Homemade decade rosaries

One of our activities several weeks back during "R" week was making homemade decade Rosaries with pipe-cleaners and beads.  I found the directions for these in my Catholic Icing preschool curriculum book, they were very simple.  Gemma made one for each of her grandmas, and kept the sample one I made for herself.  We keep it in the car, as we've recently started praying a decade of the Rosary each time we go somewhere with our Holy Heroes Rosary CD.  The one I made (which is the one she has) has the 10 beads in color-wheel order, so it is very easy to help her follow along without having to turn around and look at where her fingers are.  For some time now I have wanted to start a "Rosary habit" with the kids and just haven't had the motivation to do it.  These little homemade Rosaries and the Holy Heroes Rosary CDs have been awesome tools.  As a side-note, the pictures below really crack me up, they are quite an insight into my children's individual personalities...Gemma with her beads all lined up neatly in a row, and Kolbe with a bent pipe-cleaner throwing beads across the kitchen and laughing when they bounce under the fridge.  AHHHH kids!

Halfway there

Hard to believe I'm halfway thru this pregnancy.  Seriously, where does the time go??  It is really going quickly this third time around.  Thought I'd share a recent pic of the babe and me.

A favorite Morning Offering

I thought I'd share this prayer, in case anyone else would like to use it.  I know Lent is a nice time to start new prayers/prayer routines.  In order to give credit where credit is due, this is from the prayer book Every Day is a Gift that I received from a dear friend.  The book does not list an author for this specific prayer.

Prayer to Bring Christ into Our Day

Lord Jesus,

present in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar,

help me to cast out from my mind

all thoughts of which You do not approve

and from my heart

all emotions that you do not encourage.

Enable me to spend my entire day

as a coworker with You,

carrying out the tasks that You have entrusted to me.

Be with me at every moment of this day:

during the long hours of work,

that I may never tire or slacken from your service;

during my conversations

that they many not become for me

occasions for meanness toward others;

during the moments of worry and stress,

that I may remain patient and spiritually calm;

during periods of fatigue and illness,

that I may disregard self and think of others;

during times of temptation,

that I may take refuge in Your grace.

Help me to remain generous and loyal to You this day

and so be able to offer it all up to You

with its successes that I have achieved by Your help

and its failures that have occurred 

through my own fault.

Let me come to the wonderful realization 

that life is most real

when it is lived with you as the Guest of my soul.

If you are looking for a book (for yourself or to give as a gift) with short daily meditations, I would highly recommend Every Day is a Gift.  My friend said it jumped out at her because it had the same name as my blog, and I'm so glad it did.  It has been a nice, simple addition to my daily prayer routine, with its concise (a sentence or two) Scripture verses, reflections and prayers.

Valentines 2012

The kids had fun painting/stickering/writing their own Valentines for those we love this year (and quite a many for our fridge as well).  We also used some of these (and more here) from Catholic Icing which I just thought were so SUPER-duper cool.  I mean, seriously, how great.  We printed ours black and white on tag-board and painted them (with watercolors) but if you printed them in color they would really look very "professional" I think, and the Scripture verses just make them so wonderful.

Gemma made a Valentine for me that said "H V T" on the front, "for Happy ValenTines," she told me.  I was so proud of her.

Hope everyone had a nice, love-filled Valentines day.

Kolbe's mealtime mohawk

Kolbe has always had a fascination with hair.  Maybe because for his first year + of life he didn't have any??  At any rate, when he was little tiny and I spent hours a day wearing him, he loved to play with my hair.  Now that he is a little older and he tries to do this when I rock him to sleep, I will admit, it gets a bit annoying (alright, it downright drives me up the wall, he's not as gentle as he used to be) so I have been discouraging the habit.  This has led to him messing with his own hair (now that he HAS hair), especially when he falls asleep.  And at dinnertime.  I'm not sure if this comes from the need to clean his hands, or if he just likes messing with his hair that much, but it has made for some quite interesting do's (or maybe "don't's" would be a better description) as you can see.

Lent 2012 activities

I wanted to keep a record of our Lenten activities, and started to put it all in an Excel spreadhseet and then just decided to put it on the blog, like my friend Kansas Mom did so I could have a record to look back on in future years.  This has been a work in progress for us last year and this, and I'm sure we'll continue to grow and change our ideas as the kids get older, but this is what works for us now.

