Baby J's Baptism

We were so blessed to have our Ridiculously Happy Baby baptized on Divine Mercy Sunday.  He slept through the entire service, including his actual baptism and even though Father Roger gave him quite a bath!

We were blessed to have my sister (his Godmother) and my parents present.  M was completely intrigued by the whole process, and he had to get a closer look at the font during the service.  Deacon Gary let him carry the chrism oil, and thankfully his guardian angel also had two hands on it to help keep him from dropping it!

Taking a peek at the font

We are blessed by our parish and our kind and faithful Father Roger and Deacons Gary and Eric.  The 8th graders at the local Catholic school also made a blanket for baby J and we will treasure it always.

May God continue to bless and guide our sweet baby J!  He is such a gift to our family!

Easter 2015

Easter 2015 - otherwise known as "Sick Mom Edition"

I finally succumbed to the family sore throat/respiratory infection bug during Holy Week.  We made a little "Lamb of God" craft early in the week, but mostly laid low.

Lake City Easter Egg Hunt

On Holy Saturday, we walked over to an Easter Egg Hunt sponsored by a local non-denominational church and held at the high school.  The kiddos didn't have to look too hard to find the eggs, right?  M was very methodical about putting the eggs in his basket - he stopped before he filled it up - I think it started to feel too much like "clean up time". ;)  But he was pretty happy to eat all of the candy before we even made it back to the house!

Easter finest - 2015

On Easter Sunday, our prayer chain was complete and draped above the kitchen table.  And our beans turned into Easter M&Ms (to M's complete amazement!).  Both boys received new books for Easter.  No one sang the Gloria with more gusto than our little M and we rejoiced in the greatest miracle of our faith.  I hope you had a beautiful Easter!  I'm so thankful we get 50 days to celebrate it!

Lent 2015: Preparing Our Hearts

The season of Lent is upon us.  Are you ready?  I spent some time this weekend planning for our family practices during this season.  I hope this will be a good year for us as a family to institute some new, good family habits to help our home life center more closely on Christ.  At the same time, today, my heart grieves for the Christians murdered yesterday.  This Lent, I will be praying especially for the end to the violence in the Middle East.  Please join me. 

I'm planning to take the boys to our church's Ash Wednesday service.  M loves going to Church, and I think the application of ashes will help to demonstrate the change in the Church seasons for him.  Then we will come home and take down our Valentine's decorations and (hopefully) begin learning some new prayers and Christian songs.   

Prayer:

Personal Prayer Time:  I'm planning to get up 30 minutes early on a regular basis so I can return to a personal prayer time and devotional study each morning.  I'm planning on reading Scott Hahn's Signs of Life (it has 40 chapters, that aren't too long, so hopefully I can get through a chapter a day).
Prayer Chain: Over the weekend, I cut out 40 strips of paper and wrote the names of forty people/families/causes on each one.  I'll let M pick one each morning, and then we will pray for that person/family/cause that day, and turn the strips into a prayer chain of color to decorate our home for Easter.  I set out to do this last year, but didn't, and I can't really recall why it fell apart.  But I'm ready this year!

Fasting/Family Disciplines

My Individual Fasting: I will be observing the no meat fast.  I'm also going to give up soda (diet coke/coke zero), sweets and french fries.  My favorite food!  In light of recent events in our world, that seems rather trivial, but I will be trying to focus on increased prayer for persecuted Christians and peace in our world!  I'm also going to fast from iPad/random phone browsing during the day for me.  If I'm going to be internet-ing, it needs to be purposeful and not just random scrolling while I'm giving our sweet baby a bottle.
Family Practices: I asked my husband about trying out the "count to 40" before meals idea that I learned about from Kendra's blog at Catholic All Year.  He is on board, so we are going to try it this year!  I'm excited.  I'll also put out a bean jar, which hopefully will be filled with beans of good deeds, to be replaced with jelly beans on Easter.  M is only 2, but he is so observant, so I'm hoping these kinds of practices will plant seeds that will grow over the years.

Almsgiving

I'm aiming to live more simply and donate any savings.  I'll be limiting what foods I buy to perishables as much as possible and eating out of the pantry and freezer.  I think I will also allow M to choose something from the pantry to donate to the food pantry each Friday.

I'm looking forward to challenging myself to a renewed focus on and closeness with Christ.  I want to listen, really listen to Him so that I can more closely follow His will for my life.  I hope that your Lent is full of God's blessings!

What are We in Love With?

