First Communion

Last month my daughter celebrated her First Holy Communion. She was doubly blessed because she celebrated twice! Of course only one was truly her "first" First Communion, but she wore her white garments for both.
Our parish priest celebrated the First Communion Mass and he is the same one who baptized her, so that made it extra special. She did a good job with the big chalice, too!
The following weekend, her school had their First Communion celebration and she was invited to celebrate again with her classmates in that parish. Although it was still a Catholic Mass, it was a very different sort of celebration (it was a dedicated First Communion Mass rather than having the celebration integrated into the regular Mass the way our parish does it) so it was interesting to see the differences.
My sweet girl looked beautiful on her special day. She wore a silk dupioni dress from Strasburg Children and I had her veil custom made by the woman who made my wedding veil. It is a child-size version of my wedding veil. Perfect for my bow-loving little girl who really really wanted to wear Mama's veil (that was too big and that was the wrong shade of white).
I bought her this beautiful rosary from Etsy...and, my favorite, a beautiful little clay bowl to keep it in.
This bowl is gorgeous and was packaged SO beautifully! It is personalized for my daughter so I can't show the details, but click over to Etsy to look at the shop for Clarey Clayworks. They make beautiful bowls for all sorts of occasions and will personalize them. It is just lovely and perfectly holds her new rosary.

Easter Vacation

Happy Easter! It is still the Easter season in the Catholic church, so technically I'm not late with my greetings even if Target has moved on and is selling 4th of July decorations already. We were on vacation for Easter and the week following and it was wonderful! We went on our annual beach trip and it was cold but tons of fun! Before leaving for our trip, we went on an Easter egg hunt.
Yes, the egg hunt was inside our local grocery store! It is fun for the children and perfect for our weather conditions. My children LOVE it and for weeks afterward hope they will find a stray egg leftover from the hunt. (It has never happened, but they still hope!)
Next we set out on our long drive to our vacation destination. Once we arrived, we went for a quick (chilly!) walk and then started getting ready for Easter as it was already Saturday afternoon. First we planted these magic seeds that I came across. (Idea found via Meet the Dubiens) The magic seeds enthralled my children as they had never seen seeds this big!
They planted their seeds in little pots and Easter grass (multi-colored crinkled paper) and put them in front of the "lovely" faux fireplace in the vacation condo. I told them I was pretty sure it would take all night for anything magic to happen, but they still kept checking.
Sure enough, by morning, two bunny lollipops had sprouted out of those pots! So cute! The children were thrilled and hope we come across some magic seeds to plant again next year!
We had a little egg hunt in the condo living area and the children were happy with their baskets. We've used the same baskets since my daughter's first Easter. I bought four identical wicker baskets her first Easter in the hope that I would one day have four children. I have been blessed with two children (and love them dearly, so I don't want to say "only" two children) so it looks like the other two baskets are for Mama and Dada.
These glasses make me smile! I think the Easter Bunny knew that Mama likes to take goofy pictures of her babies and this will make a perfect calendar picture!
Our Easter Sunday Mass was spent at a quaint little ocean front Catholic church. In this picture my children are standing in the church parking lot directly in front of our car. Look at that view! Breathtaking! The church was tiny but so sweet and the priest's message was wonderful. We really enjoyed the service.
One of our family traditions on Easter Sunday is to go for a drive after church and then get ice cream. Well, if you know the area, you can look at this family picture and guess where our vacation drive took us. We had a nice tour of this place and then enjoyed some fresh ice cream. Yum!
And, of course, no Easter is complete in our family without Bunny Cake! This one is rather messy and covered in crumbs and little fingerprints because I had lots of "help", but we had fun working on it together. I baked it home and we decorated it on Easter Sunday.

It was a busy day but so fun and so full of family time. Really a perfect Easter for our family.

First Reconciliation

My sweet (squinty eyed!) girl made her First Reconciliation this past weekend and is thrilled to be one step closer to making her First Communion. She was the first child to make her confession and was so excited to use the confessional. She had the option of using the confessional with a visiting priest or sitting down face-to-face with the parish priest--who isn't our parish priest because she made her First Reconciliation in the parish where she goes to school rather than at our home parish. At any rate, she chose the confessional because she is fascinated by it. She didn't tell me what she confessed (and I didn't ask!) but she did inform me that her penance was to say one "Our Father".
After she was done, she made her First Communion banner (which has her name at the bottom--I attempted to clone it out in PhotoShop, thus the odd shadowing!) She will be making her First Communion at our parish church (with our priest who baptized her) and then the following weekend will be walking at this church's First Communion celebration where her classmates will be making their First Communion.

It is hard to believe my little girl is growing up! I ordered her veil today from the woman who made my wedding veil ten years ago!!

Stained Glass Cross Craft Tutorial

Last week I was looking for a fun craft for both my children and decided to have them make stained glass crosses. We had all the supplies on hand--tissue paper (that I cut into squares), clear contact paper, and black paper (that I cut into two cross outlines per child).
I taped down a section of contact paper (sticky side up!) for each child and put down a cross outline. Each child also received an individual bowl of tissue paper squares. Taping down the contact paper helped keep their projects from moving.
My preschooler went for the random approach for his stained glass cross.
My second grader aimed to cover every exposed area of her cross.
When your child is done with their masterpiece, put the second cross outline on top of the first (to hide the spots where the tissue paper overlapped the first outline). Then put a second sheet of contact paper down--with the sticky side on top of the artwork to seal everything inside. The final step is to trim around the project.

Beautiful!

Visit Lenten Ideas for Kids at Catholic Icing, Someday Crafts, and Weekend Wrap at Tatertots and Jello!

