The Other Things Are Still Happening!

Linking up with This Ain't the Lyceum for another round of 7 Quick Takes!

Some of you know it's been quite the week, but there have been other stuff going on in our lives. Promise.

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We celebrated a belated Feast of Pope St. John Paul II last Friday with dirt and worms! 

I learned that the only candy my kids agree on are gummy worms. I can roll with that.

I also made some for my Endow group. I make the grown ups have liturgical fun too.

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This little monkey has zero interest in walking, but an insatiable thirst for climbing.

Finding her under the cart is becoming a regular occurrence. 

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As is this.

Obviously, it is easier to climb over every single pot and pan than it is to go around the corner.

Babies!

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We have been in full swing Halloween prep time for a while, but things are coming together now!

I almost always carve my jack o' lanterns with a moon and stars.

Because I'm not trying to win any contests. 

But it's pretty, no?

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I thought about getting a better picture, but I kind of like photo bombing wand in the front there. He's got spunk.

One of the successful Potter DIY's...WANDS! 

These are made out of paper, hot glue, and lots of metallic spray paint.

They also had glow in the dark spray paint at the store, but I resisted.

But how awesome would that be though?!

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You might have noticed there have not been homeschool preschool updates for a bit. 

(Or not, that's fine too.)

We are on our halfway point vacation!

This is one of my curriculum policies. We steam ahead trying out different approaches on a curriculum until we find our groove. Once we reach about halfway, we have normally found the groove and a break will not be too detrimental to getting back on track.

Halfway is about how long I would give a little kid program to work. If it was not going well, this is the time I would use to find something else. 

But it's going fine, so this is Halloween fun time instead!

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Reminder, time change this Sunday! Don't let this be you!

Credit: Catholic Memes

It is really sad to be ready to sing awesome songs on Sunday....

....and then look out at a very sparse church.

Because they couldn't be trusted to notice things like Daylight Savings Time ending.

Don't make your church ladies sad!

Comfort in the Communion of Saints

Linking up with Blessed Is She and #BISsisterhood this morning to talk about Communion of Saints.

We're approaching two of my favorite feasts in the church year: All Saints and All Souls (November 1st and 2nd, respectively). 

All Souls is our feast for the dead. This is the day to visit the cemetery, add pictures and mementos to your home altar, and light all the candles!   It is the day we remember those who have passed on, but might not be in heaven just yet. 

All Saints is for everyone who has the joy of heaven! It serves as a catch all for those souls in heaven the Church has not managed to canonize. 

Perhaps one of my favorite church teachings is that of the communion of saints. It means that all souls are still connected, even after death. Those in purgatory still need our love and care, and those in heaven are able to know and love us here on earth. We never stop being family to each other.

We have an obligation to care for each other, even after death. I try to remember this by praying for the most forgotten soul in purgatory. The one who has no one to pray for them, who may have been forgotten for centuries or millennia. That is the one I want to help.

Saints no longer need our prayers to help them in their purification for heaven, but they can help us here on earth. Saints are capable of loving in a way we have forgotten. 

This year is bittersweet now that we have our own saint in heaven. Catholics know that we become saints, and not angels, when we die and are in heaven, and innocent children always go to heaven. Mary Bernadette exists now in perfect form. She may have died a very tiny infant, but she is now in her full soul form.

Through the communion of saints, my daughter and I can know each other. We will not physically touch until the end, but we can meet each other in prayer. She can intercede for me. I like to think she has a bit of a soft spot for her mom.

In this communion, we are never fully separated from each other and we get a glimpse of that closeness we were made to exist within. All of this hard work on earth is meant to have the final goal of getting back to that place of perfect communion with God and each other.

That's a goal I can get behind.

A Catholic Grief

Our family has gone through some very tough moments since October 19, 2015. That is the day we gained a very little saint in heaven.

We named her Mary Bernadette, even though there is no way to know for sure her gender. I like to think she is the official patron saint of the Hoberg family.

It is an odd thing to mourn someone you have never seen face to face. There are no pictures, no momentos, no favorite objects to cling to.

Instead, I've found pictures of her patrons, St. Bernadette and Our Lady of Guadalupe, and placed them on our family altar in her honor.

This is a particularly raw time in which to experience a miscarriage. October is the national month for pregnancy and infant loss, and November is the month Catholics remember the dead. Nothing like the rest of the world hitting you over the head with reminders for remembering how much this hurts.

I generally do not feel helped by national months/days for categories I represent. It feels like, because we have designed a time to talk and feel about this issue, everyone is off the hook the rest of the year.

