Our Little Flowers’ Tea Party ~ Decorations
One of the other moms agreed to host the party at her home, and she did an amazing job! She has such a lovely collection of china and her beautiful backyard made a perfect location. We were also blessed with additional decorations and supplies which were loaned to us by my friend Trina who has been hosting a tea for her Little Flowers’ group (of older girls) for the past five years. Not to mention, the weather was perfect!
My girls were up bright and early getting ready to leave for the tea. They could hardly wait!!
I just love the little antique tea pot which belonged to Marci’s grandmother.
Extras were provided. 😉
(We hadn’t added the menu at this point.)
My 2nd Blogoversary!
As of today I have been blogging for TWO YEARS!! I can hardly believe that it has already been another year…Where does the time go??
Last year, I posted a few thoughts and reasons why I have grown to love blogging so much. Not much has changed, but I didn’t want today to go by without telling all my dear visitors thank you once again! Thank you for your prayers, advice, encouragement, and friendships. You all have been such a blessing and have made blogging such a joy! May God reward you!
Since it is Mother’s Day…
… and since I just can’t keep it a secret any longer, and since I would really appreciate any prayers you can spare…
I found out on April 14th, just before looking at my calendar and finding that last rose. (I was so surprised to see that calendar page, but yet it was SO very fitting!!) ☺ I am praying that it was a sign that everything will be okay, since I did miscarry our last little one in the fall. So far I have had a couple preliminary blood tests to check my hormone levels, and everything has come back as it should. I have also been very tired and nauseous, which explains my rather sporadic blogging lately. My poor family has been on their own for meals this past week, since I can’t even seem to be able to open the refrigerator with out getting sick! (Thank you hubby, for taking care of it all!) I keep reminding myself that being this sick IS A GOOD THING, and trying my hardest to offer it up and be thankful as I am throwing up! 😉
I have another appointment next Wednesday with my midwife, followed by an ultrasound on Friday at which we will check for the baby’s heartbeat and determine my actual due date! (The online calculators gave me a date of December 24th, and the doctor’s office has said December 21st. Either way, I had better start my Christmas planning early this year!)
We are all very excited, though I must admit I will feel much better after hearing this little one’s heartbeat next Friday. Thank you all for your prayers!
Prayer for the Graces of Motherhood
Powerful is your intercession with God, Mary, for you are his mother. Tender, too, is your love for us, for you are our mother. Confidently, then, I come to you as a child, poor and needy, to seek your aid and protection. In every trial of motherhood, I beg your aid. For the grace of a happy delivery, I come to you. For your holy assistance in guarding and directing each tiny soul with which God entrusts me, I call to you. In every sorrow that comes to me in my motherhood, I confide in you.
That I may have strength to bear cheerfully all the pains and hardships of motherhood, I lean on you. That the sweetness of motherhood may not through my neglect be embittered in later years by pains of regret, I trust in you. That the will of God may always be fulfilled in me through each act of my motherhood, little and great, I beg your aid. Never forsake me dear Mother, my hope, my consolation, my confidence, and my trust, but ever be at my side to aid and protect me, your needy child. Amen.
Little Flowers Girls’ Club ~ Truthfulness
Last Thursday we had our final Little Flowers Girls’ Club meeting for the year!! I just can’t believe how fast the year went!! (Now if I could just find those last two patches for my girl’s sashes!!)
Once again, since the weather was gorgeous, I hosted the meeting at my home in the afternoon, giving the girls an opportunity to have some play time in addition to our meeting. This month we learned about St. Bridget of Sweden and the virtue of Truthfulness.
As usual we began our meeting with the prayer to St. Therese and the Acts of Faith, Hope, and Love. We then continued with a review of the virtue and saint we learned about at our last meeting. The girls now have their jar of beads all filled up, so we need to determine a surprise treat for all of them… Hummmm….
I was not able to find a coloring page for St. Bridget of Sweden, so I opted for a coloring page for the flower of the month, the Narcissus.
Next I introduced the virtue we will be working on, Truthfulness, and read a short biography of the saint for this month, St. Bridget of Sweden.
I was so excited to be able to use another excerpt from Chat With God’s Little Ones (Lesson 30. The Eighth Commandment) to further explain the virtue of truthfulness to our sweet little girls. I just love that book!
Following the lesson the girls began making their notebook pages. I included the memory verse and for Truthfulness, a quote from The Catholic Girl’s Guide, and the prayer to St. Bridget of Sweden.
