Feast Days - St Agnes and Our Lady of Altagracia and a little planning too ☺

January is such an interesting time for us.

WE have the 12 Days of Christmas and are still in the Christmas Season liturgically BUT as it is Summer here and School Holidays our family is technically 'on Holiday'.

However the children rarely truly love the unstructured time for long  and itch to get back to 'normality'.

I however am torn as it is often the time I plan our structure for our new year of learning and even with the best of intentions I end up taking longer to do this than expected. I also love the fact that there is lots of wiggle room and a relaxing time for us all.

This year as I worked (still rushing around madly on the last day- we are starting back tomorrow) I decided with my husband that we would return to the old way of learning this year.

Our old year consisted of year round learning and having 4 weeks on 1 week off. This worked really well for us for many years until the children started interacting with more traditional school based friends and loving the idea of 'school holidays.'

The other thing we find difficult is celebrating liturgical feast days during holidays and on weekends.

So our January Feast Days often get left out.

This year we actually managed to celebrate the Feast of both St Agnes, who is one of Vellvin's Confirmation saints, and Our Lady of Altagracia. When we were expecting Arwen I desperately wanted her to be born on this day as I love the story told in A gift of Gracias- The Legend of Altagracia clearly she was born a few days later but still I love  the warmth and love of the story.

As part of my planning this year I had wanted to have all  my note, ideas and colouring pages, crafts and cooking ideas printed out and in plastic sleeves ready to just pull out and use, to reuse each year.

With the help of Vellvin I have manages so far to get up to the end of February. It really is a mammoth task and I think I will go to plan B and try to get a month at a time done.

We had a recipe we have wanted to try for a long time which was a Grain free/Gluten Free Orange cake. Let me just say it is one of the most lovely moist and sweet yet tangy cakes ever.

To compliment this we made home made ice cream from frozen oranges and milk and cream.

We read about Our Lady, coloured pictures and ate some good food. This is what constitutes a great feast day in our home.

In the evening we celebrated St Agnes with a cake and Vellvin blowing out her Baptism candle. We sing a song to this each celebration of the anniversary of a child's Baptism-
'May God Bless you this Day
May God Bless you we Pray
Live for Jesus dear........
May you serve him always'
Once again we read about the life of St Agnes and her living her Faith as God asked her to.

Now as we are on the eve of a new month (already) and our new Learning Year I pray you have a most blessed Sunday.

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

Trahaearn's Baptism ♥

It constantly amazes me how fast time flies, as I type this I am embarrassed to say that it has been three weeks since Trahaearn was Baptised. I simple have not posted these photos as I was pondering what to say about it.
Well I decided that what more can be said except we are so grateful to have our baby Baptised and receive the First of the Sacraments.

So this post is fairly picture intensive without much commentary.

Trahaearn was Baptised at Our Lady of Lourdes Church where we regularly attend each week. Our Parish Priest Father John Baptised Trahaearn and another child on this particular Sunday.

The following photos are not in order but are taken in the Church during the Mass and at the Baptism following.

Our Family Photo

Our Family with Father John and Stephen's Parents

Random shots to follow ~

Rogan and Saxon both served during the Mass and then Rogan was the tidy up person r after Mass.
We always say Rogan reminds us of Matthias Mouse out of the Redwall Books, both in mannerisms and looks.

Our Eden, Saxon and Vellvin are Trahaearn's Godparents.
They have wanted to be Godparents ever since Kynan, Braedon and Autumn are Corbyn and Myffwyn's Godparents

The First Anointing

We had the traditional After Baptism party at our home afterwards and had a very beautiful afternoon even despite the  horrible wet, windy and cold day that it was. We had good food and great company and the spirit of love that is an aftermarth of this special day.