Awhile back, I stumbled across Craig Zimmer's encouragement to take a deep look at how we really spend our time.  He says:

Rather than first asking ourselves whether or not our treasure is in God, maybe we should first look at what we do with our evenings, how we spend our weekends, etc.  Yes, falling in love with God will affect everything, but how we spend our time on a daily basis also reveals what we are in love with and where our treasure is.  One of the great gifts of Ignatian Spirituality is its invitation and challenge to us to examine our day in order to seek God and to ask ourselves whether or not we are recognizing and responding to the work of the Holy Spirit in the lived experience of our daily lives.

source. (emphasis mine)

I know nothing about "Ignatian spirituality" but I felt challenged by this reflection.  I suspect that I am spending too much time on things that add or have little to no inherent value, and not enough on things that encourage or promote healthy living and values.  But what, and how much?  I'd like to see the specifics from my own empirical evidence. 

What are you in love with?  Where is your treasure?

Seven Quick Takes: Angel Week!

Happy Friday, Friends!

This was a busy week in the Liturgical Year with lots of feasts on the Calendar.  My husband and I both converted to Catholicism from Protestant denominations, so celebrating these feasts is new to us* and we are in the process of figuring out what works for our little family.  I'm enjoying discovering the histories of these feasts, and also how they are celebrated differently in different cultures and countries.

*we did celebrate St. Lucia Day on occasion, since my family is Swedish!

Here's what we did this week:

1.
Feast of the Archangels!  Also known as Michaelmas, of course.  This one is special to us for lots of reasons, including that we were married in a little church named for Saint Michael.  Saint Michael is also the patron saint of the military, and my hubs did a few years serving our beautiful America, and my brother and brother-in-law continue to serve.

I intended to make devil's food cupcakes with M and use those little cocktail swords so we could stab the devil, but I couldn't find the cocktail swords.  Lesson learned to look early next year, or stock up!  This was definitely not an original idea by me, but something I've seen on other websites/blogs.  We had the best time making the cupcakes, M even cracked 1 of the eggs for me.  He loved it, and I loved doing it with him.  The kitchen was a disaster mess, but we had so much fun!

We prayed St. Michael's Prayer at dinner, and I tried to talk with M about the Archangels, but it was mostly over his head. =)  He did like the cupcakes though!

2.
The lawyer in me also thought it was interesting to learn that Michaelmas marks the beginning of a legal term in the UK, and the Idahoan in me was surprised to learn that it is considered the beginning of hunting season and is a harvest feast day. (source)

3.
The Feast of St. Therese of Liseaux was celebrated on Wednesday.  We continued to feast on our frosted cupcakes.  I watched this interesting video.  This part stood out to me the most: "In every moment, what is the demand of love?"  The answer to that question, then, guides how we should act.  I'm encouraged to reflect on this daily, and throughout my day.

4.
A is for Angel.  We are very, very slowly working on letter recognition with M.  We are reading The Gift of an Angel and coloring pictures of angels.

Probably time to get some more printer ink?

5.
The Feast of the Guardian Angels.  Last spring, my prayer group spent one session talking about guardian angels.  It was fascinating.  I honestly hadn't ever really thought about them before, other than just in passing, so it was pretty interesting to hear other perspectives.  One point that someone raised and was very memorable to me was that our guardian angels love to be close to God, and so we are encouraged to attend Adoration as frequently as we can.  I never thought of it that way, because I was never really thinking about having a personal guardian angel.

6.
We baked an Angel Food Cake for dessert on Thursday.  After our baking chaos earlier in the week, I didn't get too carried away, it was the "just add water" kind.  Turns out, I don't love Angel Food Cake.  And D pointed out that we enunciate it completely differently.  Who knew?!  #southerner 

7.
An interesting read about Angels here.  H/T to the ladies here.  This was also very helpful to read!  Same group of ladies, fun fact - some of them were my suite-mates in college. =)

Whew!  That was a lot of dessert for one week for us.  Good thing I had some good workouts too - 2 stroller runs and a killer strength class.  My glutes are still crying from the squats.  Hoping to also get a swim in and some weekend runs.

Tomorrow is the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi.  Any good ideas for celebrating with a two year old?  Please share!

Check out www.conversiondiary.com for more quick takes!  Have a wonderful weekend!

Please Pray for the Christians in Iraq

I was going to have a silly little post about nothing important, but my mind keeps returning to all of the tragedies and violence occurring in the world today. 

I am particularly saddened to hear of the ongoing persecutions of Christians in Iraq.  Please read this post and this one, and remember these people in your prayers.