But I don't get a day off. It's my every moment.

I'm not at a place yet where I can write things like "what to do to help your friend going through miscarriage". I don't know what I'll need tomorrow and I barely know what I need today.
All I really want to do is pray, and all I really need to your prayers right now.

Our little family is hurting right now, but we're doing our best to incorporate our little saint into our lives.
We will be a having a Blessing for the Parents of Miscarried Children, and evening prayer from the Office of the Dead. We will be adding her to our family altar, which I always build in remembrance of our dead loved ones during the month of November.

If you are currently experiencing a miscarriage, I would love to hear from you. If nothing else, we can pray for each other.

Other bloggers have been able to write far more on this topic. Mandi at A Blog About Miscarriage is amazingly thorough, loving, and real in her writing. Her resource lists are worth linking to in of themselves.

Fall Celebrations, Rosaries, and Crafty Crafting

Linking up with This Ain't the Lyceum for another round of 7 Quick Takes!

We have a had a very busy week/weekend! Since we are approaching the middle of John's preschool homeschool with 26 Letters to Heaven, we are taking a little break. It's a good thing too because we needed some time to do crafting to get ready for Harry Potter party!

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We went to the parish Fall Festival last Saturday! This was our first time attending post-wedding, so first time with kids. Like many things in life, it's a lot more fun with kids.

This is a game where you shoot a little boat with a water run and race to get it to the other side of the gutter faster than the next guy. Surprisingly fun.

John got his first face painting. He picked out the pumpkin image himself, but he was pretty suspicious of this process.

Check out that side eye.

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We also love our ecumenical relations in this neck of the woods. Check out the festival spirit shirt.

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We also had rosary making that evening!

You know what is a good idea to do BEFORE an hour or two before the event starts? Make sure you actually have rosary supplies.

I had nothing besides tools and string. I don't know what happened there.

We made an emergency Joann's run, and the event was saved!

Evidence that I ordered a LOT of new supplies. They got here yesterday. Sorry y'all.

For the interested, we did mediocre at trivia and did not succeed in securing the table with good light, so no rosary making at the bar. But someday...

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John played his first Monopoly game and it was pretty funny. "Gotta hold on to your monies."

When paying rent to Matt: "Con-GRA-tulations Dada!" 

The guy who has taken a vow of poverty beat us all though. 

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And it's prep for Harry Potter time! I made these pipe cleaner Happy Potter glasses just for fun to kill time on a no-nap afternoon, but John REALLY liked them. Might just make a few for the littles on Halloween. I don't know if I can size it up enough for an adult size.

I put together the sorting hat! This is precisely the reason I will go through the trouble of picking up stuff let by the side of the road. So many fun scraps of fabric!

Me and the hot glue gun are good friends now. This week, we'll include some spray paint in this party.

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Today on the left, late August on the right. I work on it at least an hour every day. Oh dear.

I am making progress on the enormously complicated Christmas stocking! Hopefully, I can get it done by Christmas. There is still a lot of work to do.

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Our bonus questions for Link-tober Fest on 7 Quick Takes is to add our most popular 7 Quick Takes post. Since this is only my tenth, ever, with only 59 views, it's....

7 Things That Make My Life Easier

And, for fun, my least popular, with 24 views is....

Friday Update!

Which is not at all surprising. It was clearly not a good titling morning for me.

The Way: Love and Truth are Besties

Linking up with Blessed Is She and #BISsisterhood to talk about The Way.

I went to my first big Theology on Tap event last night.

For those who have not heard of ToT, this is an event that was started to quite literally bring the Gospel to where the young people are: the bar. There is a speaker who will be talking about a particular point of theology or aspect of Catholicism, followed by Q & A, in the middle of this perfectly normal bar.

It's pretty great.

Last night's event was with Dr. Mary Davenport, our only NFP doctor in the entire SF Bay Area, talking about "coping with your fertility". She had her work cut out for her: trying to explain how we got here, historically, and all of the copious methods of NFP and artificial birth control in relation to church teaching.

Then a medical assistant stood up as the first question. She works in an OB/GYN office and sometimes has to walk patients through how to use artificial birth control. She wanted to know if what she was doing was morally wrong.

It was simultaneously heart rending for both of them. They both knew the answer, but the choice was in how to give hope. How to give this woman stuck in a difficult position some sort of grace and support in getting out of a moral trap.

Reading Aquinas' Summa showed me that a lot of theology is very logical, and can be arrived via human reasoning. But I still desperately need Jesus' example to show me how to show love to someone who is hurting and struggling.

