Lent and it's sputtering start in our home

 Lent started the week after we had a week off of school and sputtered through the following week.  It was a tough start, as it always is, here, but it began perfectly for my William.  He made his first Confession on Tuesday, February 9.  So excited for May and his First Communion!

 Ash Wednesday was the next day, and James very grudgingly got ashes placed on his head, and Lucy was just totally unsure about the whole thing.  (Yes, I am one of the distracted mommies in church who takes a selfie in Mass).  I found that my ashes stayed quite long this year, just like my mom's used to do.  I never understood how she did that.  I still don't know the secret. 

We have been doing stations of the Cross at home, and we have been trying to get the kids more focused on them.  I have wanted to make the little votive candle holders with the stations on them, but I haven't been able to get my act together enough to prepare for that.  So I tried to just put out some little candles, just to see how the kids would do with the candles.  (It's hard to tell, but there are 14 candles)  I really wanted the mood of the candles, but the kids needed to read the station book, so we didn't manage it as much as I'd like.  But the snuffing and the flip chart are a great tool to get them involved.  We used the stations booklet from my sister Jenn's blog.  I need to make a better copy so we all can have one, and William had a box with props for each station.  All in all, except for the occasional fights over who's turn it was to snuff, and how hard it is to share the books, I think it went okay.

 Our favorite Father Juan had a holy hour for children (I called it for kids, and Patrick was indignant. "I'm not a kid" so I clarified.  "Kids and pre-teens.") and I just love the joy and love of Jesus that he reflects in all that he does, and the sweetness of the time with Jesus.  My favorite was the 3x we days, "Jesus, I want to be a saint." 

I have not put out the beans, as I forgot, but there are still 4 (!!) more weeks of Lent left.  Our newest priest, Father Noah, came to our home the weekend before Lent.  I hope he had a nice time, and I think James hugged him a total of 10 times while he was here.  Father was an eagle scout and we hope he will keep up in spending time with our scouts.  We played a version of Clue, and I don't think the noise of our family of 5 kids was too much, as he is coming from a family of 8 kids!