Holy Saturday: Paschal Candle prayers at home

You know how you see one thing that looks like a nice, small, good idea and it snowballs into a much bigger production than you initially foresaw?  Read on.  A couple weeks ago I stumbled upon several posts about making your own Easter Paschal Candle at home and in a burst of productive insanity decided to give it a try.  It actually wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it might be, and it was FREE (or more accurately, I already had all the items it took).

• a 3x6" white pillar (of the Wal-mart variety, I am told to be 'legit' it should be at least 51% beeswax, but oh well)
• acrylic paints (yes, they really do work on wax, and let me tell you I was dubious)
• red gems (in place of incense grains, I just wasn't seeing it...)
• dull pencil to etch your pattern on before painting.

I started by drawing a simple cross on a piece of paper and then traced around it on the center of the candle with the dull pencil, letting it make a nice indentation.  I probably went over these indentions 5-7 times to get a nice clean line.  I added the numbers for the year, an Alpha at the top and an Omega at the bottom (free-hand) and then painted inside the lines as shown.  I let everything dry and added the gold paint on the inside of the cross.  We'll add the gems (I am praying my glue-dots will do the trick) when we bless the candle tonight...

Because after I made it I realized it would be nice to have some sort of prayer and blessing for it, rather than just sticking it on the middle of the table.  And since the Easter Vigil is just not an option for our family at this point in our lives, I thought it would be nice to incorporate some of the prayers and rituals done there.  I drew from several sources for this, namely The Year and Our Children and my Magnificat (for the prayers).  Here is what we will do.  

Begin with the Sign of the Cross and pray the below, tracing the parts on the candle as noted.

"Christ yesterday and today (vertical bar of the cross)

the beginning and the end (horizontal bar of the cross)

Alpha (A, above the cross)

and Omega; (Ω, below the cross)

all time belongs to him (2, upper left quadrant)

and all the ages: (0, upper right quadrant)

to him be glory and power (1, lower left quadrant)

through every age for ever. Amen." (3, lower right quadrant)

(while adding the gems to the four ends and center of the cross: ) 

"By his holy and glorious wounds may Christ our Lord guard us and keep us."

Light candle.

"May the light of Christ, rising in glory, dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds." 

V. The Lord be with you.

R. And with your Spirit.

V. Let us pray:

O God, who through your Son bestowed upon the faithful the fire of your glory, sanctify (at this point sprinkle candle with water) this new fire, we pray, and grant that we may be so inflamed with heavenly desires, that with minds made pure we may attain festivities of unending splendor.  Through Christ our Lord, 

R. Amen.

V. A reading from the Holy Gospel According to John.

R. Glory to You oh Lord. 

 (Read from the Bible John 20:11-18 -- the story of Mary Magdalen at the tomb).

Litany of the Saints as prayed at Mass, adding our family member patron saints to the end. (found in Magnificat)

Renewal of Baptismal vows (bless family members with Holy Water). (found in Magnificat)

V. Now that the days of the Lord's Passion have drawn to a close, may we who celebrate the gladness of the Paschal Feast come with Christ's help, and exulting in spirit to those feasts that are celebrated in eternal joy.

R. Amen 

Sign of the Cross to close.

Our candle will be our centerpiece for the 50 days of Easter, and we will use it throughout the year on special feast days and such.

Wishing everyone a blessed joy-filled Easter.  REJOICE, for He is risen indeed!

Lent 2013

I thought I'd blog our plans for Lent this year, more for my benefit to look back on than anything else, but if you're curious read on, most (all?) of these ideas I've gotten from someone else.  

