I'm a nerd

So I've hit the 37 week mark.  At this point, "baby" would be eagerly welcomed any time, any day.  However, my babies tend to not come early (or really at all - as the last three had to be induced), so I'm trying to remain calm.  I have noticed more of the braxton-hicks contractions/cramps/back pain with this one than with any of the others (or really all of them put together - hah - I did not have ANY IDEA what a contraction felt like until I started my actual labor with my first child, Rebekah).  Despite these and my complete and utter exhaustion from trying to remain an active stay-home-mom of my four other kiddos, I have begun preparing myself for the next few weeks.  As the title states, I am a nerd.  Here is a copy of my most recent "preparation."  I will put it on the fridge by our regular calendar.  Our schedule is fairly typical (this next week is oddly empty in the mornings while the boys are at school, but I'm sure I'll find plenty to fill it with).  In any case, it seems like such a short time when I look at it this way (rather than when I tell someone I have three weeks left).  I'm just trying to stay busy and not freak out, as thinking about labor too much. . . well, I try to offer up every time I think of it, but it does kinda freak me out - I am not really excited for it - other than the fact that the reward is a little baby.  I always thought it would get easier and maybe it has. . . by about one percent - hah.  But it is still a great challenge.  In any case, I'll quit rambling here.  I just thought I'd post SOMETHING as I have kinda dropped off the blog world for a while.  So here I am jumping back on for a bit.  That is all. . . for now.

Oh and this picture I found on the internet the other day.  Some truth there for sure.

Yet another reason why my husband is AWESOME :)

Gordie is going to be working from home.  Wanting to encourage him in being healthy, I urged him to purchase a stationary bicycle.  His ingenuity and AMAZINGNESS led to the following creation.  This is definitely one of the reasons I love him so much.  Such creativity and the ability to follow through and make an incredible creation.  I hope he enjoys many hours of work at this "desk" :)

Lent 2012

Lent is here!!  I had hoped to get this published before but I have just barely finished preparations for us to begin today.

 I will begin with perhaps my favorite lent activity.  I put this big cross up on the wall (made from brown construction paper). Each day, as we do good deeds, keeping our lenten resolutions and such, we get to put flowers up on it.  (See picture below for the flowers my daughter will hopefully be cutting soon - as she is old enough to be really helpful like that now and does not seem to mind so much.)  I believe I found the idea through a blog called Catholic Icing last year.  (Tangent: Catholic Icing has LOTS of good stuff, for Lent and for all the time.)  The direct link, however, is here.

As you can see in this second picture, I added a few "suggestions" for lenten sacrifices.  They are the Spiritual Works of Mercy and the Corporal Works of Mercy.  Now I don't anticipate us doing ALL of them, by any means and the words are BIG for my kids (Admonish the sinner, etc) but I'm hoping I can link some of their deeds to these such as to forgive offences willingly, or to comfort the afflicted.  At the least it spurs discussion and explanation, I hope.

I also have my hand there with my own personal lenten resolutions.  Last year we did hands for the whole family, but the younger ones just don't seem to "get it." And I don't want to push them.  Maybe as the season progresses they will show more interest.  Rebekah, however, has her hand there, as well.

The three charts with the sun in the background we got from church.  They came with a set of stickers.  There is a numerical sticker (a cross or a lamb or a cloud, etc) for each day of lent that the kids can each stick on their respective chart. Then there is an empty tomb and Jesus for Easter.

 We also have one Lenten Countdown page.  We did these last year, but having one for each child was a bit much as the younger ones really were not so into it.  I almost skipped it this year as we have the sticker charts, but I thought they might enjoy being able to see how much is left.

Above the Lenten Countdown we have our memory verse.  This is a concept I borrowed from my friend, Monica.  It is the responsorial psalm from Sunday.  Well, it is supposed to be, anyhow.  For Ash Wednesday and the rest of this week I chose the responsorial psalm from Ash Wednesday: Be Merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.  (Psalm 51).

