March for Life

What a fantastic day!!  We had a bus from our parish join in the March for Life in D.C.  We are only a couple of hours away so it's a very easy day trip.  Of course we were a little concerned yesterday when they were predicting 10 inches of snow and freezing cold temperatures.  What were we thinking??!!  It turned out to be a bright, beautiful day.  We hardly noticed that it was only 11 degrees outside.

We had 4 Little Flowers join us this year and they were troopers!!  I'm really going to encourage more of the moms to bring their daughters next year.  My littlest is only 8 and she had no problem.  It would be great if they could march with our church group carrying their Little Flowers banner.  It's so good for them to see all the youth just filled with LIFE!!!  I love that my daughters are being taught from an early age that we need to protect LIFE and that every single life is precious.  

I'm still flying high, but totally exhausted.  It's time for bed.

Orderliness/Organization - Wreath III

Feels like I haven't been to a Little Flowers meeting forever!!  My girls and I missed our December meeting due to travel and then we had our Christmas party.  Our main January meeting had to be postponed due to a pipe bursting in our social hall.

This seemed like the perfect virtue for January.  How many of us make a resolution in the new year to get organized?  Well perhaps our meeting, along with some of the activities will help to get some of the girls and moms motivated to keep those resolutions.

I'm not sure why I struggled with this virtue.  Perhaps my mind was still spinning from Christmas.  What's so wonderful is that I was able to fall back to the workbook.  We focused on working on some of the activities.  I've never heard a mom complain about getting some of the activities completed during the meeting.  It's always nice to get a jump start on getting them completed.

We started by having the girls all tell me about their Christmas vacation - ALL AT ONE TIME!!!  No order whatsoever.  It was loud and of course, no order.  We learned fast that it is important to have some orderliness at our meetings.

To work on our first activity, we talked about how God presented us with the first opportunity to see order, Creation.  I talked about how God had a plan and He had a purposed for putting each day in a certain order.  Then we talked about what would happen if God had decided to just mix things up.  It just wouldn't work that way!

Using the Leader's Manual, I encouraged the moms to make sure that they didn't just expect their daughters to know what goes on in their heads.  Explain why we always hang up our keys.  How it keeps things running smooth and we don't run around like crazy women in the morning looking for them.  Of course, if we do happen to lose our keys, we can always ask St. Zita to help us find them as she is the patron saint of lost keys.  We can use this handy little prayer, "Zita, Zita, help me please.  Help me to find my missing keys" (Sorry, I can't remember where I found like).

Then we talked about two women who really knew something about being organized.  The first being St. Zita.  The second is the Proverbs 31 woman.  I gave the girls a little background info on how it was a mom telling her son about the kind of woman he should find.  I can take absolutely no credit for this part of the lesson.  I found a wonderful guide which I borrowed.  I cut out the bible verse and used the one from my Catholic Bible but otherwise it was very helpful in breaking down the different virtues that the woman should have. You can find the guide here.  We talked about how Little Flowers is helping them to develop all those wonderful virtues.

Lastly for our activity, I had the girls make hot cocoa cones.  This was so perfect!!!  The girls had to layer the ingredients in order.  We also passed out the ingredients in an orderly fashion.  Just a warning if you decide to do this activity.  I totally lucked out finding the plastic cones to layer them in.  There were some clearanced right after Christmas at Michael's.  At first I couldn't find them and I was a little panicked thinking of a craft that I could do.  Then at the last moment, they appeared!!  I got this idea from the Catholic Missionary Family.  The post was a few years old so maybe Hobby Lobby no longer carries the cones she used.  Ours definitely didn't look as nice, but it got the job done.

Here are the instructions.

- Each girl received 4 packets of hot cocoa mix, a small cup with 1/4 cup of mini chocolate chips and a cup of mini marshmallows. 

- Empty the hot cocoa mix into a snack size baggie and then stick down in the cone bag.

- Dump the mini chocolate chips in and then layer it with the marshmallows.  Add a twisty to close it and you are done!!

I typed out a little card with the instructions that Catholic Missionary Family had posted.  It reads, "Heat 5 cups of milk and chocolate chips over medium heat until the chocolate chips have melted. Reduce heat to low and stir in the cocoa mix until the drink is smooth. Serve with marshmallows. Makes 4-6 servings."

With the cold weather that is headed our way, I know the girls are going to be enjoying their creations right away!!

Lots of Notes of Cheer!

Things have been rough at our church over the last couple of weeks.  A pipe burst in our social hall and the water just poured in for hours before it was discovered.  There was a whole lot of damage.  We will not be able to use it to hold classes or meetings for at least 3 months. 

Needless to say, my mood has been down as we sort through the damage and plan how to fit religious education classes into the church.  As usual though, God is so good to me.  I got a few bits of mail that just really lifted my spirits.  I was so excited to be able to take them to our Little Flowers meeting.

We received a wonderful thank you note from the hospital that we sent the get well cards to back in the Fall.  We also received a nice thank card from the maternity home babies that the girls made blankets for at our December meeting.

Now, saving the best for last!!!  We received a response from the Vatican from our Christmas card!!  This was so exciting.  The holy card is so beautiful. 

God knows how to lift my spirits and keep me moving forward.  The girls asked me who got to keep the holy card.  I said that I would hang it in my office.  It will be a great reminder of His love.