Made with Love :: A Birthday Cake for Mom!
Last night my girls had so much fun shopping for a few supplies to decorate a cake for me this year, after I wasn’t able to find a cake pan I was looking for at three different local stores… (More on that later!) This morning the big boys borrowed my camera and the girls kicked me out of the kitchen! Everyone helped while Bud napped and I had some quiet computer time with my cup of coffee. I just had to hop back online to share a few of the pictures I found on my camera, along with the completed cake and a picture of seven of my greatest blessings!
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| I’m very curious to find out what is inside the gift Sean left with the boys… They are making me wait until I have blown out my candles to open it! |
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| Pink Roses from Chiquita |
A beautiful bouquet of flowers just arrived from Sean (I miss him so much!), we are headed to town for a few treats, and my Aunt Bridget is coming over in a couple hours to make dinner for us all! I’ve closed the comments on the giveaway and will draw a name tonight or tomorrow morning, after I have had a chance to finish printing and cutting all the entries! 🙂
A Few Changes and A Saints Calendar Giveaway!
Christmas Day in the Morning
I am so thankful for my husband! I always realize just how much during times like right now, when he is gone for weeks and I have to try and keep up manage without him. He really helps so much around our home. I was so exhausted, and not feeling very well, following Midnight Mass on Christmas that he told me to just rest while he took care of filling all the stockings, setting up the rest of the nativities, laying baby Jesus in the manger, and placing the children’s gifts under the tree. We hadn’t gotten home until around 2am and he didn’t get to bed until nearly 5am, which was when I woke back up nurse the baby and then snap a few pictures.
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| Holy Family Stockings for the Boys and Angels for the Girls |
I’m still working on a system for storing the boy’s legos, and am hoping to hang a few more wall shelves in their bedroom soon. Usually the top of their dresser is covered with their creations and others are displayed on their bookcase. The rest are in boxes in the closet. I love Charlotte’s Lego Trays, but my boys have under bed drawers, otherwise I would have made some by now!
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| Bud enjoying the gifts from his godparents! |
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| Opening gifts from Grandpa and Grandma |
After the children had opened their gifts I put my camera down and didn’t pick it up again all day. We enjoyed the day together as a family and, after dinner, we drove out to my parents to deliver gifts and see more of my visiting siblings. It was such a beautiful blessed day, and just the beginning of our celebrations for the Twelve Days of Christmas and the whole Christmas season!
Our Christmas Day Christkindl Family Gift Exchange
We loved incorporating the Christkindl tradition into our own family traditions this year! On the first Sunday of Advent we all drew names, and though out Advent we prayed and did special favors for that particular person. We did our best to keep who had who a secret and we actually did really well!
We wanted to end with a Christkindl gift exchange, so that was a little challenging, since some of the children needed my help to get the gifts for their Christkindl. We gave them each an allowance to do so, but my hope is, as they get older, they will make gifts for each other… it just wasn’t practical this year, especially with our Advent birthdays.
I already knew that the Snuggles and Rose had each other, and had been helping them throughout Advent, and then I helped Rascal, Twinkle Toes and Chiquita with their gifts as well, but not until a couple days before Christmas. However, I still didn’t know who had me, that narrowed it down to Sean and Captain, and I really thought it was Sean! (Though he did have me confused since I noticed him doing things for others throughout Advent too – Feeding the Cat for Rascal some mornings before work, beating me to putting the dishes away in the middle of the night so that Captain would find an empty dishwasher in the morning, bringing me home a coffee… I really wasn’t sure who he had, though I did know it wasn’t Captain!) It was a nice surprise to find out that Captain and I had each other!!
Anyways, Chiquita started our gift exchange, carrying her gift (a box she choose to fill with little packages of lego mini-figures) over to Rascal. Rascal then gave his gift (a set of Rebecca books) to Twinkle Toes.
Twinkle Toes had her Daddy! She was so cute and reminded him of a few nights before Christmas when we were praying the rosary… Sean sometimes asks the kids if they have a specific intention they would like to pray for. That particular night he asked Twinkle Toes and she responded, “My Christkindl!” Sean went on to expand on that intention, praying specifically for certain things for that person (grow in virtues, etc) and he had no idea he was asking for those things for himself! Very sweet!! And he loved the Latin Mass Missal Cover I helped her order for him, along with a Hershey’s candy bar.
