Best Buddies

Adam and Ryan..... Spider and Spiderman.... still best buddies, two peas in a pod!

One More Thing...

As a follow up to my last post about Religious Education, I just want to add that another very important way we teach the faith to our children is through our devotions - alone and as a couple. By praying and studying the faith individually and together we grow in faith and in our ability to teach the faith. When the boys see us praying and studying the faith, that does not go un-noticed.

Tonight I was praying with Adam in his bed. He asked me, "Mommy, before I go to sleep, could we say that 'fires of hell' prayer? It is so cool!" I also overheard him in time out yesterday praying multiple Hail Mary's. I'm not sure that his intentions were pure though. He told me was just praying like crazy that I would let him go play. It's definitely a work in progress!

Celebrating the Liturgical Year

In the past few weeks three different people have asked me what we do for Religious Education with the boys. We actually do several things.

1. We attend Mass weekly. We decided not to sign them up for religious education at our parish this year because the Kindergarten and Preschool classes are held during the Mass we normally attend. We think it's more important at this point for them to attend Mass with us and learn how to behave in Mass.

2. We do have a homeschool religious education textbook program that we use, but I'm not thrilled with it. It is the one recommended by Catholic Heritage Curriculum. It's called "Who Am I." I follow their chapters and we read the scripture readings and do the worksheets. I pull that out a few times a week. Beginning next year we plan to use the Faith and Life program at home.

3. The boys attend a Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program one morning a week. Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is a Montessori approach to religious education. It is being offered in more and more parishes. It is very hands-on and child-directed. The boys love it and I would highly recommend it.

4. The MOST IMPORTANT thing we are doing for religious education is CELEBRATING THE LITURGICAL YEAR IN OUR HOME. The liturgical year is the center of all that we do here. We have a prayer table in our living room which is decorated according to the liturgical year. Every morning we pray as a family before Daddy leaves for work. We talk about each day's liturgical season/color and each feast day and/or saint of the day. We often continue that discussion with a book, coloring page, or other project during our school time. We have a section about the liturgical year in our portfolio binders where we collect all of these pages/projects.

I recently created a little nook next to our kitchen table where I am also putting the liturgical color, any appropriate statues or symbols, and a piece of artwork for us to look at and discuss each month. (The artwork is from Catholic Heritage Curriculum's "Art Masterpieces" packet.)

During some special months, we have devotions we read/post near the kitchen table (usually at dinner time). We do a Lenten Journey poster, Easter Garden poster, November Thanksgiving poster, and an Advent calendar and wreath in December. Here's a picture of this year's Thanksgiving poster:

Each evening we each tell something for which we are thankful. We write those things on the fruit/vegetable papers and hang them on the poster.
Obviously, this could be done on a much smaller / less elementary-schoolish scale. (You can take the teacher out of the school, but you can't take the school out of the teacher I guess!)

We pray together again at bedtime, usually reciting rote prayers and then offering special intentions. We also have some special things we do on a monthly basis. We pray a decade of the Rosary each night during May and October. During November we read about a saint each night. During December we are going to do Jesse Tree readings and ornaments. During Lent we read Bible stories each night.

And then there are the big Feast days. We have gradually been building up traditions surrounding the big Feasts. I have posted some of them here already. This week we commemorated All Souls Day by planting some tulip bulbs. (We usually also visit the cemetery, but that didn't happen this year.) The tulip bulbs are symbols representing our bodies. When we die our our bodies go into the ground, but Jesus promises New Life for us at the end of time. The transformation from bulb to beautiful flower represents the passage from death to new life. As we planted each bulb we prayed for someone we know who has died.
All of these things are relatively simple. I know many of you already do these things and more. Please share any suggestions/ideas you can add!

It is by LIVING the faith that we best teach it to our children. It's amazing how much they notice and absorb and how simple it can be to plant the seeds of faith in our youngest family members. There will be lots of time for learning doctrine and studying the Catechism, but for now I want my children to love God and to experience Catholicism as our way of life.

"Holey" Ray

This morning Ray lost his 5th tooth! (He lost his front four very early because he had damaged the roots). He has carried the tooth around all day. I hope the Tooth Fairy remembers to visit tonight!

A Crazy Day!

Monday was All Saints' Day.... a holy day, my FAVORITE holy day. Next year we're going to go to Mass and spend the rest of the day at home praying and celebrating and learning about the saints in a peaceful, holy way. That will be the opposite of how we spent the day this year.

