A Special Birthday and Feast Day

First of all let me start by saying...



Happy 85th Birthday Pope Benedict XVI!

PRAYERS FOR BENEDICT XVI:

V. Let us pray for Benedict, our Pope.

R. May the Lord preserve him, and give him life, and make him blessed upon the earth, and deliver him not up to the will of his enemies. [Ps 40:3]

Our Father, Hail Mary.

O God, Shepherd and Ruler of all Thy faithful people, look mercifully upon Thy servant Benedict, whom Thou hast chosen as shepherd to preside over Thy Church. Grant him, we beseech Thee, that by his word and example, he may edify those over whom he hath charge, so that together with the flock committed to him, may he attain everlasting life. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

— Excerpted from the Roman Missal. A partial indulgence is attached to the versicle and response.~ Catholic Culture

In honor of the Pope's Birthday I discussed his Coat of Arms with the boys. I printed this coloring page but we didn't have time to color them today. We will continue celebrating the Pope's Birthday tomorrow with some cupcakes and  coloring pages. Another great way to make today feel special is to bring yellow roses into your home. I wish I knew where to find some near my home but I am thinking about planting some maybe next year?

In addition to Pope Benedict's Birthday it is also the Feast day of Saint Bernadette Soubirous (My Confirmation Patron Saint) Today is a very special day for our family! There are actual several feast days that commemorate Saint Bernadette but we celebrate them all. Who doesn't love a reason to have a celebration with friends and family? Saint Bernadette has always had a special place in my heart and in my faith as I grew as a young adult. I admired the strength of heart that she possessed although her health and body were weak. I hope that one day every person can feel the love of Jesus and Mary, our blessed Mother the way Bernadette could. I am striving to be more like Saint Bernadette, to offer my sufferings as reparations for my sins and those of the whole world, to love God in such a way that it emits from me and my family and have patience and understandings that this world is not our real home.

You can place your petitions at the Grotto of Lourdes through this website here. The Grotto is where Bernadette dug into the mud and created a spring that is a special place of pilgrimage in Lourdes, France. It is a place that many miracles of healing has occurred.

Some of my most favorite quotes from Saint Bernadette are...

"O Jesus and Mary, let my entire consolation in this world be to love you and to suffer for sinners."

"O Jesus, I would rather die a thousand deaths than be unfaithful to you!"

"I must die to myself continually and accept trials without complaining. I work, I suffer and I love with no other witness than his heart. Anyone who is not prepared to suffer all for the Beloved and to do his will in all things is not worthy of the sweet name of Friend, for here below, Love without suffering does not exist."

"I shall spend every moment loving. One who loves does not notice her trials; or perhaps more accurately, she is able to love them."

"O my Mother, to you I sacrifice all other attachments so that my heart may belong entirely to you and to my Jesus."

"I shall do everything for Heaven, my true home. There I shall find my Mother in all the splendor of her glory. I shall delight with her in the joy of Jesus himself in perfect safety."

"From this moment on, anything concerning me is no longer of any interest to me. I must belong entirely to God and God alone. Never to myself."

"Love overcomes, love delights"

"Those who love the Sacred Heart rejoice."

"Jesus, my God, I love you above all things."

If you are interested in learning more about this special woman you can read A Holy Life: The Writings of St. Bernadette of Lourdes. I have never been able to finish this book but I hope to read it fully very soon. I will be watching The Song of Bernadette tonight with my boys. My husband will even be home in time to join in the showing. We will be praying a Rosary together as a family and hopefully get back into the routine of reciting it together as a family each night. Today was definitely fun and spiritually strengthening!

Our Lady of Lourdes, Pray for us!

Saint Bernadette, Pray for us!

Divine Mercy Sunday

Today was the first time in a VERY LONG time that we missed Mass. Circumstances beyond our control but I am still sad we missed the beautiful Chaplet that is normally said after Mass on this special Feast Day, Divine Mercy Sunday. Today also ends the Divine Mercy Novena that was started on Good Friday.

To celebrate today I had the children color a black and white "Jesus I Trust in You" picture from this link here. And I explained the reason this picture is so important and what the colors of the rays coming from Jesus' side. We didn't get to discuss Sister Faustina as much as I would have liked but I think the boys understood the general concept of the day.

