Sunday, August 28, 2016

Our Lady of Czestochowa

Our Lady of Czestochowa feast day tea party. The Black Madonna icon has an interesting history as you may know already. It resides at Jasna Gora, in Poland.


Ever tried Ptasie Mleczko? It's chocolate covered marshmallows. They are okay, I like American marshmallows better myself. That's what we enjoyed for our Polish feast day. 


Our Lady of Czestochowa pray for us!

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Saint Philibert of Jumièges and the hazelnut cake.

Saint Philibert of Jumièges' feast day is August 20th- yea late post sorry! Hazelnuts often called filberts (his Anglican 'translated' name is Filbert) are named after him since they ripen around that time.  Who doesn't love Nutella? 


 For his feast day we made a hazelnut cake from a box of Duncan Hines Yellow cake mix.  I added hazelnut extract. (it was imitation because that is all I could find at our local Walmart- even Dillon's didn't sell it). I made the cake according to the directions, then I just figured about a 1/4 of the hazelnut extract would be enough for a cake. (So add at your own discretion- taste it as you go another words).
  For the frosting, I used a half can of Pillsbury Milk Chocolate frosting and half a can of Pillsbury Cream Cheese Frosting, half a bar of cream cheese and then more hazelnut extract- I added till I liked the flavor. The cake came out so moist.






Not as pretty as I would like- I was in a huge hurry. Part of the sides broke off...shame on me.



Saint Philibert of Jumièges pray for us!

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

First time serving

He is getting so big. It's easy to pay attention in mass with such a sweet little altar boy.








On our way to mass he got a bit of anxiety and told me he didn't think he could do it and it wouldn't be fun.  Then apparently he thought we were heading to another mass somewhere else. Once of we go there of course he was all smiles and looked so precious with he hands folded. Afterwards he told me he couldn't believe how much fun it was and was surprised he liked it so much. He wanted to know if he could serve again soon, I told him next week likely. Once we were home he asked if he could serve again tomorrow if we had time, and then the next day. So now we are negotiating mass ;)  How can you say no to that?

Happy feast of St. Bartholomew!

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

some fun earrings

I am so tickled at how these turned out. My kids designed the jewelry (color and bead order) and I put them together. This is just a few of the finished ones.


These were so much fun to work on. Yes, those bottom right ones are Miraculous Medals. We may have a few more surprises coming.


All these holy medals are (most are stamped) made in Italy, the beads are Czech glass imported for The Czech Republic and imported Swarovski Crystal from Austria. I will have imported Italian .925 Sterling silver fish hooks soon. These are just an alloy.


Padre Pio would not look right with pink or purple. Knox picked out green for him.


I used my Great Aunt Terri's old pearls I had left over from my cape I made for our Mary statue. 
I'll have some feast day stuff to catch up on one of these days. There have been so many great saints to celebrate lately.


Happy Coronation Day!
Hail Holy Queen enthroned above!

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Collecting insects at midnight...almost..

I have a child who is obsessed with insect collection. I think you could compare it to those people who play Pokemon Go...yes I think they are dumb, and I am unapologetic about my stance on video games. 



Anyway, he has well over 100 species in his collection which he started this past winter. You can start catching butterflies and other larger bugs in February and March, but there are tons in the leaf litter through the winter.

So August is apparently the month for BIG MOTHS. And I mean REALLY BIG ONES. While my husband was researching moths for Knox on the internet, he found out we just missed National Moth Week.  People have moth collection parties and stay up late and bait moths and collect and photograph them. That's just more confirmation that we are out during the right months collecting them.


Last night Brad and Knox went out with flashlights till 11 pm and caught huge moths. It was the night before the full moon. They had wonderful luck bringing in some big ones.



Tonight they set up a sheet, and it also was a full moon. So that being said, we didn't catch any! lol




There were actually quite a few insects clinging to the sheet, even crickets climbing up it. But the moths in general, were no where to be found. Even in the oak trees where they were so prolific last night seemed empty. The moon light from the FULL MOON has to do with it and how they react and travel. It's amazing what an impact that has on their life. Makes you wonder about moth conservation and lighting we use outdoors. Betcha never thought about them moths like that huh?


Next week hopefully we will have better luck.  I will keep you updated ;)

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

St. Roch's Fingers

St. Roch's Feast day is August 16th- remember the story of him and the dog and the bread?  I found a yummy little recipe to honor him involving lady's fingers and real custard.. little sketchy on the custard, but lady's fingers....how can you go wrong with that?


So you know real custard is made from egg yolks....right? 




So I do believe I made it right, it was sweet and I put brandy flavor in it, but I just couldn't eat it. So without telling the kids what I put into it, they tried it and about gagged too from the texture. I did whip it...oh well. 


So we substituted some instant pudding. I put about 4 lady's fingers in each cup. Then poured in the half set pudding and refrigerated them covered. That let the lady's fingers cakes absorb the liquid a bit and get soft. Add a whipped topping and a cherry. Normally I guess custard would sit over night and you would garnish the whipped cream with shaved chocolate too.



Finger licking-
much better!

St. Roch Ora Pro Nobis!

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Feasting lately?

We had a couple nice feast day celebrations this week already.
Homemade applesauce from the apples at grandma's and cookies from Poland and a drink from Italy.




We did our Polish saint, Maximilian Kolbe on Sunday afternoon. We feast day it up on Sunday's too, during the week it gets tricky with homeschooling, there isn't always the time for extras during the day.  We also prayed the St. Kolbe chaplet with the chaplets I made the kids last year.


