Thursday, December 19, 2013

Celebrating St. Nicholas Day



Saint Nicholas Day was on December 6th, and as usual, the children put out their shoes by the fireplace... in the morning, they found some new books about December saints as well as a couple Christmas books, an Advent CD to listen to, and chocolate coins, oranges, and holy cards!






Lucy was thrilled that she got chocolate coins this year!  Just a few, but enough to make her feel like she is one of the big girls, or "biggurs," as she says it!



Here is our Saint Nicholas day coffee cake.  It has been a candy cane in the past to look like a bishop's crozier... and since yeast bread is hard to shape into anything and we'd had only moderate luck with the crozier still looking slightly crozier-ish after rising, I thought we would try making the bread look like a bishop's miter (his pointed hat) this year.  Again, the rising did it in... it gets rounded instead of having pointed corners as it did when I first shaped it.  And after putting the cross-shaped dough over the filling, I wanted to cover the rest of the filling with strips of the remaining dough.  So instead of looking like a miter, it looks like a trilobite.  Oh well, the kids believed it was a miter when I told them it was - they don't care!  And if the bread rises to the point that it no longer looks right - well, at least we know it was good bread!

Cecilia and Caroline show off their St. Nicholas crafts we made that morning before heading to noon Mass and our homeschool group afterwards... as you can see, Lucy was much more interested in eating the St. Nicholas cookies!



As we have done for the past several years, we made our traditional St. Nicholas cookies and bagged them up for friends and neighbors with little tags that said, "Happy St. Nicholas Day!  St. Nicholas was a bishop who lived in the fourth century.  Just as he did things secretly for others, these treats are left in secret for you!"  We spent time on this day reading our various St. Nicholas books, singing some songs, and watching the cartoon St. Nicholas movie with our homeschool group!

St. Nicholas, Pray for Us!

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Cousins

These two are exactly the same age - born just three weeks apart!
Here are some photos taken over Thanksgiving...