Catching Up: Our Lady of Guadalupe Luncheon!

 

We have been enjoying celebrating the feasts of St. Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe the past several years.  We have had a fun luncheon with friends for the past few years, and we did it again this year on December11, two days after Juan Diego's feast day and one day before Our Lady of Guadalupe's feast day.  This year, our friends brought another Catholic homeschooling family to join in the fun!

When everyone arrived, the children colored pictures depicting the story of Our Lady appearing to Juan Diego while listening to the Juan Diego glory Stories audio CD.  Then they watched part of the St. Juan Diego CCC video.  The copy our friends own had gotten damaged, so I found a partial clip on Youtube and the kids watched it through the Roku on the TV while us moms set up the luncheon!

 

We had Aztec hot cocoa (aka Mexican hot chocolate), tortilla tilmas filled with ham roses, sombreros made from Pringles and slices of string cheese...

 

...a guacamole Tepeyac Hill with tortilla chips, a Mexican cheese dip we call "sun dip" to remind us of the "lady who appeared to be clothed with the sun," the "supporting angels" made from fruit leather using a cookie cutter...

 

...crescent moon cookies to represent the crescent Our Lady appeared to be standing on, Dora Star cereal to represent the stars that covered Mary's mantle, and candy cane bishop's croziers.

While the kids ate their meal, I read our new Our :Lady of Guadalupe pop-up book to them all, and we talked about which foods went along with each part of the story.  I didn't get any photos of that... or of them coloring or watching the video... and here, a little segue from this post to say: I used to be disappointed when we did some fun activity and I didn't manage to document the whole thing in photos.  But here is what I have come to accept and embrace: if I am going to be doing activities with my kids, I will not be able to take photos of everything while also helping the event to run smoothly.  I first noticed this at our Epiphany party last year.  If I am going to be able to enjoy talking to the other adults, reading to the children, helping replenish food, and just being able to be relaxed, I am not going to get photos of everything.  And that is okay.  That is okay, because when I look back at my own childhood photos, my parents did not capture it all.  They didn't have a photo of every part of every event.  And that actually helps to add to the mystery of the memories for me!  The photos jog my memory, and I can still wonder if my memory is perfectly accurate or not, I can still relive the childhood events as my memory allows and not as dictated by exact photos of how things really happened.  And I think I like it better that way!  My own kids will look back and see photos that give glimpses and not a more full story as it appeared visually.  Their memories can fill in the rest!

So, with my philosophizing out of the way, we continue...

 

After the meal, the adults helped the kids to follow Our lady's request to build a church in her honor!  Of course, ours was a gingerbread, er, graham cracker, church.  After the moms set up the structure of the building, the kids decorated it... a little too well, as it had to be repaired from some caving in of the roof which was heavy with candies!

 

I think they got the idea that they had to use ALL the candy that was available, ha ha!

 

The completed church... with the help of the leftover royal icing from our St. Nicholas cookies!

Our Lady's image on the tilma, a  miracle which science has not been able to explain (cactus-fiber tilmas always deteriorate after a short time whereas this one has lasted 500 years!), can still be seen in the church that now stands at this site in Mexico.  I love that this little activity can teach our children of these miracles that occur in our beautiful Catholic faith!!

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas, Pray for Us!

Advent 2011

A few things we did this year during Advent... St. Lucy bread on the 13th!  Chris made the recipe for us the night before so it'd be ready for breakfast.  He's so good at keeping the extra stuff (and the regular stuff!) going while I'm mothering the bitty one. :)  This day will be a fun one to celebrate in the future with our own Lucy!

The girls about to blow out candles on the wreath-shaped bread.

Our Christmas baking this year consisted of non-baked goodies that were easy to assemble: M&M pretzel dots, Christmas bark, and caramel popcorn.  No gingerbread men this year; maybe in 2012...

Cecilia and Caroline helped with the "baking." We always enjoy being able to put work into homemade treats to give as gifts.

The girls frosted a gingerbread house kit for the O Antiphon that begins with "ruler of the house of Israel," like last year.  This kit was particularly helpful in that the house came pre-assembled!

