Epiphany 2018

In Catholic countries, Epiphany is often a bigger celebration than is Christmas--because it celebrates the manifestation of baby Jesus' divinity to the world--and that is when the children even receive their gifts (instead of on Dec. 25). Our Epiphany certainly wasn't bigger than Christmas, but it did cover three days of fun.

We attended our first Epiphany party at CCE on Friday.

Our children acting out the three wise men finding baby Jesus

A procession to the nativity

That night, Chris and the older children attended the blessing of holy water, salt, and chalk, followed by a high Latin Mass of the Vigil of Epiphany (click here for the newspaper article).

On Saturday morning (Epiphany itself), we gave the children religious gifts from their Auntie E----.

Then we attended a lovely Epiphany party which offered something like five authentic kings' cakes from various countries!

The girls decided right before going to the party that they wanted to sing a duet of We Three Kings at the event, so they practice in the back of the van on the drive over. I don't know where these sweet children get their desire and ability to perform, but I know it's not from their mother.

The gracious hosts even sent us home with two whole pizzas that were leftover, so I didn't have to cook dinner that night. In the evening, we took our children to Pike's (where we hadn't visited in years) for old-fashioned ice creams. So fun!

Late that night and the following morning, our family completed its annual project of creating Epiphany house blessing kits for our parish. Chris takes ten gallons of water, and much salt and chalk, to be blessed, then he and the children divided it all up into little kits with attached instructions. My contribution to the whole affair is keeping the younger set of tots out of their hair while they work.

Making Epiphany house blessing kits

Sunday brought more celebration, with kings' cakes served after Mass, a baptism, and a cookout over the bonfire at a friends' home.

Grand fun was had by all, and now the school week awaits us . . . although there is more Special happening there too, the story to be told on my next Seven Quick Takes!

7 Quick Takes Friday

1. Epiphany Blessing

We finally got to doing our own Epiphany blessing at the house, although still in plenty of time, given that we were still in the Third Week after Epiphany. (Note to self: start planning, as Lent begins in four weeks!)

2. Anniversary

Chris and the kids returned from the March for Life on Saturday, and I had no meal plan for the week or groceries in the house: thus began our 11th wedding anniversary! It kind of reflects our blessed but busy, zany life at this season. We ended up getting take-out dinner for ourselves (and served frozen pizza to the kids!), then ate the chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert that Chris had sent to me.

3. Sewing Classes

This week, Mary began a series of sewing classes, which we arranged and her grandfather paid for as a Christmas gift. Week 1 was Machine Familiarity. I very much wish I could join her as a mother-daughter thing, but this works because Daddy can take her and he can work on the cell phone and laptop from the car. If I went and left the other four children with him, he couldn't work at all.

Coincidentally, I read an article called "Is it Still Important to Teach Children to Sew?" this week.

4. Morning Prayer Time

We've been attempting to do some morning spiritual reading and prayer for several years now, as I try to inculcate this habit in children that should be a lifetime habit of all Catholic adults. (I've been in the practice since about 2011, and the children began in 2014--read here--and I wrote about their progress one year later here.)

Mary and Margaret in their bunks doing morning spiritual reading, prayer, and writing in their journals

Now it is early 2017 and I made a few adjustments this week, which I hope will help. I still wake up early and exercise, which usually means turning on a babyish cartoon for my two early birds who are one and four years old. If an older child wanders downstairs, he or she is immediately sucked into the TV trash and doesn't do the holy reading or prayer time. The morning starts to slip away. Or I force the holy reading and prayer, and the child is resentful because of missing "Barney" (?!).

I consulted with a mom who has instilled this habit in her large brood for more than a decade. She knew the problem and immediately knew her solution: she moved her children's holy reading time to their beds before they even come downstairs!

So, the new plan:

• I printed out instruction sheets made individual for each child and taped them by their beds. 
• I moved their spiritual books onto their beds. 
• For the 8- and 10-year-olds, I gave them each a blank journal in which to write anything--even just one phrase--documenting anything they got out of prayer that morning, or that they felt God was communicating to them.

One week in, and the new system is showing good fruits. Sometimes I go to wake the children and discover they're already quietly awake and doing their reading or prayer. They're spending this time without complaint now, they're not as distracted by TV or eating cereal, and they accomplish one of their most important goals before even coming downstairs for the day.

