Planning, planning, planning

I've always been a planner, even to the point of ridiculousness. I even remember one of my brothers making fun of one my to-do lists as a kid because first on the list was "wake up", as if I needed to plan that.

Anyway, so I'm planning a lot right now. First, in scheduled order, I am planning a Mardi Gras party for our homeschool group. I knew this is a Catholic custom but I didn't know anything about the holiday so I thought planning a party would be a great opportunity to learn about it, and I was correct. Yesterday I ordered necklaces, masks, and decorating materials from Oriental Trading, and last week when I bought Happy's birthday supplies at Dollar Tree I grabbed a few paper goods for Mardi Gras as well, and today I spent over an hour working on gathering information about the holiday to share with the group. I've been looking up recipes for "King's Cakes" finding coloring pages and word finds to share. It's actually been one of the more fun parties to plan because I'm learning about it as I go. This may become a tradition.

With the end of Mardi Gras comes Lent and so I've been planning Lenten activities as well. Shower of Roses and Catholic Icing have helped me come up with a number of Lenten ideas and activities. For starters I printed out a Lenten calendar for kids which looks like a game. Next I printed out the words "Pray/Give/Fast" to hang on the wall and I'll put corresponding activities below each word. Among those I'm planning on having a charity box that we will put one item in every day of Lent for the poor, as well as fill the Rice Bowl Mr. Sloth will bring home from CCD. This year I'm also planning on doing 40 bags, in 40 Days in order to purge my home and heart of things. (The real trick will be to NOT bring anything into the home) A friend of mine did this last year and gave me the idea. As for prayer, at brunch today Mr. Sloth and I were practicing the "Hail Mary" in different languages*** and I thought it might be a good idea to spend meal times teaching Demand and Happy some new prayers during Lent.

Being a late start to Lent this year we're getting close to the Feasts of St. Patrick and St. Joseph. There's so much I want to do for the Feast of St. Patrick that I've decided to make it an Irish WEEK. I bought one book on St. Patrick off Amazon and found one at the library (along with a St. Valentine one I WANTED to buy but didn't.) We even have a playdate planned for a mini-feast and I ordered some shamrock/Trinity crafts with my Mardi Gras purchase.

Two days after the Feast of St. Patrick is the Feast of St. Joseph, in fact the whole month of March is for St. Joseph. Wanting to sell/buy a house I want to make it a big celebration this year so I am going to try and make a traditional Italian St. Joseph's altar. Could be fun, could be crazy. I bought a beautiful St. Joseph's statue on Saturday while Demand was in ballet. I think the kids and I will spend the two weeks prior to the feast day getting the altar ready. Tuesday I think we'll make those hand print lily flowers again, so appropriate.

And to complete Lent, one of my favorite friends is a Jewish convert to the Catholic faith so I asked her to teach us how to have a Seder dinner. She agreed and I couldn't be more excited! If we don't do it on Holy Thursday we'll do it the week prior. So exciting!

That brings us to Easter which I am not prepared for, but that's what's Lent is for, right? With Lent being so late this year I've already started some of my Lenten reading and can't wait to start my Lenten resolutions. You know Catholics, we just love our suffering. ;)

Oh, and Demand has the planning-gene too. She's always planning her next birthday and she now has it narrowed down to a Tatoo party (yep you read that right), a Strawberry Shortcake Party, or a Pinkalicious Party (my vote), then again she did tell me over coffee/juice this morning that she wanted me to make the castle cake again only this time add a staircase and a spinning wheel (Sleeping Beauty)" because I didn't do that last time" (said disapprovingly) so who knows what late June will bring us.



***Planning for Demand's oral presentation next month I thought she could learn a prayer, perhaps in another language. I know it in German and Latin which started the conversation at brunch this morning. Mr. Sloth knows the Our Father in Latin but not the Hail Mary which then prompted us to looking it up on youtube.