Catching Up: Saint Lucy's Feast Day!

 

Saint Lucy's Day, December 13th!  We made our traditional bread recipe shaped like the wreath crown of candles.  Props to the hubby, who made the dough and let it rise while I was swimming laps the evening before the feast day.  I shaped it and let it rise again before baking once I got back home!

 

The older girls in their Lucia crowns and "gowns" with red ribbon sashes... I actually planned to make our Lucy her own crown this year, but I couldn't find another styrofoam wreath form in that size!  Then I thought of a better idea to make one - and promptly forgot what that was.  Anyway.  I have battery-powered tealight candles, fake holly leaves, elastic for the chinstrap... and so one day, I will figure out how I was going to make it without the styrofoam ring!  Here is how I made these back in 2010.

 

This is the only group photo I could get with our little Lucy in it... if she doesn't want to look, she is not going to look!  But I got some other cute ones with just her:

 

 

Cecilia gets ready to help blow out the candles...

 

Arial shot of icing-snitching...

 

Breakfast is served!  No, we normally don't cram our dining table in our schoolroom for meals, but we were having a Little Flowers meeting this afternoon, so I had Chris help me move the table the evening before so it would be ready for our group!

St. Lucy, Pray for Us!

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!

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!

Cousins

 

These two are exactly the same age - born just three weeks apart!

Here are some photos taken over Thanksgiving...

 

Daybook for November 25, 2013 ~ Thanksgiving Week!

Outside my window... overcast and cold.  It is in the 30s this morning, and all week will be cold, although Thanksgiving Day will have a high of 50 and be sunny and clear - yay!

My Little Flowers group working on lanterns to go along with the virtue Love of God.

I am thinking... about ways to keep a peaceful atmosphere as we enter the Advent season next week.  I have plans that I need to carry through on so that we will have things ready to observe Advent as a family and as part of our homeschool day.  I am also thinking of Christmas gifts, even more carefully than usual, in an effort to get things that will add to the atmosphere of joy rather than add to the clutter, cause arguments, etc.  I am focusing on things that don't have a million small parts, for instance, because none of my children are ready to be responsible with those toys and activities they do have with lots of pieces.  The bigger girls are each getting a box full of books, and I am considering a nice dress-up costume each that they have been wanting.  Lucy is getting a new toy shopping cart, most likely, to replace the broken one we have.  If I can replace things, then that means I am not bringing additional stuff into the house.  Less is more.  As a friend and I were talking about this a few months ago, she said something that struck me: "We want to teach our children the virtue of poverty."  I like how she put that.  Overconsumption and a consumerism attitude has to be addressed at the most basic unit of society, the family.  And it is not stuff that makes the family happy and functional nor is it what gets us on the right path towards Heaven.

I am wondering... if my family members will ever be able to swallow cod liver oil without gagging (or complaining!).  Lucy takes it like a champ, and I don't mind it either - I have been swallowing it like you'd swallow a pill.  I have a very well-controlled gag reflex, apparently, or else the rest of my family doesn't!

I am praying... for a special intention.  Also that all families who are missing a loved one over Thanksgiving may feel God's comfort.

I am thankful...to have a place to go for Thanksgiving - I have still never cooked a Thanksgiving meal at my own home, and although I would like to host it myself sometime, it is nice to not have to worry about it while I have babies or toddlers!

One of the moms made these cute lamb cupcakes for our snack at this month's meeting - our saint this month was St. Agnes, whose name means "lamb of God."

I am hearing... Lucy's adorably cute, well-formed sentences.  "Mommy, please help me move this out of the way.  Thank you.  Thank you, Mommy, for moving tunnel out of the way."  There is a small pause between each word still.  She is trying to push the broken shopping cart around the room, and the older girls set up the play tunnel for her recently.

Learning at home... We are doing some fun Thanksgiving activities this week.  I read the girls the poetry from this book, Merrily Comes our Harvest In.  I check it out from our library every year!  Cecilia has just started her own print handwriting (instead of tracing letters) and is doing a nice, neat job of it!

 

From the kitchen... We had chicken gyros last night for dinner... yum!  I love this grain-free naan bread recipe.  It is easy and tastes great!  I am soaking nuts right now to make crispy nuts, which I will then keep in the freezer for use whenever they are needed.  Soaking and dehydrating them makes them taste better, I think!

I am reading... Small is Still Beautiful: Economics as if Families Mattered by Joseph Pearce.  I heard him speak at a Catholic homeschooling conference last spring, and then I talked to him a bit and bought this book after having him autograph it.  It is actually not about homeschooling or Catholicism... it is about how maybe the bottom line in economics (making more and more money and producing more and more goods) may not actually be a good thing.  We actually got on the topic of discussing backyard chickens, and he said he'd just gotten some.  I had glanced through the book for a few minutes and immediately thought of G.K. Chesterton and his idea of distributism.  Yep, that's what it is.  I am a few chapters in so far, and it is quite good.

Lucy eating a s'more at our hot dog/marshmallow roast with friends

To live the liturgical year... Last Friday was Cecilia's "nameday," and so she got a new holy card and a medal of St. Cecilia that morning.  After our Little Flowers meeting that afternoon, we had a family cookout over a bonfire (okay, really it was a portable fire pit, but bonfire sounds better!), including s'mores and an apple butter cake.  Cecilia was excited that the cookout was on her special day!

One of my favorite things... how Lucy says the w sound as a y sound.  "That's my yatoo bottoo (water bottle)."

The men are all by the fire, of course

I am creating... lists and plans for Advent and Christmas.




Around the house...  I have begun organizing all our holy cards by month and putting them in sports card pages.  Hopefully this will keep them well-organized!

A few plans for the rest of the week...

* School Tuesday morning
* Dentist appointment for me Wednesday morning where I will get a permanent crown put on, and hopefully not a recommendation for a root canal! :/
* Packing and traveling to Atlanta for Thanksgiving with my parents and brothers
* Dinner out in Atlanta with Chris to celebrate our anniversary!
* Target and Trader Joe's runs while in ATL
* Possible eye exams for the big girls

A picture thought I am sharing...