Celebrating St. George's feast day

We had a lot of fun celebrating a name day on April 23rd.  Do you celebrate name days??  The first time I started celebrating name days was last year with George.  This year I wanted to make it bit more special and also teach George more about the Saint to build up a special devotion to his patron saint whom he is named after.

He was given the name George after his grand dad (Sony's father).  It is also his great grandfather's name. Last year we bought a small statue of St. George slaying the dragon so that George can pray to him everyday.  One of the coolest things about the story of this Saint is that he slayed a dragon (whether it's a legend or not) unlike the many other Saints we have heard about.  I think as a child this is what fascinates George the most.

I decided to make a dragon cake this year to celebrate the feast day inspired by Charlotte.  I never thought the cake would turn out like it was pictured here in the one hour time frame I had.  We had our couples prayer group that day and I was finishing up the cake right before everyone came.  We were also celebrating one of George's friends birthday at the prayer group so the cake served two purposes and due to that reason I wanted to make sure the cake turned out right.  All I could do was just pray that it turns out good and the Lord answered my prayers.  What do you think?

I had also taken this book called Saint George and the Dragon from the library and it started off like this: 

 In the days when monsters and giants and fairy folk lived in England, a noble knight was riding across a plain.  He wore heavy armor and carried an ancient silver shield marked with a red cross. 

What an awesome book!! George and I loved it.  The pictures were just amazing.  I never knew a book like this existed.  Thanks to other moms who blog and share the information so that myself and other moms could enjoy it with our children. We celebrated the feast day and the birthday with our couples prayer group. There are 6-7 young families that are in the prayer group.  They all joined in for the celebration.  I wanted to get some cocktail swords but couldn't get them on time.  So we just used normal knives and they kids had such a blast.  We specially prayed to St. George to give us the strength and courage to withstand the temptations from devil. 

St. George - Pray for us

Backyard Picnic

I had such a great time with my little George and Anna last week doing a backyard picnic. The weather was just incredibly beautiful.  I made some meatballs and hot dogs for lunch and got everything ready in the backyard.

He took that basket and put it on her head lol

I have had few backyard picnics with George but this was the first time I had it with both of them.  I just purely enjoyed this time with them.  To have one child is great but to have two children is amazing and I don't even know how beautiful it will be when you have 3, 4, 5 etc I can only imagine.

I enjoyed seeing them enjoy the time with each other.   I love it when George starts talking to her and she looks at him with her bright eyes and with her mouth open wide smiling at cheta...  I love seeing them together sharing and caring, loving and hugging, sometimes even fighting for my attention haha

feeding each other

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eating apples

I read them books and just listened to them and watched them enjoy their childhood days together. How blessed am I to be their mother and nourish them and love them through the graces that God has given specially to a mother!  Soon it was too hot to stay out and I had to take them inside.  I hope I will be able to do many more picnics with them this summer.  

Good Friday - A different style

All these years Good Friday was a day that I reflected upon the passion of our Lord, go through the stations of the cross, attend church, and watch the movie Passion of Christ or a Jesus Movie.  This year it was very different.  It was not just me or my husband but I had to in some way or the other explain what Good Friday meant to my little guy George.  How much can a 3 year old understand?  I looked up online and came across this beautiful idea that was shared at Catholic Icing   It was so last minute and thankfully I already had most of the items at home.  

Lacy at Catholic Icing had already given the bible verses to be read as you go through each item.  Very helpful.  I had dad take the lead in reading the bible passages and sharing the story with our George.  It was just amazing to see how daddy was telling the stories and how George was paying attention.  

Love their expressions

His favorite part was washing his hands in the water which resembles Pilate washing off his hands.  

Half way through our lunch my brother and one of our friends also joined us.  They had just gotten back from doing the way of the cross by walking few miles all the way to our church.  

It was absolutely worth putting in all the effort to make all these items.  Sometimes we may think why do we need to put in so much effort to make a  little 3 year old understand these things.  But after you finish doing all this and seeing the joy in our children's eyes make it all worth it.  More than that just knowing that we are really building up true strong Christians who get to learn about their faith from such a small age itself is satisfying.  How much money and time we spend for our children in buying toys or taking them to places!  It is good to have those fun things but it is necessary and very important to incorporate our faith into the lives of our little children whom God has entrusted in our human hands.  We parents are their primary educators.  No teacher or school can replace that responsibility. 

Spring Walk and Lenten Journey

Yesterday the weather was just beautiful and for the first time this Spring we all went for a walk.  Anna had so much fun.  This is the first time she is being outside without a car seat.  She enjoyed everything but she couldn't take the sun light hitting her face.  I have never taken her outside for a walk since she was born.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts I was able to do a few Lenten activities with George this Lent. I had made a Jesus tree for George to go through the life of Jesus up until his resurrection.  We were not able to do this every day since I was not able to make the ornament for each bible story.  We are slowly catching up.  I wish I had more time in my hand so that I could make these ornaments all together.  It takes a lot of time to cut up all the small pieces of felt and to glue it together.  I hope to find some time to finish it all this weekend so that I don't have to stay up so late in the night to make this. 

It was fun filling up the bean basket with George. After doing it for few days he himself started reminding me about putting bean in the basket.  He will tell me how he was such a good boy today and he wants to add more bean to the basket. If we were to take the bean out each time he misbehaved I don't think there will be any bean left in the basket....haha  But I do have to say that he is starting to become a really good big brother and big help to mamma.  He will bring me diaper when I am changing Anna, he is slowly learning how to clean up his toys even though it is very very hard for him lol.  He helps me with unloading the dishwasher, he will tell me when Anna wakes up or if I leave her with him in the bouncer for little bit he will watch her.  The other day she was crying in the car seat and he went and sang her his favorite song "your grace is enough" and she stopped crying.  How sweet!! 

