Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It's all about food and family, and most importantly there is a heavy focus of pie. We weren't hosting a huge group this year so I only doubled (instead of quadrupling) the cranberry daiquiri recipe and made both the pies. Last year my grandmother finally consented to moving into a retirement community and has no regrets in the decision. There is a restaurant downstairs where she can dine with other residents and I think she can even have food sent up to her room. Everything about the community is so convenient for her, so convenient that she is reluctant to want to leave, even for holidays and special occasions. Her knee really troubles her so she would rather avoid stairs, and most of her family have homes that require a few steps up. As a result we are now a smaller party that can all sit at one table together.

I love how the pecan pie is all puffed up when you remove it from the oven.

Everyone can fit in the dining room this year. I set the table with the Moonlight Rose dishes and the french crystal goblets. Did I mention that we were burgled during our summer vacation? They stole our sterling silver that we received for our wedding, among other things. It was pretty sad setting the table this year without it. I filled in with a set of silverplate flatware that I inherited from one of my great grandmothers (and that they saw, but did not steal.)

I always use this collection of squirrel and quail place card holders and this year I found some pretty harvest themed place cards while Little Miss and I were out shopping. (And I remembered that I bought them AND where I put stored them!)

Deuce was a good helper while I et the table and was very complimentary of my work. He was inspired to make a centerpiece for our table: a turkey of legos. I love it! I think he is so creative.

He and the others also loved to help we dress up the Muffy and Hoppy dolls for the holidays.

Small victories

This is my first year homeschooling two of my children. Things are going well with my 3rd grade son who has special needs. Things are not going well with my 6th grade son who is mourning the loss of being at traditional school, refuses to participate, and is basically unschooling himself. Recently he has been trying out new recipes. Yesterday he used his dad’s fancy French cookbook to make pancakes. Today he used the same cookbook to make these blueberry scones. The recipe is ridiculous, he had to shred a stick of butter with the box grater. I would never have done that if a recipe called for that. But he did it all on his own; I only helped a bit when he was kneading it all together.

So while he won’t do much in the way of school work, I’m considering this a victory. 💕

A Mother Son tea party

One of Mr. W's co-workers has a son that was in Deuce's class at the old school and we became fast friends. I'm always posting photos of my tea travels and she mentioned at the company summer picnic that she would love to join me sometime and that her son might like it too. Of course I loved that idea! It took a while for us to get all coordinated and scheduled (she's getting another degree right now on top of working) but we finally had our tea.

The boys were so sweet and did a nice job or trying new foods and using their table manners. Their attention span waned pretty quickly though so she and I did our best to make it through the courses quickly.

Scones with lemon curd AND jam.

We had such a nice time. I need to plan of these types of mother son outings.

Martinmas Lantern Walk

I have posted before about how I discovered Martinmas in a book about old fashioned, Victorian holidays while I was living in NYC. Obviously I wanted to incorporate this into my domestic church after I had children. Interestingly 3 of the mothers in my online mommy group live in Germany right now due to work or deployments. I love hearing about the popular holidays that they and their July 2013 children get to celebrate while living there. Martinmas is one of those popularly celebrated holidays and their children have lantern walk celebrations at school. It is so nice to think about the universal church and doing an activity here that people are doing on another continent.

I used to just take flashlights with us on lantern walks if I even managed to get us outside. In recent years I have put together lanterns for the children. I use fancy jam jars, construction paper, used tissue paper, white glue, and wire. First I cut out the construction paper and tissue paper in strips that will fit around the circumference of the jar. (I could have taken a lot of time measuring out something that would fit perfectly, but I haven't done that. I just cut a straight strip knowing that I will have to trim off the edges on the bottom and that there will be some overlap where they fit together. We use these once a year in the dark so simple is good enough for me on these.) Next we use the glue in a thin layer on the outside of the glass jar and apply the colored tissue paper to it. Then I have them draw out some designs on the construction paper that either they or I will cut out. I try to recommend a cross for Jesus or an M for St. Martin.  We put glue on the back of the construction paper and apply it to the outside of the jar on top off the tissue paper. I use a rubber band or two to hold the paper in place until the glue dries completely. Lastly I pass them off to Mr. W and have him cut and wrap the wire around the top rim of the jam jar and form a little handle on top.

