Happy Monday....Happy October!

 

Can you believe that it is October 1st already?  This has been the fastest year I can remember!  I guess you could say that the older I get, the faster the time goes!  Given that this is my most favorite time of the year...I'm glad! 

It's time to get out all the fall decorations, all my pumpkin recipes and start pretending that our weather is cooler.  It's also time for me to become jealous of all my friends who live in areas with real seasons and real fall colors!

Today is the Feast Day of St. Therese of Lisieux!  What a great reminder from her that we should remain "little".  Have a wonderful day....a wonderful week!

"It is needful to remain little before God and to remain little is to recognize one's nothingness, expect all things from the good God just as a little child expects all things from its father; it is not to be troubled by anything, not to try to make a fortune. Even among poor people, a child is given all it needs, as long as it is very little, but as soon as it has grown up, the father does not want to support it any longer and says: "Work, now you are able to take care of yourself". Because I never want to hear these words I do not want to grow up, feeling that I can never earn my living, that is, eternal life in heaven. So I have stayed little, and have no other occupation than of gathering flowers of love and sacrifice and of offering them to the good God to please Him.

 

 

 

Cathedra Petri

Today, we celebrate the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter (Cathedra Petri).  I would like to point out though, that this Feast Day actually refers to the occupant and not the piece of furniture.  I say that because up until my first trip to Rome in 2007....I had no idea there was  actually a real chair hanging in the middle of St. Peter's Basilica!    The jury is still out on whether or not St. Peter himself ever actually sat in this chair.  Does it matter?  Nope.  I'm not celebrating the chair itself, but the one whose job it was to occupy it.

Prayer to St. Peter

O Glorious St. Peter, because of your vibrant and generous faith, sincere humility and flaming love our Lord honored you with singular privileges and especially leadership of the whole Church. Obtain for us the grace of a living faith, a sincere loyalty to the Church, acceptance of all her teachings, and obedience to all her precepts. Let us thus enjoy an undisturbed peace on earth and everlasting happiness in heaven.  Amen.

Preparing for the season!

I realize that I will probably be scolded by some of you for starting the Christmas/Advent discussion before Thanksgiving! If I were to be brutally honest right now, I would tell you that I've been listening to Christmas music both at home and at work for several weeks now. It's a weakness of mine. As far as I'm concerned...we could skip right through from December 26 to September 20 every year. I love the sounds, smells and wonderment of late fall and early winter. I think also, this time of year brings up for me the most wonderful memories of my childhood. Sometimes the responsibilities and worries of adulthood can be a total drag!

As a result of my over zealousness, I want to share with you some really fun places to visit. If you find any of these sites helpful to you.....I'm so glad! If you have a place that you visit regularly during this holiday season, please feel free to share them in the comments here and then I will add updates to this post with links! It is my hope that these places bring as much joy to you as they do to me! Enjoy!

1. Our house can't have a holiday season without remembering our dear St. Nicholas. We love St. Nicholas in our house and he stays on my mind all through the year as he is the patron Saint of children! The older my kids get, I try to focus on St. Nicholas' Day as the day for receiving gifts and Christmas as the day we give to others as Christ did for us! We are working slowly towards that goal...and eventually, we will get there. In the meantime, if you have never visited the St. Nicholas Center, you are in for a treat. You will find recipes, prayer cards, cookie cutters, books, movies, banners and tons of other things you can use to celebrate this wonderful saint. Here is how we celebrated this feast day last year! Enjoy!

2. Another wonderful place to visit during this season is O Night Divine! Here you will find Advent/Christmas feast day celebrations, prayers, novenas, music, books, online shopping and tons of other resources! You will never get bored clicking through this site. Please bookmark it and keep it in your electronic library!

3. From the O Night Divine site, I ran across the No Panic Advent Series from Karen Edminsten! This is the real thing! She has done a terrific job of giving you fun yet simple activities to get ready for the season. She has a "favorite advent book" section that I love! You can't miss these great ideas!