The only "problem" we had was on the first day when one particularly enthusiastic child spent an hour in this pursuit, too much time in prayer and too much time writing in a journal about God for this child's station in life. There was nagging and a missed breakfast, plus a late start to school! Later that night we had a gentle talk about having to fit in this worthy pursuits to more like 15-30 minutes, or the child could choose to wake up earlier, but that breakfast is at 7:30 and school is at 8:00. After that, it went more smoothly!

5. "Why Latin?" Class

On Wednesday night, I took John and Mary to a Mass, dinner, and lecture entitled, "Why Latin in the Liturgy?" by Fr. Jason Barone. It is so rare that I go out for evening events, so it was emotionally refreshing to get out, but by 7:30 I was wishing I were getting ready for bed, and it was a couple more hours before I could get home.

6. Mama's Birthday

If you missed it, you may read about my wonderful fortieth birthday by clicking here.

7. Miscellaneous

John had a baby tooth that was fused to the bone and not going anywhere extracted this week. All went well and he was sore only for about a day.

Recess: Eating lunch outdoors in 70-degree weather while reading "Ask" magazine

Belated birthday gift: Joseph's first Nerf gun from Grandpa!

For more 7 Quick Takes Friday, check out This Ain't the Lyceum.

7 Quick Takes: The New Year

1. Going Public

If you're not friends with me on Facebook, you probably missed our big announcement! I am expecting Baby Lauer #6 in August, and the children are so excited to be getting a new sibling. Discussions of boy versus girl and name choices have commenced among them.

Now you can go back and read all the blog posts for the last six weeks and imagine the descriptive words "and I was exhausted to the bone and wanted to vomit every moment" embedded in everything I wrote. (I know you won't really do that.)

I haven't read aloud stories to the children in at least a month because I can't stay awake, and I'm not bothering to post my meal planning because it involves a whole lot of standing in front of the refrigerator, wondering, and then asking kids, "Do you want a peanut butter sandwich?" I went two weeks without being able to exercise whatsoever, and then, with a goal of walking briskly for an hour, walked for 15 minutes before I stopped and really wished I could take a nap.

First trimesters don't get easier, no matter how many kiddos you already have, that's for sure!

2. New Year's Eve

We enjoyed celebrating New Year's Eve (click here).

3. Pottery

The children got their finished pottery pieces back. Thanks, Grandpa R.!

4. Soft Start

My first intention was to start back to school on January 1 with our revised, rigorous schedule, which includes some major shift-arounds and an entirely new curriculum (First Form Latin), as well as moving piano lessons back into our home and my taking over teaching Music Theory (instead of going to lessons with a teacher for that).

Yeah, so that didn't happen.

Second, after I saw our week filling up, I hoped for a Soft Start to school, with a goal of doing about half our daily work each day.

The reality is that our back-to-school was really more of a stumbling start in which we fell on our faces. The week was simply too crazy!

• I'm still in the thick of major nonstop "morning" sickness.
• On Monday, the kids went to lunch with their grandparents before they left town, then Daddy took them to Lazy 5 Ranch for hours so I could take down all the Christmas decorations and tree undisturbed.
• On Tuesday, I was gone for almost five hours at my prenatal appointment (I drive an hour+ each way to the only provider I consider decent), plus we had piano and violin lessons, plus I made a meal for a postpartum mama.
• On Wednesday we said goodbye to Grampa Neil, went out to lunch with him before driving him to the airport; plus the housekeepers came for their monthly visit (which always hours of preparation work on my part, which you can imagine was exponentially harder after Christmas and our switching around furniture in three bedrooms).
• On Thursday, I had my personal trainer appointment (while in my first trimester = ha) and I took five kids to a music lesson and to the dentist.

My kids take up the entire dental office simultaneously

• Finally on Friday, we started back at CCE all morning, attended an Epiphany party in the afternoon, and then I collapsed in a heap while Chris attended the evening Epiphany Mass.

So, yeah, this week was the School of Life. NEXT WEEK, we get rigorous. My calendar next week is gloriously empty and lacking in color.

5. Newly Organized Bedrooms

I took photos of the completed-for-now boys' and girls' rooms.

BOYS' ROOM

GIRLS' ROOM
The girls' room in particular would benefit from some organizing solutions because their toys have no place to live now that their bedroom is shared with the sewing room. I'd like to get some under bed storage.