• The liturgical-themed centerpiece works well for us...I could do what I did last year, but I'm thinking of using a glass candle-holder filled with sand and one of our 3 inch pillar purple Advent candles, and then some other purple embellishments.  I've also started putting monthly liturgical items (prayer cards for Feasts of the month, statues, religious pictures, etc.) on our little corner shelf in the dining room by our daily calendar and weather chart, so I'll probably put some Lenten items there as well.
• I will make charts again for each week with daily prayer, fasting and almsgiving activities (plus a weekly [short] memory verse).
• PRAYER We are doing a prayer garden this year.  I printed (and am still cutting) a bunch of construction paper flowers and we will write our daily intention on the flower and hang it on the cabinet in the kitchen.  We will pray for these intentions specifically during morning prayers and at dinner as a family.
• FASTING We will again choose an item (that I have already shopped for) for the babies in the pro-life outreach each day (a modified idea from this book). Whomever's "day" it is according to The Magnet will get to chose the item.   And we will of course fast from meat on Fridays.  We are also going to try to fast (as a family) from treats on Fridays.  This will be a first for the whole family, and I think it will be difficult for the kids.  I am struggling with fasting and what is appropriate for young children.  I think it is important for them to learn about sacrifices, but don't want to force things too much.  Like I said, struggling with this one.  Any insight or experience would be appreciated.
• ALMSGIVING We will count a specific item in the house and put that many coins in our alms jar to give the pro-life outreach after Easter.
• This year Gemma and Kolbe will each have their own Lenten Path from Catholic Icing to color a square a day.  These will hang "in" our prayer garden.
• During our morning prayers we will read a Psalm or other short Scriptural passage from Magnificat. 
• We are going to learn the Act of Love as a family, and pray it in the morning and evening.  
• On our corner shelf, I will have a "Sacrifice Jar", where the kids can put a purple bead when they make a sacrifice, a red bead when they do something loving, and a yellow bead when they say a special prayer on their own.  We'll see how this goes, it's kind of an evolving idea and I am drawing my inspiration from several sources...
• I was given a neat little booklet called Forty Clues for Forty Days that we'll do each day during Learning Time in the afternoon.  I'll also have some rotating books from home/library/prayer books etc. sitting around and try to focus on reading some of them each afternoon.
• I picked up a couple Stations of the Cross coloring books for the kids.
• We'll pray a Sorrowful Mystery each time we get in the car with this CD.
• We are going to attempt weekly Stations of the Cross in the afternoon at our parish.  
• Aaron and I have a daily meditation book by Henry Nouwen and we are going to try to watch the Catholicism series, we have a handful recorded on the DVR and my sister owns the whole set.

Please share your ideas in the comments, or better yet, do your own blog post!  I love reading about what others are doing and getting new ideas!!

A blessed Lent.

Journal (12th edition)

TODAY

Out my window: Sunny.  Cold.  Supposed to be mild(er) today, and then get cold (relatively speaking) tomorrow and into the first part of the week.

Clothing myself in: Aw, do I HAVE to??  Grey sweats, tank and navy sweatshirt that is too big but I wear it because it is comfortable even though I don't particularly like how it looks.  Yes, this is my life.  And I'm getting a cold sore.  Bummer.  It has been a long time since I've had one, I mainly have them under control it seems through diet/supplements, but alas...  Bleh.

Around the house:  Christmas decos are mainly up.  Advent has been nice so far. Trying to just slow things down and focus on what's important.  "People before things," in the wise words of my spiritual director.  As easy as this sounds, it's not always.  Trying though, and Advent has provided a great time and motivation to really focus on this.

In the past few weeks I successfully completed the mail merge and printed envelopes with addresses and return addresses for our Christmas letter (this is always a miracle in and of itself, I only do a mail merge once a year and I never quite remember how...pins and needles until it's actually done).  THEN, I finally decided to buckle down and write the letter.  Starting out is always the hardest part.  Once I did that it took about 10 minutes, a day to sit on it and tweak, printed it.  Got the pictures ordered with a really good deal from Shutterfly.  Got some professionals done of the kids (now I'm out of order on when I did all this, but I'm too lazy to go back and correct myself).  Folded, stuffed, stamped, SENT!!!  Whew.  Don't ask how many.  (115).  Seriously, I have tried to cut our list and I just can't.  Do I have a problem?

Hoping to tackle gift wrapping this coming week.  Done with shopping for the most part.  

Wow, that was all very random.  Sorry.

 

The baby: Is rolling now.  He had been going back to front for a few weeks (although I just actually SAW him do it for the first time earlier this week).  Just this morning he figured out the front to back thing.  Now I have to watch where I leave him!!  And the floor is just such a safe spot with an almost five and almost three year old in the house.  OH dear...

 

The kiddos:  

I'll start with Kolbe...HE DID IT!!!!!  I am ready to call "The Great Potty Adventure of 2012" a SUCCESS!!!  We haven't had any accidents for over a week, and only a few "false starts".  AND, I don't have to remind him to go.  He heads into the bathroom and does his business all on his own without being told.  YAY!!!!!!!!!!  He is still in diapers at night, and I've a feeling he probably will be for awhile, but by golly we've got days down!!  The big success was celebrated with a package of "Thomas" underpants from St. Nicholas.  

