Feast of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha

What an amazing day! To start the celebration of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, I decided to take the kids on a family field trip to the Indian Temple Mound. It was such an awesome experience and I am glad we decided to make a trip to the Heritage Park and Cultural Center before our move in a couple weeks.

I was extremely disappointed when I discovered our library has NO BOOKS to checkout on Blessed Kateri. The closest book store is over an hour away so I am contemplating making the drive to purchase a book for our personal collection.

My sadness has been greatly lessened when I received an email notifying me that Holy Heroes had a FREE coloring book download for Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, Saint Imelda and Saint Juan Diego. I printed the coloring book for our Lily of the Mohawks and Little Man is ready to get started. I love that the coloring pages tell the short story of her life. While he colors with his brother we are going to pray the Litany of Kateri Tekakwitha.

In addition to our field trip today I wanted to make some Native American crafts. I decided on completing some Sand Art. From what I know about the custom, Native Americans would make pictures using colored sand to depict symbols from their tribes. I decided that making sand art would be fun but I incorporated the Chi Rho as our symbol. A turtle or lily symbol would make a great sand art picture as well. The turtle was the symbol of Blessed Kateri's tribe and she is known as the Lily of the Mohawks.

Since we have had typical Florida weather (Pours rain for 20 minutes while the sun is shining, stops and then starts again). I was unable to go to the beach to get sand. I am sure you can buy colored sand from the craft store but why buy it when God has created it for us for free? We have our symbols ready to go so hopefully this project will be finished tomorrow. I am really hoping to have a nice relaxing Sunday as a family since my husband will be off work too!  To the right is a sample of some Native American Sand Art. To complete sand art you need is any color card stock that has a symbol printed or outlined on it. Use white glue and place colored sand over glue. After you leave the picture to dry overnight shave off excess sand and you have a beautiful sand art picture!

For dinner tonight I made chili and Mohawk jiffy corn bread. I wanted to bake some fish instead but I have to admit I never cook fish, so I prefer for my culinary husband to do all the seafood cooking in our household.

The one thing I really wanted to do today was pray the rosary on the beautiful nature trail near my parents house. It was raining so I decided against it. I thought it would be so peaceful and we could make stick crosses to leave along the trail like Blessed Kateri  did. Maybe I should have bought some ponchos and let my children dance in the rain? Hmm...

Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, pray for us!