1. Our Lenten centerpiece.  We started out with a prayer table a couple years ago in our living room, but as Gemma got older and more distractable, and Kolbe got more mobile and into things the end-table we designated as "Prayer Table" just didn't work out.  So slowly but surely our table centerpiece has evolved into a Liturgical theme and we say our prayers around the table which works very nicely.  So here is our "Lenterpiece" (and I must admit, I stole the name from my clever friend Angie).  This will remind us throughout each day of the penitential season and Jesus' suffering for us.
2. Lenten song (Forty Days and Forty Nights) at the beginning and end of Morning Prayers.
3. Daily Meditation from Welcome Risen Jesus with our Morning Prayers.
4. Our weekly Scripture/memory verse (that we recite after prayers) will be the Responsorial Psalm from each Sunday, and these will be typed out at the bottom of our weekly charts (see #5).
5. Our daily "Pray" "Fast" and "Give" activities on our weekly charts that will hang on the fridge.
6. GIVE: We'll do this activity as soon as we finish Morning Prayers. I made an alms jar (simply from a glass jar with a slot dremeled in the lid) for the kids to put their coins (which we provide) in, and we will donate the money to the Catholic Pro-life Charity that we like to support sometime during the Easter season.  Each day the kids will count an item in our house (pillows, windows, picture frames, etc.) and we'll put that number of coins in the jar.
7. FAST: Our daily activity will be performed as applicable throughout the day, these are still pretty simple since the kids are so young.  
8. PRAY: After dinnertime we will do the intention from our "Pray" category as a family using our Prayer Cube.  
9. After we've done each day's activity, Gemma will color in the corresponding box with a purple crayon to show our progress each week.
10. Also after dinner and our prayer intention we will pray/meditate on one Station of the Cross each day, repeating them throughout Lent as needed, from one of our St. Joseph's station books like this.
11. We'll pray one of the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary each time we ride in the car, using our Holy Heroes Sorrowful Mysteries CD.  (See my recent Holy Heroes review here.)

We're keeping things pretty simple, but hopefully doing enough that it will make the season memorable and meaningful for the kids (and us).  I am still figuring out for sure what I will be doing personally, but I know I'll be cutting back on computer time and would like to make my way through Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Frances de Sales.

To check out others' Lenten activities and ideas, check out (and join in on!) the link-up at Catholic Icing!!

Surviving another day

Oh parenting, marriage, family life...vocation...wow.  It's everything I ever dreamed it would be, and absolutely nothing like I dreamed it would be, all at the same time.  Like I said, wow.  

Lately I feel like I've gotten into a a real rut with life in general.  At the end of the day more often than not my thought is, "thank God I've survived another day.  Now let's go to sleep so we can wake up and do it all over again."  I realize this goes with the territory when you're in the tunnel of parenthood and that this is said to be (by some) one of the toughest stages of parenting and oh how I hope that is the case.  I know the adolescent years will certainly hold with their own difficulties and challenges, but now it's just, ohmygoodnessgraciouswow.  Children: you are needy and grumpy and loud and needy and messy and you can't articulate yourselves very well at all sometimes and you're quite needy too and I feel like all you ever do is clamor for my attention all.the.time. and I love you so so so so so so much but some most days I just feel like it's all I can do to tread water when it comes to parenting you, educating you, clothing you, helping form you in the Faith, keeping a house and making it a home, making time for family and keeping up friendships, finding time for volunteering/stewardship, trying to make regular time for prayer and the Sacraments, running errands, going through the mail, paying bills, etc. etc. etc.  And oh yeah, my marriage and relationship with your daddy.  That's important too.  I am just in awe that God has seen fit to entrust to our care these miraculous, complicated bundles of human life, but sometimes that awe easily turns into overwhelmed-ness.  And then I feel stuck.  Like I'm in a state of perpetual water treading, with no end sight.   

My actions of late seem to really reflect this "treading water" attitude too and I just don't like it.  Lately I've gotten so grumpy, so snappy.  I yell at the kids and get gripey with Aaron.  Too much.  The smallest things will set me off.  I feel like I am constantly reacting.  Reacting to this mess, or that fight or another phone call or the millionth item to add to the "to do" list for the week or gosh pretty much everything.  I have so many things that I deem to be "important" that I strive to accomplish each day, but at the end of the day I sit here and what do I remember?  How many times I lost my patience.  How many times I yelled and reacted.  And had to apologize.  And then did it all over again.  So what?  So I could have a clean house and folded laundry, sheets on the bed and clothes on the kids, or an updated blog and just the right books placed on hold at the library?  Don't get me wrong, this stuff can be important too, but in moderation.  And I think lately I've been having trouble seeking (and finding) that moderation.  That balance of what's really, truly important in my day-to-day family life.  