Yes, St. Nicholas.  He visited this week bearing adorable chocolate Santas, holiday t-shirts for the kids, some Xylitol gum, hair-things for Gemma, patron saint prayer cards and the aforementioned undies.  As tradition holds we read this book, and the kids watched the CCC St. Nicholas story (I DVRd it from EWTN) several times in the past few days.  Gemma was so excited for his arrival (and Kolbe too by default) that she wanted to put her shoes on the fireplace first thing the morning of the 5th.  I had to remind her she would actually need to WEAR them that day, and she could put them out at night before bed and it would be fine.  It's fun seeing the kids look forward to these traditions in our family.    

In the kitchen:  Chicken Linguine, Meatloaf (I really should blog the recipe, my neighbor brought it to us after Clem was born and it was awesome.  It's my new favorite meatloaf recipe), TACOS for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, maybe Salmon Noodles (from my Betty Crocker cook book), but I may change my mind by Friday on that one.  As of now I'm not feelin' it, but that's what the "menu" says....  I'd also like to make some parsley pesto (loosely following this recipe), a neighbor (different one) brought us some parsley from her garden and I've found this to be a great thing to have in the fridge.  And while I like basil pesto better, the parsley stuff is definitely more versatile.   

Crafting:  My kind neighbor (another one yet...we have the greatest neighbors) is letting me use her serger to finish the edges of a blanket that Kolbe will be getting for Christmas.  I tried it out the other night on some scraps, and plan to take the actual blanket over to finish some night next week.  It is fleece that I got on a SUPER good deal on Black Friday.  So excited about this!!!  I have some other sewing ideas bouncing around in my head, we'll see how soon they come to fruition. 

Learning:  Mainly Advent activities.  We're using this Jesse Tree book as part of our morning prayers, and while we're not actually doing a Jesse Tree, I printed these coloring pages out and Gemma is coloring them to hang on the cabinet as we go.  It has been a really good opportunity to immerse the kids in Scripture a bit more (we're also reading the stories from our Children's Bible) and talk specifically about Salvation History and God's covenants with His people.  Still plugging away with reading lessons.  Gemma is making some great progress.  This week we will start working on our Salt Dough Ornaments.  We will. 

Reading:  I recently finished Unplanned.  The story itself was really remarkable.  I think the thing that resonated with me most though was its testimony to the power of prayer.  Very powerful.  

Bringing me joy: A clean oven, thank you MOM.  Yes, I have the coolest mom ever.  She totally cleaned my nasty-gross-gnarly-I'membarassedthatsheevenlookedinit-oven for me and it looks AMAZING.  It was a complete surprise too.  Long story but I went to put a lasagna in the oven for dinner on Monday and had to do a double-triple take.  I thought I had somehow been crazily transported to a mystical world where they have clean ovens. 

Some time away with the baby and hubby.  Aaron had some continuing ed about 3hrs away from home last Fri./Sat.  And my dear parents (yes, the same ones who cleaned my oven) took care of Gemma and Kolbe while we were gone.  It was their first night away from home (aside from when Clem was born) so it was kind of a big deal.  They had fun, my parents had fun, and the baby and I got some uninterrupted shopping time in the "big city" while daddy was in class.  Plus getting to visit with Aaron uninterrupted in the car was kind of amazing.  AND we went on a date to a restaurant where someone else cooked and cleaned up after the meal, AND they had live jazz music.  Who knew such things existed?! (haha)   It was relaxing, but as cliche as it sounds there really is no place like home.  

Advent.

My squishy baby.

Kids who play well together (no, it's not always this way, but boy when they do it is WONDROUS).

The music on this CD.

Thinking about: How long this post is.  Congrats if you made it to the end!!!  Any thought that I've had of late is probably summed up in the above paragraphs, so I'll spare you any more insights into my wacky head. 

Pictures to share: 

The kids in their St. Nick shirts.

 Clem.  Always amused by his older siblings.

Kolbe drew a person!!!

We did a "photo-shoot" with Max the dog one day when we were playing out at the park. 