Last year I remember that the tea light candles kept blowing out during our lantern walk which totally frustrated the older kids. The reason why I put the paper on the outside of the glass was so that I could have an open flame on the inside. Anyway, this year I got smart and put battery operated tea-lights inside. That eliminated that complaint.

I suggested that we stop by one of T-Bone's friend's house on our walk to say hello, but he was mortified by that idea. When I said, why not, they are Catholic too?, he said, yes, but they aren't Catholic dorks.  I probably should have been offended by that, but I couldn't help but laugh. He has me totally pegged! :D

Mr. W opted to stay home and make a nice dinner for us instead of joining us on the lantern walk. Most sources suggest goose for Martinmas too, Cooking With the Saints has a recipe for duck, but we decided that a pork loin would be nice and seasonal. The Feast Day Cookbook has a recipe for cinnamon apples for St. Martin's Day so he made that as an accompaniment. The children's lanterns make a nice table decoration.

After dinner I read the book Snow on Martinmas to them. It mentions lantern walks in there too so I am not the only dork.  

Bunny time

The kids have been playing with the bunnies a ton recently. They used to just visit them in their hutch or play in the yard with them in a pen, but now every time I look it seems that someone has brought a rabbit inside. It is pretty cute.

They are even good companions during our homeschool day especially during reading time.

Little Miss has finally gotten comfortable picking up, carrying, or holding the bunnies on her lap. That first Easter when they received them from the Easter Bunny we had them sit cross legged on the floor and put each of their bunnies in each of their laps, but she could feel Elsa's nails through her clothes and has been spooked about holding them ever since. I'm proud of her for overcoming this fear.

T-Bone has long wanted to make movies when he grows up. Sometimes after school he will direct movies of the bunnies with his siblings acting out the voices. This is a shot from one of the 'sets.'

And speaking of homeschool, I use Scrabble as a tool for math, spelling, and vocabulary. I was never a strong speller so this was not a game I played or enjoyed as a child. I'm hoping to make it more positive for my children. And I have a habit of taking photos of the board so we can track our progress on the words we are able to come up with and use.

All Saints and All Souls Days

I posted about what they boys did as part of our new homeschool group for All Saints' Day, but we also decorated at home and had a nice dinner together. I have accumulated these saint statues since my childhood. Several were gifts I received for sacraments like First Communion. The Sacred Heart of Jesus I rescued from an acquaintance who was going to donate him. St. Patrick I found at a gift shop at the church we attended for Palm Sunday in Maui. The St. Anne I recently picked up at an antique store. I have been spending a lot of time lurking on Sancta Nomina and she has St. Anne as her blog's patroness so I was inspired to rescue the statuette and add it to my collection. I regret that I did not plant marigolds this year so I snipped a few chrysanthemums

Those two prayer cards in the back the boys won as prizes the day before from Stump The Priest.

At dinner T-Bone read aloud to us. We had The All Saints' Day Party by Jerry Windley-Daoust and Jackie's Special Hallowe'en by Brenda Castro. Little Miss has been enjoying reading this herself with her 1st grade reading skills. I'm Bernadette by Emily Ortega is also a good All Saints themed book, but we didn't have anyone at that reading level this year who hasn't already read it.

All Souls Day

I like to visit the cemeteries and bring white carnations, or whatever white flowers I can get my hands on at the grocery store that morning, on All Souls Day. My Grandmother has been helpful in showing me where to find our relatives and I like to think that maybe me following in my great grandmother's and grandmother's footsteps will be carried on by my children in the future. Time will tell; already the boys have no patience with this exercise. Haha.

It was a beautiful day today which made me too ambitious; I decided to go to 5 cemeteries. Little Miss seemed to enjoy the whole day, the boys were less than thrilled. I had to do some bribing with Dairy Queen that we happened to drive past on our way to the last cemetery. First we drove way out to Mt. Angel where my great grandmother's family lived. There are two cemeteries there. My great-great grandparents are at the modern one on the outskirts of town, as well as a few of my great-grandmother's siblings and their spouses. Since this was the first stop Deuce was respectful and into the care-taking, carefully cleaning moss off the graves.