Polish stew, because I can't think of another name for it, it's so so good.


Then Monday was the Feast of the Assumption, we made brownies and Blueberry crumbles! Blue is the Assumption theme color I hear...



The homemade crumbles are so sweet.


I used fresh blueberries I froze about 3 weeks ago. They tasted soo good. We made paradise punch and ate our brownies and blueberries for Mary's Assumption party before we ran out of the house to our CGS atrium to rearrange materials and furniture- which we found partially flooded..oh the luck. Good thing we weren't real late, we caught it early enough, the church shut the water off.  I couldn't find my Assumption centerpiece card I made last year, we all were wondering where it went. Hope you had a great start to your week!

Friday, August 12, 2016

Do a polish tea pary- get ready for St. Maximilian Kolbe now.

Okay, I am giving you a heads up. Now is the time to run to World Market or another grocery store, buy your imported cakes or cookies or candy. Whatever you can find from Poland. We are going to have a Polish tea party, okay? You have two days to prep...get going. Look at my old post for more ideas.


This is from World Market. They are called "HIT".


Made in Poland.


Also buy your Prince Polo wafers.  World Market didn't have the big packages like they did last year. They also weren't selling their black currant Quadratini wafers either...BOO!  We'll make due though. You also have the option of looking on Amazon. They have lots to choose from in their gourmet foods. And it's more convenient. 

Feasts of St. Lawrence and St. Clare

The church just celebrated to big saints, St. Lawrence on the 10th and St. Clare on the 11th. 
  The tradition for St. Lawrence goes that we eat something cold to honor him. I made huge 2 foot long sub sandwiches, which of course were gobbled up and had very little left over.  Genna's homework today was on St. Lawrence and she drew a picture of him on the gridiron. I wasn't expecting her to go that route- seems more like a thing her brother would do. But she really did a good job! lol I am sure St. Lawrence would approve.



That was her third sandwich. 

Then for the feast of St. Clare we celebrated by listening to our Glory Story about her and eating and Italian dinner of spaghetti and meat sauce and then a tea party cheese cake.


See the monstrance? It's okay to laugh! lol!  I put jam in the bottom of my cheesecakes. This year homemade triple berry jam I made back in July.


Of course an Italian drink.


We got our Monstrances out we designed last year and set them out. If you know St. Clare you know about the miracle. We might make new ones next year, they kids still enjoy these.



St. Lawrence and St. Clare pray for us!

St. Michael's Catholic School back to school pictures 2016

Can you believe it? We started school three weeks ago!  We were scheduled for 5 weeks ago, then I changed it to 4, but I felt so bad for the kids' summer being shortened, so three is where we landed. So that last week before schools started we took a stay-cation- I think that's the term.  We went to the zoo, water parks, YMCA climbing, Exploration Place, playgrounds, played with friends/ family, Mass, we did something every day of the week sometimes twice a day. We let our summer go out with a bang. Here's out back to school pictures.  


Genna in 2nd grade this year and Brenden- Preschool and maybe Kindergarten depending on how his speech therapy goes- poor guy hit the end of the hoe going down a slide...don't ask!


Knox in 3rd grade. His baptismal feast day was yesterday. 

Last night he had a real nightmare. He woke up last night in a cold sweat and his teeth and body tremoring, I could hear him in the hallway. I thought he was coughing sort of loud and went in to see him. He was wide eyed dazed looking and scared. He started weeping he had just finished a years worth of math and "then again tomorrow..said he couldn't tell me what was going on"- I was worried he was holding back a bad secret since he was so upset. 
I couldn't figure out if he was delirious from a fever or just waking up from a bad dream. But I suspected fever because of him being sweaty, even though he had none on the digital thermometer. I gave him Tylenol and tried to get more out of him on what was going on with his math assignments. He seemed coherent enough. Then he said, "I am going to throw up.", and he got up out of bed. He returned the Tylenol to the toilet but nothing else came up. I had him get in the shower for 15 minutes to wake up and to help regulate his body temp- I was still worried about a fever. He seemed okay and had no idea what he was saying to me but that his math was stupid and didn't make sense to him. (HE DIDN'T SEEM ASLEEP AT ALL)
 The next morning still no fever. BUT I asked him what in the world that math stuff was all about. He said, "Oh that was so weird, I dreamed I finished a whole math book and it took me all day long. It was a whole years worth of math. Then I was supposed to wake up the next day and do another years worth of math again and I got sick from it." Knox said he was so upset he wasn't allowed to do anything except math and it was hard and didn't understand it all but he felt trapped doing it. I am not sure who his teacher was.. I need to ask him that! lol
 SO, my poor kid had anxiety from a dream last night, enough to give him cold sweats and to throw up. Kids are so darn sensitive, I needed that to remind me to be careful and not burn them out on anything!
Oh and the only medicine he had been given was Claritin- cause we all have typical Kansas allergy problems right now. I read it can cause anxiousness, so that may have been a factor as well. 




bigger smiles!



Their schultutes had washi tape, playmobil, new holy cards, Genna got a large talc powder case and a puff, and Melissa and Doug books.  We skipped candy this year.


Knox had his Playmobil schultute boy.


Brenden can't do a normal picture for long. EVER.
  





Hope you have a great school year!  And if you haven't started yet, no worries, we all have our own timing and reasons for when we start. Don't compare yourself to others. My reasons and circumstances are different than yours.