50 days 50 ways to Pentecost (or how to celebrate the 50 days of Easter)

Update, but not really!
I was looking for my list of 50 Ways to celebrate the Easter season 2017 and decided to update the title and re-post this on facebook and my facebook page. I fully intend on making posters to hang on the wall and fill in daily with the kids and do all the reading this year. Perhaps you would like to try it with us?

I don't know how it is in your home, but for us, during Lent we try to spend each evening reading something spiritual. Something that will hopefully help us focus on Lent and why we spend these 40 days preparing. We talk about Our Lord's Passion and Death. We not only pray the Stations of the Cross, we literally walk them, following pictures placed throughout our home.

The Triduum is spent a little more somber as we notice the finality of His life. The end is coming. We eat certain foods, to remind us. We change symbols on our home altar daily. We spend much more time at church.

Then Easter Sunday is here. Time for rejoicing, celebrating! He has risen, just as He promised: "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day." Matthew 20:18-19

In the Catholic faith, the Easter season is celebrated not for one day or one week, but for 50 days, until Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came to rest on Mary and the disciples in the Upper Room. But what have WE been doing for these 50 days? The Acts of the Apostles does not give us a whole lot to read and meditate on and there are not many books on this, nor special symbols as we await this special feast.

Several years back, after feeling like I had a little Lenten let-down, I came up with a solution to that for our family and we try to use this every year during the 50 days of Easter.

I call it 50 Days 50 Ways to Pentecost! Only with the help of the Holy Spirit was I able to compile a list of 50 things to learn about and meditate on for each of the 50 days of Easter. We use simple children's books to read short descriptions of each and I make posters to post on the wall, filling in each day with the new thing we have learned. (If you are into lapbooking, these would probably be perfect for that!)

There are so many topics in our amazing faith that come in similar sets of numbers so you can play with the numbers and change them around each year. Here is the list we will follow for this year:

10 Commandments
2 Great Commandments
8 Beatitudes
7 Corporal Works of Mercy
7 Spiritual Works of Mercy
9 Fruits of the Holy Spirit
7 Gifts of the Holy Spirit

That equals 50! Some replacements could be the 4 Cardinal Virtues, The 12 Apostles, 3 Theological Virtues, 20 Mysteries of the Rosary, the 7 Sacraments, the possibilities are endless! (Some of these are linked with children's books that have great reflections good for all ages to follow--we use these little books often!)

So if you are feeling like there is nothing for you to follow or immerse yourself in once Easter Sunday has passed, feel free to borrow these ideas and enjoy the path to Pentecost!
Have a faith filled Holy Week and a Blessed Easter season!

November Gratitude Journal

Woo hoo!  2 days in a row, I am on a roll. (I will not push my luck for 3 days!)

#4 Being Catholic.  There are so many amazing and beautiful ways that the Catholic church leads you closer and closer to Our Lord Jesus Christ.  The more I learn, the more I love Him.  If anyone ever has any doubts on the authenticity of the Catholic church or just wants to ask some "why do you do this?" type questions, let me know.  I LOVE talking about my faith :)

#5 Coffee.  Do I really need to explain this one??  Didn't think so.

#6  A new friend named Sarah.  God truly had his hand in leading us to meet one another.  I am so blessed to be able to welcome her into my life.  I look forward to getting to know her and her sweet family better.

#7 The Women of Christ conference.  It is not until tomorrow, but I have a feeling I will be too busy to post about it tomorrow.  It's only 10 minutes from my house and it is a wonderful faith filled day with so many amazing speakers.  I am truly looking forward to it.

November Gratitude Journal

Here it is--November again.  I have barely posted this year and I really did such a horrible job of keeping up my gratitude journal for 2011.  It is certainly not for lack of things to be grateful for, but for lack of time to put my usually scattered thoughts together and type them out!  I will try to be a little more dedicated to it this year.  So, here goes:

#1  Listening to my 3 girls singing in the church choir last night at Mass for the Vigil of All Saints' Day.  They look so sweet up there and the choir truly brings a lot to our Masses. 

#2  Heat and electricity.  So many on the east coast are without these basic things.  I am praying for them all that things get up and running quickly.  From what I hear, tempers are starting to fly, we must pray for peace.  So many bad things can happen to people in times of trouble, by also, so many good things.  Humanity can show the good, the bad and the ugly at times like these.  We need to pray for SO much of the good.

#3  Our sweet Lord Jesus.  Every day I am allowed to wake up and start fresh, the problems of yesterday wiped clean.  Thank you for Your sacrifice, my Lord and my God.

"Amen. Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honor, power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen." Revelation 7:12

Protecting our Treasure

I am not going to speak at length about this.  Attachment parenting.  Extended breastfeeding.   I feel so strongly about this, but my words and my heart just cannot convey how I feel about women exploiting their children and putting them on a magazine cover in a very personal position.  I am talking about THAT Time Magazine cover.  (I will not link to it here.  You may google it on your own if you must.)  Could they not stop for one moment and realize what they were doing to these poor kids??  Protect your treasure.  God has entrusted these little souls to you to keep for Him, to raise up for Him.  Not to exploit them.  In case you were wondering, YES, I do practice attachment parenting to an extent.  And YES, I do practice extended breastfeeding.  My last 3 children were breastfed for 3+ years of their lives.  I have tandem nursed, nursed one or two while pregnant, nursed a toddler while in the hospital after giving birth.  But I would never, ever, go on a magazine cover to prove that I am right, you are wrong, you didn't do it this way, you are screwing your kids up.  I would never do that, because it is a very personal choice to make for yourself and your child.  Whichever way you decide to parent that is up to you, just protect that treasure.
I will leave you with some postings from another mom who is a much better writer than I am.  Her post brings tears to my eyes. You can read it here
God bless.