4. If it's food and/or menus you are looking for.....I'm going to give you a few suggestions of places to visit.....first up is Foodgawker! Warning: this site is full of scrumptious, delectable photos and I wouldn't visit here unless you have already eaten! There are endless food blogs represented here and I'm sure that with just a smidgen of effort, you can find the exact recipe you are looking for! Incidentally, while drooling over the food photos, you can also find a link to another site called Craftgawker! Enjoy them both!

5. Another great food site is Catholic Cuisine! All of the wonderful women that contribute to this site with their recipes and ideas, wanted a place for the world to be able to celebrate the feasts and the season of the liturgical year! There are many resources on this site as well. I have tried several of these recipes and I was not disappointed.

6. One more cooking/food site that I have found is Mennonite Girls Can Cook! Again, this is a place filled with ideas, photos and resources. They also do giveaways and contests! I am so grateful for woman who are willing to share their ideas with others.

****If you have any ideas or sites of your own, please leave me a message and I'll be happy to post a link to it in an update for this post. In the meantime, enjoy your preparation for our coming Savior!*****

Guardian Angel

Celebrating the Archangels!

It actually turned out to be a pretty good day! I was dealing with a lot of things at home...and some personal stuff, but I managed to stay on schedule! You have no idea how important that was today. In order to do it though, I had to sacrifice Nathan's choir practice....but I think he'll live!

One of the things that's been on my list has been to get the liturgical calendars finished started! As you can see by this first photo....I'm 10 months into the year and this is the first one that actually made it up on the wall. Now, we do have a family calendar hanging in the kitchen that is for all school/personal stuff....but I wanted a separate one for special feast days and holidays.
I am going to make a sincere effort to actually do an activity of some sort for the saint of the week. Since school started, our devoted saints have had to take a back seat. Since October is the month of the Holy Rosary and the Holy Angels, we will commit to saying the entire Rosary every day (we currently can only manage one decade) and learning the prayer to St. Michael (actually, Nathan already know this...but we'll be working with the girls).


I included this photo of Nathan doing his homework.....mostly to show you my fall centerpiece that I put together. Those are candles from last year, but this year I added the "doom-a-flachee" around the bottom. Isn't it cute? I thought it was simple enough for our style. Now....if I can keep the kids from pulling the little painted balls off of the vine....

For dinner, I used the recipe from Catholic Cuisine for gnocchi! I must tell you, it was extremely easy. This was so easy that I'm embarrassed I've never tried this before. No, it doesn't exactly taste like my Nanny's, but it really was pretty good.

I didn't even make much of a mess while doing it!

I made some meat balls and garlic bread to go with them (no veges tonight!). Surprisingly...everybody ate (it always helps to starve your kids before you feed them something new)

After dinner and baths, I pulled out the Archangel coloring pages from Waltzing Matilda. Amelia was exceptionally proud of her St. Gabriel!!

I wrote out the St. Michael prayer and placed it on the wall with their pages. We'll practice the prayer every night!!

And how can any feast day be complete without chocolate chip cookies?

Happy Michaelmas!

What are your plans for this wonderful Feast Day???? We're going to keep it simple this time around. We will have this wonderful recipe for dinner! I've already printed off some great coloring pages for the kids. We will light the candles that we made last year and then, we will ask these very special angels for their continued protection.

I will post some pictures of our day.

Our Lady of Fatima

We're getting ready to celebrate Our Lady of Fatima's Feast Day tomorrow! Our plans are very simple.....praying our family rosary, enjoying a special treat and watching The Day the Sun Danced!

The girls have been begging me to make these Snow Cloud Meringue Cookies. Sometimes I avoid things because they sound complicated. I'm happy to say that these were NOT complicated at all! Extremely easy!!! This recipe is from a book I got for the girls for Christmas....it's called The Usborne Little Book of Christmas Cooking. I love Usborne books!!

Anyway, here is the recipe....

