Catholic Mama: Keeper of the Monkey House: What We Did on Fat Tuesday

Well, our day started at 5:30am when we had to get up to drive DH to the bus stop [his car is having trouble, we think all is well as of tonight though].

This led to the children being insane, exhausted monster children all day, except for THE BOY who always gets up between 5-5:30. This is normal for him [which I think is just sick really. LOL!]

BUT, in spite of the "Mortal Kombat Death Match" that went on and on at my house today, we still managed to get some pretty constructive Fat Tuesday stuff done AND we got school done. That has to count as a good day!

We made two "Crowns of Thorns" [an idea I got from Melanie last year]. That was pretty cool. We are doing it a bit differently though, we made two crowns of thorns and then put a zillion toothpicks in because I wanted the kids to *earn* the toothpicks out of the crown - they get to remove a toothpick for each sacrifice or good deed they do during Lent with the end result that they are supposed to have all toothpicks removed by Easter. At that point we plan to decorate the Crowns with flowers and put candles inside them and turn them into "Happy Easter" decorations. Since we have 4 kids participating, I thought it would take at least 2 crowns [and a zillion toothpicks :) ] to make this enough of a challenge.

Then, we made cake for Fat Tuesday. Monkey1 had a chocolate cake recipe from the WWII era [using no butter or eggs because of rationing] that she has been dying to make. So, we made it. And it didn't taste bad for a cake made without butter or eggs, it was really pretty good. Then The Boy said "But I don't like Chocolate cake", which is true, so I made a massive pound cake for him. It had [literally] a pound of butter and six eggs. So much for rationing I guess LOL! It was really amazingly delicious though, and both cakes made worthy Fat Tuesday treats.

Monkey1 made a large purple foam cross yesterday at Little Flowers and they put a bunch of holes in the Cross with a nail. Then they were all given a little bag of foam sticky hearts and every time they do a good deed during Lent they get to put a heart sticker on the Cross over one of the nail holes - with the objective being that they will have the whole Cross covered with hearts by Easter. I thought it was quite a clever idea! This is a little redundant I guess with the crown of thorns we were making, but I didn't know about this project until after I had already planned the crowns... and the kids are LOVING the sticker idea on the Cross - they managed to earn several heart stickers today even whilst being possessed by the demons of sleep deprivation!

And last but not least, we put together a list of people we know and we put each of their names on a teeny piece of paper [an idea taken from Totus Tuus] and put them all in a little box. [Actually, a very funny box made of a hollow cardboard baby stacking block - the children have destroyed all my baskets!]. Each morning each child will draw a name, and we will pray and sacrifice for that person [or those 4 people actually] for that day. The kids got really excited about coming up with all the people they wanted to pray for!

Here is Monkey4 holding one of the finished Crowns of Thorns:

This is a close up of one of the finished Crowns of Thorns:

Here is how they are placed on the mantle, flanking our Home Enthronement statues of The Sacred and Immaculate Hearts:

Here is Monkey4 just being a cutie:

This is the "box" with all the names of people we plan to pray for. It is sitting next to "Stitches", the red Holy bear that Monkey3 got from the ER the day she had to have her head stitched up. Stitches has been blessed on the Feast of St. Francis and everything. So, Monkey3 feels strongly that Stitches must sit up on our Mantle along with all our other Holy Items. LOL! [He does look cute guarding our cartoon box of prayer intentions!]