Seven Quick Takes: The Weird, the Wonderful, and Lent

 

 1.  It was the strangest thing.We were walking through the woods and saw robins throwing leaves.  They were on the forest floor, very deliberately picking up leaves and throwing them vigorously into piles!

We went over to investigate and found the places where the birds had been: small patches of bare ground with a little leaf pile next to each spot... and a worm hole in the exact center of each bare patch!

 2. Klenda continues to do very well at art school,  She has become known  as "The Quirky One."  For some reason.

They were painting a white ball surrounded by colored scarves (an exercise in perceiving reflected color).

She put this face on the ball, which I think shows hidden depths of creativity, skill, and creepiness.




3. We had slipped into a rut in our dinner time conversation.  We would start out talking about our day, and quickly move over to what was happening in a video or computer game or movie.  I wanted to broaden the horizons a bit.

What did I want to talk about?  I came up with a list and put it on a spinner.  You may notice that all the topics I found annoying are also on the spinner.

We don't spin the spinner, just move the hand one space each day.  The question jar is a jar filled with dinner conversation topics that I got here and here.



And, yes, we also have a spinner to show if we prayed before meals because one family member got tired of others asking at each meal (usually after prayers), "Did we pray yet?"

We're a bit weird like that.

 4. Now that it's March, I guess it's time to mention Valentine's Day!  

One of the question jar questions was : what is your favorite family tradition?

Mine is everyone making valentines for each other!

We go around the table and read them one at a time. So fun!  So much love!




 
5. I had a bone infection in my jaw and had to have minor surgery and a tooth removed.  They are going to put another one back (dental implant), which makes it feel a little less like I'm just losing body parts as I age, but it still hasn't been the most fun.

Every time I want to complain, I think of this meme (from Lit Catholic Memes), and it cheers me up!

6. Lent is almost here!  At long last! It feel weird having this much time between Christmas and Lent.  Also, given that I can't eat much right now (see #5) it feels like it's already Lent!  I'll do a separate post about this year's Lent, but if you're looking for Lent ideas, here you go.  This is the poster from 3 years ago, but, given the 3 year cycle, this year's poster will be similar.

7. Can I just say that shoebills creep me out?

When we were at the Natural History Museum this week, we stumbled onto a wonderful new exhibit tucked back behind the dinosaur exhibit on the second floor.

The actual exhibit is a selection of fascinating things from all over the Smithsonian collections, and we loved it!

But seriously, these birds are each about four feet of creepy!

Have a great weekend!  More fun with Kelly!

Happy Lent!

I am pretty excited that Ash Wednesday coincides with Valentine's Day! 

Just in case we didn't get it: LENT!  IT'S ALL ABOUT LOVE!!

This is the first time this has happened in my lifetime, although, according to Google, it will happen again in 2024.

I like Lent anyway, mostly because I love (and need) second chances.  I feel like this Lent is a Valentine from God!

I'm looking forward to new ways of seeing how God is loving me, and finding new ways to love God!

Here is this year's Walking With Jesus Poster.  This is essentially a Lenten calendar with a footstep for each day and a picture for each Sunday's Gospel.  I think the foot steps are really hard to see, but they're there!

And we are doing the Vine and Branches again.
Basically it's a 7 foot tall vine cut out of brown paper with branches for each member of the family. We cut out tons of leaves and grapes and put them in a basket. Whenever anyone sees someone doing something good, they put a leaf or fruit on that person's branch.

We'll be filling the cookie jar with pretzels instead of sweets, and we'll be only eating dessert on Sundays: Gospel Desserts!



 We'll be trying for daily Mass on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we'll be collecting money (amongst ourselves) to donate to the poor.


And we'll be doing the Scripture Cross.
This is made of 40 squares of light purple paper. You do a scripture reading, have a kid draw a representation of the reading on a square, and then tape the square to a wall. By Easter you have a large cross representing Salvation History. We've done this several times and the kids loved it. You can find the readings and more info here.




And the Sacrifice Beans. We put in a bean for each act of love or devotion.  On Easter the beans become jelly beans because Jesus makes all our sacrifices sweet!



And we've set up our little Lent Altar in our main room.

This year we have the big wooden cross, a jar of ashes (from burning last year's palms), the squares for the Scripture Cross and the grapes and leaves for the vine, a candle, and a statue of Jesus on the way to the cross.

I think for myself, the focus is going to be on reading more scripture, looking to better understand God's heart.

Happy Lent!

Happy Valentine's Day!

 Valentine Sudoku with candy hearts.

Lots  of Valentine jokes.

Kid: what's for lunch?

Me: Quiches.

Kid: Quiches?

Me: Sure! (Big kisses on the top of their head)

We had our traditional Valentine treasure hunt, which ended in the chapel.

And red heart balloons!

And raspberry filled chocolate cupcakes, shared with friends and neighbors.

And a big jello heart, photobombed by a Temmie.