Easter 2010

Happy Easter!

We had a wonderful Easter celebration as a family of four. On Saturday evening the children readied the baskets for the Easter Bunny. We reuse the same wicker baskets and the same green paper Easter grass every year and fluffing up the grass so that it is "just right" has become a tradition for my little girl.
After the baskets were ready, the children put them on the table in readiness for the Easter Bunny.
Easter morning started with an egg hunt in the family room. Despite the children trying to look in all the nooks and crannies, they managed to miss two eggs that weren't found until Monday afternoon! The eggs had pocket change or a couple of jelly beans in them.
Finally it was basket time! (The Easter Bunny did parent baskets too, but those weren't very exciting!) My six year old's basket included a box set of Tinkerbell books, a Junie B Jones book (the last one I'll ever buy--thank goodness these now are too easy for my little girl because I am not a Junie B fan!!), bubbles, a drawing toy, a set of American Girl ballet clothes for her doll, a Leapster cartridge, some lollipops, a little chocolate bunny, and a handful of jellybeans. A miniature American Girl Molly doll and hardback book set was under her basket. My four year old had a stomp rocket under his basket. In his basket were two books, a Leapster cartridge, Cars pencils, a drawing toy, a Leapster cartridge, bubbles, a Cars vehicle, some lollipops, a little chocolate bunny, and a handful of jellybeans.
We finished all that by about 7:15am. My children are early risers! We went to Mass and enjoyed a wonderful service. Doing the Resurrection Rolls last week really helped my little boy understand the Easter story and made it easier for him to pay attention during Mass.
After Mass we went out to brunch and then out for a drive in the countryside before stopping for our traditional Easter ice cream!
We arrived home and had some time to play with our little boy's new stomp rocket before dinner. It is a big hit and even intrigued some of our neighbors. I love that it doesn't require batteries! Even my four year old was able to make it go HIGH into the air!
After a simple dinner, we enjoyed bunny cake for dessert! We had a wonderful and calm Easter. It was such a pleasure to celebrate with our family of four and not feel as though we needed to rush any part of our day so that we could travel to meet up with our extended family. We love our extended family, however it is so nice to have a relaxing holiday with "just us."

Happy Easter from our family to yours!

Egg Carton Craft

Okay, let's try this post again! I had to delete it on Sunday after somebody posted a link to my site on another site and I started getting slammed with unwanted traffic. Those people did not have good intentions.
Princess and I did this craft from Catholic Icing on Palm Sunday in preparation for Holy Week. She had a wonderful time crafting with mama while her brother napped. We talked about the disciples and she really enjoyed herself. She's bringing it to school on Thursday for kindergarten show-and-tell. Perfect timing for Holy Week!
You'll have to visit Catholic Icing for the full instructions, but I can tell you that the only supplies needed are two egg cartons, printouts from the blog, glue, scissors, and something to color with. Princess did all the coloring and I did the cutting and gluing.

Weekend Recap

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! We had a busy but fun Easter weekend. On Saturday before running some quick errands, we went to our wonderful local grocery store for an Easter egg hunt.
They had hundreds of eggs hidden all throughout the store--plenty for everyone! Some of the eggs had candy and others had tickets for prizes. My daughter found one with a certificate for a free slice of pizza at the cafe in the grocery store! Plus every child left with a bag of candy and a kite! My two were thrilled with this!

Later in the day I finished up Easter preparations and made a surprise for my children for Easter Sunday...
A bunny cake! Not the most professional job, but I just think he's so cute! Super easy to make too--I just used two round cakes. One for his head and one for his ears (plus leftovers.) White frosting, jelly bean eyes and mouth, pulled apart Twizzlers for his whiskers, a Necco wafer for his nose, and pink sugar for the interior part of his ears.

Look at these "carrots" that went in Princess and Handsome's Easter baskets!
This idea is from a blog, but I can't remember which one. Anyhow, it worked really well for us because my little girl kept seeing those Reese's faux carrots in the store and really wanted one, but we can't do nuts because of my son's nut allergy. This was a great alternative!
Princess and Handsome were quite pleased with their Easter baskets! They weren't too elaborate, but they enjoyed everything in them, so that made me happy!
After baskets, it was time to look for eggs in the family room! Princess was a little too quick with finding the eggs, but was a good sport when we made her wait while her little brother found a few!
They were so good and it makes me happy to see them getting along so well. Aren't their jammies cute? They're organic cotton from Costco. I love them and wish I had bought more!
Next we read a Patricia Pingry book about Easter. It explains Easter really well for their young age and backed up what they've been hearing in Church. We have a lot of her books and like all of them.
After that I showed them the bunny cake I made--they loved it! Handsome even blew it kisses!
We squeezed in some pictures before leaving for church. And when I say squeezed, I mean squeezed! It was POURING rain out and this was the one dry corner of our front porch!
We arrived at Mass nice and early--the "holiday" Catholics tend to show up in droves on Easter, so we wanted to make sure we were able to get our usual pew at the front of Church. It was a very nice service and, for the second weekend in a row, we were selected to bring the gifts up front! The ushers have a soft spot for our children and seem to select us for this honor quite a bit!

After Mass we went on our traditional drive through the countryside--with the ultimate destination being ice cream! We started this tradition before we had children (back when we lived far from family) and we love sharing it with our children. Although now we're lucky enough to live within a couple of hours of our family, we've claimed Easter as the one holiday we celebrate as a family of four and we love it.
We did some geocaching along our drive which made it a lot of fun. It is so wonderful to have an inexpensive hobby that the whole family enjoys...even in the rain!

All in all, we had a wonderful Easter weekend and I hope you did too!

Jerusalem My Destiny