Little Sacrifices for Lent

When we were discussing what to give up for Lent this year around the dinner table one night, Drew said he wanted to give up his favorite Lego thing he built with his favorite Lego man.  I thought that was cute.  He brought it to me on Ash Wednesday when I was sitting at my make up table, so I put it in my jewelry box for safe keeping.  He is so proud to participate in Lent this year like a big boy.

The whole family is giving up chips and desserts this Lent.  Hannah is giving up looking for and adding things to her Amazon wish list.  Genevieve is giving up her turn in the movie choice rotation (Each child gets a turn to pick a movie and we rotate through normally.)  Isaac is trying hard to make a habit of not complaining about his work/chores, and so in lieu of giving something up that he would get back at the end of Lent he is trying to make a habit of not complaining. 

Our Lent in Links

For Lent this year, I was a little behind as usual.  That translates into the books we are going to go through as a family are not quite here yet.  Even Amazon Prime couldn't save me this time.

First of all, in other places that we have lived there have been really good Stations of the Cross at the churches we've been near with the occasional week directed at the kids which was always fun and always soup dinners afterwards.  Here they do not have any that are at a good time or good for kids, and no soup dinners.  This year I want to do it here at home.  I'm not sure exactly how this will play out, if we'll invite neighbors or have soup or what.  What I do know is that I ordered a new kids book of the Stations and there is an app for the Stations if we want to mix it up a bit.  Plus, I ordered some 8 x 10 inch pictures of the Stations that we can shine a flashlight on when we say them.

I also ordered a book called My Path to Heaven to go through this Lent with the kids.  I am looking forward to trying this one out.

Finally, Brian wants to say the Rosary every day, so I got this to help revive the children in their Rosary.  It is called Pearls of Peace: A Rosary Journey through the Holy Land and I am hopeful it will help someone at least to focus on the mysteries.

We've given up dessert as a family as usual.  I am hoping to make time for adoration alone.  Brian and I are going to finally start reading The Great Divorce together and sacrifice some late night TV time for it.  Hannah is trying not to pester her siblings and trying to go last more often.  Genna is giving up playing in her bed at night when she is supposed to be sleeping and pestering as well.  Isaac is sticking with the family dessert sacrifice.

So, that's our simple Lent this year.  Here's hoping for holiness!

Holy Thursday: Why we go at bedtime with little ones

Holy Thursday Mass is my absolute favorite Mass of the year.  It was the first Mass I ever attended, back when I was an extremely wary of the Catholic Church and generally uninformed Protestant.  Even then, I saw the beauty in it, the reverence, and that it was the re-enactment of the Last Supper.  I wouldn't say that was the beginning of my journey to the Church because many things had happened before that got me to the place where I wanted to go see what a Mass was like.  However, it captured me, nonetheless, and put the wheels in motion to research what the Church was all about, and that got me to where I am today.

Pictures are completed unrelated to this post!

All this is to say how much I love Holy Thursday Mass.  If you know me then you know that schedules and babies going to sleep on time is very important to me.  This is THE Mass that I take toddlers and babies to even though it starts at their bedtime, the only Mass.  Yes, this makes the Mass somewhat not as enjoyable for me since I often have one or two tired little ones both wanting mommy due to their exhaustion.


A couple of years ago we found this church that is about 15 minutes away from our house.  It is small, quaint, and not modern which we love.  The church that we go to regularly is only 3 minutes from our house and therefore much more practical for our family and for daily Mass.  BUT on Holy Thursday we make the trip. (Ha! 15 minutes is hardly a trip, but it seems like one at bedtime with little ones!)  I feel badly for those sweet, faithful parishioners whose Holy Thursday Mass we destroy liven up.  Last night I wondered to myself if they now remember and dread our attendance.  I am going to go with, "Hopefully, not!" since all too often I am a bit egocentric.  Our kids are normally pretty well behaved in Mass (minus the wildcard Drew,) but at this time of night they are a little wigglier and whinier.

You always need pictures in a post, right?

This year it was two little ones both wanting mommy.  Judah was quiet but SUPER wiggly, trying to dive for the back of the pew so he could chew on it when we were standing.  Naturally I was trying to stop him.  He is really strong, by the way.  Then he went to sleep in the Ergo right after Communion...at the end, of course.   Drew wanted me.  Brian spent the whole Mass trying to keep him quiet and ended up taking him out to the foyer for the last half.  The foyer at this church is the size of a closet and not sound proof.  Twice he had to step outside to quiet him.  Isaac decided to abandon his pursuit of holiness about the time Brian took Drew into the foyer which left me to bounce Judah in the Ergo while correcting Isaac for not kneeling or facing the front.  All the while I was trying my darnedest to absorb as much of the beauty as possible.  Did I mention there were three other children all in different families and at least four years old.  We kinda stuck out like a sore thumb even though we've became a back pew family.  We have Drew to thank for that.

