This past weekend, my 10 year old daughter and 13 year old son had an out of town soccer tournament with their travel soccer teams. Due to a schedule conflict, I was not able to watch the tournament and stayed home with my 14 year old daughter and 19 month old daughter.  But, my husband went with our other 3 children to the tournament.

My 10 year old and 13 year old also each play on local recreation soccer teams.  My oldest daughter, age 14, also plays soccer on the homeschool soccer team and her team plays against private and Christian schools in our area.  So this Spring means soccer, soccer and more soccer!  Practices Monday, Wednesday, Thursday evenings.  Games during the week with the homeschool soccer league and on the weekend locally and out of town for my other 2 soccer players.   

Is your head spinning?  Yep, so is mine!? 

So when we aren't praying, eating, sleeping, or homeschooling, chances are my kids are kicking a soccer ball somewhere and enjoying every minute of it! I'm just so grateful for a super involved hubby and great mom friends who help get everyone to the right practice and game at the right time! 

I thought I would share a fun video and some pictures of our soccer "stars" for this post.  My real life is consumed with soccer so I thought blog life would get a "kick" out of this soccer post (pun intended) ;-)

This is a video my husband took this past Saturday night and this is what you could call getting creative with entertainment.  While the parents are heard in the background trying to figure out a place to go eat for dinner with a big crowd some of my children and other players and siblings thought it would be fun to try to get the cars driving by to beep their horns.  As seen on the video, the kids got very excited when a car actually did beep.  My husband said this entertained everyone for at least 20 minutes when parents frantically searched and called around for a place to eat dinner.  


Here is my 10 year old daughter's team resting in between games and then a (dark) group shot when they came in 2nd for their age group in the tournament!  Go Hurricanes!  My daughter is kneeling in the front middle.


Very proud of my soccer "stars"!  They work hard and have fun with their teammates while enjoying the exercise! 

If I'm not in blog land, chances are I'm on a soccer field trying to watch a game while also running after my 19 month old as she tries to dart onto the fields!  :)

PS: Today, March 9, is the feast day of Saint Dominic Savio!  When we read about him this morning during our Couch Catechism time, my kids were reminded again how young he was when he died...just 15!

Enjoy this beautiful graphic and information of Saint Dominic Savio created for you by SaintNook, where the Saints are always online!   You can follow the Saints online too at the SaintNook Facebook page by "Liking" the page! 


Hope your week is blessed!

Last Friday on February 27, some of our homeschool families met for our annual breadmaking afternooon in preparation for our annual St. Joseph feast day celebration that we have each year on or around St. Joseph's feast day (March 19).

We've been making the bread for many years now and have celebrated St. Joseph's feast day with an altar, food and fellowship for over 10 years now with our homeschool group! 

Each family brings homemade bread dough and then the kids shape the bread into various creations.  Some popular shapes are fish, crosses, ferns, a staff to represent St. Joseph's staff, pretzel shapes, monstrance, braids, crowns, and the spelling of "St. Joseph." We then bake it and freeze the bread to then set out the decorative breads on the St. Joseph altar that we have a few weeks following our breadmaking afternoon.

The annual St. Joseph feast day celebration is usually on a Sunday afternoon closest to March 19 so all the Dads in our homeschool group can attend this special and joyous celebration.


I blogged about our breadmaking tradition in 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014.

For a history of St. Joseph's feast day and St. Joseph altars, be sure to read my post HERE that tells all about it, including black and white photos of when my Dad was a little boy and how he celebrated St. Joseph's feast day with very elaborate and decorative altars.


Here are some pictures of this year's fun and tradition...

It's been a week since I lasted posted on my blog here with my 7 ways to bury the "ALLELUIA", which by the way is still not too late to do :)

Some of the reasons I have not updated my corner of blog land can be explained by this edition of
7 Quick Takes hosted by Kelly at This Ain't the Lyceum.  This past week can be summarized nicely by the 3 "S's": Snow, Swimming, and Sickness!

Our family has gradually added new Lenten traditions since my oldest was born over 14 years ago and it is fascinating to me to learn how other families celebrate the Church's liturgical calendar and seasons.   I get so many ideas and so much inspiration from reading how other bloggers and friends walk through the Lenten season. 

On my last post about how our family celebrated Fat Tuesday and started Lent on Ash Wednesday, I commented that I would like to start a new Lenten tradition of "burying" the "ALLELUIA".  This tradition is a tangible way to remind our families that the "ALLELUIA" is not sung at Mass in the Catholic Church during Lent.  Why is that?  Go HERE for a brief explanation.

Martianne at Training Happy Hearts left a comment on my post with how she buries her "ALLELUIAs" and she encouraged me and said that it wasn't too late to get those ALLELUIAs buried! 

So this week's 7 Quick Takes hosted by Kelly at This Ain't The Lyceum is 7 Ways to "bury" the "ALLELUIA" in case this tradition is new to you and you want to start it this year.  Lent has begun, but it's not too late to start this tradition!

In this post HERE I blogged about our 2015 plans for Fat Tuesday and Ash Wednesday.  I wasn't able to do all the "plans" because today was a bit hectic, as most days!

Last night on Fat Tuesday we had a little Mardi Gras celebration with dear friends and for dinner we had pancakes, bacon and fruit.  Then for dessert we had a (fat) homemade King Cake for Fat Tuesday.

Here's some pictures of our little celebration and our feast before the Lenten fast.

The King Cake came out rather large and the purple, yellow and green sprinkles are there, they are just hard to see. But, it still was oh so delicious!  The recipe that I used for the King Cake can be found on my post HERE. 


My oldest Cupcake found the baby in a piece of the King Cake, which supposedly means that she will have to make the King Cake for next Mardi Gras!  This is the same King Cake we made to celebrate the Epiphany in January.

Today we went to Ash Wednesday service at noon (the noon service had scripture readings and songs, but not the Eucharist, hence the name "service").  We decided not to attend the morning Mass (that had the Eucharist) because we wanted to meet my husband at the lunch time service and receive ashes as a family.  My husband was actually asked to be one of the distributors of the ashes since they were short on volunteers.   I loved that my children were able to see their Dad take part in this special Lenten practice.

We made our salt dough crown of thorns that I blogged about HERE with the easy recipe and got our bean jar ready for more opportunities to make sacrifices.  I printed out the Crown of Thorns Printable from Catholic Icing to add to our crown of thorns and bean jar traditions.


One tradition that I would like to start at the beginning of Lent is the burying of the Alleluia and I like Nicole's ideas at Children of the Church of the wooden ALLELUIA letters in the box.  And Catholic Icing has this post about burying the Alleluia.  Maybe I'll start this tradition tomorrow!?!  Better late than never right? :)

Tonight my husband and I sat down to read from The Magnificat Lenten Companion together.  These short devotions are doable and I hope we can read from it each day together.


I have to share this photo that my 10 year old daughter took in the car with my husband's iPhone on Ash Wednesday evening.  This sunset was captured on their way to basketball practice. My husband texted this beauty to me and all I could say was WOW!   

May you have many "WOW!" moments as you embark on your Lenten journey!



Have a blessed Lent!