Archive for » July, 2010 «

The Great Adventure Bible Study

20 Jul 2010 by

A few weeks ago we started one of Jeff Cavin’s Great Adventure Bible Studies with some of our friends. We’re doing the 24 week Bible Timeline: The Story of Salvation. The study will take us through the 14 narrative books of the bible to learn the story of salvation history and our role in it. In April we attended the one day workshop at St. John Neumann with Jeff Cavins. We were hooked and knew it was something we had to do and something we want to share with our children.

It’s fabulous! The timing of the study was perfect with our start of school because I have the children doing the  Great Adventure for kids. Every week Adam and I are studying certain chapters, I read to the children the big stories and there are four coloring pages for each of the 12 time periods.  It’s the first thing we do in school each morning after prayer and the kids LOVE it.

Tonight we finished the first time period, The Early World (Gen Ch. 1-11).  Some things that resonated with me were:

  1. We were created on the same day as the beasts but we were set apart. The 7th day–the sabbath, a day of rest–was created for us. In this fast pace world with so much busy-ness, will we remain in the 6th day with the beasts or will we enter the 7th day as Sons and Daughters of God and use the sabbath as God had created it for us?
  2. God in his infinite mercy banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden so that they would NOT eat from the Tree of Life and live forever in their fallen state. Can you even imagine living in the state Adam and Eve were in after they disobeyed God? Oh wait, aren’t we in that state when we live a life of sin? I remember how miserable and empty my life was when I was separated the Church. And I remember how much peace and grace flowed into my soul when I returned and went to confession the first time as an adult.  How grateful I am for the Sacrament of Reconciliation!
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Our Lady of Mt. Carmel

18 Jul 2010 by

O Most beautiful flower of Mount Carmel, fruitful vine, splendor of Heaven, Blessed Mother of the Son of God, Immaculate Virgin, assist me in this my necessity.

O Star of the Sea, help me and show me herein You are my Mother.

O Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and Earth, I humbly beseech You from the bottom of my heart to succor me in this necessity. There are none that can withstand Your power.

Blessed Mother keep our children under the protection of your loving mantle and Immaculate heart that they may grow in grace and virtue to know and do the will of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Friday was the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. At their baptism, each of our children was consecrated to her. To celebrate, we’ll be enjoying some brown scapular brownies for dessert tonight!

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School’s in

18 Jul 2010 by

Last week we started school again. The children had been asking for a couple of weeks to start. Not seeing any reason why we should wait, I decided to start us back up.

My personal goals in making our school day successful are 1) get started on time and early and 2) make school my number one priority. To this end, we start at 9 a.m. To accomplish my second goal I make myself drop what I’m doing at 9 and resolve to come back to it during our break. In the past we wouldn’t start until 10 a.m. and then I often found myself not giving Therese my full attention–because there was the load of laundry that needed to go in the wash, or the bread that needed to be started, or the floor that needed to be swept ‘real quick,’ or the baby I needed to put down for a nap.  You know the book, “If you give a moose a muffin” ? I could write the book, “If you give a mom a chore.” I think as a stay-at-home/homeschooling mom I have two full time jobs and because they occupy the same space and time, the lines between them are blurred.

For the last two months, I’ve been preparing us gradually to get our act together so that our school time is more routine, and our home life is less chaotic. I’ve been training the children to do their chores and have been very pleased as to their contribution in making our home and meal times run so smoothly.  I’ve been training myself to choose how I use my time more wisely. As we heard Jesus tell Martha in today’s gospel reading, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and trouble about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.” I am a “Martha” by nature. I need to remember my work is to education my children and get them to heaven. The dishes can wait. The floor can wait. The laundry can wait.

I made us a schedule that will hopefully keep us on track:

  • 6-7 a.m. exercise
  • 7-8 clean up and get everyone dressed
  • 8-9 breakfast and clean up
  • 9-noon school
  • noon -2 p.m. lunch, clean up and free time
  • 2-4 p.m. finish school
  • 4-5 p.m. free time
  • 5 -6 p.m. cook dinner
  • 6:30 p.m. dinner and clean up
  • 7:30 p.m. bathtime
  • 8 p.m. children’s bedtime

Then I have specific house cleaning chores for myself on certain days of the week (e.g. Monday and Thursday are bathroom cleaning days, Friday is laundry day and Saturday morning is grocery shopping). Of course I make time for 4 days of school. The 5th day is a make up day or  we make a trip to the library, book store, playdate, etc.

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My Kitchen Angels

10 Jul 2010 by

After a lovely Mass with my 4 little blessings, we came home to fix dinner. Nothing inspires helping in the kitchen like new and spruced up aprons. (After my weekend travel plans were thwarted by the rain and flooding in south Texas, I spontaneously decided to make my girls’ aprons a little more girly. Pictures to come soon.)

Fulton washed the dishes. Muffin prepared the grapes–and ate a few too. Therese threw together the salad. Adam turned on the oven to bake these homemade whole wheat buns while we were at Mass. (And that’s him in the back working hard on a Saturday on a big project for work.) And I made the sloppy joes. (By the way, I’ll never go back to store bought buns after making those whole wheat buns.)

Quote of the day by Fulton: “Mom, you’re the best cook. You’re better than the restaurant.”

Thank you, sweet Fulton. Just call me Chef Mommy.

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Summer Reading

09 Jul 2010 by

Summer reading is not a problem. Keeping up with all the summer reading programs, logging the books read, and our time spent reading…that’s another story.

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On the Move

09 Jul 2010 by

She’s officially on the move…As of the 4th of July she started crawling forward…

and she’s also pulling up…

..and behind that cute facade, she’s starting to have vampire-like characteristics…She likes to be up for about an hour in the middle of the night. (So much for that last post about her sleeping better.) And her upper lateral incisors are in but her central incisors are not.

Marc, Misty and Grace visited for the July 4th weekend, and the girls played well along side each other. It was great fun to have them here. Grace’s cousins were quite enamored with her.

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