Two of my great grandmother's brothers who died as children are buried at the old cemetery in town. Little Miss was very into having her photo taken AND making prayer hands or sorrowful faces.

On the way back towards the city I decided to stop at a cemetery in the Woodburn area where my great grandparents on a different side are interred in the big mausoleum. I don't know if real flowers are allowed in there or not, there only seem to be fake flowers in there. So I used the sink to clean the ones that were there, they were super spidery. ::shudder::

My great great aunt is also buried at this cemetery. The grounds have this very nice statue for the Civil War veterans.

Then we drove all the way back to town and stopped at the cemetery where most of my close relatives are buried. It was nice to see so many other families out visiting at their loved ones today, although that made for more witnesses of my sons running around like crazy after being in the car so long. Eventually they did come over to say a few prayers with us. Little Miss was a dedicated helper the whole time.

We could have gone home at this point. It would have been the prudent decision...but... I have been doing so much genealogy recently and have been discovering where the Catholic threads of my family tree originate that I really felt strongly about going to visit my great great grandmother whose family was French Canadian. Up until Little Miss was born and relatives were talking about her name, which happens to be a family name, but I did not know that until after the fact, I had no idea I had any French heritage. My aunt was mentioning how she always liked the name of this particular great grandmother of hers, I had never heard any stories about her since she passed long before I was born, and I agreed that it is a beautiful name. As a result I drove past the exit to our house and continued on to Vancouver to visit this new cemetery which has a quite a few family members.

Hallowe'en and All Saints' Day costumes

My hair is naturally red and now that I am in my 40s it is slowly beginning to turn. I wasn't sure when it would actually happen for me because virtually no women in my family wear their natural hair color. I am planning on going grey naturally, I have zero interest in coloring my hair because I am too lazy to keep up with the maintenance that would entail. Therefore I need to do all the red-headed characters for the next few years of Hallowe'ens while I still can.

We decided to begin with Fred and Wilma Flintstone. Mr. W loves Hallowe'en and loves costumes. He had been thinking about growing back his mustache for the winter so his beard grow out made for the perfect Fred 5 o'clock shadow. I already had leftover black felt and and white fleece from the Olaf costume I made a few years ago. I bought new orange fleece, turquoise felt, and some white cotton to be split between the Wilma costume and a saint costume. (However it was SO thin that I ended up supplementing with the fleece for the skirt and wearing a white tank top as a camisole under the one sleeved dress.) I did not use a pattern for this and there was A LOT of trail and error in sewing the Wilma dress. My ripper was well used. I used a shirt as a template for the top and tried to add pleats to the skirt to give a bit of the bubble effect. I also added a couple darts in the top once I had it all sewn together. Sewing the top and bottom together was also difficult trying to find my waistline on myself in the mirror, but eventually it all came together well enough to be worn under a coat while chaperoning trick-or-treaters. The Fred costume was much easier to sew together since it doesn't need to be figure flattering and fleece doesn't need to be hemmed. I did sew all the black spots on, rather than hot glueing, so he could wash this costume and use it again if he wanted. Mr. W really liked this costume and I think he was much warmer than I was.



Here is a closer look at the necklace (expert photography by tween.) I used the same technique as the top search result for Wilma costume. I bought styrofoam balls, rolled out white, air drying modeling clay, and wrapped the balls with it. Then I speared them with bamboo skewers until they dried over night. I originally wanted to use kitchen twine for a rustic look, but It was too difficult to force through the holes so I switched to curling ribbon instead. It was still a challenge to fit through, but eventually worked.



Fortunately the children never committed to any costume in advance so we ended up reusing or buying new store bought costumes. They settled on a donkey, Charzard, and a peacock (our spring break trip to Victoria has inspired our whole year apparently!)



