Planning Progress

Our plans have come along pretty well since my last post.

Mardi Gras: I'm almost done gathering everything together. Last night while Mr. Sloth was out I finshed the posters I was making with information about the history of Mardi Gras. At least I thought I finished. I forgot about a poster for "King Cake" and I want to laminate the posters to use for next year as well. They were a lot of work I don't want it to go to waste only to do it again next year.

St. Joseph's altar: Instead of scrambling to put together an altar on March 18th I decided to slowly put one together right up to the feast day. So far we have a statue of St. Joseph and yester day Demand and I bought flowers for the altar (yellow, green, and then some white lilies). Today Demand asked if we could make handprint lilies for the altar. How could I say no? Before tonight is over I'd like to print out a short prayer to St. Joseph to hang in my shower. (Yep, I have prayers in my shower.)

St Patrick's Day/Week: I'm having a few homeschooling friends over on the actual day for a mini-party. So far for the menu/events I've planned making mint-ice cream in our ice cream maker and then making Trinity Shamrock crafts that I ordered for from Oriental Trading. I'll plan more after Mardi Gras. I'm thinking of having the kids make sacrifice beads as well or maybe this pipe cleaner rosary.

Lent: While I was making posters for Mardi Gras I worked on posters for Lent. I made three posters "Pray", "Give", and "Fast" and below each will be filled in with activities, etc. I've decided to start 40 bags, 40 days early that I am done by Palm Sunday and can then do spring cleaning (got that idea, yet again, from Shower of Roses) I found another great idea for kids during Lent. Catholic Icing suggest the child pick a toy and put it in a box for Lent. It's a great idea, but I don't want choose too much for Demand this year, plus we're already packing things up for a possible move. Maybe next year.

Packing: The other night I finished boxing up 20 boxes, then loaded them in the van. (and the van was loaded), stopped to get gas. (Thank you 'state' for passing a law that you had to stand next to the pump while filling your gas. FAREEEZING!) Then I took them to Obscure's home where he helped me unload them. I hope to do this all over again later this week. I have mixed feelings about it since it's exhausting work to do after a long day with the kids, but it feels nice to have things out of the house.

School: Demand and I had a great day of home schooling and it was quite unplanned. Quite organic actually. I was planning on napping but when Pax had his own ideas I decided we would get some school work done while he played on the floor. Demand has only four books left before she can buy this book, and only one of the four books is completely new to her. She's working to finish by Friday. After reading I had her practice her oral presentation for later this month while I changed Pax's diaper. She is going to recite the "Hail Mary" and "Our Father" prayers. I picked something she already had memorized so she could work more on her posture and volume this time, there's still the nerves issue too. After Pax was back asleep she and I headed downstairs and made hand print lilies for St. Joseph. Next she worked on her letters online for a good hour while I cleaned the kitchen. Well, worked on cleaning the kitchen. Now she is alternating between entertaining Pax and writing her letters. Here's a tip by the way, if you have a chalkboard a great way to entertain your children is to give them water and paintbrushes and let them go to town. Happy and Demand worked on their letters for a good half an hour the other day doing that. Anyway, I didn't plan on doing much homeschooling today but we sure accomplished a lot.

Life: Today with Mr. Sloth having to leave for work "early" I couldn't go to Mass....by myself. Since it was a later Mass and the kids were up and ready I did it, I braved Mass by myself with all the kiddos. I prepared for the absolute worst (which involved me nursing Pax running down the aisle chasing Happy but not quite fast enough too catch him) but things went really well. We started in the Cry room because, who are kidding? Plus it was the all-school Mass and I didn't want us distracting the school kids. It was actually a great way to explain parts of the Mass and really encourage their responses. Happy worked on being quite and Demand worked on paying attention. Pax naturally wanted to nurse just before Communioin which I would have skipped but Happy and Demand know the routine and were already trying to break out of the room, so after a quick snack I braved bringing all three kiddos up to Communion. Happy was such a good boy! He held Demand's hand the entire walk up. It was quite endearing actually. He of course has no concept of waiting in line, but Demand sure does. She kept dragging him back to us. It's a good thing He held Demand's hand because I need both hands for Pax. He's a grabber, I mean a serious grabber. Never seen a kid like him and grabby babies and Communion.....let's not go there.

Alright I have twenty minutes to purge my fridge and gather a 'left overs' dinner or I like to call them "Penitential Meals". Gotta go!

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.

Happy is 2!

Happy's birthday party went well last week. My only complaint was that Pax was difficult to get to sleep all day and sure enough he fell asleep just as the guests were arriving, which wouldn't be a problem if his bed wasn't directly above our front door. Happy too was power napping. He slept until 5:30! So due to the sleeping babies upstairs people were restricted to downstairs which meant we had 21 people in our living room/kitchen.

It was a "Finding Nemo" theme and we had a taco bar for food. I thought it would be a super easy route to feed people, inexpensive at least. It was more work than I thought but that's O.K. Demand helped me plan the party. We both decided clown fish and 'bubbles' hanging from the ceiling which I made from scrap paper would be fun. I bought our plates, forks, etc from Dollar Tree (love that store!) and then I found a few 'clown fish' items on clearance at Party City (cups $1.25 and a platter $0.99) I maybe spent $8 on decorations. I spent around $50 on food but fully knowing we'd have left overs for a few days....which we did....and loved.

