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,
 

All Saints Celebration 2013

All saints day this year was a really successful day in regards to achieving what we wanted.
The children chose their saints that they wanted to dress up as and we found the saints in our Book of Saints Series and I found this site for great Saint  colouring pictures that we choose a few from.
I also read Father Phillip Tells a Ghost Story

I made up a couple of word searches from an online word generator because our children love them.
I made a harder one for the older kids, being Vellvin and Rogan, because Saxon and Eden were at work.
Then I made a simpler one for Moran, Myffwyn and Corbyn.

We used Jessica's Saint Bingo and Saint Cards for a go fish game that we played after dinner.
We also printed the Scavanger Hunt too, which we just filled in the blanks for

Surprisingly we did not have any special themed food for this day and I don't think it was missed.

We were invited to a group All Saints Day but our car had not had the seats put back in so we couldn't go.

I'm sure the children did enjoy our day though and the dressing is a MAJOR part of the fun for us.
However getting a group shot was like an impossibility.

Now on to our saints-

Arwen was St Bernadette!!
I got very confused as she was going to be St Agnes with her lamb then she was St Bernadette  and I missed the significance of her kneeling near the Roses with a Rosary. Thank you Vellvin for setting her up like this.

Corbyn was St Mark with his Lion

His was one of the fun costumes to put together

But he  refused to wear his sandals but had to have his gumboots, which he lives in.

Vellvin cam as St Zita

One of the best parts was getting her basket of goodies to give to the poor

Myffwyn was St Kateri and it was so good that we were able to use Autumn's Indian costume I made for her 10th birthday.

Trahaearn was St Francis but he wasn't very co-operative this day and would definitely not have his picture taken.

He wouldn't put his hood on and look at me

But he was very cute anyway

And then he and St Bernadette started to feed St Francis's animals their lunch

Rogan decided he wanted to come as St Raphael

St Francis followed us on our journey

as St Raphael was showing us his costume

Let's pray a Rosary says St Francis

Ok the wings- we couldn't find any so I quickly used some tracing paper and coloured them in

Once the breeze picked up they did flap around which was pretty cool though.

Moran was St Cecilia

and she loved having the violin to play for this

So...... St Bernadette wasn't happy with her costume after she saw St Raphael and wanted to be an angel too.

Here are some scenes of the children working on their 'work pages' while I read aloud about everyones saints.

A messy table as we work

Still in costume, well most of them anyway.

I read the Father Phillip story on the lounge as Arwen and Trahaearn both were tired and fell asleep while listening

We did buy a pumpkin to make a Pumpkin Moonshine.
We have only done this once before and they children really loved it.
I know the children would have loved to make more with different patterns but they are frightfully expensive here.
We did keep the seeds so hopefully we might be able to grow some for next year.

This type of pumpkin is so different to the type we eat all the time. So much empty space and very stringy.

Rogan was the one who was most keen and so he did the work by himself

Our other book display.
I just love Pumpkin Moonshine as a sweet book on the family traditions of the day.

The flies were very pesky and seemed to love the pumpkin inards

Nearly there............

Finished!!

But then we added soome stars and moon to the sides

Very proud pumpkin cutter for the first time.

Myffy was his photographer and companion

When Eden came home she started straight away on the wordsearch.
Did I mention how much our kids like wordsearches?

When it was dark and we went to light the pumpkin we found this huge moth inside the pumpkin.

It refused to leave even after we put the lit candles inside

Wow they look fantastic at night

See the moth is still there  and stayed there all night

After dinner and clean up we played the games together.
I must admit this was a lot later than we wanted to play the games

One very tired little player BUT she did win the Bingo Game

Then we  played Go Fish with the Saint cards which I couldn't laminate as some very helpful person put paper in the laminator and it won't work now.
Which munchkin could it be.

Brother team..

Is it really time for bed?
I don't want the party to end!!

Good night!
Sleep Tight!
Blessed All Saints Day to You!!

Blessings to you and your homes,