Here's a run-down of our day:

1. I was awakened by Ray telling me he brought me McDonald's for breakfast. What? Before I even woke up, Jon and Ray went to 6:30am Mass, the bank, and McDonald's. (I hate that the bishops have waived the obligation to attend Mass this year for All Saints... but I can't rant too much because I didn't go.)

2. After breakfast, I packed the van with more stuff than we usually take on a trip to Michigan. I had supplies and outfits for several events. We left the house around 9:00 and did not return for more than twelve hours. I don't know how working/schooling families do this every day.

3. We went to a very fun All Saints Day party with our homeschool group.

We didn't have a lot of time for making costumes this year, but both boys were happy to wear their "suits of armor" (Thanks Pappy and Mary!) and be Saint George. Adam added a red cape to his.

As it turned out, there were several Saint George's and one Saint Michael the Archangel. Needless to say, several swordfights broke out during this party.Fortunately, there were lots of sweet little girl saints to balance things out!Here are the boys decorating crowns:We played several games, including Halo Toss, Saint Anthony Lost and Found, and When the Saints Go Marching In. 4. We joined some of our friends for a fabulously non-nutritious lunch at McDonald's. (That's right, we had McDonald's for breakfast and lunch. Yikes!)

5. We headed to our Monday co-op class. After playing on the playground, the boys had fun in their class making compass rose crafts and clay landforms. I crazily galloped through African Geography with two groups of older students, handed out sweet potato chips, and laughed with my friends about the Liberian Sweet Potato Pone ("LSPP") debacle.

6. We went to my sister's house where the children played with their cousin and ate dinner. (Yes, I think they actually did eat some fruit and vegetables to counteract the McDonald's overload.)

7. Here's where the day got strange! Jon and I left the boys with my sister so we could go to a party hosted by one of his "A Clients" (???). This client does political advertisements and this party was a celebration of the end of the campaign season. We thought it would be a cocktail party, a quick meet-and-greet, in-and-out affair. Ha. Ha. Ha. I felt like I had entered the Twilight Zone, a completely different world from where I normally dwell. I was exhausted from my planning/cooking whirlwind of a weekend and my crazy-busy day. I had no idea what I was walking into. The fancy invitation requested "business casual" attire. Fortunately, I had changed into some black slacks and a decent blouse. I wished I had brought a nicer coat.

We followed the map WAY into the outback regions of Dublin. We arrived at some kind of club/health spa where we boarded SHUTTLE BUSES. I sat behind a lady wearing a black lace dress, very high heels, and sparkly things in her hair. I knew we were in for an interesting evening. The shuttle drove about a mile and turned down a long driveway to a farm.

We entered a huge barn through a fancy green awning. We greeted the "A client" and signed up for door prizes and had our picture taken with a person posing as a statue. We were given champagne with berries floating in it. We were escorted through a beautiful corrider into "Las Vegas." That's right. "Vegas baby." We had our picture taken with a very skinny, busty, sparkly, feathery, showgirl. Wow! We were each given $25,000 cash (FAKE!) to spend at the twenty PLUS gaming tables. There were three food stations serving everything from brie to lamb to sushi. There were ice sculptures, a bar, DJ, entertainers --- showgirls, jugglers, a guy on stilts. There were video horse races and slot machines.

I am not making this up. We had delicious food. Jon played some black jack and I stood behind him looking around at this crazy menagerie. I was laughing to myself as I compared and contrasted my world to this world. Both are loud and chaotic, but this world seemed so empty to me. I didn't feel inferior to the gorgeous, fashionable, polished women... but I did feel out of place. This hoopla felt so different from my normal hoopla.

We had told my sister we would only be gone for an hour or two. I managed to break Jon away from the fake gambling and as we left we passed the Queen of Hearts, who was doling out desserts from the rolling table that was part of her outfit. As we waited for the shuttle to take us back to the real world, a prominent local politician came in and shook our hands.

Jon and I really laughed on the way back to my sister's house. It was a wonderful way-over-the-top-party and we did have fun, but it seemed somehow strange to us. We talked for the millionth time about our priorities - faith and family. We talked about the irony of spending this holy All Saints' evening in this way.

8. We returned to my sister's house around 9:00 (way after the boys' bedtime) and found the boys sitting on the couch in their pajamas watching TV.

9. We drove home, plopped the sleeping boys into bed and plopped ourselves into bed. I didn't unload the van or check email or voicemail. I think I brushed my teeth.