I'm wrapping up an almost two-years-long project that was very important to our family but has sucked soooooo muuuuuuuch of my time and I am very grateful to be moving on, but aside from that I know my priorities are often just out of whack.  And I really, reallllllly need to do something about that.  Not just talk about it or think about it, but really DO something. about. it.  I am looking forward to the upcoming Lenten season and hoping that it will give me an opportunity to prioritize, to grow in grace, to continue to learn and grow in my vocation. And I think one of the things I desperately need am going to do is cut way back on my computer use.  Now that my 'project' is nearing its end I will have a lot less excuse for spending time on the computer/Internet.  Oh don't get me wrong, I find plenty of excuses throughout the day to get sucked in check up on this or that.  Too many really.  And therein lies a huge part of my problem.  The Interwebs are so super-great, it's honestly hard for me to imagine life without an Internet connection.  I really can't imagine having to go to the library and actually look something up in the card catalog (do they still have those?) or not be able to "google it" every time I need a recipe or want to know the difference between a primary and a caucus.  But seriously.  One must draw the line somewhere.  And it is high time I do some line drawing.  

So I am going to be taking a bit of a hiatus for the next month-and-a-half or so and we'll see where it goes from there.  I still intend to check in and keep the blog semi up-to-date.  I really do enjoy having the record of things (especially those related to our darling children) on which to look back and such; but I'm going to try to cut back and focus on the things that are really important.  Like real life, for instance.  Our family is growing, our children are growing up right before our eyes, and we'll have a huge adjustment this summer when we add #3 and the minivan and the shared sibling bedroom and all the other fun things that come with traveling further into "the tunnel".  I know the light is there, at the end, somewhere.  I've witnessed friends emerge triumphant at the other end and they give me hope.  But for now, on I trudge.  Striving to do more than just "survive" each day.  Hoping to truly seek and find Christ in my day, in my children, in my husband.  In my life and vocation.  Striving to (as my spiritual director once told me) "reflect" instead of "react" to everything that happens in my day in an attempt imitate our Blessed Mother, instead of falling apart in a heap of my own wild, crazy shenanigans that I try to pass-off as my feeble attempt at being a mom and wife.  

Blessings everyone...thanks for sticking with my rambles.  Here's to life, and the hopes for a fruitful upcoming Lenten season.

REVIEW: Holy Heroes Rosary CD's

For his birthday, Kolbe's godmother gave him the Holy Heroes Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary CD.  We finally pulled it out last week for "R" week, as I decided it would be a good opportunity to talk about the Rosary.  I was really impressed with this CD.  The entire Rosary is led by children, with explanations at the beginning of each mystery and then a brief meditation before each Hail Mary.  This is a wonderful tool - in my opinion - for praying the Rosary with kids.  Because I have high hopes of praying a Decade of the Rosary with my children and I'll be honest, it just never happens.  Now we've started the habit that if we go somewhere in the car (which happens more days than not it seems), the first thing we do is listen to/pray a Decade of the Rosary.  Call me lazy, but having it on a CD is so much easier than trying to lead it on my own, and engage the kids in what is going on.  I was so excited about this that I decided to purchase the Sorrowful Mysteries as part of the kids' Valentines present for us to use during the upcoming Lenten Season, and will likely purchase the Glorious Mysteries as an Easter gift.  You can also purchase the entire Rosary as a set.

Click here for more information about Holy Heroes.  And if you haven't heard of their Lenten Adventure, you can check it out here.  They also have an Advent Adventure and a Summer program as well.  We've never participated actively in one of their Adventures, but I am signed up for the emails and they have great resources for families during these important Liturgical seasons.  And, it's FREE!!  So go check Holy Heroes out and support a wonderful, truly Catholic, family produced and run company.

***I received nothing in return for this review, I simply wanted to give an honest review about a Catholic product I found to be a good fit for our family.***

Monthly update - January 2012

For whatever reason I have really been dragging my feet on doing an update, and then I did this one and it sat in my drafts forever.  But I really do like looking back at these and seeing what the kids were up to at certain ages, so on I trudge, maybe quarterly updates would be a more achievable goal though in the future...

