Food for Thought

Saint Gianna Beretta Molla-The Gift of Life

I have been interested in the life of St. Gianna Beretta Molla ever since the day a woman I'd never met before placed one of her 3rd class relics-a holy card that had been touched to a pair of St. Gianna's gloves- in my hands after Mass many years ago.  At the time, we either were expecting our 6th child or she was a very new baby. The woman handing the holy card to me said that I reminded her in some way of this saint and she felt called to pass the card onto me. 

After having two more babies, both born prematurely for no apparent reason, I spent most of my 9th pregnancy with that holy card propped up in front of my computer monitor so that I would be reminded to pray to St. Gianna for a healthy pregnancy and baby.  Our 9th child did stay put long enough to make it to term which was a tremendous relief to me.  Shortly after her birth, I passed the holy card on to another mother who was dealing with a less-than-perfect pregnancy.

With that in mind, when I was given the chance to read a children's book about St. Gianna, I was rather excited.  I much prefer to learn about saints from children's books at first.  They often are a tad more interesting than adult oriented books and can help you to easily explain the lives of the saints to your kids.  Saint Gianna Beretta Molla-The Gift of Life is part of the Encounter the Saints series published by Pauline Media.  These relatively short chapter books are perfect for children in the 3rd to 6th grade age bracket.

Saint Gianna's book focuses on her family life, including her life as a child.  It shows the role her parents and siblings played in shaping her personality.  It does also teach in a gentle way about the choice St. Gianna made in preserving the life of her last baby even knowing it would place her own life at risk. The story of her death and it's impact on her community was shown in a caring way which will not leave the gentlest readers afraid.

Even as an adult, I learned quite a bit about the life of St. Gianna from this book.  I learned she and my oldest daughter share a birthday and that she was the 10th child born to a large family.  This book shares the story of a beautiful mother in a way that will touch the hearts of young children.  I plan to share this book with my elementary kids as soon as we finish our current read-aloud book.

This review was written as part of the Catholic book reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on Saint Gianna Beretta Molla - The Gift of Life. They are also a great source for a baptism gifts or first communion gifts.

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. 

Morning Offering Craft

I am attempting to get back to doing more hands-on fun stuff with the kids.  The stuff that requires you to buy lots of glue sticks, scissors, paper and the like.  The stuff the kids actually enjoy doing.  Even if it does make a mess that at times they seem to not see when it is time to clean up.

Today we made a Morning Offering craft.  I have always loved the idea of a morning offering prayer and yet I have always forgotten to teach one to my kids (or use one myself, oops).  While browsing the Crafolic website, I stumbled up the craft they already had put together.

I'm hoping to run these projects through our laminator later tonight or tomorrow. Then we can hang one up in each bedroom and one in the kitchen so we will all be reminded to say a morning offering each day.

Happy Birthday Abby!

Abby turned 6!  We celebrated her birthday a day early so that her older brothers would not miss out on the fun (they insisted honestly).  Abby treated us all to dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings where they made an awesome looking birthday crown just for her.

Then we came home for cake and ice cream.  Abby asked for ice cream in cones but I told her we just can't do that with cake. Instead I offered to make the cake in the ice cream cones and top it with ice cream.  She loved that idea.  Something a bit different and kind of fun.

Abby got a brand new doll and some new kitchen toys.  May I say that I am so glad we don't do birthday parties for the kids every single year (or ever at the moment).  I can't imagine how overwhelming it must be for a kid to have so much stuff to open and find a home for and I've seen many parents who simply sell each years' toys at a garage sale every year so I have to question other families spending the money on the toys anyway.  But I am rambling.

Anyway, Abby was very happy and seemed to have a great day.  Two of her brothers made LEGO creations for her and her sister made her a beautiful card.  She picked out monkey bread for breakfast and spicy pizza for lunch. 

Here's looking forward to another great year with a wonderful little girl.

Easter Pictures

Just a few pictures from dying Easter Eggs and out annual egg hunt in the front yard.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, from our crew to yours! I hope everyone had a wonderful, restful day.

Divine Mercy Crafts

We are attempting to do the entire Divine Mercy Novena leading up to Divine Mercy Sunday.  I say attempting to because we seem to rather stink at follow through on things of this nature lately.   But we are trying again.