Here are the links to narcissus and the image of St. Bridget that I choose, and my sample page: (You can download my document here.)
The girls have done an excellent job making all of their notebook pages this year. It’s so fun to look back at their beautiful pages from each month!
“Momma, can you please help me? The glue stick is TOO HEAVY!!!” 😉
Despite “heavy” glue sticks, the girls finished their pages in record time. (Perhaps since we only had 5 girls present this month?!) Here are their completed pages:
With our end of the year Tea Party and Mother’s Day this weekend, I also planned an additional craft for the girls to make and give to their mother’s at the tea party. We made bouquets of lily’s with outlines of the girls hands! I first saw it in a Family Fun magazine around Easter and LOVED it! I modified it a bit after seeing these directions online… Didn’t they turn out cute?
Snack time was next. Erica had been assigned snacks for this meeting, and even though she was not able to make it, she STILL dropped off snacks for the girls! She is so awesome AND she makes the BEST sugar cookies EVER!
As usual, not everyone was able to make it, but we still had a wonderful time!
I’ll be back soon to share a few pictures from the tea party we had today. It was PERFECT!!!!
Busy, busy…
We had our last Little Flowers meeting yesterday, which was lovely and I’ll share more about it soon, but today I am off to a doctor’s appointment this morning and then lots of errands for our Little Flowers Tea Party tomorrow. My girls are SO excited!! Tomorrow night we are also attending a Fundraiser for the Hadley’s. We have plans for Sunday and Monday too, so it is going to be a very busy few days…
Before I go, I thought I’d post one more picture from my trip to Washington that Christine just sent. (Thanks Christine!)
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and hopefully I can find the time to post a few Little Flower pictures soon! God Bless!
Help!
We just went outside to find a brand new baby bird on our deck??? WHAT do we do??? It only has just a few feathers and it is COLD!?! I don’t think I like our momma bird very much….
Updated to add a photo of the little baby bird:
Cinco de Mayo
In all honesty, I didn’t even think about celebrating “Cinco de Mayo” until this morning (when I saw the link on Crafty Crow) to the Mexican Flag Mosaics. Since we had most of our schoolwork completed early, I thought I’d let my children make them. Before I knew it, we were having quite the celebration! Despite the lack of planning, we had a fun day!
Chips, Guacamole and Salsa
(For with our dinner of Shredded Chicken Burritos,
Sweet Yellow Corn and Touchdown Taco Dip)
Happy Cinco de Mayo!
Trip to Washington
I’ve been dying to tell you all about my trip to Washington to visit Regina and attend the Northwest Catholic Family Education Conference! I had SUCH a wonderful time! (Thanks again Regina for letting us stay at your home!)
I left early Thursday morning and traveled with a couple friends, Erica and Marci. We arrived at Regina’s around 4pm. We visited for awhile and then I left to meet up with some of my relatives for dinner at the Olive Garden. It was so nice to see them and have them to myself for once! 😉 (Our huge family get-togethers can be overwhelming!)
Friday morning we headed to the conference and, although we were late, I was so excited to find that I had won a door prize that morning!! Wahoo!!! There was a big table of donated items to choose from, and when I saw Meredith’s brand new book Mondays with Mary, I couldn’t believe my luck!! It was at the top of my wish list of “things to purchase” at the conference, and it is amazing! Not to mention, I now have my very own signed copy!!
It was so great to finally meet Meredith, and her talk, “Nurturing Catholic Family Life by Living the Liturgical Year,” was one of my favorites.
Speaking of the talks, I also really enjoyed the talk by Fr. Gerard Saguto, F.S.S.P. on “Salt and Talent,” and the talks given by Dr. Joan Cotter, author of Right Start Mathematics: “How Children Learn Best — Keeping Brain Research in Mind” and “Why Mathematics Is Important for Our Children’s Futures”. If your interested, all the talks are available on the website.
Anyhow, I must admit that my favorite part of the weekend was seeing some of my dear friends that I hadn’t seen in awhile, and meeting some online friends for the first time! It was so great to be able to spend time with Regina and Trina (two of my dear friends who both moved away), see Christine and Christy again (who I met at the conference last year), and meet Meredith, Suzanne, Angela, Kim, and Heather for the first time (they were all SO sweet!). I also had the opportunity to meet and visit with so many other great homeschooling moms!
After the conference ended on Friday, we went to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory.