Then came the procession.  I explained at the back of the procession to Isaac how important it was to me for him to just be respectful while we went to pray before our Lord for five minutes.  FIVE.  I reminded him that he was trying to be holy.  We walk into the room they have prepared in the parish center.  Isaac loudly flops down on the floor with a look of utter despair and says, "I'm bored," thankfully, not too loudly.  We pray while Drew is in Brian's arms trying to get my attention so he can beg me to rescue him.  (He's such a Daddy's boy when it isn't bedtime or Mass-time.)  We leave and I try to get Judah into his car seat without too much waking and crying while I try my best to let go of my disappointment.   I too am a sinner.  They are just kids.  God loves us no matter what.  He is pleased with our efforts even if I wasn't able to focus most of the Mass.  So, no I don't regret going.  I regretted it for only a moment at 2:30am when my normally sleeping through the night almost 8 month old woke up possibly due to a disrupted schedule.

P.S.  Drew and Genna got their feet washed.  Drew was super excited about that part and talked (loudly) about it all the way up until the time to do it.

Mental note: Do more preparation of what to actually expect at the Holy Thursday Mass next year with the kids that can understand.  I assumed they would remember and behave like usual.  Assumptions!

Lent

 This Lent the kids are enjoying an old favorite, the crown of thorns.

We always give up desserts since it seems wrong to be eating candy or cake during a time of sacrifice and prayer.  As a family, we are trying to say the Morning Offering in the mornings and go to daily Mass at least once a week.  These have been harder than I thought since Judah has had a tough month for sleeping which is just now starting to improve.

The girls also packed up about half of their toys in their rooms to put away for Lent.  Hannah is trying to replace her "mean" or "mad" faces with smiles.  Genevieve is trying not to cry about schoolwork.  I gave up yelling, to which Genna said, "But Mom, you don't really yell."  Then she followed that up by, "Well, except when you are trying to talk over all the noise."  Bingo!  I am so not a natural yeller.  I don't like loud noises, so why would I make them, right?  Well, when it gets overwhelmingly loud, I totally yell over the noise to make it stop immediately.  This makes me feel more frustrated inside, so it is not a good plan.  I would rather learn to cope with the noise that 5 kids make sometimes in a different quieter way.   After having a baby, I am much less likely to tolerate loud noise.  So this has been a good practice in self-control for me. 

Ash Wednesday and Our Lenten Plans

This lent we are sacrificing cookies, candy, and cakes as a family (except for special feast days, like Valentine's Day, and Sundays.)  We are also going to work on not complaining, but being thankful for all things instead.  In the past, our crown of thorns has been for the kids to take out thorns only, but this time we are going to add thorns as well, but only for complaining, not all sins.  This is because it would be impossible for us to not complain at all, so this is a way of trying our best and not giving up when we fail.  The children can pull out thorns for all good deeds, but especially if they hold in a complaint or make a thankful statement in place of a complaint.  The puling out of thorns for withholding a complaint will be done on the honor system since I cannot know their hearts.  The girls are old enough to understand and examine themselves in this way, but Isaac may not be.  We'll see how it goes.

We are going to be using Catholic Icing's free printable Lenten Calendar instead of a homemade one.  The kids will each get their own to color everyday.  We will be reading from Amon's Adventures each evening, in addition to saying the rosary as a family.  We will also watch the Holy Heroes Lenten Adventure videos and do some of the activities (i.e. coloring pages and crossword puzzles).  I hid the Alleluia sign and set the altar up last night.  We will include Stations of the Cross into our Fridays as well, whether we go to the church or have our own here.  I also hope to do this new Veronica craft during Lent.  Have a good, purifying Lent!

Here are my Lenten posts from the past years if you need other ideas.  I have learned you can't do it all every year.