Because our struggles are not always logical, it takes more than being a skilled apologeticist to explain church teaching. It takes walking in Jesus' way and seeing the person beneath the surface who needs you to see her and hear her.

Doing that cannot ever take away from the truth in theology, and we do noone any favors by taking away a moral center.

I appreciated Dr. Davenport's response that both heard the questioner's concern and her underlying worries: can I still work in this job? Can I be a medical assistant at all? Is there hope for me?

Responding in love and truth is Jesus's way, THE Way. It's hard, and I fail at it a lot. But it's the only way worth walking.

A Catholic Halloween Trio

I have read a bunch of blogger's posts about what they do for Halloween, All Saints, and All Souls, but they are almost always AFTER those days have happened. And I tend to forget before the next year. So I decided to write up my plans now so these ideas are fresh for anyone who wants to give them a shot!

I decided after my first Halloween in college that kid Halloween is the better Halloween.
Candy, costumes (the non-Playboy variety), and doing things just for fun. The kids got the better deal.

I figure other people about my age might feel that way too, and they might not have little kids of their own as a built in excuse for participating in kid Halloween.

Enter, the Catholic young adult Halloween party!

I theme it, decorate like mad, whip up a lot of food that is of the "looks cool but is secretly simple" variety, and invite ALL of the Catholic young adults I can find.
It's a hoot.

This year it's a Harry Potter party!

I've been reading aloud the first book to 3 year old John as a special mom and John only thing. I thought he wasn't listening too much, but some of the storylines have worked their way into his playing lately. (And the nerd time begins...)

He got to pick his costume yesterday (at the Dollar Tree). Behold Sir John!

I'm not sure if we're going to call him one of the enchanted suits of armor or make him into one of the ghosts.

Therese is going to be Dobby. As in the house elf. She is going to be a baby house elf! I'm saving that cuteness for the post-Halloween version of this post.

The extra creative fun part comes in for all of the days post-Halloween: All Saints and All Souls.
And John is finally old enough for my awesome ideas to go into effect!

On All Saints, you get to keep wearing your costume, but now you have been transformed into a saint!

John will probably be St. George, but we might find someone more obscure for funsies. Therese will probably be a beggar girl of some sort.

The highlight of All Saints is All Saints Dinner. I try to make a dish that reflects each of the individual saints. The fun part is the kids get to wear their costumes to dinner but (as much as age possible) they have to be in character. So if you are Roman, prepare for the pig Latin!

On All Souls the costumes get put into their "grave" (aka. the box I will hide at the top of the closet until the next rainy day) and we get ready to remember our dead.

I try to go to the local Catholic cemetery, even though we don't personally know anyone there. I make a red construction paper heart and we write down the names of everyone we know who has died. Our family altar will morph into a memorial altar with the paper hearts, I buy extra large white votive candles to try and keep burning whenever we are home during the month of November.

This year, there is a neighborhood Dia de los Muertos celebration just down the street from us, so we might participate in that. That involves a candle light procession and collaborative memorial altar. That obviously won't be distinctly Catholic, but it's about a pseudo-Catholic of a celebration that I can ever hope to happen in Berkeley.


So what are you doing to celebrate the trifecta of mid-fall holidays?

Ships, Slides, and Rosaries! - 7QT

Linking up with This Ain't the Lyceum for another round of 7 Quick Takes!

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This is John looking very deep in thought. This is what he did before roaring at the pigeons. 

We went to the very last day of SF Fleet Week on Monday. They only had ship tours going that day, but that's all I really wanted to do with the little kids any way.

We saw this ship.

HMCS Calgary

She's Canadian, and had to miss the Sunday tours because it was Canadian Thanksgiving. Thank goodness we came on Monday. 

Everyone was very friendly, and John was only a little bit terrified of the diving gear and big guys in uniforms. 

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Monday was also cool because we got our friend David, known as David the Jesuit to come with us!

Therese is a little groupie.

 He is a seminarian and fellow Texan, so we're obviously friends.

Thanks for hanging out with us! I feel like it should count towards priestly training to experience a day with littles. Maybe some penance.

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Matt has been taking an evening bike repair class on Tuesdays. The kids are pretty fine with it until we are eating dinner. Then there is BIG concern about where Daddy might be.

When he does come home, it's a little like the world was crashing but now it's all better because DADDY'S HOME!

Lots of props to Matt for getting right down to baths and bedtime stories. I think they like it.

