I'm taking a break from planning an All Saints' Day party that I'm hosting this Sunday, Nov. 1 with some of our homeschool families to update the blog on some of the Fall fun we've had in the past few weeks.

On Thursday, October 22, (St. John Paul II's feast day) some of our homeschool families met at Hubb's Corn Maze, which is about an hour and a half away from where we live.  This has become an annual tradition and it was so nice that my husband could join in on the fun.  It was a beautiful, fun day!


On Friday, October 23, we celebrated my son's 14th birthday with a camp out in our backyard with a few of his friends.  After playing football and soccer in the backyard, they roasted hot dogs, grilled cheeseburgers and made S'mores in our firepit. And here's the cake my son insisted I make.  I didn't complain about the simplicity of his request compared to the other cakes I've made in the past and  this gets the easiest cake I've "made" award.  :)

Since our backyard campsite was already set up for my son's Friday night camp out, my husband and 2 of my daughters camped out in our backyard on Saturday night.  They enjoyed this special time with their Dad.

If celebrating a birthday and camping out wasn't festive enough, we also celebrated and enjoyed meeting the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia from Nashville, TN that came to visit our parish from Friday, Oct. 23-25.  My family met the two visiting nuns on Friday morning after morning Mass and then my oldest daughter and I were able to chat with them again on Saturday and Sunday as they chatted with the youth and their families about their life and vocation.  It was so wonderful to meet them and be in their presence.  They are so joyful and peaceful and I was really drawn to them.  I could have chatted with them for hours! :)


One of the many questions they answered was about their habit and the significance and beautiful symbolism of each part of the their habit.  Here's a video I took of Sister Peter Marie explaining the Dominican habit:  (I'm having trouble uploading the video to this blog post, but click on the link below to my blog's Facebook page where I have the video)

https://www.facebook.com/tracy.b.smith.14/videos/10206637346630398/

Recently at TAN Homeschool, I was a guest blogger where I wrote a post about some ways our family lives our Catholic faith during our homeschool days.

"I hesitate to write posts regarding our family’s prayer life.  It’s not that I’m ashamed of our Catholic faith or that I don’t want to share the richness and beauty of our faith with others.  Rather, I would not want to make the impression that my family’s prayer life (and my personal prayer life) is as consistent and steadfast as my blog post may portray.
However, I thought I would share 5 ways our family strives to live our faith during our homeschool days in hopes to encourage, support and inspire other families in their faith journeys."..... Read more on my post titled 5 Ways We Live Our Faith.

 Hoping your week is a blessed one!