6. Thomas' Sleeping Saga

Thomas' sleeping saga continues. You'd think that by Baby #5, I'd have this figured out, but it's not so.

I finally followed all the advice and sleep trained this baby at 10 months, and then enjoyed six months of being able to nurse him and lay him down awake, when he'd go to sleep totally peacefully by himself. I could step away from homeschooling for all of 10 minutes for the whole process, instead of losing an hour to it: glorious!

Until he learned how to climb out of a crib at 16 months . . . and would proceed to climb to the tops of all the dangerous furniture in the master bedroom.

I bought a sleep sack (babies can't climb in those!) but he just climbed in his sleep sack anyway.

He learned how to open the door knob and would appear downstairs.

Finally, I bought a very expensive, escape-proof crib tent.

It took Thomas 24 hours to learn how to unzip the crib tent.

No, I don't have a room or closet in the house that can be a bare room with a toddler mattress on the floor and a lock on the outside of the door.

No, I can't nurse him to sleep anymore, like I did with the first four babies, because I finally followed The Good Advice and sleep-trained him: he loves nursing, but it is not a sleep association for him at all.

For the entirety of Christmas break, I've been getting by on my husband laying him down for naps (which Thomas will do! just not for me!), but Chris has gone back to work, so we're stumbling around trying to figure this out.

7. Bonus Reading

"How to Stop Whining and Learn to Love Being a Mother" by Mussmann (The Federalist, 5 Jan. 2017)--Believe me, this is advice I need to take, not advice I'm fit to give.  [EDIT: I just have been informed that the author of this article has only two small children, so now I'm wishing I hadn't shared her article because she is in the natural phase of knowing virtually nothing but thinking she knows it all. It is still a worthwhile meditation, and we're having a really fruitful, lengthy discussion about it over on my Facebook threads with mothers of many, many children (including one mama with 17 kids). So, I leave it up, with a caveat to read with a grain of salt.]



For more 7 Quick Takes Friday, check out This Ain't the Lyceum.

Epiphany Blessing Kits

Chris and I are excited about Epiphany house-blessing kits being made available for our fellow parishioners. My husband Chris heard that there would be a traditional blessing of Epiphany water and chalk on the vigil of Epiphany: this blessing is much more significant than the normal blessing of holy water, includes numerous exorcisms, and it takes nearly an hour.

Upon hearing the news, Chris dashed out, bought chalk, and hauled 10 gallons of water to the blessing. Then he and our children assembled kits by breaking chalk into eighths, dividing up Epiphany salt (actually blessed in 2015), and printing out instructions for the blessing. He hauled the water to church and filled the water dispenser (with the invitation of the church, of course).

Below are the instructions, and I hope all our local friends were able to grab a kit after the various Masses on Sunday. Think of how many graces will abound if a majority of our parishioners bless their homes!

Dear Friends of the Charlotte Latin Mass Community

Laudetur Iesus Christus!  In the ancient Church calendar we have entered into the Octave of Epiphany which runs thru (Commemoration of the Baptism of Our Lord). The Christmas season then continues on a spiritual level until, the Feast of the Purification/Candlemas. During this "Epiphanytide" it's been customary for the faithful to have their homes blessed by a priest, and when a priest can't be present (which is common), the father of the household can perform this blessing which we kindly attach.

Epiphany Blessing Kits

In the spirit of Epiphanytide, the Charlotte Latin Mass Community will distribute Epiphany Blessing Kits this Sunday after the 12:30pm Latin Mass. The kits includes Epiphany Holy Water, Blessed Chalk, Holy Salt.  The Epiphany Holy Water is actually located in the Holy Water Font in the narthex and you will need to bring your own container. The chalk and Holy Salt will come in a bag with some information.  

A few questions (and some poorly worded answers)

1. What is Epiphany Holy Water? In short, it's very powerful Holy Water and its blessing contains an exorcism prayer along with the Litany of the Saints. The entire blessing usually done on January 5th and takes 40 minutes. It can be used in the home blessing, your home's holy water font, and used to ward off evil spirits or demons. 

2. What is Blessed Chalk? This sacramental is used during the Epiphany Home blessing and you are to write the year and the initials of the 3 Magi over the door of your home to show Christ reigns in that home, and to keep away evil spirits.