One thing that I was sad about Deuce missing by not being in a traditional school this year was the 3rd grade saint project. When my oldest participated they did a report on a saint of their choosing, made a shield with 4 different facts about their saint, create a costume, and wear them to the All Saints' Day school Mass. Such a sweet tradition. I was very happy to learn that the homeschool group we joined had something similar for every student. This parish had the added fun of playing Stump The Priest at the fellowship party following the Mass. Who wouldn't want to stump a priest so the boys decided to pick less obvious saints. When T-Bone was a 3rd grader he had done his report on St. Theodore of Amasea who, as a demoted saint more popular in the Eastern church, seemed to be capable of stumping a priest. We still had the costume of this soldier saint so T-Bone just had to review what he had learned 3 years ago to compose his 3 clues.

I would have wanted Deuce to do a report on his patron saint, but he is among the most popular and would be so easy to guess. Instead he looked through the box of Patron Saint Flashcards he received as a First Communion gift. He settled on St. John the XXIII. Can I just say there are a lot more components to this saint costume than the humble, brown robe I would have been making? I bought the white cotton for the cassock and a red shiny poly blend for the capelet. I knew I could reuse the fancy cloth we bought for the chalice of the First Communion banner for the stole so I bought some gold fringe and red, fabric covered buttons. I just looked up cassock to make sure I was using the term correctly and learned that the pope's capelet is actually called a mozetta. You learn a new thing every day. I used another shirt as a templet for the white robe and made it quite long so the hem could be let down if needed. More trial and error occurred while working on the mozetta. What eventually worked was folding the fabric in quarters in order to cut out a big circle. I attached a little collar, but ended up just hand sewing on the buttons without making button holes on the joining side because I was running out of time. The yarmulke was a souvenir from my ex-boyfriend's dad's second wedding. I imagine a future pope hat is not what they had in mind when they gave them out. haha.



The homeschool group is part of a parish we do not regularly attend. They are Dominicans and it is very traditional, they still use the communion rail and receive on the tongue. Check out their chancel lamp!



As the daughter of a stained glass artisan I always check out leaded windows and every window in this church had a dalmation dog in it. I imagine that must be an attribute of St. Dominic, but I'm going to save that teachable moment for religion class next week. It was a very nice Mass and I really appreciated what the priest had to say during his homily. My mother joined us and the boys were relieved that they weren't the only children dressed up. After Mass the priest saw Deuce in his costume, bowed to him and greeted him as "Your Holiness."

Stump The Priest was very fun. So many cute and creative costumes and the two priests playing did a good job of playing along with the children whose costumes were more easily guessed. There were a couple of Maronite families in the group who were dressed as saints popular in the Maronite tradition and they definitely stumped the priest. It was pretty funny. At one point the priest said that if anyone wanted to gift them a book on Maronite saints that they would gladly accept it so they could study up for next year. Our boys did pretty well. St. Theodore of Amasea stumped both priests.


When St. John the XXIII walked onto the stage the first priest again greeted him with "Your Holiness" and kissed his ring. He thought he was either a John or a Paul, but not a John Paul. In the end St. John XXII stumped one priest, but not the other. He was a little disappointed, but I think they were proud of themselves.




These are the clues they used:

St. Theodore of Amasea

• I lived in the 3^rd century in Asia Minor and died a martyr in 306 AD
• I was a young Roman soldier
• I wouldn’t worship pagan gods and set fire to the temple of Cybele

St. John XXIII

• I lived in Italy from 1881 to 1963
• I wrote several socially important encyclicals like Pacem in Terris
• I wanted a “New Pentecost,” a new out pouring of the Holy Spirit

Pumpkins, cider, and poetry

The Freddy's had a huge display of season treats including pumpkin donuts from Franz bakery. I could not resist that kind of temptation and, therefore, decided to have another Poetry Tea. I bought a jug of fresh apple cider to round it all out.

We had cheese, crackers, pretzels, and salami to accompany the pumpkin donuts.  I asked the boys to bring down their Shel Silverstein books; each has received one from us on their 7th birthday. I had some Mother Goose verse out for Little Miss to read aloud from too.

This poem about perseverance from The Children's Book of Virtues edited by W.J. Bennett spoke to me. Homeschooling is a significant challenge.

The best part about this is that the kids really like reading these silly poems aloud. The books were still on the table tonight from yesterday's tea and the boys were still taking turns reading aloud.