Cecilia adds an ornament to the Jesse Tree.  We enjoyed doing the Holy Heroes Advent Adventure and following Jesus's family tree.

And now that it's Chris's birthday, January 14, maybe I'll actually get around to putting away the Jesse Tree, along with the Christmas cards and other random decor that's out and about our house!

St. Nicholas Day 2011

Yes, it happened over a month ago, but I am finally recording it here... new baby laziness syndrome going on here. ;)  I want to try to catch up a bit....

So, St. Nicholas Day was on December 6th.  The girls set their shoes out the night before, and in the morning they were found filled with goodies!  

This year, the shoes contained walnuts, holy cards (St. Andrew is visible - his feast day typically falls right at the beginning of Advent), and St. Nicholas chocolate coins to represent the story of Nicholas tossing gold coins into the home of  poor family.

Cecilia was excited about the chocolate!  St. Nicholas also left two new books for Advent, plus a box of candy cane Joe Joe's, which are apparently a much-coveted product at Trader Joe's as soon as they hit the shelves each year... my mom and I were buying them and another customer said, "Oh, you'd better get another box of those - they're so good and will be eaten quickly, and when you come back in a week, Trader Joe's will be sold out already!"  This man and his son were each carrying a box or two of the cookies.  My mom said that  they must be good since she just saw a lady with four boxes in the next aisle.  The man said, "That's my wife."  

I just bought one box.  Probably a good thing since the 2/5 of pregnancy weight I had lost hasn't budged any further (and in fact got worse over Christmas with all the yummy eating).

We have had a fancier breakfast on this day in the past few tears to set it apart as special.  Well, I wasn't up to preparing the candy cane shaped sweet bread this year, so my incredible husband did it!!  Caroline was really excited, since she remembers this bread from years past and enjoyed having it as our little family tradition.

enjoying her St. Nicholas breakfast!

Oh, and this was the evening before... we had our St. Nicholas pork and apples dinner, again in part thanks to my hubby, who cooked the meat so I wouldn't spatter grease on the little slingling.  

During the day, Caroline did some St. Nicholas copywork, we read St. Nicholas books and sang songs about him, and the girls made this fun set of paper figures that I printed from St. Nicholas Center.  

In the afternoon, we were invited by my sweet friend to come over to make St. Nicholas cookies!  Making cookies has been fun for us in the past years, but all that dough-rolling and icing-piping didn't sound very easy for me to manage with a baby.  So what a treat for them to have all the dough made and everything ready at their house!  The girls and I still got to help without the stress I would have faced trying to do it on my own.  And yes, my husband probably would have taken on the cookies too, but this way he didn't have to, and we got to still take part in the cookie tradition.

Yum!!  I just love this recipe!

and so does Cecilia, apparently!

St. Nicholas, pray for us!

The Feast of St. Martin of Tours

We did a little something for the feast of St. Martin last Friday... in addition to reading about him and singing the St. Martin song, we made these delicious horseshoe cookies just like last year. No lantern-making this year, although we did pull out last year's lanterns and light them on the dinner table, along with a St. Martin candle. Here's Caroline running the food processor to grind up the almonds...

...and measuring out one cup. Have I mentioned how much I love this food processor? Whole almonds to ground almonds in under 30 seconds!

Caroline shaped them into horseshoes... St. Martin was a soldier, and in the most famous story about him, he was riding his horse when he met a poor beggar suffering from the cold.

After the cookies had baked, we rolled them in powdered sugar. So buttery, so yummy... delicious with a cup of tea or coffee!

All Hallows Eve, All Saints, and All Souls!

Saint Clare of Assisi and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary

The girls dressed in their saint costumes on All Hallow's Eve (the evening of All Saints Day, or Hallowe'en). They were so excited about their homemade costumes! I was glad, because with a newborn, I didn't have the time to get too elaborate. The only time-intensive part was pinning and hemming their veil/mantle pieces - whatever they're called.