As we are starting the novena, we have made a few crafts to help the younger children understand a little better.  Sean made this Divine Mercy Craft yesterday.  He even managed to find blue and red glitter to put on it.  Catholic Icing also has a wonderful Divine Mercy countdown craft you can make using the original craft as the counter.  But my glue gun is missing so we won't be doing that this year. 

Today several of the middle children made this Divine Mercy Lacing project.  This project is great for giving them their own one decade counter for saying the chaplet, complete with the prayers written on each bead.

Well also spend some time reading this book and listening to the Glory Stories audio on St. Faustina's life.  Hopefully this will help the children learn the story behind the Divine Mercy.  We've also found a few coloring sheets to use as well and I plan to see if EWTN will be running any Diving Mercy shows for the kids this week. 

Saturday at Home Depot

Today Dad was actually home to take the kids to the workshop at Home Depot. Everyone was very happy to have him along to help.  I know I loved knowing that I was not going to be the only person getting my fingers hit with a hammer today.

We took the 6 little ones with us today.  Ellie hung out on my back and the rest of the kids built bird feeders.  I think this was only the first or second time Robert has been able to go with us so he was beyond thrilled.

Liam took off and had his project finished perfectly well ahead of everyone else.  This is pretty much normal for him.  He is truly meant to do projects such as these.  His entire demeanor changes while he is working with the wood.  It's rather nice to see hm truly engaged in a project like this.

Everyone did a great job and we will be keeping many birds well fed this year. 

Resurrection Eggs

We pulled out our set of resurrection eggs today.  Yes, you can get creative and call them Paschal Mystery Eggs or Holy Week Eggs or make your own version but I bought ours a few years ago and am quite happy to have someone else do some of the work for me.  Especially when you can watch for sales and get them fairly inexpensively.

This year I also added some printables to go with the eggs.  I plan to laminate them later this weekend and hopefully add some velcro dots to keep the pieces together.  Assuming I can find my leftover velcro dots.  They walked off my desk the other day.

Even Ellie joined in the fun this year.  And the growling older children who seem to think at times that activities such as this are slightly beneath them.  Until the other children can't answer the questions, then all of a sudden it's "Oh, oh, I know, pick me" so I keep insisting that they stay involved. Because I am mean like that.

While I would not rely on these eggs as the only instruction your kids get on the meaning of Holy Week, I do think they are a wonderful hands-on way of helping them figure things out.

We Don't. . .

We certainly do not stand on the LEGO table in this house.  Nope, never.

We also would never even begin to imagine standing in a book box around here. 

Nope, those things do not ever happen in our house.

Last Supper Project

On Tuesday I printed out everything we needed to make this project for Holy Thursday.  Then we got busy (I realized I probably should not go shopping on Good Friday and really needed to get the groceries on Thursday instead), Alan came home early, and I fell asleep.  It was a much needed nap but it meant our Holy Thursday project was not finished until Good Friday.  Oops. 

a homemade last supper

Katie, Abby, Liam, and Kieran helped with this project.  It was a bit harder to get the egg cartons to stay together than I thought it would be and I imagine the entire thing would have gone together better with a glue gun rather than glue sticks.  But my glue gun is missing.  Guess I need to do something about that.

I love the finished project even if Katie did repeatedly cut off noses, beards, fingers, and in one case half of a face.  Now to find something for Good Friday.

Playing With Color

Today I had several of the kids paint a primary color wheel.  Something I just stumbled upon but thought would be perfect for a bit of art.  This involved digging out the water colors and realizing that they all got put away without pain tbrushes.  No paint brushes in the art bins in the living room or in the paint bin in the school room. So I go upstairs to pull out the paint brushes from the painting project I did with Little Flowers only to discover that most of them were never washed and are now covered in 2 week old acrylic paint.   So now comes the internal debate of do I attempt to save the brushes or just toss the lot of them since I bought 99 cent bags of assorted brushes and call it a day.

Anyway, I had a few kids who did the project properly and ended up with a very nice band of secondary colors in their color wheel. Then I have one who decided to paint to his own drummer and paint the middle spots himself.  The wrong colors.  Sigh. At least he used the secondary colors.