Angel cookies 2012

I had to post a few pics of our angel cookies this year for the Feast of the Guardian Angels.  Gemma was really looking forward to this, it's fun seeing these family traditions evolve as the kids get older...and having kids old enough to look forward to them.  We also had a little mobile craft we did last week that went along with the book Pascual and the Kitchen Angels.  I can't for the life of me find the link for the directions now, but I have the template saved in a Word document if you're interested.  Here are our 2012 angel cookies.  I love Kolbe's proud smile!  I finally found an angel cookie cutter, and borrowed one from my mom as well.  It worked out really well having two this year.  Each kid had their own dough, own cutter, own space.  Happy Feast of the Angels everyone! 

Feast of St. Kolbe

Sweet Kolbe celebrated his feast day this past week.  He was so happy to inform everyone that it was "St. Babby".  So cute.  He received a copy of this book (which was great for the feast of the Assumption, and next week's feast of the Coronation), and some religious stickers that our local Catholic store now carries!!  His sweet godmother also brought him a Brother Francis "DDD"  (as he calls it) which both kids are enjoying, although Kolbe was admittedly a bit befuddled at the fact that the whole show didn't revolve around the "ball-ball" on the DVD cover.  ;-D  That's my boy!  Happy Feast Day to my big little guy!  May St. Kolbe always pray for you as you grow in Christ.

Feast of Saints Peter and Paul

I would so like to make the saints a more regular part of our activities around here.  I am still finding it hard to strike a balance though, at least with young children...most of the saint books we have are just a bit above Gemma (and Kolbe obviously).  I wish there were something more comprehensive (think Saint of the Day) out there geared specifically toward preschoolers.  At any rate, I've been trying to at least find a saint or feast or two a month and focus on them for several days with various books, pictures, activities, prayers and projects.  I decided Sts. Peter and Paul would be a great feast to celebrate (June 29), especially since Gemma learned (and has remembered!) a lot about St. Peter in Bible School.

Here are some of the resources I found for celebrating the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul:

• Here and here are some posts from Catholic Icing on St. Peter activities, and here is the recipe for the Keys of the Kingdom pretzels (I only used a tsp of salt in the dough, and I used 3 cups WW one cup white flour...they were quite tasty I thought and the kids enjoyed the whole process)

• Click here for a brief (geared towards children) biography on Sts. Peter and Paul
• Click here for a St. Peter coloring page and here for St. Paul
• Art print of Sts. Peter and Paul
• We checked out this St. Peter and St. Paul book from the library...definitely above Gemma but it worked
• And this great book of pictures entitled The Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, both kids really enjoyed all the pictures of art and architecture (even though it isn't actually a "Catholic" church, it was still really cool, and a great part of our US history as well)
  
• Of course, there's always a good St. Joseph picture book for about any occasion, we found Peter and Paul in Great Men of the New Testament
• I added our St. Peter and Paul prayer card to our table/liturgical centerpiece
• Click here for some prayers for Sts. Peter and Paul

Lenten update - what's working so far

I blogged before Lent about what I had planned for the kids and wanted to briefly update on how things are going.

• I like Welcome Risen Jesus a lot, but find it to be a bit above Gemma, even more so than Welcome Baby Jesus (Advent), which I thought was right at her level for the most part.  I have actually put this aside for now and opted for a daily reading from either Celebrating Lent or The Works of Mercy during morning prayers.  Gemma seems to identify with these quite well, especially the pictures.
• Along with our alms that we put in a jar for "the babies" (our local Catholic pro-life outreach), we've also been doing a spin-off of sorts on "Sacrifice Beans".  If I catch Gemma making a special sacrifice she gets to put a purple bead in the alms jar and "offers her sacrifice up" for the babies.  This is working fairly well, it is so hard to set parameters for something like this though, especially for a four-year-old to whom everything needs to be black and white...  She really does kind of get it though, definitely enough to keep up with it.  I've had to remind her she can't ask for a bead, but she does (frequently enough) find little things that are sacrificial for her to do, and "sacrifice" is becoming a more regular word in her vocabulary which I like.  Living and learning we are...
• The weekly charts are a good thing, I'd like to rework them a bit next year though so our prayer and fasting activities go with our daily readings.  Even on the charts though, some of the "fasting" things I came up with I just can't seem to follow through on if I get too much resistance.  Gemma just seems a bit young to really "get it" and I don't want to force the issue with her so much that she resents it.  And that's OK.  Just hard to know which battles to pick and which ones to let go.  Instead of coloring the squares on our charts, we're using the Lenten Calendar from Catholic Icing again.  A great visual for the path through Lent for all of us.
• Abstaining from meat on Fridays has been a great family activity this year.  Gemma really seems to get that.  And while it's not a huge sacrifice for her (she's used to eating what she is served at a meal), it's something we all do together and it's different than the usual fare.  She sees the fish on our Lenten Calendar and will proclaim "no meat today"!  It's nice to see a few things really sinking in.  
• Family prayer intention and one Station of the Cross after dinner are working out splendidly.  I may try to broaden on this a bit next year, Kansas Mom has some great ideas with her prayer garden.
• I found these coloring sheets for the Stations of the Cross, and we've been using watercolors or crayons on one or two a week.  I intend to put them together in a little book for Gemma to use on Good Friday, and maybe even attempting Stations at church that day.  Maybe.
• I found this beautiful book at our library.  The pictures are just wonderful. 
• I have several books from the library to read during Holy Week, and My First Pictures of Easter which I purchased recently. 

