Thursday's Week in Review

A Week in Review before the Holy Triduum begins . . .

1. Super Busy Weekend: Part I

The weekend of Palm Sunday was overly busy and Chris and I were so grateful to have each other to juggle and balance all our duties and events.

On Friday, we attended Mass as a family at 7:00 a.m., then John attended CCE, while I took the other kids to the grocery store, bakery, and cemetery. Chris took the kids (at their request) to pray at the abortion clinic (in the pouring rain) and, after their completing afternoon chores and music practice, Chris took the oldest three to 7:00 p.m. Tenebrae services, left John at the Fraternus lock-in, brought the girls home, and went back to retrieve John to sleep in his own bed.

Despite being up till nearly 11:00, the fellas wanted to be woken at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday to make breakfast sausage for 40 boys and get back to the lock-in bright and early.

John played sports with the guys for five hours before Chris took him to a birthday party. Meanwhile, I braved a deluge and flash flooding to take five kids to their last ice skating class and evaluations to see if they ranked up.

Flash flooding

It is so cute to watch the littler guys skate, especially three-year-old Thomas in his fireman helmet!

Without Chris' typical help to juggle the transition, I had the little boys take a car nap instead of going home, took everybody through drive-through for lunch, and delivered Mary to orchestra practice.

2. Super Busy Weekend: Part II

Come Sunday, Mary had choir practice before the Palm Sunday Mass which lasted three hours. It was beautiful but certainly took rigorous work for all the parents. I was so impressed that even more people than normal came to our Latin Mass, knowing how long it would be, when they could have attended the Novus Ordo: about 350 souls! I watched and all those many children--in the pews, in their parents' arms, in strollers--were not eating a bite of food in the church, or playing games, or reading books, and certainly nobody had electronics out. Good job, parents!

David sleeping through a Very Long Mass

The photos of the Mass are all courtesy of Marcus Kuncuro:

After Mass, John and Joseph joined in the first occurrence of a sports-team that is going to meet once monthly after Mass. The boys always play games, but this is going to have teams, jerseys, rules, and points. The fun was multiplied when one of the priests showed up to do his own exercise and decided to join the boys for basketball. All the parents and siblings were cheering and a lot of us brought brown bag lunches. It was super!

3. Notre Dame

On Monday of Holy Week, the 850-year-old Notre Dame cathedral in Paris burned. This is grievously sad for practicing Catholics and those of us who have been there in person are touched on a personal level. We thank God that the Eucharist (body, blood, soul, and divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ), holy relics (such as Jesus' crown of thorns) and saints' relics, as well as much artwork, was saved by a human chain of heroic firefighters.

We told our children the next morning and there were tearful eyes among us.

4. Introducing Peter

Apparently I have no bird afficianados reading my blog, or you would have been laughing and emailing me to tell me that Heidi is a male zebra finch. Zebra finches are sexually dimorphic, with strongly different color patterns.

Male on the left, female on the right (source)

Heidi's bright red cheeks were a "tell" to anyone who knew anything, which was obviously neither me nor any of the PetSmart staff. Further, Heidi sings and sings, while Clara never found her voice: it has been too long since I took a zoology class to remember that most birds who sing are males--decidedly true of zebra finches.

So, our mystery is solved: Heidi is a male, Clara is a female, and these are real baby bird eggs. Mary has renamed the male bird "Peter," who is the goatherd in the novel Heidi.

And now we wait to see if the birds will successfully hatch!

Clara and Peter nesting

5. School Break

I took off teaching school for Holy Week (to prepare for Easter) and Easter Triduum (to actually celebrate Easter).

This is now the calendar entry I actually enter into Google Calendar a year ahead of time for every Holy Week: "GOAL: Take off Holy Week: It is way too stressful to keep schooling and achieve anything holy or domestic."

Only the middle schooler had a full load of independent work for his hybrid program (because he won't be able to do it next week) and all kids had music practice (the oldest two in the final two weeks of preparing 10 and 15 songs, respectively, for the big Guild event). He also got a new lawnmowing client!

6. Annual Standardized Testing

We scheduled our Annual Standardized Testing for Spy Wednesday. I was able to leave the 1- and 3-year-olds with Chris at home, so I sat for almost four hours in a quiet room while my children were being tested and I got to read nearly 100 pages of my book! Compared to the pitiful three to five pages per day I now get to read, this was a 'feast'!

I always say that the standardized testing is to make sure Mommy is teaching them right, so it's really me being tested, not them.

Results: Mommy is doing fine. Carry on!

7. Maundy Thursday

Thursday was busy-busy-busy with preparations, including dying the Easter eggs. It was fascinating to watch that I really was not needed there, the older children are growing in leadership so well. 

John served the Thursday night liturgy while Chris and the girls attended. I kept the wee ones home, read the Bible story about the Last Supper to them, and tucked them in. The three-year-old was so interested that he sat up in bed, looking at the Bible for twenty minutes.