We were not able to follow through the Lenten Calendar I made.  We did it for the first few days and then I couldn't keep up with it.   Hope to make better use of it next year!

As far as my Lenten journey,  I am trying my best to be faithful with everything I gave up this Lent.  I am also trying to read some books and I hope to finish My sisters The saints before Easter .  I started reading this last week and I highly recommend it to all women out there.  

Offer it up..

I wake up most of the mornings with a long list of things to do and with certain decisions and desires.  I want to be extremely patient and loving to kids.  I want to get a lot of my work done which means waking up early morning before the kids, cleaning the house, doing laundry, taking kids out to the library, go to mass, read lots of books for the kids, make sure that my picky eater George eats very well, do my prayers, catching up on reading the book I am trying to finish for over a month now, find time to prepare for home schooling and actually find time to teach George, nurse and feed the baby, try to engage George in something fun so that he wont bother the baby's sleep, check my email and the list keeps going.....

If all of these things I mentioned above goes according to my plan I am a happy and content mom and at the end of the day I can look back and say I was successful.  Here is a little peek at my day this morning:

We all woke up with daddy today at 6:00 am.  I would like for the baby to sleep for another hour but when George wakes up she will hear him since they both sleep in the same bed with us.  I was happy that we all got up together and the kids will get to see off Sony when he leaves to work by 6:30 am.  I tried to put another layer on George since it is very cold downstairs but he didn't want to wear it.  I got little upset with him and the next thing you know George is screaming and crying.  Well what to do, so I carry George along with Anna and bring them both down to the kitchen, put the baby in the high chair and had George sit at the kitchen table.  He kept crying.  I made waffles during this time.  I had already made the waffle mix last night so it was quick. By this time I am so irritated and upset that George is still crying. Finally I carry him (which I should have done long ago) and consoled him, gave him few hugs and kisses and he was slowly getting better.

After brushing George's teeth, and putting the baby to sleep I  was able to do a little bit of homeschooling today which is about Alphabet Fun from the Little Saints Preschool Program.  We started with a prayer, read books, sang few songs, did some art work (which he initially didn't want to do).  By then the baby woke up and I wanted to take them to the library today for some story time.  I got both of them and myself ready, put the baby in the car seat, got my diaper bag ready and I go to get the van keys and its not there.  It is 9:15 am and I need to make it to the library by at least 9:45 so that I can get the tickets to join the story time.  By this time George is already outside the door.  Anna is in the car seat.  I looked in the closet, upstairs in the room, kitchen table, my bag, my parents room and I cannot find it.  Baby is starting to cry in the car seat. I took the baby from the car seat and kept searching for the key with her.  George is getting frustrated  and he is outside which worries me.  I call my parents who is in Michigan with  my sister to check where they put the keys because they are the ones who used the van last time.  They don't have the keys with them.  By this time believe me I have lost all my patience and I am angry really really ANGRY.

I told George that we cannot go today and he gets upset and wont come inside the house.  The baby is so tired by now and she is starting to get fussy.  This makes me even more irritated and angry. For once we are early and on time to go to the library and I cannot find the keys. I got George inside and he knows I am upset but he continues to say that he wants to go.  It is almost 10:00 am and story time begins at 10:15 am.  I gave up my hopes by that time.  I know even if I go I wont get tickets.  I am forcing myself to pray so that I wont go crazy at my two very needy and irritated kids.  At this point I just thought of looking one last time through all the coat pockets in our closet.  And guess what I found the keys in my mom's coat pocket which I thought she had taken to Michigan with her at 10:00 am.

We quickly got inside the van and thank God even though we got there right before the story time we got the tickets because not many people showed up today.  After the story time George wanted to go visit his friend who lives around the block and I said we will go if they are home but when I called them they had gone outside.  Now this is very hard for a 3 year old to understand right.  George is so upset that he cant go play with his friend so decided not to come outside the van when we got home.  The baby was so tired I did not have time to make him understand or to force him out of the van so I left him in there.  I came inside the house with so much frustration and anger and worried about him sitting in the van by himself.  Anyways,  I quickly gave the baby something to eat and kept going back outside to check upon him.  Finally after 10-15 minutes he came inside crying and upset.

It was 11:15 am and I had barely made it through the morning.  I look at how my day is going and did it go according to my plan?  Was I patient and loving?  Did I do everything I wanted to do?  Most of the times the answer might be NO.  I am angry, frustrated, tired, sad but the question is was I able to submit all this to the Lord and say Jesus it is not my way but yours, it is not my plan, but yours, it is not my will, but your will. When I was driving to the library after I found my keys I was looking back at that 40 minutes of searching for the key.  The Lord really wanted to see how patient I was and how much loving and gentle I could be to the kids even at that moment of frustration and anger.  How easy it is for us to say that we are so loving and patient when everything goes well, but Lord wants us to be patient and loving and take care of our children and do our motherly duties when we are going through these hard times.  This is the time to offer it up to the Lord and say here I am Lord show me your way.

Even though my day was frustrated and tiring and I couldn't do most of the things I wanted to accomplish today I look back at it and thank God for the beautiful things we were able to do today.  I was able to feed the children, got time to home school, took them to the story time which was so much fun filled with songs, stories and puppet shows with other children.  We got to eat Alphabet soup and Mac and cheese for lunch which George and Anna loved.  They were so happy and are sleeping peacefully now which is why I can write this post.  The Lord knows that we need the purification for our souls and it is through these little frustrations that we can grow closer to the Lord by offering it up happily to the Lord.

"Nothing, how little so ever it be, if it is suffered for God's sake, can pass without merit in the sight of God."  (From Thomas Kempis)