Pentecost Sunday

Happy Birthday to the Catholic Church!

Today is Pentecost also known as "Whitsunday" one of the most Blessed Feast Days of the Year! Its traditional to wear red today to symbolize the "tongues of fire" that came upon the Apostles. This is our first time having a party in celebration but I found there are so many fun ways to celebrate this Feast Day.

A tradition I am starting is one I saw on Catholic Culture. I modified their tradition a little but I think the end result was cute! You write the Gifts of the Holy Spirit on paper that has been cut into the shape of a dove with red ribbon (used to hang it within your house). Each family member draws a dove to see what gift from the Holy Spirit you need to work on for the year. The doves are then left on display as a reminder to everyone to focus on their gift throughout the year. Below are the results!

Myself: Counsel

Little Man: Fear of the Lord

Squishy: Knowledge

We allowed Little Man to draw Squishy's gift because he was COVERED in red velvet cake...

As a craft the boys and I made headbands with flames attached to look like the Holy Spirit was falling upon us before dinner. It was so fun and I hope the kids remember these fun activities.

The food we eat on Feast Days is the most exciting part for my children. Today we had donuts and water (My husband and I enjoyed coffee with cream) as our before Mass snack. For lunch we ate chicken strips and potato wedges to continue with the "white" theme and for dinner I was planning on making a Seven Layer Casserole in the crock pot. I had to modify the recipe because I forgot to buy chicken and red potatoes. Instead I made everything separately but I think the meal still turned out quite nice. We served everything on our red plates and used red cups. If you would like to try out the original recipe I was going to use, check out the recipe below:

Seven Layer Casserole

Red potatoes  thinly sliced

Chopped Onion

Frozen Carrots

Frozen Peas

Rice

Chicken Breast

Cream of Mushroom Condensed Soup

Milk

Salt and pepper

Put all ingredients except rice in crock pot on Low for 8 hours

Add Rice 3 hours before casserole is finished

You could always add cumin or chili seasoning to add some kick for the tongues of fire!

The kids and I baked a red velvet Pentecost Birthday cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to the Church. I couldn't help but decorate our cake like Jessica's from Shower of Roses. It is gorgeous and has so much symbolism! We topped our cake with 1 large candle (Christ: the light of the world) and topped with 12 small candles (the 12 Apostles) and Seven Dove chocolates (7 Gifts of the Holy Spirit). It is also surrounded by 12 strawberries (12 Fruits of the Holy Spirit).

I have to admit I did not think about how close I placed all the candles together before we lit them... Well let's just say LESSON LEARNED :o) It looked like the cake was going to go up in flames!!!

Little Man was laughing so hard while we sang Happy Birthday because the middle candle melted completely while we were singing. Although everything did not go as planned this will become a treasured tradition for our family and now we have a silly story to share with anyone who is willing to listen.

After an entire day of celebration we decided to end the night with a movie. I rented a movie for us from Netflix called Bedbug Bible Gang: Pentecost Party. I have never seen it or know anyone who has seen it. It looks interesting and I hope the kids like it. I will update with my opinion after tonight. I hope everyone had a Blessed Pentecost!