2 egg whites, at room temperature

1/2 cup granulated sugar

sugar sprinkles

That's all!! I think it took me 15 minutes from start to finish!! Preheat your oven to 225 degrees. Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Whisk the egg whites until the thick/stiff peak stage. Add the sugar a tablespoon at a time. Whisk well (batter will be shiny). Scoop a teaspoon at a time of the meringue onto the cookie sheet. Sprinkle with your favorite sugar sprinkles. Bake them for 40 minutes, then turn off the oven and let them sit inside for another 15 minutes.

Even if they don't come out perfect....they are delicious cookies! This recipe isn't exactly on Weight Watchers...but if I substituted Splenda for the sugar....I should be good to go!

Here's how they turned out....

There are 31 yummy recipes in this little book....I'd like to try them all!

Either this camera is bad.....or (the more likely scenario) I haven't a clue how to adjust the settings so I can take decent pictures. Sigh....

Another bad picture. I wanted to show how shiny the batter is....because apparently, this is very important in order for the meringue to be the correct consistency so it can "dry" out properly and become crunchy. But all you can see here is that the batter is WHITE. Oh well...I tried.

Here is our finished product before going into the oven. These are supposed to be more uniform in shape....but I had two little girls pulling on my legs so they could see better and....well...this is what I could manage. The girls did the sprinkles....we picked blue in honor of the Blessed Mother! Since they need to be in the oven for about an hour...and we started too late, I promised that they can have this special treat for breakfast! I apologize in advance to their teachers!!

And lastly, I thought I would share one more picture from today.....I let the girls go outside to play while Nathan was doing his homework! I went outside to check on them. Olivia said they were playing "hide and seek". This is where I found Amelia hiding.....in my Camellia tree!!

She's my little monkey!!

The Miracle of the Sun

Feast of the Annunciation!

The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

There are actually 3 Feast Days celebrated today.... The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, The circumcision of Our Lord and The New Year Celebration. Here is a great site with lots of information on the history of this Feast Day. And here you will find a list of feasts, prayers, activities as well as resources honoring the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is a very special day and I can't think of a better way to start this year.

I think that we can all agree that there are many challenges waiting for us in 2009. Some things we will have control over...and others...we won't. I guess I'm just grateful for another clean slate...another whole 12 months with nothing set in stone and nothing written on the calendar (which, by the way, I don't have yet)!

We have 19 days until the new president takes office. We should be able to get at least one novena completed before then! We will need it....he will need it!! The economic situation looks bleak...at least for those who have placed all of their eggs in one basket. Now, for those of us who have few eggs....or no basket....we will continue to live pretty much by faith...which is how I believe God wants us to live anyway. If we do that, then any success we may have will be because of the grace and mercy of God. I tend to forget that when things are going well.

For me, I want to really and truly sit down and take a look at my life and decide what is really important. I want to try to see and know the difference between "wants" and "needs" and not have that line so cloudy. What can I do without? What do those around me need? How am I showing the love of God on a daily basis?

These are the things that I'm reflecting on as 2009 begins. How about you? What goals to you have?

One of my most favorite Scriptures is John 3:30..."He must increase and I must decrease". Isn't that so true? I'm thinking of a song that we sing in church sometimes....I can't remember the title but the line I love is...."O Lord you are the center of my life..." Oh, to be able to live more like the song talks about! I will work towards that this year.

This is my prayer for you this year....that you (we) may move closer to Our Lord and His Mother!

Have a wonderful New Year!!!

Our Lady....pray for us!

Our Lady of Guadalupe, who blessed Mexico and all the Americas by your appearance to Juan Diego, intercede for the holy Church, protect the pope, and help everyone who invokes you in their necessities.
O mystical rose, hear our prayers and our petitions, especially for the particular one we are praying for at this moment (mention your request).
Since you are the ever Virgin Mary and Mother of the true God, obtain for us from your most holy Son the grace of keeping our faith, sweet hope in the midst of the bitterness of life, burning charity, and the precious gift of final perseverance.
Amen.

Thank you St. Gerard!!