3. What is Blessed Salt? - Although not tied directly to the Epiphany Blessing custom, it's a powerful sacramental which can ward off demons and evil spirits. You can sprinkle it around your house during the blessing, take it with you when you travel (hotels), or even place in your food (at any time). Fisheaters has more information about it.

4. Why all the attention around Epiphany? As you know, Epiphany is an important feast in the Church, and she provides her faithful with many graces during this Christmas season. This is especially true in the Extraordinary Form rite (Latin Mass), which has several blessings of sacramentals during this season to help us on our journey to salvation. Many of these customs of Epiphany were forgotten but now we as a Church are rediscovering them. The Roman Ritual book of 1962 (i.e. the Extraordinary Form rite) contain these traditional blessings for Epiphany water and Blessed chalk as well as gold, frankincense and myrrh (and many other blessings for the rest of the year). In these troubled times, it's beneficial to take advantage of the graces and gifts Holy Mother Church provides us.

There is a lot more to say about these 3 blessed Sacramentals, but the linked resources will be a good place to start. We hope to see you Sunday.

Feast of Epiphany 2016

We don't have a solidly established tradition for the feast of the Epiphany in our family yet: I continue trying to note the day, treat it as a "little Christmas," and make it festive.

Breakfast muffins

Some families give gifts on Epiphany, and, in fact, in some cultures no gifts were given on Christmas but they were all given on Epiphany. The families who mark the day with gifts today have various traditions: some give three gifts per child, or three gifts to the family as a whole, or give only religious gifts, and so forth.

This year, I tried my hand at giving gifts to the family as a whole and making the gifts loosely represent gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Gold: "Pot of Gold" chocolates by Hershey!

Frankincense (perfume or incense): Since we are increasingly enjoying drinking tea and the process of "having a tea," I bought for us high-quality loose leaf tea (so much more flavorful than bags of tea), as well as a beautiful tea strainer. Tea is aromatic: get the connection?

Myrrh (anointing oil): Some of the children have Mama's sensitive, thin, pale skin so I bought us a jar of unrefined shea butter, which I hope to whip up to make easier to apply to raw, chapped hands. Anointing our skin, see?

Also, a grandparents' gift of some fabulous Usborne books arrived belatedly, so we gave those as Epiphany gifts too. So fun!

Mama is getting slightly wiser year by year: I realized this year that I actually have to choose between doing our normal routine (school, chores, music practice) and celebrating a feast day in such a big manner, but I couldn't do both unless I wanted to be a sourpuss, angry, shouting Mama. I know I'm not alone in that accepting that I can't do it all is very hard for me.

I decided to take the morning off of school and make our Epiphany preparations a family affair, which I hoped to be enjoyed by all. Isn't that more lovely than trying to cram it all in, staying up way past my bedtime to do the preparations by myself, feeling resentful because I did slavish efforts which my kids couldn't possibly appreciate enough?

Unfortunately, maybe the devil was after us this morning because there was much disobedience, bickering, and Mama's Bad Booming Voice.

The cake stuck in the Bundt can despite much butter and flour to prepare the pan

When my Epiphany cake was "ruined," and there was no more cake mix, time, or energy left to bake a new one, I had to call on every trick I know to keep myself from having an adult-sized tantrum. Instead, I bundled up the four children like the younger brother in "A Christmas Story" and sent them outside to play in the 30-degree weather.

John noting which poems he hoped to read at tea time

We had an "Epiphany Poetry Tea." This was supposed to be a Poetry Tea with a Christmas theme, but then Daddy spontaneously took my big kids to Atlanta for four days and used up the last of our Christmas octave. There went my tea! So, I decided that Epiphany marked the end of the twelve days of Christmas, so we could still read Christmas poetry, as well as some Epiphany poetry. I had put in some considerable time over the Christmas octave seeking out beautiful, serene, meaningful Christmas poetry (that excluded all mention of Santa because that's how we roll around here).

Table set for tea

I don't have a matching set of anything, so I've come to view my table settings like a field of wildflowers: most items are individually pretty, some are plain, but all the riot of sparkle and color come together to make a pretty effect.

Years ago, my aunt hand made me this beautiful card for Epiphany, and it contains the poem "The Magi" by T.S. Eliot, so I use it to this day as decoration.

The Magi have arrived!

After the conclusion of tea time, we sang "We Three Kings" as a family, then opened engrossing books from the grandparents before sitting around for a while reading them in the den.