Without The Cross

It is Tuesday of Holy Week.  The holiest week of the year.  It's been just a little over 3 months since we celebrated one of the happiest days of the year...Christmas.  From crib to cross.  From His mother's arms in Bethlehem as that newborn babe that shepherds came to adore back to her arms once again.  This time, He is dead.  He is covered in blood.  No one is there to worship and adore Him.  Yet we call this special day, this holy day, GOOD Friday.  Good?  How can we call this good?

He took up that cross, after such a harsh beating, and carried that cross, through the streets of Jerusalem.  People taunted Him, spit at Him, ignored Him.  Some wept, some helped.  Didn't anyone understand or feel how important this was?  He was carrying OUR sins on that cross.  Being nailed to that cross and dying on it opened the gates of Heaven that were closed so long ago, again, due to our sin.  that is why it is good.  He is taking our sin, crushing it, doing away with it.  We may sin again, but no longer does this mean our eternity will be spent without Him. 

We cannot celebrate Easter, or the Resurrection, without remembering all of this.  There is no hope of eternal life without that cross.  This is the way God choose to have our debt of sin repaid.  We need to embrace His cross, His sacrifice.  We need to embrace our own crosses as well.  We need to accept that we too, need to sacrifice.  At times, during Mass, when my children don't feel like kneeling all through the consecration, I point up to Him on that crucifix and whisper, "Do you think Jesus felt like hanging on that cross?"  They silently kneel again.

We all must sacrifice and suffer in some way.  How we choose to embrace these crosses that God has laid before us depends on what kind of Easter we will have.  Can we tell God that this cross is too hard for us to bear?  Can we tell Him we are in pain, please take this away from us?  "Father, let this cup pass from me..."  Of course we can ask, even beg for it to be taken away, but joyfully, we must accept these pains and sufferings, "not my will, but Yours be done."  Joyfully we can look to Easter and realize that one day, we too, will rise.  He will gently take our hand and lead us home to be with him for all eternity. 
Have a blessed Holy week and a blessed Easter!

Advent Planning Updated!

Advent is a little over a week away.  I am busy pouring over all my resource books, like A Year With God, to find just what I want to do with our family this year to enrich the season.  Here are just a few of our favorites.

Advent candle--have to look for an evening prayer to go with this.
Jesse Tree--Several years back, several home school families got together and made ornaments.  One mom provided a list with the scripture for each day and a suggested ornament theme.  Each family chose the day, or days, and made 20+ ornaments of all the same kind.  It was so much easier to make 20 of the same as opposed to one for each day on your own.  If you ever have a chance to do a co-op project like this, DO IT!!  I love all of our ornaments.  Each family used a different medium:  glass, clay, cardboard, wood, cloth, you get the picture.  I will attempt to post pics as we go through Advent.

Advent calendars--Yes, I buy each child one of those silly, chocolate filled calendars you can buy anywhere for a buck.  They love 'em.  I also have a window cling tree that gets an ornament each day of December through the 25th.  Then, I have this one which has magnets you attach to the magnetic back with all the nativity people and animals.  I admit, I also fill each day with candy.  The children rotate days, so every 6th day, you get the candy and hang the magnet.
Reading--Christmas Mosaic by Cay Gibson  I discovered this jam-packed gem a few years back and love it!  I dig into all her suggestions and start putting holds on all the books at my library.

There are also so many beautiful feast days sprinkled throughout the month of December:  St. Nicholas, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, St. Juan Diego, Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Lucy and so many more.  Not to mention our first baby surprised us 5 weeks early on December 14.  He was an early Christmas present that year!  Now he will be turning 15!

I love Advent, and I try to make it an exciting time for my children.  Teaching them to focus on our newborn Savior, as opposed to our shopping obsessed culture, I believe, will benefit my children for years to come.

November Gratitude pt 3

Oh my, I am really bad at this, aren't I???  :)  Now I have another whole week to post.

Day 9:  Beautiful, blustery, blowing snow!  My littles were SO excited!
Day 10:  Had a bunch of errands to do and Jake, (my almost 15 yr old son) volunteered to come with and stay in the van with the 3 little boys!
Day 11:  My girls had their groups:  Lizzie had All Things Girl, Susanna and Abbie had Little Flowers.  I got to sit and chat with some of the moms. 
Day 12:  Jake was able to buy his very own Xbox 360 with his very own money.  Happy boy :)
Day 13:  Mass at 7:30 am with Lizzie and Alex.
Day 14:  No out of the house activities--get to stay home with my kiddies--big and small.  I love that.
Day 15:  Read a pile of train books to my 2 little guys, Matt and Jason, quite early in the morning.  Nice and quiet for once.
Day 16:  My oldest and dearest friend took me out to lunch for my upcoming birthday.  She is so good to me.
Day 17:  Yet another great religion discussion with Jake.  His chapter was on Christ's kingship, very ironic, considering it will be the Feast of Christ the King on Sunday.  I learned a lot right along with him.  Praise God!!

"Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father."  Luke 1:31-32

Blessings.