Reason for the Season Event 2013

 Our Faith & Family Committee organized a (hopefully annual) Reason for the Season Event to help parish families prepare for Advent.

 We made banners with Advent wreaths on them.  The flames each have a piece of Velcro so that you can "light" the candles.

 

 We packed Basic Needs boxes for CSS.

 

And we learned about some other Advent traditions while enjoying some cookies & cocoa.  It was simple & nice!  I hope we continue to do something similar each year.

Well, hello!

Sharing a book

Teresa loves playtime with Leo & Gus.  They especially like to "read" each other stories.  They're the best of friends.

Rosary

Rebecca's class spent the last month learning about the Rosary.  They talked about each of the mysteries, all of the prayers, & then made their own Rosary to take home.

At a regular daily school Mass, Father blessed each of the Rosaries & handed them to the kids.  Rebecca was beaming!

Later that afternoon, they returned to Church to pray the Rosary together with whatever parents could attend.

We celebrated afterwards with cupcakes & smiles.

I think it's a beautiful introduction to a fantastic spiritual devotion.

Happy Birthday to me!

 Thank you for all of the kind birthday wishes & prayers! It was such a nice day. I woke up to this delicious breakfast made by the kiddos (complete with the chair-sign) & then was able to spend the day with Darren who took his first day off since the day Sarah was born!

 We went to Mass, hit the Rodizio grill for lunch (ironically, amid all the meat, the glazed pineapple was my fave), fun with the kiddos after school, birthday Blizzards, & then out to the Nebraska Jazz Orchestra that night. I felt really spoiled.

  God is good!

Say "cheese"!

Falling for autumn

Quite the line-up

 My mom sent us home with a tubful of pennies & the kids have been having a blast!  Most recently Andrew lined them all up in stacks according to their year.  1961-2013 represented... all except for 1963... so close!

My sunshine

Yep.  It's that kind of day.  :)

The three amigos

 Welcome Joseph, David, & James!

Rosary group just got a whole lot more masculine! 



Guten tag!

 Okay, she probably hasn't intentionally said THAT yet, but Sarah is all kinds of babbling lately. Lots of "mamama, dadada, bababa" with the occasional "hi" or "a-gen-da" thrown in there. With all these new words to practice, who has time to sleep? She fills my heart.

Climb that wall!

 Andrew's Cub Scout pack earned another trip to the climbing wall this year.  He did great!

 Ring that bell!

Mass helpers

 Rebecca practiced over & over & over for reading at Mass.  There were a lot of not only hard to read words but completely new vocabulary words for her.  She needed to be a tad closer to the microphone but overall did awesome!  There was that one mix up of two new words where she said, "Love one another with genuine AFFLICTION," but we won't mention that.

She also took up offertory later in the week.  So much excitement!  I love how enthusiastic she was to help out at Mass.

Little tired?

I keep finding her like this:  half swaddled, binky under her chin, rolled to her belly, LEGS THROUGH THE SLATS, totally zonked out.