 Next up we have our crown of thorns that loosely corresponds with the flowers on our wall cross.  Each good deed done means the child gets to pull out one of the thorns.  Last year I baked my crown of thorns and I think that looked a little better, but I was running low on flour and time this year, so I tried making it out of play dough.  I'm not overly impressed with the result, but it works.  I should have put in less blue and probably took a little more care in rolling.  Also, as it dries, it is starting to crack, but it still works.  Our candles are rather humble, but I had to fit four (as you may recall from my earlier post, our prayer time REQUIRES four candles so each child can blow one out) and these were the four I could fit.  I would like to add a small cross to the center but as if yet I had not found/made one.

We light the wreath when we say our prayers. I posted earlier about our Family Prayer Time that is really working for us.  For Lent we do pretty-much the same set-up, but with a lenten reflection from Welcome Risen Jesus.  I'm trying to get us all up earlier so we can pray that reflection in the morning, before school, and have all day for the action part.  It worked today, but I imagine getting up early is a battle to be fought one day at a time.

Finally, I am eager to read The Story of the Cross again as we discovered it last year and enjoy it a lot.

That's all I have for now.  I hope your lent is fruitful and leads you closer to Christ!

Create a clean heart in me, O God.

-Renew in me a steadfast spirit.

Spiritual Reflection

In Conversation With God

I asked for these for Christmas and my birthday (December 27th) and received the first two volumes.  They are AMAZING!!  They have three short reflections for each day (corresponding to the liturgical calendar, for example, today is Saturday in the Third Week in Ordinary time).  The reflections are about two and a half pages (counting each side of the page as one - and keep in mind the book is a smaller size).  I really enjoy them.  They are deep enough to get me thinking, but not too heavy and not too long.  I recommend them for a nice short, but serious spiritual reflection each day.

Prayer Update

In my last post I shared our growing prayer habits.  Well, they have grown even more!  Ok, first off, a slight tangent. . .

"Anyone who does not breathe dies of suffocation; anyone who does not accept with docility the grace that God constantly gives us ends up dying of spiritual suffocation." - R Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, Vol. 1  (Tangent inside a tangent: This comes from In Conversation with God which I plan to address in my next post.)

"For to those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away." - Mark 4:25 (NRSV)

What this quote and this passage from Scripture enlighten for me is how God's grace is so much more than we can imagine.  As we open ourselves to it, it is like a faucet on full-blast!  And there is no turning it down.  It is on or off and when we manage to get ourselves to stay put in the flow - oh my, it is amazing!

I feel like this is what is happening with our family prayer time.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I did "pray about it" as I know it is really important and I just felt like I was not doing it justice.  It felt like an insurmountable task to try and conquer and our minor attempts seemed so pathetic.  To add to it, I have a degree in Religious Education.  I am TRAINED to teach this - you would think I could handle helping grow the spiritual life of MY OWN FAMILY!!  Sheesh, I certainly felt like a failure I must say, but God has been showing me that it is not me (surprise, surprise), it is Him.  And man, when I step back and follow His inspiration, He does a pretty darn good job I must say.

But enough with the tangent.  Back to the main point of this post.  I mentioned we were reading Prayers for Each and Every Day.  And we still enjoy that book, but it has become clear my children are hungry for more.  The other day we finished our short "reading" and they asked for a bible story.  So I broke out the Bible and it has become a tradition now.  I love that they enjoy Scripture!  Some days I pick up the regular Bible  and other days we enjoy a more structured approach such as 365 Read-Aloud Bedtime Bible Stories.  This is nice as it starts at the beginning and you can just read it from cover to cover, but it is simplified and sometimes my hungry young minds want two or three of the stories, but I'm not really complaining.

So there you have it.  I will keep you updated as we progress further.  On a side note, but related, I have started praying Night Prayer from The Liturgy of the Hours with my oldest child, Rebekah (almost 7-years-old).  The words are BIG and often above her, but she knows it is a sacred prayer for the Church and she enjoys praying it with me.  (On a side note: Night Prayer is only on a weekly rotation, instead of the four weeks of psalms for Morning and Evening Prayer, so it is a bit more familiar.)  I have no doubt it is helping her vocabulary grow and when the time is right she will have an even greater understanding of the spiritual aspects it contains, as well.  I'm also working through

The Mass book for Children and Little Acts of Grace with her as she will be turning seven soon (the age of reason!!!) and God-willing, receive her first Reconciliation and first Communion.