What a day! I apologize for this long-winded blog, but the point is in the details. I raced through a crazy day instead of observing a holy day. As I wrote in my last post, I know I need to keep things more simple. I need to keep returning to the priorities and letting go of busy craziness. It's not that anything I did was foolish. It's more that I got really wrapped up in it all and frazzled.

As I lay in bed, exhausted, I prayed a simple Litany of the Saints. I felt sad that I had "missed" the holiness of this day, but I also knew the presence and prayers of the great cloud of witnesses who have preceded me in this sometimes-crazy, always grace-filled life.

All you holy men and women, pray for us.

A Little Quiz

What is this?

I was going to make this a multiple choice question, but my choices we're quite obnoxious and I don't want to offend any readers.

If you guessed "LIBERIAN SWEET POTATO PONE" .... you are correct!

Email me and I will send you a prize! ;)

If you've ever tasted "LIBERIAN SWEET POTATO PONE" I will send you an even bigger prize!

Here's my amazing husband making this "LIBERIAN SWEET POTATO PONE" on Sunday night:

Why? Because he loves me and is so very helpful..... and because sometimes I can be a real crazy person.

You see, I am teaching in a homeschool co-op class on Monday afternoons. This month our focus is on Geography. I am working with a team of moms to present the seven continents to elementary students. This week I was in charge of teaching the Geography of Africa and bringing an African food to share with the students. In my ridiculously perfectionist style, I spent the past week zealously searching for information, resources, ideas, and recipes. Of course I completely over-thought the whole thing and planned way too much for the short time period we had to teach.

On Sunday I was stressed out and trying to pull together all the details. I knew I wanted to make a sweet potato recipe, but it had to be something that could be cooked ahead of time. Jon searched online and found a recipe for "LIBERIAN SWEET POTATO PONE" and agreed to make it for me. This involved TWO HOURS of chopping, mixing, stirring, cooking.

The recipe sounded yummy. It included grated sweet potatoes, molasses, ginger, oil, baking powder, and salt. Simple enough.

It STUNK! As soon as Jon started to mix it up, it stunk up the entire house! We were so thankful that the boys were asleep. Adam's sensitive nose would not have been able to handle this.

In addition to the horrible smell, it looked really really gross. Jon and I determined that if we were African we would starve. We resolved that if we ever visit Africa we will take our own food.

I determined that I simply could not serve this concoction to children. So, I tossed and turned all night and in the morning I decided to slice up the remaining sweet potatoes and bake them with some butter and salt. Sweet potato chips. Yummy. Simple. Why didn't I think of this on Sunday?

With chips AND pone packed in the van I headed to the co-op class. It was a whirlwind two hours and we ended up running out of time and having to give the snack to the children very quickly as they left. They loved the sweet potato chips.

But there I was with two pans of LIBERIAN SWEET POTATO PONE. After telling this saga to a few of my friends, they wanted to see it. My friend Becky told me she didn't think it smelled too bad. She agreed to take it home and try it out on her husband and five children.

Here's the feedback she sent me via email today: "I thought maybe you were making the 'African stuff' sound worse than it really was but it was confirmed by all 5 children and myself that it was BAD! I drank a whole glass of water to get the taste out of my mouth than went and brushed my teeth. Veronica was so excited to try it and then spit it out instantly. After tasting it, Julia said I really want to LIKE it BUT... I think we now know why there are so many starving people in Africa."

Jon tasted it tonight. On a scale of 1 to 10, He gives it a 2.5. Ever the optimist, he says that if he makes it again (WHAT?!?) he will use one cup of molasses and one cup of sugar.

We still have nearly a full pan of it here, so come on over if you'd like to try it. If we don't get any takers we may have to bury it in the yard.

So, the lessons I've learned from this are:

1. My husband is absolutely awesome and so supportive of my crazy endeavors.

2. "LIBERIAN SWEET POTATO PONE" (aka LSPP) is really gross. I don't even think Liberians would like it.

3. I NEED TO FIND A WAY TO KEEP THINGS SIMPLE!

Trick or Treat!

Beggar's Night was tons of fun! It was very cold, but thankfully we had warm costumes. Ray had planned to be a race car driver, but opted instead to wear the warmer lion costume that Aunt Susan had given him. He got many great compliments, especially since our town's high school mascot is a lion.

Adam's "Charlotte" costume turned out great!(Thanks Mom!) He absolutely loved it and I think he looked so cute! The boys thought it was SO funny when one man told Adam he should have a candy bag for each of this hands. It was funny to see the adults laughing at "Dilbert" and the children wondering who he was.Both of the boys had just as much fun spending time on the porch passing out candy as they did trick-or-treating.