And best of all, lots of valentines we made for each other!

Seven Quick Takes: Valentine Lent

1. I hate it when Valentine's Day falls during Lent:  hearts, romance, love, and...self sacrifice?

How's that supposed to work?



Never mind.

Anyway, I'm actually excited about it this year, partly because it falls on a Sunday (guilt free chocolate!), and partly because the juxtaposition was a whack on the head.

I've had a very odd few weeks, and it's only just now come into focus: this Lent is God's valentine to me.  All the fasting, praying, and giving is a way to make space to receive all the Love He wants to pour into me. That may take me more than 40 days to unpack!


2.  This has been my favorite Lent video for three years running, and I'm guessing this is not a coincidence:

3. Kid Lent is going well.  I blogged about it here, but here's the free printable in case you missed it.

You can use it as a template, or just print and color it yourself!

The idea is to color in a footprint each day, starting at the lower left cross. 

Some years we also drew flowers around the footprints to represent the acts of love we had done that day.

Please note, the cross itself is the symbol for Ash Wednesday (the first footprint is Thursday), and each Sunday is a picture relating to that Gospel (no footprints on Sundays).

4. Lent +Year of Mercy=Lent of Mercy!  This video nudged me to pick up the Divine Comedy again.






5. Speaking of great Lenten stuff from Fr. Bishop Barron, did you know he is doing daily Lenten meditations? He is!  And they're free! Sign up here.

I've given up playing games on my phone for Lent, and I've been filling time with snippets of spiritual reading,so this is quite helpful. Dominicana, has also been a great source. 
I can't just give something up, I need to fill it with something positive.

6. This chart, nabbed from Catholic Memes, cracked me up!

I have been slowly realizing that part of my issues with Lent has been due to an unconscious presumption that my Lenten practices were something that I took on and succeeded (or failed!) at based on how mightily I grit my teeth.
Ah yes, my spiritual growth, depends on my sheer force of will power!

I need a GIF of my guardian angel facepalming, "You know that's a heresy, right?"

7. Also, shamelessly cribbed from Catholic Memes, but thought of frequently while buying chocolate for Valentines Day on a Lenten Friday:

 More fun,and some hilarious Catholic Valentines with Kelly!

More Wordless Valentines

Valentine Creatures

Here's an easy Valentine project: cute creatures made of candy clay.

Did I say easy?  The clay is just cream cheese mixed with powdered sugar!

We added blueberry flavor and lots of food coloring for fun, but I think the last time I did this, I just used cherry flavor and red food coloring.

Amie actually started this with Choclo and Oob while I was working with another kid, but Leena joined in, and other kids wandered in and out, too.


They raided the sprinkle box for fun embellishments. 

The regular sprinkles were good for hair.

 I had some little glasses and bow ties on hand.

I like lots of odd sprinkles, so it's a varied collection!







They ended up using the star shaped sprinkles for awards and badges for all their little creatures.

And they gave away most of their creations.

Tasty and fun!

Wordless Wednesday: Valentines Edition

Valentine's Day!

Better late than never!

 We were quite busy with Valentine's Day last week.  Even my bread turned out shaped like hearts. 

I really hope to find my bread pans soon, because this was not planned, it was just a coincidence.  An uncannily accurate coincidence, as Klenda pointed out!

Actually, knowing that she learned enough anatomy to diagram a loaf of bread does my heart good!


In other news of the missing, I can't find my normal heart cookie cutters.  I had one that was rather large, so I decided to go ahead and make my favorite cookies, just not as the usual sandwich cookies.

Problem? What problem?

I hadn't factored in the fact that the dough would expand... and we ended up with cookies the size of Oob's head!  He did not find this a problem, however...

As you can see in the background, we also got 2 dozen heart balloons which are still floating around the house, being used for fun, games, and neutral bouyancy experiments.  





I also found a package of adhesive mustaches!

Not all Zoomlians loved this idea, but the Zoomlians that loved it, really loved it!!

And of course there were valentines! 



Lots and lots of valentines!





Our friend, Amie,who is living with us, made gorgeous, intricate valentines of the various favorite animals (that bottom one is a tapir!) which the Zoomlians are using as puppets!


And, naturally, there were valentine sweets: the older Zoomlians set up a treasure hunt for the younger Zoomlians, and then the younger Zoomlians set up a treasure hunt for the older Zoomlians.  The treasures were conversation hearts and heart shaped gobstoppers (called, alarmingly, "heartstoppers!").






And we had a jello heart (which got mostly eaten before I remembered to get a picture), and a big pink strawberry rice crispy heart (which got all the way eaten before I got the camera).

And, of course, Pink Burping Cows...of Love!


We are kind of crazy about Valentine's Day, and I think I've figured out why: it's a holiday that celebrates love, and that's what we do.  We love people. 

Not perfectly, of course, but that's really what our family is about: God gives us people (including each other) to love, and we do.