Being on an anti-THING kick we only bought him three gifts. A BOY big wheel (we have a girly big wheel, and two girl bikes) and a bathtub faucet toy, and then as toppers to the cake we bought him Nemo figurines. (Which he loves!)

The party was rather humbling in that we needed the only space we had for eating to hold all the food. (As it is we can't all fit at our dining room table for dinner for a weeknight dinner) So I spread some blankets on the floor and that was our dining space. Eating went well though. We could eat Mexican food every night and our kids love it and it seemed everyone else did as well. It feels good to serve a meal children will eat. Mr. Sloth and I were also a bit embarassed that the only drinks we offered were juice, beer, and water. We just didn't want our kids begging for pop so we didn't even have it as an option.

Happy had a great time though. He loved all the 'Nemo's' and he LOVED his cake. I even had a cupcake just for him to blow the candles out because children spitting on cakes freaks us out. His favorite gift was probably the Little People Airport from Mena and Papa, but that was no surprised as he was obsessed with his cousins' at Christmas.

So Happy Birthday Happy! I can't believe my baby boy is two. You're such a joy and we love you very much!

So proud

I told Demand a while ago that when we got through lesson 15 (of 30) of her Math curriculum we'd go to Caribou just me and her and she could order whatever she wanted. Well we finally did it! Would have been done sooner if I didn't have a newborn or take the month of December off.

She is so proud of herself and she should be, she worked really hard, especially this past week.

***Breaking News****

Happy asked to sit on the potty today! I was changing his diaper and when I went to put his clean diaper on he said, "No". After some discussion I asked if he wanted to sit on the potty and he said, "OK". And he did for about twenty minutes. It was most exciting! The after dinner he ran up to me saying, "Oh, no, I poot, I poot!" I then asked him if he wanted to go potty and he said, "OK." and ran upstairs. He then sat on the potty for 30-45 minutes. He had already gone but he was determined to try and go on the potty. Unfortunately in the excitement I made the poor decision to give him copious amounts of juice to keep him motivated and Demand brought dessert in to share. (Dessert on the bathroom floor...I just had to look away and pretend it wasn't happening.) Finally he wanted his diaper back on.

Due to the high amounts of sugar getting to bed was most aweful...actually we're still dealing with the drama of it all as I write this. Having him sit on the potty inspired both Mr. Sloth and myself to think about bringing the potty chair to Mass with us. We're desperate, aren't we?

God bless him for trying!

Our Lady of Lourdes/ St. Valentines

Finally getting around to posting about our resent feast day celebrations.

Last Friday was the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. I read the kids the short version of the story during breakfast, later Demand and I colored pictures and made dessert. We made "pools" of blue jello to represent the springs of water .Since I didn't feel like leaving the house Thursday I had to be creative and decided to make "dirt" for dessert as well since St. Bernadette was told to dig in the dirt and drink of the spring and eat of the weeds there. (Demand seemed very disturbed by this) For dirt we had chocolate pudding topped with crushed oreo cookies.

In the afternoon I put on "Song of Bernadette". I had my doubts that Demand would like it but she did, despite the disturbing idea that the entire family dwelled in ONE ROOM and the fact that it was "gray" (Black & White).

Sadly I didn't get a chance to part-take in dessert. The last few hours of the day were crazy and dinner didn't get made, we were about to order take-out when Obscure (who had already eaten) offered to watch the kids so we could go out.

Vrooom!

We were gone. The kids had the pudding when we got home but I was putting Pax to bed.

By the way, Demand STILL doesn't like jello. (She just think she does)

Even though the appearance of Mary in the apparitions is pretty important, I let Demand color her the way she wanted to...ahem, insisted.

Again, making last minute plans I dug through what books we had and found these. The statue was Mr. Sloth's grandfather's who found it buried in his yard when he was a kid so it''s well over a hundred years old. (and I LOVE it)

Demand, proudly showing off her picture of the "Immaculate Conception".

And now for the Feast of St. Valentine! Demand was disturbed at the hearts I hung in her doorway while she slept but pleasantly surprised at the decorations in the dining room. We had pink breakfast while I read the story of St. Valentine to the kids. For breakfast we had strawberry milk, strawberries cut like hearts and heart shaped pancakes with walnuts and strawberries inside. In all honesty, I measured the pancakes wrong and they were not good. Sorry kids! Who wants chocolate for breakfast? As a gift the kids got slippers and candy. I had my doubts as to Happy liking his (super clearance after Christmas sale) slippers but he LOVES them and Demand keeps thanking me for them. After getting a late start we rushed around getting ready for the big homeschool party. Mr. Sloth helped me get out the door after he got home from Mass. I really should have packed lunches and laid out clothes the night before. Lesson learned (I think).