We've (mostly) taken a of a hiatus from our Letter of the Week activities so we can focus more on Lent, and that's been nice.  As things stand, I'm planning on jumping back in with our letters after Easter, and we should be able to finish the Alphabet well before baby arrives.  Goodness, time flies!  Just one more school year and my baby girl will be heading off to Kindergarten, wow.

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!!

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.***

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!!!

Our Lady of Guadalupe

As I mentioned, we've taken some time off from our "letter of the week" activities to really focus on the Advent and Christmas. seasons  We have had plenty of other activities to occupy our time for sure and I am grateful I decided on a break.  For the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Gemma did this coloring/painting.  She used crayons to color the picture, and then watercolors over it.  I realized after the fact that to achieve the desired effect I should have had her use non-washable crayons.  Oh well, it still turned out pretty neat I thought.  She and I also made the little craft (to the right of the her painting) with brightly colored yarn like we read about in The Legend of the Poinsettia (which takes place in Mexico).  We also enjoyed Tomie dePaola's The Lady of Guadalupe immensely.

Feast of St. Nicholas 2011

It is really neat - as the children get older - to watch various traditions develop in our family.  St. Nicholas is one of those really fun traditions.  Gemma made sure all our shoes were set out on the fireplace well before bedtime (actually, it was even before dinner I think) on the eve of the Feast of St. Nicholas.  

And as expected, St. Nicholas left some fun treats.  Candy canes and M&M's, some fancy buttons in Gemma's shoes (she loves playing with buttons), a book for each child, and a board for building with their duplo-blocks.

 

And if that wasn't enough, after examining the treats at the fireplace, they headed over to the deck door to realize there was a very light dusting of new-fallen snow!

Gemma begged and begged and begged and begged and begged to make a snowman.  Since daddy is off on Tuesday mornings, and is pretty much the best daddy in the world, he took her out to play for a bit.  No snowmen were built (imagine), but he said she had fun playing abominable snow monster with the buckets of snow he scooped up for her.  It's the little things!

"K" week

We started "K" week off with the Feast of Christ the King.  I found this craft (click link) in my Catholic Icing preschool book and just thought it was super-neat.  Gemma was able to do almost everything by herself on this (besides glittering the name Jesus and writing the word King).  I heart our Zots!

We also had Chicken a la King for dinner Sunday evening, and that was mighty tasty!  A bit rich - almost like a chicken stroganoff - but very tasty.

Some of our favorite books were:
Riley Flies a Kite
The Kite 
Come Along, Kitten
Counting Puppies and Kittens
Katy and the Big Snow  (This was a really great story!  Gemma and I both really enjoyed it a lot.)
Kitten's First Full Moon  (We had checked this out before and Gemma was excited to see it again.  It is a "Caldecott" award, and deservedly so.  I like it a bunch.)
Kitten Red, Yellow, Blue

Our craft activity for the week was a homemade kite.  Gemma was so excited by this.  She carried her kite around for the better part of the week, to the library, Hobby Lobby, daddy's office...  Unfortunately (for her), we were low on wind for most of the week.  At one point she even stood in the driveway and said, "Please God, can we have some wind?!"  I thought that was pretty cute.

That's about all for "K" week, which was also Thanksgiving week.  If I had been thinking more when I did my planning we would have taken a week off from our "letter of the week" and just focused on Thanksgiving, but the way I had things planned out with Advent and everything it was just easier to keep things as is.  I think we'll take the week before and the week of Christmas off though.  I'm wondering what we're going to do once we run out of letters...