Mary reading fairy tales to Margaret

John reading a book of vehicles to Joseph

How boys read versus how girls read

Knowing that we would have had a Poetry Tea in the afternoon plus Daddy and the older children were going to an exquisite orchestral solemn high Epiphany Mass at night, I didn't want to plan a huge dinner. Instead, I planned for a spread of appetizers for our dinner meal.

Appetizers

• Sister Shubert's sausage-stuffed rolls (store-bought)
• bruschetta
• English muffin pizzas
• crackers with cheese, hummus, pepperoni
• grapes
• quiche muffins

Not everything has to be perfect or even excellent to be sweet. Today did not feel like a grace-filled day to me: these pictures do not capture my ugly facial expressions as I raised my voice way too often when the kids were particularly squirrelly all day. Just as everyone sat down to my beautiful tea time, the baby woke, frustrating me, and as I walked up the stairs to retrieve him, I heard my two-year-old smash something, so I had the walk up and down the stairs to calm myself, "Nothing on the table is more valuable than me keeping my composure about Joseph's accident." As I tried to start serving everyone in a gracious manner, the baby for the zillionth time daily spit up profusely all over my clothing. The poetry I picked to read during tea time was too mature for the children because, in my excluding of all Santa poetry, the only thing left were beautiful classics that were above children's heads. The tea I brewed was way too strong because it was my first time using loose leaf tea, so nobody drank it but me. Fights broke out over the chocolates.

But, will the children remember those "failures" when I tuck them in tonight? I could be wrong, but I think that mostly they won't. They will just remember a sparkly table, fancy tea, doing something grown-up, and opening presents, before going to an exquisitely beautiful orchestral Mass.

We mothers have to soldier on and try our best: don't let perfection be the enemy of good! We can't let the devil ruin or undermine our efforts to live the liturgical year and give honor to God.

Margaret nearing five years old got to attend her first night Mass
with John and Mary! She shrieked with joy.

As Catholics, we are so blessed to have December 25th mark not one day of celebration but the beginning of a long story of God sending his son, the first step in re-opening the gates of heaven which had been closed since Adam and Eve's original sin. This is a story worth telling and celebrating for many days. I enjoy taking advantage of it!

Epiphany (Again)

On Friday, we were blessed to have a priest from the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter come to our home to give the Epiphany blessing. While a father or head of household can do this in the absence of a priest--which is the current state of affairs due to the overburdened time of diocesan priests--it has always been traditional that priests spent the month of January traveling to all their parishioners' homes to impart the blessing.

I learned that a priest would be coming to our home about 48 hours in advance--and this is a big deal to a Catholic. We want our homes sparkling for such a visit! Yet we'd been sick for two weeks, the house was an explosion of Christmas decorations taken down but not yet put away, and basically a lot of disorder and dust. I may or may not have thrown an adult-sized tantrum.

On Thursday, I managed to rally enough post-influenza energy to vacuum and scrub and Chris got all my decorations snugged into the attic. On Friday morning, the children themselves surprised me in such a sweet way: after breakfast, they instructed me conspiratorially to stay downstairs. After a mere twenty minutes of racing around, they led me upstairs amidst giggles and beaming faces to show me an absolutely pristine second floor. All six beds were made, not a toy was strewn on the floor or a book off the shelves. Pajamas were tucked in drawers and the bathroom was in order, not a toothbrush out of place. The children had dressed themselves and even dressed the toddler. In a word, it was perfect.

This is good and bad for the children, of course. Now I know exactly what the kids are capable of doing (and cheerfully!), which does not much resemble our typical mornings around here.

Anyway, what a gift to this still very tired mama who is on antibiotics, along with the toddler, for our double ear-infections.

Inspecting

Father arrived and the children inspected with interest his Epiphany blessing supplies.

The Latin prayers translated in English

Children following

The children ran after Father on his first round through the house, sprinkling holy water in every single room and closet.

Heading upstairs with holy water

Mary delighted by incense

Then Father took the same route through the house with his lovely incense.

Incense

 Lastly, Father wrote the Epiphany blessing above all the exterior doors.

Blessing the doors

Blessing the doors

After dinner, we gave the children a basket of Epiphany gifts. I had managed earlier to order a book of Gospel stories and a Rosary flip-book from Sacred Art Series, about which I am very excited to use. I supplemented with a quick trip to the drug store where I bought silly little paper, glitter, toothbrushes, straws, and some candy.