Lent: Catching up

I'm way behind on this post, and we are already in the midst of Lent. We are using Holy Heros Lenten Adventure this year to supplement our religion. The only other new thing we have done is put each kid's sacrifice on their purple hand prints. We put those hand prints on the altar. (Isaac's hasn't quite made it to the altar yet.) We are giving up desserts as a family. Hannah is giving up going first. Genna is giving up vanity/caring too much about what she looks like and looking in the mirror all the time. Isaac (this one was suggested by me since he is too little to self examine) is trying to say the responses in Mass instead of giving something up. He used to say them, but has not been of late. We encouraged the girls to pick things they really struggled with the most. Brian and I have some sacrifices of our own as well.

Our crown of thorns and ten commandments resides on our alter as well.

Simple stuff this year since I am working on a new organizational system for our house that is really time consuming.

Repent from your sins and turn to the gospel.

Here's what we're doing around our house this Ash Wednesday to begin the Lenten season.

Crown of Thorns

Book Basket
We read about St Frances of Rome today. And, we have St. Patrick and St. Joseph's days are coming up soon.

A Fresh Lenten Calendar
It's not too different from our desert calendar from the last two years, but it didn't survive the move. However, I added the fruits of the spirit to the calendar. I know it doesn't really go with the theme, but I was going to do the corporal and spiritual acts of mercy and decided they were too difficult for the kids to understand or intentionally put into action. So I thought the fruits of the spirit might be a good way to focus their actions in order to remove a thorn from Jesus' crown.

Our Sacrifice Jar
We are trying something different this year for the kid's sacrifices. Instead of giving up dessert for the whole time, we draw one sacrifice each day out of the jar. The kids brainstormed with me and thought up 5 different sacrifices, and Hannah wrote them down.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (they have them every day!)
TV
Book on CD (the girls are addicted to them in the car so much so that they are miserable when we listen to music instead)
Chips (something I rarely even keep in the house when I am not pregnant, but you know...)
Dessert (put in the jar twice to make for a week of sacrifices minus Sunday)

I grabbed Hannah to photograph with the jar and then Genna comes in and wants to pose with it too.

And, of course, a little bit of ashes on sweet children...

Isaac rubbed his head all over me during the duration of Mass, so his ashes are mostly on my clothes. :)

Let the spring cleaning begin!

Even if the Spring won't actually begin here until after Easter! I got in the mood, and Lent is always a good time to start that yucky business anyway. Since the result of the cleaning doesn't seem to last long, I decided taking a picture after I finished an area would make me feel like I actually accomplished something after all.

Toy Corner: New labels (don't know how long that will last with the "Destroyer" around), put away toys that don't get played with much anymore, threw away broken toys on the sly, set aside toys to get rid of.

Mud Room/Entryway: Gave Isaac his own shoe shelf (he has enough shoes now that it is necessary, rain boots, snow boots, tennis shoes, and dress shoes), removed all outgrown shoes, hats, gloves, etc., added a new basket for socks (they all wear the same size sock if you can believe it. Isaac wears a size 6-7 shoe and the girls are both still in a size 9!), separated out the mittens into another basket to reduce digging and therefore messing up my mud room!

Obviously, I still have many areas of the house to go!

Ashes Ashes

Today was a bit rough, but we made it. I won't go into details of our adventures today, I would rather focus on what's really important. We went to Mass at noon and got our ashes. Isaac had rubbed his off before Mass was even over. (When he is tired, he rubs his head on everyone and everything and noon is right in the middle of nap time.) During nap and rest time I got most of my Lenten decor up around the house. I am reusing my calendar I made last year. I scattered my purple cloth and ribbons on our religious items just like last year as well. I don't have my dry earth ready yet, but I plan to put it in a real pot this year on my kitchen window sill instead of on the table where I have this crown of thorns...

waiting for little bitty charitable, obedient, loving people to do good deeds and remove the thorns (toothpicks) from it. Genna already got to remove the first thorn when she jumped down off her tired daddy's tummy to move a kid chair closer to him so he could rest his arm on it without anyone even mentioning that he needed one. His arm was dangling and she jumped to assistance. So generous and thoughtful!

I gathered books to use for Lent. Two apostle books, four saint books, and the Stations of the Cross for the itty bitties...

and a few for the mama too.

This next photo is less than aesthetically pleasing, but it illustrates one of our main goals for this Lent. I hung rosaries for the kids and I on the nails that held the stockings not too long ago above the fire. (Brian carries his in his pocket so his is not there.) I did this because before we pray and read bedtime stories we plan to say a decade of the rosary as a family on at least three or four nights a week. We used to do this, but got away from it when I was having to play double roles in 2009. So Lent is a perfect time to get back into the swing of things here.