Gemma - 4yrs

• The day of her fourth birthday she informed me should could wipe herself, wash her own hands and no longer needed my help in the bathroom because she was "a big girl".  This has been really nice.
• She's getting really good at writing her (capital) letters, and will often ask me how to spell certain words.  She loves writing "letters" to people.  Santa brought her a whole box of envelopes for Christmas for this specific purpose.  
• Her latest favorite thing to play with is pillows.  She will get all the pillows from the whole house and build some formation and then play with/in it for long amounts of time, typically Kolbe is included in this as well.  Sometimes I wonder why we have toys...
• Biting.  I am embarrassed to say we are still having issues intermittently with her biting Kolbe.  (This has spiked terribly recently.)  She does it reactiveIy when she is angry or frustrated with him and really gives no thought to any consequences (of which there have been plenty that vary greatly) so I am really at a loss as to how we should handle this.  Advice?  Please??
• She is very good at drawing people and animals.  Well, as good as a four-year-old can be anyways.  But she gets the whole placement of facial features, arms, legs, etc. and I always love seeing what she comes up with. 
• She's getting pretty handy with scissors.
• She got a new fish (first part of Feb.).  We decided to go with a Betta as we were having many issues with dead guppies.  She named him "Flowercup".

Kolbe - 2yrs

• This kid has grown an opinion and a personality in the past few months.  Wow.
• Still loves ball-balls, is learning to say the names of different balls and correctly identify them.
• His speech is really starting to improve.  Still not really speaking in sentences (at all) but he's saying a lot of new words in context each day and will combine two words if you work with him on it.  He repeats a lot, though not always correctly.  He's so cute and fun.
• He likes trudging around in Aaron's or my shoes.
• He is infatuated with the stepstool.  Heaven help us all.  (Said stepstool has been stored on a closet shelf since the writing of this post.)
• He and Aaron have developed a very intricate morning routine that involves bananas and Sportscenter and a sip of coffee.  I'm always a little sad when Kolbe sleeps later than normal and misses out on this.
• It's hard to believe Kolbe is 2.  It's even harder to believe that when Gemma was his age we were bringing home a new baby (him)!  July will be fun.

Gemma 4yrs and Kolbe 2yrs

Lenten giveaway WINNER

The winner of my Lenten giveaway, according to a random online number generator is my friend ANGIE!!  Congrats, Angie!  I believe I have your new address so I will be sending a copy of Welcome Risen Jesus your way soon.  I really liked Angie's Lenten tradition, so much so that she inspired me to go out and get some items to make our own Lenten centerpiece with our Liturgical candle and some nice purple floral pieces, ribbon and holy cards.  I'll have to post a pic!  Anyways, here's what Angie had to say.

"We have a "Lenterpiece" (that's what I call it) that I made with 6 purple votive candles and we light them at dinner adding one each week in Lent. Think Advent Wreath only Lent. It has been a good reminder of the season and of our sacrifices and commitments we've made for Lent. I am looking to reading more ideas! Thanks Mon!"

Thanks to all who entered, and blessings as we all prepare for the Lenten season.

Baptism Anniversaries 2012

Soon after our January birthdays, we celebrated Baptism anniversaries. When our oldest was Baptized we got a really neat pamphlet from our parish talking about the importance of Baptism and commemorating this special day.  This has been very helpful as we have begun celebrating Baptism anniversaries in our family.  For Gemma, we actually had her renew her Baptismal vows for the first time this year.  She was very enthusiastic with her "I do".  It was sweet.  We said the prescribed prayers, let her blow out her candle, and then she got a small gift, a Holy Water font for her bedroom.  I think she and Kolbe are a little too excited about it, but hopefully the novelty will wear off soon ;-D  And please, don't be fooled by the folded hands and angelic smile...

For Kolbe we just recited the Apostle's Creed together and let him blow out his candle.  He was quick, Aaron couldn't even snap the picture before the candle was out.  Kolbe received the book Baby Come To Church.  I'm hoping it will keep his attention a little more at Mass.  The realist in me says it probably won't.  Nothing ever does.  

Ahhh grace.  Thank you God for the Sacraments, and thank you for my children who are constantly giving me opportunities to grow in grace.

And don't forget to get in on my Lenten Giveaway if you are interested!  Contest closes Tuesday 2/7 at 8PM.

