Our Advent

Ah, here we are, the day before the fourth Sunday of Advent.  How did we get here already?

This is our ninth year of celebrating Advent, and it is so wonderful to reach a point where Advent and our traditions feel like home.  I usually add one or two new things each year to try in our family, but this year we did not add anything new.  It is a great comfort to see how this steady growth of thoughtful traditions has enriched our family life over the years, and has created many warm and wonderful memories.  

Some of our traditions include:

• Homemade beeswax Advent Candles
• Making chocolates for the Feast of St. Nicholas
• Decorating the house with lights on the Feast of St. Lucia
• Bringing down the great big box of Christmas books to read and enjoy during Advent and Christmas
• The Jesse Tree
• Handel's Messiah, in small sections using Cindy's guide
• Praying and singing to mark the O Antiphons
• The St. Andrew Christmas Anticipation Prayer (Thank you, Celeste, for your lovely prayer card)
• Mexican hot chocolate on (or near *ahem*) on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

I hope you and your family are having a lovely Advent!

Celebrating Our Lady of the Snows

Happy Feast Day of Our Lady of the Snows!

Yes, I know the day is generally commemorated as the Feast of the Dedication of St. Mary Major, but ever since I found about Our Lady of the Snows last year, I've preferred this title for the day.  Perhaps it is because today is my birthday and I like having a feast day for Our Lady on my birthday - even if it is an obscure one!

We celebrated the day by going to Mass and Adoration, then coming home and having a little snack and an activity.  I sliced some zucchini bread and set it before the kids, telling them the story of Our Lady of the Snows.  When we got to the part about the snow on Esquiline Hill in Rome, I offered them powdered sugar "snow" or cream cheese "snow" for their zucchini bread "Esquiline Hill".  Perhaps muffins would have been more hill-ish, but I was going with what I had!  They were charmed, and had a great time making it snow on their bread.  After we finished our snack and story, the children made and decorated snowflakes for our Jesse Tree Year Round and hung them.

I'm thinking about making these cookies this afternoon with the kids, but we'll see if I have the energy for it.  I also need to frost my birthday cake and make the kabobs for our BBQ tonight...  and I have to remember that I'm 8 1/2 months pregnant and do not have endless amounts of energy right now!

Celebrating Pentecost

Happy Pentecost!

We're still relatively new in our celebrations of the Liturgical Year, but we are learning and growing each year.  This year we decorated our "Jesse Tree Year Round" with tongues of flame inscribed with the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit and doves.  I printed everything out on card stock and the kids and I had fun cutting everything out and discussing why we were using these elements for our tree.  I got the idea from the Windsock for Pentecost at Shower of Roses and adapted it to make it work for us.   

As an aside, if you'd like to work more with your kids (and perhaps yourself!) on memorizing things like the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, I highly recommend Kevin Vost's book Memorize the Faith.  The memory techniques presented in this book are fantastic and work well with kids and adults.   

For dessert - because after all, celebrating the liturgical year with food is such a highlight for everyone! - we had pound cake, whipped cream, and strawberries cut length-wise to look like flames.  The kids The kids thought it was great and were quite impressed that strawberries could be made to look like flames.   We also had some raspberry rooibos tea with our dessert because it was as close as I could get to an appropriately colored beverage on short notice.