Cecilia chose one of her patron saints, Clare. Here's how we made her costume: First, she wore brown sweatpants underneath. If it had been colder, she would have also worn a long sleeved shirt underneath. For the tunic part, we used one of Daddy's brown t-shirts turned inside-out to hide the logo writing on it. Then we took an extra piece of clothesline rope and tied some knots into it and made a belt - I looked at photos of some Poor Clare sisters and this is how their belts looked. Then we hung a simple wooden bead rosary over her belt. The white part - I believe this piece of the habit is called a guimpe - is just a size 4 turtleneck. A plain white t-shirt works as well and is not so tight. The arms of the turtleneck are just tied around the back of her head. Then I hemmed a black piece of fabric... it was 3/4 of a yard, I think. I safety pinned it to the turtleneck in two places. I also had to pin the back of the brown shirt because the neck was sliding off one of her shoulders.

We made the monstrance very cheaply and easily. See the tutorial for step-by-step instructions. Saint Clare took the Blessed Sacrament up to a window of the convent when the city was being attacked, and the enemy turned and fled when they saw it.

To make Caroline's costume, we began with a hand-me-down dress from our neighbors... it looks to be handmade, and we decided the green velvety material made it look like a dress for royalty. Then I hemmed a white piece of fabric, one yard. It was held in place by the crown, which I cut out of cardstock. Caroline decorated it with craft sequins.

The finishing touch to the costume: a basket with a piece of bread (yes, it's real, from the loaf of Irish brown bread we'd baked earlier!) and some fake roses. Elizabeth of Hungary was taking bread to the poor, of which her husband didn't approve - it was not the kind of hing royalty should have to do, he thought. So when he pulled her veil back (where she was concealing the bread), he only found roses.

On All Saints Day, we did some fun yet schoolish activities... here the girls are playing Saint Memory using the cards that can be downloaded for free here.

Caroline told me everything she could remember about St. Elizabeth of ?Hungary, and then she illustrated her narration. Cecilia did the same. We're going to make a family All Saints book and add their saint each year.

Cecilia illustrates her saint.

Next, we made soul cakes. They were the original "treat" that was given to people coming door-to-door. Catholics in England used to knock at neighbors' doors and ask for a "soul cake" in return for offering prayers for the dead of the family. There are various ideas of how these soul cakes were made... not sure if there was a particular original recipe. I think this really illustrates how Hallowe'en is truly a Christian holiday and doesn't have to be a gory secularized day!

Cecilia wearing a dress-up dress, as usual, while making the soul cakes...

They each got to sample one before leaving for Mass, and then they shared more with friends at the park, where we went for lunch and to play after Mass and before ballet class!

Then we met with the same friends and another homeschooling family from our church on Friday for our first All Saints Party!

Here are the snacks... my friend Beth pulled all of these ideas for food together. Many of the ideas were found here at Catholic Icing... Bugles for St. Gabriel's trumpet, Goldfish crackers for St. Peter (and any of the apostles who were fisherman), pretzel sticks for St. Bernadette's firewood...

Here's the pumpkin cupcakes I made for the cupcake walk... I topped each one with a printed holy card on a toothpick. I got the here from That Resource Site.

The kids played Saint Bingo... here's St. Nicholas!

The older kids helped the younger ones, and everyone got to pick out prizes.

We did the cake walk out on the driveway since the weather was so nice. We played a Catholic children's CD and when the music stopped, I called out a saint. Whoever was on that saint went to choose a cupcake.

She ate more than just the frosting, I promise. ;)

Last, we did St. Isadore the Farmer's Pumpkin Race. The kids rolled pumpkins across the yard as fast as they could!

St. Clare, who looked more like St. Francis at this point since she'd removed her headpiece, ecided kicking the pumpkin was easier than rolling it with her hands... she decided to pick it up and carry it the rest of the way back to the driveway!

Blessed Kateri and Mary, Queen of All Saints, take their turns!

We used holy cards and religious medals for prizes, along with candy corn and candy pumpkins and gummi "snakes." Click the photo to see it larger and read the labels.

Here are all the saints who dressed up! We had fun and hope to make this an annual tradition!