Today is St. Gerard's Feast Day. He is the patron saint of expectant mother's. I'm so thankful for his intercession in the conception and birth of my 3 children. I think it's pretty wonderful that my youngest (and obviously my last) was born on his Feast Day. He is one of my favorite saints. For all of you who are praying for the blessing of children, ask St. Gerard to whisper into the ear of the Savior for you. There are many books and pamphlets explaining the life of St. Gerard. I pray you will be as touched as I was by learning more about him.

Feast of Angels

I am very fond of our Guardian Angels and this Feast Day. Even as a child, my mom would read to me about them and we would often pray for their protection. I got out of the habit of paying much attention to them as an adult...until I had children. I guess in many ways, parents feel as though we need all the help we can get in taking care of these precious gifts that God has allowed us to have. We cannot be everywhere nor see everything. We must rely on heaven to assist us if we are to live out our faith with any success. It's just how it should be.

Ever since Nathan began school, he and I have said our Guardian Angel prayer in the morning. I am now doing this with Amelia too. To me, it helps to start the day out right. For starters, I wrote the prayer out on lined paper and it has been sitting on our refrigerator now for 3 years. My hope is that the familiarity of it will bring it to their minds and hearts in a time of need.

I might have to rewrite it as it's getting a little torn up.

This isn't the tradition prayer. This one seemed simpler to me and made more sense when praying it with children.

"Guardian Angel, protect me today. Watch over me while I work and play. Let me be kind and loving and good. Help me to do the things I should. Amen"

My goal for celebrating this feast day was first to just talk about our angels. While we did our craft project, Nathan read from the Catechism about angels. We talked about whether or not they had bodies and wings. We discussed where they lived and what their jobs were. We all decided that when you're tiny babies...God actually lets you see them sometimes...but when you're bigger...he doesn't let you unless he needs you to for a very special reason. We all agreed that they are with us all the time and that they never sleep.

The craft was pretty simple...just some votive candles, glass holders and some pretty cool jewel stickers. We also added some ribbon. Each of them got to decorate their glass candle holder with the stick on jewels and then we added the candles and I helped with the ribbon. It was really easy, not at all messy and kept their interest because it was quick. When we were done, we lit the candles and turned out the light.

After lighting them, we set the table for dinner and ate with the candles burning. As part of our blessing, Nathan recited the Prayer to St. Michael. It was my full intention to have made an angel food cake earlier in the day...but...that did not happen for chemo related reasons.

All in all, it was fun and I hope it allows the kids to remember that they are never, ever alone. Heavenly hosts surround them always.

Post Chemo #1, Day 4 (morning)

Every joint and bone in my body is on alert this morning. When I got out of bed, I literally felt as though I had just run a marathon! Now, for any of you who know me....trust me, I've never run a race..let alone a marathon! But I swear I know what your body must feel like afterwards.
I hardly interacted with anyone last night...just slept. I would like to try and get something done today...anything at all...but, it may just be another bust.

The kids and I will be doing our angels craft! I've been looking forward to this one for a while. I've borrowed the idea from another wonderful blogger, Dawn. I absolutely love checking in with her each day to see what they're doing up in New England. Here is the idea that I'm stealing....although it won't be exactly the same.

Also, here's another great site for finding out what menu is on the table during any number of Catholic feast days...it's called Catholic Cuisine.

Chemo Meter is looking ok this morning:

Fatigue Meter: 3
Nausea Meter: 0
Anxiety Meter: 0
Vomiting Meter: 0
Pain Meter: 0
Overall Meter: 3

Have a wonderful Sunday. Enjoy your family, enjoy your surroundings, enjoy all of your blessings and don't forget to be thankful for everything.

Padre Pio pray for us!

St. Pio of Pietrelcina

Dear God, You generously blessed Your servant, St. Pio of Pietrelcina, with the gifts of the Spirit. You marked his body with the five wounds of Christ Crucified, as a powerful witness to the saving Passion and Death of Your Son. Endowed with the gift of discernment, St. Pio labored endlessly in the confessional for the salvation of souls. With reverence and intense devotion in the celebration of Mass, he invited countless men and women to a greater union with Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.Through the intercession of St. Pio of Pietrelcina, I confidently beseech You to grant me the grace of (here state your petition). Amen. Glory be to the Father... (three times).