 

So there you have it.  Yay, God! :)

Family Prayers

Prayer is very important to me and I KNOW it is important to pray as a family, but it is definitely one of my challenges.  In any case, lately I have stumbled up on some ideas that ARE REALLY WORKING FOR US!!!  So I thought I'd share.  But first, I want to give a shout out to my good blog-friend, Monica.  A while back she posted about her family's Morning Prayers and I was awed and amazed and inspired (and possibly a little jealous) by what goes on at her house.  In any case, I have prayed and stewed over the notion of family prayers, trying this and that, but this past Advent I have finally struck gold with my clan.

The secret I believe is the candles.  My kids REALLY enjoy having candles lit and even more, blowing them out.  The minute a candle is lit, they are quiet and their full attention is on it.  In addition, knowing they are going to get to blow that candle out keeps their attention on the task at hand.  So, for Advent, they were LOVING the Advent wreath. (especially once we reached the fourth Sunday so they all could blow out a candle - rather than having to take turns - and then even more once we got to Christmas so Mom could blow one out, too!)

For Advent, I put our wreath on a large platter so I can move it from the top of the bookshelf to the table for meals and then back up for "safe-keeping."  Once the Christmas season ended, I put the Advent wreath away, but kept the platter out.  I found four candles and

some green cloth (ok, they are pot holders, but they ARE green for ordinary time) and a nice cross that stands up.  Now I move our "sacred space" from the top of the bookshelf to the table for every meal we eat together (sometimes breakfast, often lunch, and normally dinner every night). 

I found this really neat book called "Prayers for Each and Every day."  It has a morning and evening prayer for each day of the week.  It also has some special prayers in the back.  It is scripturally based with some poems and reflections, too, but in a fairly kid-friendly way.  So we use that and then sometimes we discuss what I read or ask for petitions.  We then conclude with a few prayers from "My First Prayers for my Family" or "Daily Prayers" or another little prayer book of some sort.  The kids like to look at the pictures and my daughter can now read some of the prayers on her own (which she LOVES to do).  Eventually I imagine they will have most of these prayers memorized (as they memorized our Advent and Christmas prayers (from My First Prayers for Christmas, which I highly recommend, by the way).  Then we each blow out a candle.

We, of course, still say our regular blessing of the food before meals (well, I say "regular" but for us, we usually sing it in various ways - such as to the tune of Gilligan's Island, or we chant it - yes, that is one of our favorites - or sometimes we sing the "Johnny Appleseed" grace), but this gives us a bit more opportunity to be prayerful together and if nothing else, I find it to be a great breath of fresh air.  The kids seem to enjoy it as well and I can only hope we are planting seeds during this time to help them grow into spiritual giants, able and willing to following Jesus in whatever He asks of them.

P.S. I really would like to show a picture of our "sacred space" but you can refer to my last post for an update of why that is not possible at this time.  For now these images will have to satisfy my need for visual description.

An explanation

So I have not been blogging much and here are my reasons:

1. My computer broke and the one I use now does not have any working USB ports.  This may seem like nothing, but blogging to me is all about pictures.  How can I possibly blog with no way to plug in my camera and add pictures?!?!  It is quite a dilemma that I have not been able to fix yet.

2. I am pretty miserable right now with a lot of things going on in my life (that I would love to share, but don't have time right now - lol) and blogging is just not high on my priority list.

So, I'm sorry if you miss me.  I actually kind of miss sharing stuff with you all  (all 3 of you that actually check my blog once in a while) but that is how it is right now.

On a side note, a few blog ideas are popping around in my head and I MIGHT just break the cycle and post one or two of them WITHOUT A PICTURE!!  But only if I can find some time so. . . wait in anxious anticipation if you want. . . or just consider yourself warned.

In the mean time, Happy Tuesday.