Lenten GIVEAWAY (with a small catch)

Leading up to Advent, I gave away a copy of the children's book "Welcome Baby Jesus" on my blog.  I was surfing Amazon around Christmas-time, and a book entitled Welcome Risen Jesus popped up in my recommendations.  We really enjoyed Welcome Baby Jesus at our house as part of our daily prayers and I was excited to see a Lenten book by the same author.  It is essentially the same format as Welcome Baby Jesus, just for the 40 Days of Lent and the Octave of Easter.  Each day has an "Act", "Fast" and "Pray" section along with a daily Scripture verse and meditation.  Just as in Welcome Baby Jesus, these are very child-appropriate.  Some of the activities are definitely above a preschooler (especially the fasting ones in my opinion) but this will definitely be a book that our family can grow with over the years.

So here's the giveaway part...leave a comment about your favorite family Lenten tradition, and I will randomly draw a winner to be announced on the blog first thing Wednesday, February 8 (two weeks before Ash Wednesday...can you believe how soon Lent is?!!).  The catch?  When I received the copy I bought on Amazon, some of the Bible verses were cut off the sides of the page in a small section in the middle of the book.  I contacted Ligouri and they kindly offered to send me another copy but I couldn't bear to throw the other one away, so I'll jot words in for the verses that were cut off and give that copy away.  Also, just as an FYI, I recently saw this book at the local Catholic store on the west side of town for $1.25!!  So if you're interested and don't win...

And here's a Lenten tradition we enjoyed last year.  I got this from my friend Geri/the book Guiding Your Catholic Preschooler.  For each day in lent we have a Pray, Fast and Give activity (this year I made some charts in Excel to hang on the fridge).  For PRAY: we have a special intention that we say a family prayer for each day.  I'm looking forward to using our Prayer Cube for this.  For FAST: we choose an item from our own things/things we've purchased to donate to the food pantry or pro-life charity, fast from something simple like music in the car, or give up some playtime to say a special prayer, etc.  For GIVE: we count something in the house each day (doors, lights, pillows, windows, etc.) and Gemma and Kolbe get to put that number of coins in our Alms jar that will also be given to the pro-life charity.

Now it's YOUR turn.  I can't wait to read about others' Lenten traditions, and am very excited to share a copy of Welcome Risen Jesus with one of my readers!!  And don't hesitate to enter even if you live out of town.  This book is small and I am more than happy to mail it if need be.  Contest closes Tuesday evening, February 7 at 8PM!!!

Small successes XLV

1. Waxed my legs for the third time this winter.  Awesomeness. My legs have not seen a razor since early October (sorry if that's TMI), and they actually do not resemble those of a woolly-mammoth.  This waxing business is pretty sweet when you stick with it and follow through.

2.  Sold some cloth diapers that I bought in advance and ended up not needing/using.  I was able to sell them for close to what I bought them for (since they were still new) so I ended up coming out less than $10 short of what I bought them for.  Yay!  And this has cleared some nice room in my diaper storage tubs, which is always welcomed.

3. Got everything together for our taxes (this a joint success for my hubby and myself) and got things in the mail (to our tax preparation guy) for our corporate and personal taxes.  Now we just wait!  Always nice to get that big mess of numbers and paperwork over with.  I can't imagine having to do our taxes on our own...

4.  Replaced our bed-sheets and pillows.  I had been complaining about my pillow, and about the fact that I thought our sheets were getting a little worn.  Well, one day I was making the bed and the sheets just ripped.  Kid you not.  So yep, it was time to replace them.  We had a replacement set on hand so I got those all washed up and put on, and then went out and got a good deal on some pillows.  Sweet dreams!

5.  Caught a cold (that's not the "success" part) but weathered it pretty well and managed not to pass it on to my hubby or children.  YAY for healthy habits and healthy immune systems.

6.  Went through a major organization overhaul.  Almost like I was nesting, only too early.  ; -D  Whatever the case, the more organized/decluttered things are around  here the better (in my OCD opinion).

7.  Got several blog posts I'd been putting off saved to my drafts.  Now I just have to click "publish"!

8.  Have our family Lent plans essentially ready to go.  Is that really less than three weeks away?!

9. Posted my successes more often than quarterly!

It's important as moms to share in each others' successes, no matter how big or small.  Share your successes each week (if you'd like) over at Chocolate For Your Brain!!!