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Giant spoons are not nearly as fun as squishing food with your fingers.

I have been trying to do a little more cooking with John. He seems to be a more adventurous eater if he can help make it. This week we made chocolate chip granola bars as our fun one.

Always remember to grease the pan! Syrupy sugary foods will become like concrete in the fridge.

I did figure out we could fix it by placing the pan in a hot water bath for small time increments until the spatula could start to lift the bars up.

Look at the delilicious! Totally worth it.

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John went down the giant concrete slide for the very first time! 

I really didn't think he was going to do it by himself, but I didn't say anything about it. I went down first, holding Therese, and John had been behind me. When I looked up, and he was getting ready, I just grabbed the camera. 

You slide down sitting on a piece of cardboard. People normally leave a few there so it's easy enough to go even without planning ahead. But John is small, and he slid off the cardboard just after this photo was taken. Perhaps that was a good thing because that made him slow down for the fast part.

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Our very first batch of rosaries ready for shipping!

October is the Month of the Holy Rosary, and our young adult group is celebrating by making rosaries for the Sisters of the Eleventh Hour. They bring the rosaries to prisons in the US and Mexico.

This is also one of the cheapest ministries ever! We get our supplies through Our Lady's Rosary Makers for roughly $10, including shipping, for every 50 rosaries.

Trust me, get the knotting tool. It makes it so much easier!

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And it makes total sense to follow up making rosaries with trivia at the bar! 

If you don't know this by now, I'm a super nerd and trivia is my idea of a fun evening.

We really are going to make as many rosaries as possible and then go to trivia. 

Might continue making rosaries at the bar.

How great would it be if we got these hipsters making rosaries because they like crafting?!

UPDATE!

Apparently, I'm supposed to answer“Who is your favorite blogger that you discovered through Quick Takes?”

This is why you should always read the instructions.

Well I discovered 7 Quick Takes via Kendra at Catholic All Year. I'm pretty sure I found My Domestic Monastery via 7QT.

Though I would say I mostly continue to follow people I found through links on other blogs. Mostly because I tend to click on people with a pretty graphic or catchy title. 

On God's Time, But That Guy's Got a Sense of Humor

Linking up with Blessed Is She and #BISsisterhood, to talk about God's timing.

Our oldest child was born 9 1/2 months after our wedding. We get a lot of questions about if he was a "honeymoon baby", and subtle (along with not so subtle) inquiries about if he was an "oops".

Short answer is: not really and no. We had decided to "try to whatever" (TTW) for that cycle. We had no strong reasons to wait, but were not actively trying to conceive either.

It had occurred to me that having a baby at that point, my senior year of college and while I was writing my thesis and working as a TA and an Admissions Coordinator, might present some challenges. Not so much on not being able to do the work, that was fun at that point, but on being a pregnant woman at a school that tended to ignore the realities of reproduction.

My whole first trimester, I was a TA for Introduction to Women's Studies. You know, the class where we talk about women's issues all day all the time. I could not bring myself to tell anyone in that class for a while. When I finally did, they didn't believe me.

According to these women, pregnancy was hard, and scary, and potentially life threatening as a matter of course. I could not possibly be pregnant if I had been showing up for class, not sick constantly, and looking even more healthy than normal.

It was a hard, but enlightening discussion. A conversation that wouldn't have occurred if we had waited the more typical 2-5 years after the wedding to be open to conceiving. 

Reality finally set in for them when I came back for the last semester showing considerably more than in the Fall, but it continued to be an uphill battle to be seen as a capable person.

I'm not sure I would have had the courage to go through a pregnancy then if I had known the fight I was in for, but God knew. That guy knew the consequences of placing someone who challenged so many assumptions right smack in the middle of that class. 

I was there on purpose. I continue to be where I am on purpose - it's just not solely my purpose. And that's a good thing. It's how God keeps me from whimping out. He gets me.

Tourists Our Own Backyard: Alcatraz Night Tour

We have had quite the adventurous weekend! Here's the update on our adventures in being tourists in our own backyard. It helps when your backyard is already a tourist attraction.

All of the picture credit for this post goes to my friend Katie. She actually brought a camera that doesn't also make phone calls.

We live in an area that people travel from all over the world to visit. Part of the perks of living here is getting to do those touristy things whenever we get the hankering. 

Our friends, Erin and Alex, had gotten tickets as a birthday present a while back, and it was time to put those to good use! Three of the five group members had never been to Alcatraz before, and no one had taken the night tour.

