A Maundy Thursday triumph for the Domestic Church

... thanks to Catholic Icing!

It's been a while since I've done anything for the Liturgical Year in our house. But today, thanks to a new printer, I was able to print off the FANTASTIC downloads created by Lacy for the Last Supper, based on Da Vinci's painting.

Simply using two egg carton, Catholic Icing's downloads, and some wooden sticks we recreated Da Vinci's masterpiece in one day!

You can see Jesus in the middle there, and Judas about to take off but the rest of the apostles are literally a blur after Little Man's colouring-in!

Lacy's amazing creation is not done justice by our version, and we changed it slightly by sticking her images onto large paddle pop sticks so they weren't glued onto the egg cartons.

The sticks ended up being the best as we ended up doing a mini-puppet show after dinner where we did an impromptu version of the Last Supper, complete with the washing of feet, institution of the Eucharist, Agony in the Garden, and the arrest of Jesus all in inexplicable American accents and a bit of sword play. Above, Little Man has broken with Scripture and Tradition by having one of the apostles dance on the table... hmmmm, must have been the wine...

He said...

BEN: Little Man, do you want to pop in to say hello to Our Lord?
LITTLE MAN: No!
SARAH: Excuse me, don't speak like that! Say "No thanks Dad".
LITTLE MAN: Amen Dad!

Wagga Wagga adventures

We recently spent a few weeks in the largest inland town in New South Wales... Wagga Wagga!

Ben was doing some work there and the trip perfectly coincided with flooding in the area. Above, you can see the flood plains of the Murrumbidgee living up to their name. The town centre, north, west, and east Wagga were evacuated but luckily we were in the southern end of town which is higher up. Luckily, the levies were about half a meter higher than the flood peak and the centre of town did not get innundated.

The boys (all three of them) loved the aviation museum at Temora. It was so wet that day that the rain was coming in sideways and I thought we'd be spending the night there because even the LOCALS were worried about road floods, but we made it back to Wagga alright.

The roundhouse train museum at Junee was a favourite with all of us and we even got to see the turntable in action! Sailor didn't seem especially impressed at the time, but later when the boys were watching Thomas the Tank Engine, he hooted excitedly in recognition of the steam trains.

At Blowering Dam in the Snowy Mountains we tried to see how far we could throw rocks into the water and Little Man loved throwing the clay chunks and seeing them explode on the embankment. Sailor slept in the car.

I fell in love with this town during our stay. The people are so friendly, there are no traffic jams, a great public swimming pool, beautiful surrounding countryside, and best of all there's heaps of Catholics there!

Here's hoping we get back there one day...

he said...

On a recent trip to a zoo and hearing a peacock cry out (a peacock's cry sounds like "Help!")

Little Man: Listen mum, he's helping!

A first birthday adventure

Sailor turned one last week!

While he was happily oblivious to the fact that he turned one, we lapped it up by enjoying some cake and taking the children to a wildlife park near us which is one of those places which has kangaroos and emus wandering around posing for German tourists.

Highlights of the day involved watching Little Man trying to hug the neck of an emu, watching Little Man slip not once but twice in a concoction of mud and roo poo and walking stiffly away, watching Little Man try to catch a quoll and me pushing the pram for 1 km along a hilly bush track up and down log steps (while Ben was elsewhere enjoying a bush tucker tour!). Throughout a lot of this, Sailor was blissfully asleep.

The best part of the day was that the kids conked out early, and I now am a fully rejuvenated mother!

He said...

Toddlerese from Little Man who has a lot to say these days:

"I'll play hokkymokky*."

"Look! A hoogadooga**!"

*harmonica
** helicopter

signing off till the New Year

I realise with some guilt that it's been several months since I've posted!

We accepted a rural relief position for Ben to work in Queanbeyan for a month in October. It was exciting and fun, but also caused our Little Man to become very unsettled and to go off his food. Sailor was still having breast milk then, and not being able to tolerate it was also very unhappy, and things have only just calmed down now so we've had our hands full!

Now we are off to spend Christmas with my in-laws in WA, so I'll be signing off until the new year.

My apologies to Vicky for not checking my blog for comments - I'd like some time to think about the homeschooling resources meme. It is somehting that I have thought about a lot in the past, as I have found it very hard to know what to do with children under two (at least it was that way with Little Man). And it's true, there does not seem to be much written about preschoolers. Perhaps because those years fly by so quickly?

I always have so much to write about in my head, but finding the time to open a computer at the moment is very hard. When the day is over and the children are in bed I have so little precious free time, I tend to prefer reading to writing. I'm looking forward to jotting down all my thoughts on our break and blogging again in January!!