Squishy tried eating more crayons than actually coloring so his picture looks a little incomplete. Little Man decided to color Jesus in a rainbow of colors but did color the rays the appropriate colors. I was quite impressed!

We also created the Divine Mercy Statues from Catholic Icing! Little Man was really excited about displaying this in his room.

Little Man already loves the Chaplet for Kids and the Rosary for Kids that we say together from EWTN but we made lacing chaplets from construction paper as we said the Chaplet of Divine Mercy together. He has one more reason to be more excited to say the Chaplet now.

 For our special Divine Mercy Dinner we ate Lasagna and water :o) Very simple but incorporated the colors of red from the lasagna and blue water that poured from Jesus. I really liked the idea of Divine Mercy Sundaes from Catholic Icing but I only had sherbet :o) We made sundaes anyways and I think it was a perfect ending to the day. Although the day was definitely incomplete without receiving the Eucharist at Mass or the Chaplet sung afterwards it was a good day. I can't wait to receive Reconciliation this Saturday and feel Jesus' Divine Mercy once again.

Here is the completed crafts hung next to our Alleluia Banner in the Dining Room. They add a lot of Easter flair with all the bright colors don't you think?

Jesus I trust in You!

Have a blessed Divine Mercy Sunday!

March of Dimes March for Babies

I hope everyone is still in full swing of their Easter Celebrations. I know my kids are enjoying the candy and bright colors of the season! I thought I would get some more planning in on the next few weeks, I feel like there is going to be a lot of fun around the corner. One of the more special events we have on our calendar as a family is on Saturday April 28th it is for...

March of Dimes March for Babies

Check out my personal page here

Every day, thousands of babies are born too soon, too small and often very sick. I'm walking in March for Babies because I want to do something about this. And I need your help.
Please support my walk. Making a secure donation is easy: just click the 'donate now' button on this page. Thank you for helping me give all babies a healthy start!
The mission of March of Dimes is to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality.

My friend from High School has the most precious baby boy named Kai and we will be walking with her, other friends and family with him as our Team mascot! Both he and his mom are inspirational and although we don't spend a lot of time together, the respect I have for them is immense. Please read this article that was written about this beautiful family in the Northwest Florida Newspaper. God has blessed Mallory with such a special child and you can tell that together they are making big differences in people's lives.

I hope if anyone has the ability to donate their time to walk or donate monitarily to this most worthy cause, I pray that you will.

God Bless!

Prayer of Mothers

Father in heaven, grant me the grace to appreciate the dignity which you have conferred on me. Let me realize that not even the Angels have been blessed with such a privilege—to share in your creative miracle and bring new Saints to heaven. Make me a good mother to all my children after the example of Mary, the Mother of your Son. Through the intercession of Jesus and Mary I ask your continued blessings on my family. Let us all be dedicated to your service on earth and attain the eternal happiness of your kingdom in heaven. Amen.

Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday

We spent Holy Saturday preparing for Easter Sunday!

I helped Little Man make his first set of Resurrection Eggs!

I bought some plastic eggs at the Dollar Tree and used this link here for some pictures to place inside each egg. Little Man loved coloring the pictures and I allowed him to place each step of the Resurrection into the corresponding egg as we discussed each picture and scripture reading.

We also colored our Easter eggs as a family Saturday night (Daddy actually had the night off with us) before our first attempt at baking Resurrection Cookies.

Here are our beautiful eggs! Everyone had a great time and we have tons of boiled eggs for deviled eggs and egg salad! YUM! We also finished our Holy Road and Lenten Calendar.

I also completed our Easter Calendar today! Its made of 50 plastic eggs that I numbered 1-15. Inside each egg there is a piece of paper with a special activity to help our family celebrate all 50 days of the Easter Season. I got this idea from one of the blogs I came across but I can't find it again to link for people who would be interested in doing a similar version. I believe they placed biblical verses that accompanied another activity their family participated in each Easter. I will update with the link as soon as I can find it again.