Sean went on to give Chiquita her gift (a set of Kaya books). (There was the surprise! I really did think he had me, ever since that hug!) At that point we just had Snuggles, Rose, Captain and I! I gave Captain Big Ben to build and he surprised me with a gift card to my favorite coffee shop and a hand-drawn picture to line the gift box! Snuggles and Rose exchanged gifts next… then it was time for more coffee breakfast, before the kids began opening the rest of their Christmas gifts. Gift opening aways takes quite awhile in our home! 🙂
Christmas Eve in Pictures
At the Tree Farm
My Daybook :: January 10, 2013
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| Our 2012 Christ Candle on Christmas Day |
Outside my window…
the ground is covered with snow and my awesome little brother was outside early this morning, changing the master bedroom outlet breaker for me – the one that would trip nearly every time I turned on the treadmill for the past year, requiring a trip outside usually in the dark. I’m so excited that it is fixed!
I am thinking…
about how much I miss having Sean home. Why does it always get so crazy around here when he is gone? Thankfully we are nearly through the first week, of three… Is it really Thursday already?
I am thankful…
that I didn’t need stitches last night, after cutting my thumb. Ouch! I need to slow down a little bit… I knocked over that pretty soap bottle while washing the dishes and stuck my thumb right into a sharp piece of glass when putting more of the broken pieces into the trash can. I didn’t need stitches, just a Steri-Strip and a Tetanus shot late last night. Now I just need to keep it clean and dry for the next four days…
Learning all the time…
This week didn’t get off to a very good start, but that’s always the case after a break, right? We have gotten through the essentials, but I am really hoping we can get back to The Alphabet Path (letter D), Science (I’ve been nervous ever since the Tooth incident), and finishing up our Civil War Unit Study these next couple weeks. Thankfully everyone is right on schedule with Math, Language Arts, and Latin.
Celebrating the liturgical year…
I spent some time pulling out some of our saint books for January and updating the sidebar. I’m hoping to get back to organizing all of our books and categorizing them sometime soon. (I started last fall and never finished.) Other than another Tea on the Feast of Our Lady of Altagracia and incorporating something in honor of St. Agnes, I don’t have many plans for the rest of the month.
From the kitchen…
Thirteen different flavors of jam! I had been collecting them for awhile with the intention of making an Epiphany Tart. After spending so much time in the kitchen on Saturday, preparing our Twelve Days of Christmas Dinner Party, followed by an early morning driving Sean to the airport, I was just too tired. At least we are stocked up on jam for awhile! And maybe we will still make it eventually… We’ll see.
I am working on…
potty-training Rose. It’s (past) time! Monday I woke up to a couple sick children and after uncountable dirty-diapers (Bud) I gave Rose a bath and decided not to put another diaper on her. Unlike in the past, I thought she was finally ready! We haven’t had any daytime accidents, and just one accident last night (which is probably because I wasn’t home to put her to bed). She is doing great!
I am creating…
a new budget. I knew the Dental Insurance we signed up for was going to start coming out of my husband’s paychecks this month, but I wasn’t prepared for just how much (tax increase too?) his paycheck dropped… I usually preschedule bill payments and I ended up having to raid all the kids piggy banks and make a late night trip to the ATM on payday this week. Thankfully it all worked out, and I didn’t bounce anything, but it was way too close. Whew!
I am going…
to try and continue catching up on emails! I finally have it down to “only 100” emails sitting in my inbox from the last year waiting for a response… That’s progress! 😉
I am hoping…
that the scale starts going down a little bit. I’ve been walking/jogging every day this year and it still hasn’t budged… I keep telling myself that I am gaining muscle and the scale will start coming down eventually. Still, it has been discouraging.
I am praying…
that next week isn’t nearly as “eventful” as this week has been!
