Resurrection Garden

We soaked our wheat germ (a gift from a great baking friend) overnight.

Then after an adventure to the garden center, where I may have bought an Easter present for the whole family that cost a little more than the two items pictured above ;)

Filled it with rocks, dirt, and the tomb (small planter) per the instructions on this site. 

  Next year I hope we can get an earlier start on it so the grass is in fully by Easter Sunday rather than later in the week.   

Happy St. Patricks Day!

We had some school fun this week with a St Patricks Day theme.  

 First we worked on color mixology...you know, red and yellow make orange and so on.  The flag of Ireland is a great thing to paint with this in mind.  Then we did some rainbows so we could get the purple in the mix too.  Of course they are also associated with St Pat's Day.  

 Rose also had some fun coloring by number to reveal a pot of gold.

 Daddy made green, shamrock shaped pancakes for breakfast.  They were very excited as you can see.

To round out the day we had three other families over for a traditional corned beef dinner.  Luckily it just required the crockpot so very little cooking was done.  The kids ate homemade mac and cheese instead, then ran around and watched the St Patricks Day movie I won last year.

Mardi Gras

 Pancake dinner at the local Catholic high school.  They had chocolate chips as toppings so the kids loved it!

 Face painting...

 Batman symbol

 Heart

Dancing to the high school 'rock' band performing that night.  Some of the girls gave them balloons to bounce around too.  They were sad when we had to go.

Jesse Tree

Ok, so I have been saving this one to share for a while.  Way back in the summer, I organized 23 other moms to do an ornament swap so that we could all have a complete Jesse tree set for the 24 countdown days (of december) to Christmas.  Here is some info on a Jesse Tree.  Anyway, each mom/family made 24 of the same ornament, sent them to me, and I reorganized them into 24 complete sets and sent that back. 

Each ornament has a bible verse to go with it.  The kids really enjoyed the middle stories, but had a harder time relating to the O Antiphons at the end.  Regardless, they enjoyed hanging the ornaments everyday.

A quick project

I finally got one of the projects I had seen online in several places done!  It was so quick too, I might even make this as a gift in the future...for my homeschooling type friends.

 Pre-cut squares of felt (Wal-mart).

 Fold in half.

 Cut width to fit your cross (Michael's).

 Round the edges, add a hole for the top of the cross.

 Cut a strip from the extra piece to use for the stole.

 Repeat for colors of the liturgical year (we still need a blue stole for Marian feast days).

 Check on the cute guys in the back yard, weeding in their overalls.

 Hot glue some ribbon around the edges of each piece. We used white and gold.

Screw your cross on to small wooden discs (Michael's). 

And you have a complete set of liturgically based vestments, which you can now change after you go to mass and distract your kids by asking what color the priest is wearing.  At least until your 3 year old figures out that the priest will be wearing the same color as the cover on the chalice that is out before mass and tells you so, therefore preventing the distraction later on.

St. Rose of Lima Feast Day

Today was the feast day for St. Rose of Lima, who is Rose's patron saint.  This year, we found a church named St. Rose of Lima and went to Mass there.  It was a cute little church and everybody was excited for Rose once they found out.  Prior to leaving, I had seen that there was a state park nearby, so I packed our lunch and off we went after Mass.

 My favorite pics of the day!

 Rose really wanted to eat lunch in the middle of this pretend boat - even though it was the middle of the playground and there were probably 3 school buses worth of kids that had just arrived.  Oh well, it was fun.

 Rose probably spent a half an hour on this zip line, and would have kept going if James wasn't ready for his nap.  She was the youngest one using it so I had to keep the bigs from cutting her out of the line:( but she still had loads of fun.

After the earthquake...we brought snack to the park for all the neighborhood kids.  I made chocolate cupcakes, iced with strawberry icing, and rolled fruit by the foot pieces on top to look like little rosebuds.  Not sure if you can tell or not on this pictures, but they were really cute.  

While we were waiting for dinner to arrive - Rose had voted for pizza delivery - we colored a St. Rose of Lima print out. 

Overall, I think she had a good day.  The earthquake just made it memorable!

Mary Crowning

Rose's Atrium Montessori class had a Mary May Crowning yesterday on their last day for the school year.  It was a beautiful day and the kids were super cute.  I love the last picture of the two of them!

Mary Crowning

Rose's Atrium Montessori class had a Mary May Crowning yesterday on their last day for the school year.  It was a beautiful day and the kids were super cute.  I love the last picture of the two of them!