Lord, That I May See

 This week, we have veiled all the holy images and statues, as a sign of mourning and sensory deprivation.  Turtle is a little disturbed by this practice, and sometimes has to lift the veil covering pictures in her room when she doesn't like not seeing them any more.  For me, however, I love the visual reminder in every room of the house of the somberness of this beautiful week. We've made some "holy pretzels," as the girls call them. We said the following prayer as we sprinkled them with holy water: We beg you, O Lord, to bless these pretzels which are to remind us that Lent is a sacred season of penance and prayer.  For this very reason,  the early Christians started the custom of making these breads in the form of arms crossed in prayer.  Thus they kept the holy purpose of Lent alive in their hearts from day to day, and increased in their souls the love of Christ, even unto death, if necessary. Grant us, we pray, that we too may be reminded by th...

I pick up the girls from Grammy's house after getting a long overdue haircut. Turtle, trying to be nice:  "Oh, Mommy, your hair is short.  I like it a little bit longer." Rosebud, whining and almost crying: "Mooooommmmy, I want you to get a different haircut!"

  I wrote this post about 6 months ago.  I have left it lying in my Draft folder because I wrote it in a moment of rawness, the sort of rawness that in high school or college would've had me grabbing my journal and scrawling words spilling from my mind, without thought of consequence or correctness.   A blog is different than that journal, and so I ended up closing the computer and never pushing "publish" on this.   And yet, for some reason, today I think I will post it. It's honestly me.  It may not coincide with the experience of many others, but it is mine.   *****************************************************************************  There is a fact of my life that I have come to know well in the last five years.  It is a fact that I love and that some days I hate. It is a fact that delights me with its great glory and one that scares me, one that fills me with one of the greatest gifts in ...

#1.   I planned my dinner menu through next weekend.  I hate this chore and some weeks -- especially recently -- I try to get by without doing it, and it always seems to end up being this thing hanging over my head all day: "what are we going to have for dinner?"  So, I have this monthly calendar I stole from my husband and I've devoted it to dinner planning.   I can keep a running shopping list on the side and note on each day what I need to thaw for the next.  Hopefully this will help.  It's amazing how much the week changes for me when I do this. #2.   I did all my laundry -- 7 loads -- on Monday.  And I folded it all on Tuesday.   Check!  No constant laundry and piles of clean clothes laying around this week! #3 .  I've survived mostly without losing my temper a long week of many tantrums from both (no make that all three) of my girls (but Sunshine's don't really count cuz they're just cute). Tantrums about food to...

 Turtle enjoys sewing these craft foam shapes that I cut out.  I punch the holes around the edge with a needle before giving them to her for a "quiet time" activity.  Rosebud likes this button-sorting work.  She sorts the buttons by size.  This work I saw a long time ago on a Montessori-inspired blog -- I believe it was Chasing Cheerios , but I can't find it now -- so sorry!  I hot-glued small popsicle sticks into five different shapes -- a pentagon, a trapezoid, a triangle, a diamond and a square.  I put different colored stickers on the each shape at the joining points.  The loose popsicle sticks have velcro at the proper points for the child to join the sticks to copy the pre-made shapes.  Sunshine loves our Chinese Checkers board just like Turtle and Rosebud both did.  I just showed Sunshine how to wash the windows.  She is very intrigued and meticulous, but still can't spray the bottle all by herself. Turtle got this awesome ...

I wanted to share something that we are doing in our home to prepare for Easter. I had originally planned on putting out the Crown of Thorns like we did last year . We did actually make the Crown on Shrove Tuesday.  But looking back at that post from last year, I remembered that the girls didn't understand it then, and I soon realized that they didn't quite understand it this year either.   I was struggling with trying to explain the idea of relieving Jesus' suffering while leaving out the part where we caused his suffering (because they are still sinless!).   And there was the whole problem Turtle (and Rosebud to some extent) was having with figuring out the timeline of everything  ("Is Jesus on the Cross right now?  How many days?  When does He get off?").    About a week into Lent, after a lot of thought and talking with my daughters' Catechist at the Atrium, my mom (also a CGS Catechist) and some good friends, I decided to throw a...