The party was...exhausting! The first part is in a huge field house. These poor kids haven't seen grass in months so everyone was going crazy and Happy kept running into full blown soccer games. I think his Guardian Angel knocked Pax unconscious the whole first part so that I could have my hands free to do sprints and catch Happy.

Next was the Valentine exchange. There were about twenty kids in the 4 and younger group. I gave Happy a sucker to keep him from running away while we did the exchange and he followed us around just fine. However when we got back to our spot I noticed that his sucker was gone. I had to apologize to everyone that if they received a half-eaten sucker in their Valentine's box it was our fault. Oops!

Next was lunch. I packed heart shaped cheese sandwhiches, craisins, fruit punch, goldfish...the standards. Just as we were wrapping up I discovered that Mr. Sloth had arrived. Just in time for a dirty diaper via Pax.

Next was ice skating. Mr. Sloth was there to take Demand ice skating while I watched the boys. CaRAZy. Happy just kept running away and the place was freezing , plus I was asked to watch a boy while his Aunt skated with his brother. Since Happy kept running and then coming back I let it go, and then one time he didn't come back. For ten minutes he was lost and I was supposed to be watching another child. I discovered that there was a secret exit I didn't know about so I enlisted two moms to help me. Soon Happy came trekking around from the other side of the rink (where I didn't know you could fit let alone go) looking as though 'he'd been places'. He was happy to see me, but it didn't stop him from running off. Next stop was being strapped in the stroller.

I scrapped together decorations using Dollar tree paper doilies, twine, red bed sheet.

Demand, excited about her "Hello Kitty" Valentine.

Happy in his "Buzz Lightyear Rockets" and discovering the joy of chocolate for breakfast.

"Chocolate for breakfast is so funny, Momma!"

Pink Breakfast

Pax wondering where his Valentine is...err, catch you next year kid.

Fun in the fieldhouse.

It was a really fun day. Hope yours was too!

Busy, busy

Busy, busy, busy.

I'd love to tell you that I haven't posted because I've been keeping my house spic & span while keeping the children well entertained, educated, and happy, however, I cannot lie. I haven't posted because I've been overwhelmed.

I've reached the point in our home cycle where I need to find another solution. Even if I clean the house to perfection, within two hours it's destroyed. We are just out of space but have no where to go. It's too frustrating. I feel bad, Demand is also desperate to move. She's even brought us her piggy bank so we could buy a new house. One night, way past bedtime, she completely broke down because we weren't moving the next day. If she only knew how much we wanted to move.

So my house has suffered but I've grown in patience and things are getting better with Happy. I've accepted that the house is going to be messy while the kids are conscious. (Which with Demand is typically 5:50am-9:30pm) Happy has grown so much in the past month. I'll explain more later next week when I do his birthday post, but he's gotten so much better at communicating and understanding that it's really solved a number of problems.

Homeschooling hasn't so much happened recently. For a week Pax was in the wonderful habit of only wanting to nap in his crib but now he's refusing his swing and crib, and only wants to nurse perpetually. Considering that mommy has an abundance of milk to start with ,over nursing leads to over eating, which leads to days of upset tummies and wardrobe changes. Also he's not as 'regular' as the rest of the Sloth clan (Happy holds the title of at LEAST 3 BMs a day...yep, I said BM) so, when you are full of breastmilk but only have one exit available......

Anyway, ideally, homeschooling happens while the boys nap, but I've had to spend a lot of my time with Pax which I don't mind because Pax has also been keeping me up all night so I'm completely exhausted and in need of a nap. Which by the way, one of the triggers for Pax spitting up is me drinking coffee so I can't drink coffee.....you see the vicious circle that is laid out for us, right? (We did manage to get some work done over the last few days, and Demand is only four, so it's not like we're behind by any means.)

Oh, before I forget, this past weekend Happy had a fever so we spit up for Sunday Mass. Mr Sloth took Demand to 10am Mass and I went to the 11:30am Tridentine. I had gotten Mr. Sloth a Latin Missal for his birthday in July but I myself had never used it. He showed me how just as I was walking out the door and I have to say. I LOVE the Mass. Such a difference. Anyone who says the Novus Ordo Mass is more involved hasn't really tried this Mass. Having a missal makes all the difference. I truly felt as though I was entering INTO the Mass and that is was an offering made on my behalf. So beautiful.

Ok, so this weekend.

Tomorrow is my feast day! Our Lady of Lourdes, Pray for us! (more on that some other day) We also have a field trip to a Nature Center tomorrow morning where we will learn about "Bones". Demand is excited, she likes bones.

Saturday. Demand has ballet in the late morning and then we are babysitting for friends who have our identical family in the evening.

Sunday. Average plans for the day dinner with friends from college and their family just north of here. They have five girls and are expecting their first boy! How exciting!

Mr. Sloth is bummed that he can't cook/grill this weekend but we'll survive. Next week, he'll only have Sunday since Happy's 2nd Birthday Party is on Saturday and we're having Taco Bar. (Yummy!)

I'll try and let you know how the feast day goes tomorrow. Here's to hopefully a better night of sleep! Haven't had one in a long time.