Before getting on the boat to the island, there are mandatory photographs with an Alcatraz background. We made one with a real Alcatraz background.

 On the night tour, the ferry boat takes a slightly different route and goes the long way around the island. It means you can see more of it that is too dangerous to approach on land.

Like this area where you are almost certain to get Tetanus. 

 It's also entirely worth it for the sunset viewed from the bay.

The island has gone through a lot in it's history, and most of it has left marks that persist. During the 1970s there was an American Indian occupation of the island. Graffiti from that time is still found on the dock and on the water tower.

Once off the boat, you begin the night tour with the same audio tour visitors during the day experience. The English version is special because it is narrated by former guards and prisoners of Alcatraz from it's time as a federal prison.

Most of the cells are missing some of the standard issue furniture that would have been present when it was functional. Things like beds, sheets, cups, etc. But some are still maintained to give you an idea of what the cell might have looked like in the 1960s.

One of our special talks on the night tour was a demonstration of cell door opening. The roar of all of the doors sliding open, and the silence following, were haunting.

Matt demonstrating the listen and walk of the audio tour in front of one of the isolation rooms.

 It was an unusually warm night, but it can get very cold out on Alcatraz. If you plan to try this, we strongly suggest bringing a fleece jacket. That's the real reason so many people by San Francisco sweatshirts.

What it looks like to see San Francisco from the rock. According to the guides, when the wind is right, you can hear the sounds of the city (cars honking, people talking) from Alcatraz.

 The real perk of doing the night tour is getting to see areas that are not normally open.

For our tour, the main specially opened area was the Hospital.

Some of the famous inmates, like "Birdman", spent more of their time in this area than their cell.

Operating Room

 The last boat left at 9:25pm. Matt took pity on my history loving soul and took the earlier boat back to relieve the babysitter (I think he loves me!)

We might have had a little fun waiting for the boat. 

I saw this before catching the boat over. Cool, it's a model. But when we came back it had LIGHTS! It even has a moving light in the lighthouse, just like on Alcatraz. Now I'm impressed.

If you do get the chance to see Alcatraz while you are visiting San Francisco, make sure to reserve the tickets far in advance of your trip! Even for day tour, but especially for night tour. We had to make these reservations (October) in July.

But it's popular because it's really cool, and so far my favorite touristy thing in the city.

Sightings of Mr. Bad Attitude

Linking up with This Ain't the Lyceum for another round of 7 Quick Takes!

It's roughly mid-term time in this here college town. I always know it's here by sightings of a beast I like to call "Mr. Bad Attitude".
Mr. Bad Attitude has many distinctive behaviors.

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He can be found obsessively washing 5+ loads of laundry in the apartment wash room. 

Yes, he does need ALL of the machines. 

No, he can't possibly hold off on one load.

2

He finds all unexpected noises irritating, but especially the laughter of kids. This creature has been known to slam his window in a huff with the not-so-whispered swearing just to drive the point home.

3 

One would think this means the creature is holed up in his den studying, but this is contradicted by the theme songs of all of the Netflix binging. This is ascertained by the clear sound coming through the walls.

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Occasional sightings occur in daylight, but these are sad sights. He is normally looking a little lost, and clutching a large coffee and maybe an energy drink. He appears unsure if he meant to go to class, sleep, or cry.

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Sometimes he can be found in the beer aisle at Safeway on a vain search to find the beer he loved on study abroad when he made straight A's! You refrain from commenting. Very very much effort is expended to refrain from commenting.

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You begin to suspect this is like male PMS. Maybe it just needs the right food? Maybe you can make cookies and leave them outside his home!

But then you worry he might be gluten free. And maybe sugar isn't the thing to give for this particular ailment anyway.

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Then the glorious day comes when all is silent on the western front. Exams have been taken! Rejoice and be glad!

The happy happy day is announced by the early morning scuffling of packing and the slamming of doors in the rush to catch the airport shuttle. 

That day is today my friends. Raise your coffee mugs to all those who have survived their scrape with Mr. Bad Attitude! 

He'll be around again, but for now I can let the kids play as loud as they want and do laundry without any of it getting put, badly, on top of the machine. Freedom is here!

Living Faith: It's Gotta Be Shared

Linking up with Blessed Is She and #BISsisterhood to talk about Living Faith.

Like most other people, I go through ups and downs of faith. I also have periods where particular aspects of the faith are more appealing than others.

When my husband was traveling, I got really into the Liturgy of the Hours - like really into it. It felt like if I clung to this structured communal prayer of the Church, then I could rely on their strength to get me through the hard parts of the days and nights.