How some did it!

Since I was so lax in doing anything creative of my own, here are just a few of my favorite bloggers and how they celebrated these last two feast days...

Suzanne G....aren't her daughters gorgeous???

Margaret.....this was a great idea!!!

St. Athanasius Academy...I couldn't tell what was in the crockpot at first!!!

If I could, I would spend a lot of time doing things like this with my kids...it just feels right! Just so you know, I've already visited the craft store (Hobby Lobby is the BEST place!!) and I'm armed and ready for the Feast of the Angels at the end of this month. Just wait until you see what we're going to attempt for that one!!! The kids will love it and I think it's a great way to celebrate and thank those angels that guard and protect us night and day!!

Feast Days...

I'm all talk....no action. I can talk the talk but I'm not so good at walking the walk. There have been two feast days this week that I really wanted to blog about but didn't find the time.
The first was Sunday....The Feast of the Holy Cross and today...Our Lady of Sorrows.
Suffice it to say that sometimes, they slip by me and while I might not mention them here...they are never far from my mind. Our pastor (Fr. Fred) gave one of the best homilies I've ever heard this past Sunday. He talked much about our own personal crosses and how we deal with them. At times, I felt as though he was talking directly to me. Crosses are a big issue with me lately. We all have them and we're always trying to get rid of them. However, these crosses shape our character. More importantly, they shape our souls. It was said to me once that if I could choose between the troubles (crosses) of 20 strangers or those that are already mine...I would more than likely stick with the ones I've got. What she meant was that sometimes we see our own small world as unbearable, and then when we see others lives....we realize that we really don't have it so bad.
I met a woman today at the local American Cancer Society office. Her name is Elena. She shared with me her cancer journey...and I was floored. I won't go into all the details, but her breast cancer spread to her liver. She was given two years to live.....10 years ago. She is an amazing woman and now shares with others her story of suffering and hope. She has an amazing smile and I felt a connection with her instantly. She shared her home phone number with me and said I could call anytime. As an added bonus....and a more important one in my view....she's Italian!!! She is originally from Brooklyn, NY (her accent would give her away) but has made her home here in Jacksonville for many years. We spent just as much time talking about our mutual Italian hertitage....about NY and SF deli's....we complained about the lack of good Italian food here in the south...and she shared with me her husband's recipe for eggplant parmesan! From her and from many other great friends that God has brought into my life, I've learned that the joy is in the journey!! She said to look at my mastectomy scar and my portacath scar as badges of honor...as reminders of the fact that I'm not really in charge of anything. God is in charge! And I'd really rather He be in charge anyway....I tend to make a mess of things!!

Picture sharing...

We decided to celebrate the Blessed Mother's Birthday this year and make a cake for her. The girls and I baked a bundt cake and I made some blue frosting....you know...to match her flowing robes. Anyway, it was great fun as we did this on Sunday night...sort of helped me to keep my mind off of the fiasco that was to come on Monday. I swear I took a picture of the finished product, but somehow, it's not there now. Our Lady kept watch over the the girls as they worked.

It's important to Dan and I that our kids are at least familiar with the liturgical year. It might seem unnecessary to some, but I want them to know why the colors of the church turn purple in Advent and Lent. I want them to know (and be insterested in) why we strip the altar on Good Friday and why we celebrate the things we do. I would like them to come to know, as I have, the wonderful Saints of our faith who show great strength and virtue. These are the heros and heroines that our kids should identify with. We can learn things together about our faith....and it's fun! I want to pass my faith on to them so they can do the same for their children. In the end, we really have nothing else. Money, property, family photos and heirlooms....these are all nice...but they can't take it with them to heaven (or the other place for that matter!!). What they take in their heart and soul can and will go with them for eternity!!