Our family sacrifice is to give up desserts and candy ("except on Sundays," the girls will remind you!)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We celebrated with an easy version of Shepherd's Pie (which the kids actually liked with a little ketchup on it) and read a book I purchased from Amazon and another I found at the library! We prayed St. Patrick's prayer too (the long version at dinner and the shortened kid's version below)!

Christ on my left
Christ on my right

Christ above me
Christ below me

Christ in front of me
Christ behind me

Christ everywhere
Everywhere Christ!

Our Lenten Plans

First is my "Journey Through the Desert with Jesus" Lenten Calendar. I found this idea here, but I tried my best to make it a little different by adding my own drawings for the special Saint days that I plan to celebrate with the kids (St. Patrick and St. Joseph), pictures of the desert and Sunday Oasis, and adding a family pic to move throughout our journey along our path.

See the desert pictures and our family photo.

Here are my Holy Week pictures.

Here is the stone that will be placed over the tomb on the night of Good Friday and then "rolled away" on Saturday night to surprise the girls on Sunday morning with a resurrected Christ.

Here is my bowl of earth that, God-willing, will bring forth grass (to symbolize life on Easter Sunday) after sowing the seeds during Holy Week. This replaced my winter wreath. I found this idea here.

Then I decorated the house with purple. I found this idea here. I tied purple ribbons and pieces of purple cloth on all our religious art or statues. Here I covered up my Scrapbooks and photo albums with the cloth and put my Russian Nesting Eggs hand-painted with Jesus' life on display where my Nativity scene usually resides during Advent and Christmas. I purchased this over here at a bizarre from a Russian shop.

Isn't it beautiful!

I also plan to make an Alleluia banner to hang during Easter and hide for the next Lent, but in case I don't find the materials or the time, I am at least going to put an Alleluia on my Lenten Calendar beneath the tomb and risen Christ on Easter morning. I am sure I can manage that!

The only other little thing that I hope to include is to get pretzels from the bakery on Friday mornings. You can read about the pretzel tradition here. Here's to making it a good Lent for our hearts and souls!

Speaking of Lent...

I've been talking to the girls about how we can abstain from or sacrifice something to "walk with Jesus through the desert." On the way to Mass this morning we were discussing this and I suggested that we give up desserts and candy. Hannah says, "Hmm, no I don't think I want to do that. I have a better idea! I'll give up going to kindergarten." Nice try, Smarty Pants! No one will ever call her a dumby!

I also explained how on Sundays during Lent we can have desserts or candy since we are celebrating Jesus' resurrection on those days. In the middle of Mass, Hannah turns to me as revelation strikes her and says, "Today is Sunday! So we can have candy today!"

Celebration of the Last Supper

Our parish here is very very very small, and the dedicated are an even smaller group of people. So this was the smallest Holy Thursday Mass I have ever attended. Since they didn't have a good turn out, Father was asking everyone if they wanted their feet washed. Since I had the girls and was alone I couldn't do it, but Hannah wanted to and asked Father. He said that was fine, and so Hannah got her feet washed when the time came. She did very well and went up there all by herself. I was a little nervous that she was going to laugh and be silly, especially since her feet are pretty ticklish. However, she was good and relatively quiet as well. I wish her daddy could have seen it! Genna was a bit jealous, but I told her I would do hers at home. She kept reminding me all during Mass, but she was way too tired by the time we got home. We can do it tomorrow.

The Sorrowful Mysteries and Snow Angels

The girls were really into pretending today! Hannah started acting out the fourth Sorrowful Mystery where Jesus carries his cross, and as usual Genna joined in. Then they would fall down like Jesus did, and (here they added their own little twist) they spontaneously started doing snow angels while they were on the ground. The acting out of the mysteries is something we do at our Mom's and Little Catholic's group to get the kids excited about and involved in the rosary. The snow angels were...hmm...a unique addition, I guess.

Hannah carrying her cross

and Genna carrying her cross

...and the Snow Angels

What goofy girls I have! They also insisted at bedtime that we recreate the carrying of the cross and the crucifixion. Hannah first asked me if I wanted to be one of the naughty boys that nailed Jesus on the cross, but then she decided that I should be an angel. So we had to add on the resurrection as well so I would have a part. Genna was Mary. She followed Jesus and cried and held Jesus when he came off the cross. Hannah was Jesus, and did an excellent job saying her lines, being nailed to the cross, and playing dead too. It is an easy way to keep the girls focused on what Holy Week is all about.