In that time, the part of my faith that was about joining with others in prayer was alive and well.

However, I didn't let anyone see me. I didn't share this expression of faith with the little ones occupied for ten minutes with water and beans in various containers.

Now, I am going to say that I think it is important to do some of your prayer alone. Some things are very intimate like that. But what I was doing was making ALL of my prayer alone.

So I decided to change that.
I brought a bin of quiet (until the 3 year old gets them anyway) toys into my room, and let the kids pray around me while I said the office.

The first two times, John spent a lot of time trying to distract me: playing with my hair, tickling my feet, trying to turn the pages in the book.

But by the third time, they both got quiet during the chanting parts.

By the fifth time, John was trying to match the tones - shyly and quietly off to the side.

By the sixth time, John starting bringing a little book of his own and kneeling down with me (not actually a prayer book, but hey, effort!)

I was listening to him play while I changed the baby the next morning, and John was carrying on a conversation with his stuffed animals that went like this, "First we gotta go into mama's room. It's the CHURCH room. It's where we sing our Jesus songs. Because I love you sooooo much!"

Even though we have been working on learning the prayers, celebrating the liturgical year, and reading bible stories most of his life, what made John really grasp the faith I am trying to pass down was inviting him into MY faith. Into MY prayer.

It's not enough to make "kid-friendly" versions of faith and prayer. What kids really need is to be invited into the living faith of adults. If we are to have any hope of passing down the beauty and richness of the Catholic faith, we must be willing to be role models of adult faith.

It's perfectly fine to have saint crafts and kid level bible stories, just also make sure to let the kids see the faithful adults we are meant to be.

Ice Investigations and Invading Insects: Letter I Week!

This is an ongoing series on our homeschool preschool adventures. You can read more about what curriculum we're doing and why here:

What Little Kids Think About Homeschooling

Doing this "letter of the week" type curriculum has led me to REALLY notice how uncommon certain letters are in the English language. I is sneaky. It's a vowel, so it appears often, but is still uncommon as a beginning letter. Therefore our week really centered around ice and insects.

This was one of those weeks where I went off book a lot.

Take, for example, our illustrated letter I. I've decided to save each of the letter sheets and make an alphabet wall in the kid's room (will update with a picture later!) That really only works with making the letter out of, relatively, long lasting objects. Most of the recommendations for I were making the letter out of ice or icing - not really going to work on my wall.

Instead, I had John cut out "ice cubes" out of blue construction paper and glue those onto our traced letters.
I have zero pictures of this because I took the opportunity for longer preschooler activity to make dinner. Sorry, dinner wins.

I have been following the youtube channel What's Up Moms for a while now. One mom made a video back in the summer about ice activities with kids. I decided to try out ice painting!

Each cube is between 1/3 and 1/2 paint and the rest water.

I used some paints I found on the side of the road. Yea college town!

Remembering to put toothpicks in the cubes halfway frozen would make this a lot easier. I just had John wear some latex gloves and he got a solid lesson in what it is to hold something frozen!

I made a black ice paint. That was stupid. John liked to cover all of the colors with black, but I got this picture before he finished his plan of color annihilation. 

Once we finished with the week, it occurred that many of those Frozen (movie) themed activities and food that have flooded Pinterest would be super applicable for this week. Oh well.

We did lots of insect hunts! We found an Insect eyewitness book at the library as a kind of kid field guide, and John carried it with him all over the neighborhood.

Finding the multiple colonies of flying ants was not my favorite part of the week, but John LOVED it.

That is not spilled rice. Nope, nope, nope.

We did learn about the difference between arachnids and insects. John was very interested in the builder insects: bees, ants, etc. 

There is a farmers market on the next block from us once a week, and there is a honey booth. Being Berkeley, the beekeeper brings empty hives, different honeycombs, beeswax blocks, and beekeeper equipment with him to show to curious little kids. John was fascinated by the honeycomb that was somehow made into these perfect little shapes by the mouths of bees. 

There were not too many I books on the list, but John did like Inch by Inch by Leo Lionni.

A bug that is also a measuring tool? John was sold.

Catch the previous installments of this series:

7 THINGS THAT HAPPENED THE FIRST WEEK OF PRESCHOOL HOMESCHOOL

HOMESCHOOL PRESCHOOL: LETTERS B AND C

PRESCHOOL HOMESCHOOL: LETTERS D AND E

YOSEMITE!

PRESCHOOL HOMESCHOOL: LETTERS G AND H