Little Flowers Bonfire Night

Monday night we invited the Little Flowers group over for a bonfire.  We kept it a family event because I truly dislike evening events that leave out most of the family so we had a large group of kids hanging around.  I do believe we went through more than 2 bags of marshmallows while the kids made s'mores.  Nothing like sending everyone home entirely hopped up on sugar.  And I am just going to admit that I look at some of these pictures and still have a hard time believing that this is actually our back yard.  I do believe we will have a very hard time ever going back to living in a neighborhood again.

Little Flowers

We had our last formal Little Flowers meeting of the school year last week.  We studied fortitude at this meeting and the girls painted sun catchers. 

Next month we will have everyone and their families over for a bonfire night. 

We had a wonderful group of girls this year.  With such a wide age range, it was sometimes hard to figure out craft activities that everyone could handle.  Thankfully whenever a younger girl needed help with anything, there was always an older girl ready to jump in and help out.  This made things run much more smoothly than I was expecting.

I think the girls have enjoyed themselves this year.  Now to figure out what to do for next year since things will be a bit busier and I'll have a little one to tend to for part of the time.  No, I'm not a babysitter type person for infants. They stay with Mom for their entire first year because that is what is best for them.  While this makes things just a tad more complicated with regard to meetings such as Little Flowers, it is more than worth it in the long run.  So here's a hint: it does not help me if you try to insist on helping me by taking/holding the baby or try to force me to give you the baby because you don't get to see them often.  Nope, not helpful. Just not how I operate or what works for our family.

Little Flowers

We had another Little Flowers meeting today.  Fifteen girls joined us today.  It seems we either have a large group or a small one.  I don't mind a smaller group except when I have already prepared craft supplies for the larger group.  Small issues, I know.

This month we focused on the Blessed Mother and the virtue of cheerfulness.  I am just going to come right out and say that it is darn near impossible to find a craft for cheerfulness.  Seriously.  Many thanks to the folks at Crafolic, Shower of Roses, and Waltzing Matilda for the wonderful ideas they came up with that I was able to use for our meeting.  Have I mentioned that I am not terribly creative? 

The girls all had a great time and we spent a little time before the Blessed Sacrament praying for a special Mom that I know who is missing her little girl. 

Little Flowers

Today we had another Little Flowers meeting.  Even when I don't have my act totally together, I enjoy seeing what these girls put together.

Today we learned about Responsibility and St. Anne.  After putting together notebook pages and coloring sheets, the girls all made cards to give to someone with a job that take a lot of responsibility.

For some reason all the girls were full of way too much energy today but I'm hoping they still had fun and learned something.  I think we are all ready for the icky wet muddy weather to move along so we can spend more time outside burning off extra energy.

Little Flowers

I finally remembered to take my camera to our Little Flowers meeting.  We had 15 girls today.  Wow.  Quite a few more than I was expecting this week but we were very happy to have everyone join us.  We learned about St. Felicity and self-control.  Then we made sacrifice beads to help practice the virtue of self-control.  I've been having the girls make scrapbook pages for each virtue thanks to some wonderful print-outs found here.  Nope, I'm not creative enough to come up with this stuff on my own.  Being able to pull ideas from someone who has been through the books before me makes life so much easier. 

Since we also had karate lessons after Little Flowers, all of the kids were with me this time.  This came in handy when it was time to work on the sacrifice beads.  Ellie hit her head and wanted no one but me so Bryan was able to help show the girls how to put the beads together.  He also took a few pictures for me. 

I think this is my favorite part of the meetings.  Coming into church to pray before the Blessed Sacrament.  One week we were unable to stop in to say hi to Jesus because the school was having a Christmas concert and all of the girls were upset.  I can't so we do anything fancy but just seeing so many young kids gathered together makes me happy.  We may not pray for anything fancy or grown-up (there are often requests to pray for pets and siblings and traveling Dads), but I like to think that the sincere prayers of little girls means quite a lot even in it's simplicity.