The Baptism cake I made and decorated

The Baptism candle with images of : The Holy Trinity as it was Trinity Sunday, Divine Mercy Image and Our Lady of Guadalupe

Cutting the Baptism Cake

Trahaearn and Daddy

Poor Baby after a big day

More photos of Trahearn in the Baptism gown that I made originally for Kynan and has been worn by ALL the children

It was so hard to pick just one of these photos ......so you have a lot of them to look at

Father Felix loves to hold the babies and we have a picture similar to this of him holding Arwen after her Baptism

So if you  have finished reading and looking all the way to the end here, thank you for sharing in this special day with us ♥

Blessings to you and your homes,

Blessed Baptism Trahaearn

Dearest Trahaearn Archer Wulfran,

We pray for you today on this very special and memorable day as you are Baptised and welcomed into the Catholic Church as a Child of God.

God Bless you always our precious son

xxxxxx

Erin's Visit FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so embarrassed that it has taken me so long to finally write about Erin's visit. The fact that she came all this way for Arwen's Baptism with her little man I will cherish forever.
I guess it is for this reason I have been reluctant to start. I wanted to share all the love and friendship that we enjoyed together and I just didn't know how to put all that into words, so I kept putting it off. So now so much time has past and I still cannot put it altogether.

Sometimes there is just to much that I want to share that I cannot begin . So I will give just a brief overview and LOTS and LOTS of pictures because as they say " A picture is worth a thousand words.

Our family were all excited to be driving over to pick up Erin and 'little man'. As we don't have a car big enough for everyone, it was a matter of the lucky ones could come.
Having Erin stay was like we had seen each other yesterday instead of over 6 years ago.
It was like we were sisters and the things we did together and talked about were like so many phone conversations that it was so natural.

We talked about food, crafts, resources, babies and family life, what they were doing what we did in return. We looked at lots of books on the book shelves and talked about what we liked and disliked and, why in the world did I buy that one?
Our children adored her 'little man' and we constantly wished the rest of her family could have come to visit as well. It was over 6 years ago when we last visited them before we moved down here and the children ahve all grown, so it would have been wonderful to have seen them interact with each other now they are all older. Hopefully, Please God, we will be able to visit when we sell the house and move closer. Love those road trips, hey guys!

Dear 'little man' was constantly carted arround by our children, he barely got a chance to actually be with his Mummy, and hopefully he didn't miss his siblings so much.
Of course we were especially blessed that David and Erin are the God Parents of our dear little Arwen and we don't think she could have ANYONE better. Thank you dear, dear friends.♥


we did attempt to do some lessons. I had many plans for Ascension Day but there was so much to do with picking up Daddy from the airport and planning the Baptism that we did not do as much as I would have liked, but hey, that is the beauty of Home Education, and the plans are there for next year. We would never replace the memories for mere book learning.

There were so many things we wanted to do and talk about. You would think that 9 days would be plenty, but we did not cover nearly half of what we wanted. So the day before Erin left we were scribbling down all the things would wanted to still talk about but would have to continue over the phone.

Some things we will have to wait until we see each other again. Things like doing some of the craft things together. One lovely memory we have is of Eden helping Erin to crochet, once again the time factor of there is so much to do , feed those precious little babies, feed the children, feed ourselves etc. We had hoped to crochet some roses that had been talked about on so many blogs for saying the Rosary but....you get the picture.






Of course we celebrated one special little girls birthday and I am pretty sure Erin went home with a few things she wanted to try. Go Girl ☺


On the whole there was so much talked about and so much I can't describe. That feeling of closeness that you only get when visiting with the most intimate and trusted friends. The knowledge that she will see you in "the flesh" in my real world and know that that is as it should be. The knowledge that what I portray 'on the blog' would be verified or dismissed as not really who we are, and knowing that there would be no tell tale lines so to speak.

My, and our family's friendship with Erin and her family from our point of view has only been strengthened and made more precious by her visit here, and I want to thank Her and David and the children for allowing this to happen.♥
Much love and friendship to you always.


Just a few more photos for anyone STILL interested in this, um, short account of the visit.


Hopefully I have done justice to the very special time with had with the Mummy of Seven little Australians Plus one, minus the Dad.






Blessings,