I am reading…
excellent posts on discipline over at Like Mother, Like Daughter. I’m often asked “How do you do it all?” It is a difficult question for me to answer (My first thought is “I just do… and I don’t get to everything that I’d like to!”), but I think it all comes down to well behaved and obedient children, in addition to thinking and planning ahead. We have required and trained our children to be obedient since they were babies. They are still children and get into arguments with each other and have to be reminded to do their chores frequently, and it is always a work in progress, but they are great kids. A couple Sundays ago I had to take the baby out of Mass and Hubby had to also leave for a few minutes – the remaining six children sat in the pew and paid attention to Mass. The usher came up to me in the back and said “My kids would never have done what your kids are in there doing, if my wife and I had left them there by themselves! I’ve never seen anything like it.” I was a very proud momma at that moment! 🙂
Here is a great post to start: Six-to-eleven year olds need less patience from you. Then maybe move on to The Reasonably Clean Kitchen starts with rules for the kids.
Pondering these words…
from Auntie Leila’s post on Destruction-proofing your family:
I am listening…
We are still listening to The Lord of the Rings, and we are now on the second part of The Two Towers.
On Sunday afternoon Rascal started building his new Helm’s Deep lego set. He had it finished by dinnertime!
It’s been fun to see all their new creations, incorporating some of their old sets as well.
Around the house…
there are still signs of the Christmas season, even though we took down our tree this last weekend. We will leave our Nativity out until Candlemas.
The short little phone calls from my husband, even though he hasn’t been able to talk for more than 10 minutes each day. They keep him BUSY on these trainings!
Survive! 😉
Our Twelve Days of Christmas Dinner Party on Twelfth Night!
Inspired by the song The Twelve Days of Christmas, I came up with twelve menu items for our party. Legend has it that each gift represents an aspect of our faith and it has been said that this song was used to help teach catechism to children when religious instruction was prohibited. Whether or not this is true, I just love all the symbolism and am always looking for ways to teach my children more about our faith. (Note: You can find our Twelve Days of Christmas Lap Book here.) When creating the menu I drew from both the original gifts and the Catholic aspects of our faith which they symbolize.
I set the table with a red tablecloth and our Silent Night Table Runner, moved our Twelve Days of Christmas Ornaments from the kitchen to the table as well, and used the lovely new little ornaments from Jesse Tree Treasures to place next to each food item.
When I saw the Partridge in a Pear Tree Pie over at Taste of Home, I knew I had to try making it… It was pretty simple and turned out so cute and delicious. I didn’t have a partridge cookie cutter so I just hand cut a design with a butter knife. I also added some little leaves and cross shapes as well.
I also made some Gluten Free Mini Rum Cakes, and used Coconut Sugar for the rum syrup. You couldn’t even tell the difference. (I knew I needed some healthier options for myself or I’d never be able to resist a couple of the treats.
Twelve Days of Christmas Picture Books:
The Twelve Days of Christmas Illustrated by Laurel Long
The Twelve Days of Christmas Illustrated by Jan Brett
The Twelve Days of Christmas: A Christmas Pop-Up Illustrated byJohn Patience
The Twelve Days of Christmas: The Story Behind a Favorite Christmas Song (not pictured)
Epiphany Picture Books Pictured:
The Last Straw by Frederick H. Thury
The Third Gift by Linda Sue Park
Baboushka and the Three Kings by Ruth Robbins
We Three Kings Illustrated by Gennady Spirin
Three Kings Original Gifts of Christmas: Gold Frankincense & Myrrh Deluxe Three Box Set
A Twelve Days of Christmas Dinner Party on Twelfth Night
What are your plans for this year?
UPDATE: YOU CAN SEE PICTURES FROM OUR PARTY HERE.
The Christmas Cookie Sprinkle Snitcher
And so begins the story of The Christmas Cookies Sprinkle Snitcher written by Robert Kraus over 40 years ago, and finally republished in 2010. Our children were very excited to discover this book in our Advent Book Basket this past Advent!
Originally I planned to bake sugar cookies (in preparation for Christmas) the day they opened the book and read it for the first time, but since I was recovering from a sinus infection it was postponed until after Christmas.
The kids had a blast, and doing all these fun activities during the Twelve Days of Christmas, instead of before, has been an excellent way to really celebrate the Christmas season this year! (Even though it has been awfully hard to resist all these delicious looking cookies with my New Year’s resolutions, I have been successful! And I’ve even walked/ jogged 20 miles on the treadmill over the first 4 days of this new year! Woohoo!! Hopefully I can actually keep it up once we start back to school next week!)
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