Have you ever eaten there?? Ohhhhhh, YUM!!!! I actually didn’t have any Cheesecake (yep… I learned my lesson on Thursday night after attempting to eat Ice Cream at Coldstone), but their Avocado Egg Rolls are THE BEST!! I am determined to try and make these again at home, maybe with this recipe…
Regina, Erica, Marci, and I went back to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner on Saturday night too, it was THAT good!
Here is a picture from Friday night:
Before the long drive home on Sunday, we attended a beautiful Latin Mass at Regina’s parish. It was heavenly!
I had a super wonderful time, though I did keep finding myself swaying back and forth and not knowing what to do with my hands, since they were completely child free for the weekend!! 😉 Nevertheless, I definitely missed my family, and it is sooo nice to be home.
It’s just too yummy!
I made another loaf of Cinnamon Sugar Bread this afternoon. Just after I took it out of the Bread Maker to cool, the phone rang. I came back a few minutes later to find this:
Apparently, I am not the only one who sneaks a few bites when nobody’s looking.
At least he is just sneaking into bread, and not the butter!
Garden of the Good Shepherd ~ Week 4
Well, my children ended up getting a few “rain checks” last week since I was gone Thursday-Sunday, and we are now a little bit behind celebrating the Fifty days of Easter with “The Garden of the Good Shepherd.” But that’s okay, we can continue today.
This weeks theme is based on:
I updated my list from last year, and you can find even more ideas here. I will not get to all these ideas, but just use the list as a guideline each day and use what works with our schedule. We have a super busy week ahead of us, so I am sure I’ll be keeping it really simple.
22. The Boat : Read Matthew 8:23-27
- Make an Origami Boat
- Read Boats by Anne Rockwell
- Make Banana Boats or Celery Cheese Boats
23. The Mast: Read Ezekiel 27:4-7
Since the Cross is the “Mast” of the Catholic Church, we will either:
- Make Cross Shaped Monkey Bread, Sugar Cookies, or Cake
- Make Bread Dough Crosses page 136 of Catholic Traditions
- Make Our Lady’s Victory Vessels
24. The Sail : Read Acts 27:33-44
- Experiment with “What sinks and what floats.”
- You could do this Halves Boat Craft
- Make Deviled Egg Sailboats, Berry Blue Sailboats, Shipshape Snack, Sailboat Cake or Cupcakes
25. The Net : Read Mark 1:16-20
- Serve Net Shaped Pretzels
- Make a Sea of Galilee Touch Picture from our Little Saints Pre-School Program.
Sea of Galilee Touch PictureNeed: Pattern #67, print this picture; brown construction paper background; cotton balls; sandpaper; aluminum foil; netted produce bag cut in a 6″x4″ diamond; brown, dark blue, and light blue markers/crayons; glue stick; scissors.
- Color boat brown, sea and sky blue.
- stretch apart cotton balls and glue on clouds.
- Staple on netting over side of boat for fish net.
- Crumple aluminum foil and glue on as rocks.
- Glue on sand paper to make beach area.
- Mount onto brown background.
- Discuss and experiment with the sense of touch.
26. The Fishes : Read John 21:4-8
- Possibly take Sparkle (our one remaining goldfish) to my parents and release him in the pond.
- Play Go Fish or Discovery Toys ABSeas Alphabet Fishing Game
- Fish Snack: Need: Blue napkins, medicine cups, pretzels, gold fish crackers, peanut butter. Open up napkin and place fish in the middle. (The napkin is the ocean.) Have peanut butter in the cup. (This is the bait cup.) Use pretzels for fishing rods. Dip in bait (peanut butter) and catch a fish. Eat fish and bait. Keep fishing until all the fish are eaten.
- Fish in the Sea Snack: Need: Italian bread or French bread, Cream cheese, Goldfish crackers, Blue food coloring, Slice bread. Mix blue food color and cream cheese. Spread cream cheese on bread. Put goldfish in the blue sea.
- Make Fish Sticks for dinner
- Make Fishbowl or Fishing Pole Cupcakes
27. The Barbecue : Read John 21:9-14
- Grill some fish out on the patio, of course!
28. The Leviathan : Read Psalm 104:24-30
- Visit Monterey Bay’s E-Quariam Live Web Cams and play some of their Online Games including Deep Sea Memory.
- Serve calamari with dinner, or how about some calamari cupcakes!
- Last year we read St. George and the Dragon
in preparation for the feast of St. George on April 23rd. Since his feast has already passed this year, this would be a perfect opportunity to make a dragon cake if you didn’t have a chance.
- Read The Knight and the Dragon
by Tomie de Paola
Hope you all have a great day! God Bless!
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