You can see where I ran out of the light blue ribbon and finished with purple :o)  

After we placed the baskets on the dinner table, we made our first attempt at Resurrection cookies. All I can say is that you DEFINITELY need a mixer to make these cookies because ours didn't turn out. Thank goodness Easter is a season and we will make them again before Pentecost as soon as we purchase a new mixer of course ;o)

To start our Easter festivities Sunday morning the boys found that the Easter Bunny had come and filled their Easter baskets! They contained chocolate crosses, puzzles, books, toy cars, egg shaped chalk, prayer cards and scapulars and assorted candies.

As you can see from the pictures our sacrifice beans transformed into delicious jelly beans! Our crown of thorns lost all of its thorns and bloomed with Easter lilies as well.

I have to figure out how to download pictures from my phone onto this blog to complete a blog about our Easter Sunday celebration. Until then Happy Easter to your family from ours!

Holy Thursday

Holy Thursday is the beginning of the Holy Triduum. Today is an important day because Jesus Instituted the Eucharist and the Holy Orders. We lit our candle that we have placed as our centerpiece with the Crucifix Prayer card. In honor of this holy day, I put together a symbolic meal for the kids and read the story of the Last Supper and the Agony in the Garden from the boys' Children Bible as they ate. This was an amazing experience for me and the kids I hope to make this a Holy Thursday tradition for us!

Here was the menu:

Vegetable Beef Soup: I didn't want a huge main course since it is still Lent so that was really the only reason for soup as our entree choice

Sparkling Grape Juice: Wine and the Blood of Jesus (I even let the older kids drink their juice from a wine glasses and they were super thrilled)

Salad with cucumber and tomato: Garden of Gethsemane (Today is also known as Green Thursday in Germany)

Grapes: Work of Human hands and wine

Strawberries: Kiss of Judas

30 Crackers and Cheese: 30 pieces of silver Judas received for betraying Jesus

Olives: Mount Olive

Olive Oil: Special oil Mary used to anoint Jesus

Bread: The Institution of the Eucharist and the Body of Christ

I had plans to allow the boys to wash each others feet but everyone fell asleep while watching the Veggie Tales Jonah. I wish I knew someone who has completed a Jonah Project, I am extremely interested to try it out but I don't know how to go about it. Well I hope you enjoyed your Holy Thursday and may God bless everyone as we enter into the solemness of Good Friday. Remember to start your Divine Mercy Novena.

Holy Week Road

Here is an updated picture of our Holy Week Road

To make your own check out Raising (&Teaching) Little Saints blog!

Palm Sunday 2012

Yesterday was Palm Sunday and the start of Holy Week. The Mass was absolutely beautiful! Father John came riding a donkey into the front of the church to bless the palms. It was quite exciting for the kids and I think helped them understand the importance of this day. I wish I could have taken a picture of the blessing and procession but I didn't bring my camera. Little Man and Squishy were very content holding their blessed palms throughout mass. We placed them on our home altar when were got home but I am hoping to try my hand at weaving them into crosses sometime today.

To celebrate today we created a family palm leaf made from our hand prints and hung it above our Lenten Calendar.  I also had helped the kids make caterpillars that will transform into butterflies on Easter Sunday. To make the caterpillars we used pom poms. I had the kids glue 5 pom poms together and add googley eyes to create a face then used a small pipe cleaner and bent it to form an antenna. I think they came out cute! The butterfly is a symbol of the ressurection and I hope that my boys will think of Jesus whenever they see a beautiful butterfly.

We have a butterfly house nearby and I plan on taking them during the Easter Season to have a hands on experience.

Something else I had to try was this adorable map I found at another blog called Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints you can find the post here.  Obviously from the picture I'm not quite done but I will update with a new picture soon. I printed the Holy Week cards from the above blog and I pasted the days of the week along the left side of the "road". As each day in Holy Week progresses I'm adding the corresponding card along the right side of the road and reading the bible passage from the children's bible. I think it is a nice way to finish our Lenten journey as a family and really reflect on what is important.

 To end the day I had hoped to make some palm tree shaped sugar cookies and place them in an ice cream sundae, therefore creating palm sundaes! :o) However, we had a playdate that the kids were enjoying so much I decided to lengthen the playdate and we had fig newtons as our dessert instead. Palm Sunday is also known as Fig Sunday since Jesus ate figs as he entered the city of Jerusalem. I wasn't sure if the boys would like these cookies since they weren't chocolate chip but they ended up eating them all! We had such an amazing start to Holy Week. I hope everyone else did too!