A Slice of Smith Life: 7 Quick Takes: Confirmation, War Room, Our Lady of Sorrows, Co-Op, Sunflower Cupcakes, 4H

7 Quick Takes: Confirmation, War Room, Our Lady of Sorrows, Co-Op, Sunflower Cupcakes, 4H

Another quick week has gone by jammed packed with blessings, tantrums, family, sibling rivalry, memories, fun, and dirty diapers.

Take a peek of what our week has been like with another edition of 7 Quick Takes hosted by Kelly at This Ain't the Lyceum and I also linked up to "My Week in Review" with Home to 4 Kiddos and Every Bed of Roses.

Our oldest daughter was confirmed this past Saturday, Sept. 12th! She, along with about 60 other high schoolers, received the Sacrament of Confirmation after preparing for the special day for 2 years. It was a beautiful mass and celebration! Our dear friend was my daughter's sponsor and we were blessed to have both my parents and in my in-laws attend the mass too.

War Room the movie! Have you seen it yet? No? Then you must! Last Saturday, my husband and I saw it and we loved it! We laughed, we cried, we teared up, we enjoyed it! It is a beautiful story of how prayer is the weapon that will get you through any battle! Chris over at Campfires and Cleats has a wonderful review of this movie when she was lucky enough to preview it before it came out in theaters. Her great review was one of the reasons I was convinced this was worth the ticket price!

On September 15th each year, the Catholic Church remembers the 7 sorrows of our Blessed Mother with Our Lady of Sorrows feast day. These 7 occasions brought Mary so much pain and suffering as she lovingly cared for Jesus, but she always trusted in God's will and never complained. Mary's 7 sorrows are:

The Prophecy of Simeon. (Luke 2:34–35)
The Flight into Egypt. (Matthew 2:13)
The loss of the child Jesus in the Temple. (Luke 2:43–45)
Mary meets Jesus on the way to Calvary.
Jesus dies on the cross. (John 19:25)
The piercing of the side of Jesus, and Mary's receiving the body of Jesus in her arms. (Matthew 27:57–59)
The body of Jesus is placed in the tomb. (John 19:40–42)

Kendra at Catholic All Year came up with a fun children's activity to meditate on these 7 sorrows. It was a free printable and the instructions were to have each child eat 7 sour candies (I bought Lemonheads) while the scripture verses were read. We did this in our Co-op group this past Tuesday and then again at home after dinner. I hope to make this another liturgical tradition and add it to my A Slice of Liturgical Life page.

About 8 of our Catholic homeschooling families in our area meet once a week for Classically Catholic Memory (CCM) co-op. Last week was a review week and it was a great day! The weather was beautiful and perfect so we were able to take the youngest class out to play some relay races on the beach to learn the 9 different phyla of the animal kingdom, review games, student presentations, prayer, pledge, singing our poetry memory work (Thanks Elaine!) , dissecting earthworms, grammar and IEW writing. It was a blessing!

Today my 4 older children met for their bi-monthly 4H meeting. Currently they are learning more about gardening and they planted barley in the pots that they painted during last meeting. It is a great group if kids and the moms volunteering their time are doing such great work! I am so grateful for my mom friends who are leading this program! Thank you J.A. and M.P.!

Today was my turn to bring snacks for the 4H meeting. My 11 year old daughter loves surfing Pinterest to find creative ideas so I like to give her Pinterest "assignments". I told her it was our turn to bring snacks and I asked if she would find some garden themed snacks. So she found these grape caterpillar snacks and these sunflower cupcakes. Perfect! They were a hit and really easy to do! I made my homemade chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese icing and then used mini oreos and a can of yellow and green frosting with the tips included to make the sunflowers and leaves.

It's really late so I better sign off, but before I do, I wanted to mention that on Saturday night, Sept. 19th, Dr. Peter Kreeft, THE Dr. Peter Kreeft, will be speaking at my parish and I can't wait to go listen to him with my husband and my 2 oldest children. He will speaking on "Catholicism and Culture: How Catholics are conforming to American culture instead of conforming the culture to God." I can't think of a better subject to present and we are looking forward to hearing him speak on this important topic!

Have a blessed weekend!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love your post.
Those sunflower cupcakes are GREAT!!!
Blessings.
Em

September 18, 2015 at 9:26 AM

Branson said...

I have heard such great things about War Room! And I LOVE those cupcakes! They turned out great! :) Would love to have you come link up with the #ParentTeacherMeetUp as well! :) http://branson365.blogspot.com/2015/09/merrill-homeschool-parentteachermeetup.html

September 22, 2015 at 11:46 AM