St. Francis Academy

Merry Christmas!

It may be a day after the Feast of the Nativity of The Lord, but it is most certainly still Christmas!  The Twelve Days of Christmas, which is sung about in the song of that title, falls between Christmas and the Epiphany (Jan. 6, see post below).  The Christmas Season, in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, runs from Christmas through the Baptism of the Lord, which is the Sunday following Epiphany.  So, I have a more than two weeks to keep "Merry Christmas" on my lips.

 Merry Christmas!

Super simple chocolate cake

I love this recipe for a sheet cake, which is based on one found in Faith & Family magazine a few issues ago.  It contains no eggs, which is great when you're running low on eggs.  It calls for you to have some staples on hand, but once you make them a part of your regular baking inventory, you'll never return to a boxed mix!  Oh, this is the "family size" recipe to be made in a 13x9 inch pan, but you can easily halve it for a smaller 8-9 inch cake.  Because this recipe is moist, I recommend you don't use it for a layer cake...found that out the hard way!

• 3 1/3 cups flour
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp vinegar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups of water
• chocolate chips (optional)
• whipped cream or powdered sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Combine dry ingredients in mixing bowl until well mixed.  Add wet ingredients to the dry and mix well, scraping down the sides of the bowl until everything is well-incorporated.  Pour into ungreased 13x9 inch pan and sprinkle chocolate chips over the top.  Bake for 35-40 minutes.  Once cake has cooled, cut and serve with fresh whipped cream or dust with powdered sugar.

New Widget

I saw this at Three Plus Two and just had to get myself one!

Women's Christmas???

I was listening to Windham Hill's Celtic Christmas: A Windham Hill Sampler CD and reading through the liner notes when I came across an interesting translation of "Nollaig Na Mban."  Apparently this is Gaelic for "Women's Christmas."  And just what is Women's Christmas, you ask?  Well, it falls on January 6th, which we know as Epiphany, Little Christmas, Three Kings Day, etc.  It is the day the Church celebrates the Divine Child being revealed to the Three Wise Men.  Wikipedia explains the Irish tradition of Women's Christmas as being similar to the celebration of Mother's Day, where a woman gets a break from her domestic duties and spends the day in the company of her female friends and family.  I can't think of a nicer way to celebrate this Epiphany, can you? :-)  I just might gather some friends and get out for a few hours without any worries.  Start a new tradition ladies, and celebrate Women's Christmas too!

Tinkering

I'm tinkering yet again with my blog, so bear with me.  I was going to use one of the holiday themes, but the middle column was too narrow.  I realized this when I scrolled down to the family photo in front of the Christmas tree and realized it looked like I intentionally cropped out our oldest daughter!  Can't have that, now, can we???  I guess this red one with the star will have to suffice...

Holiday wishes

For this year, less than a week from the major holidays of Hanukkah and Christmas, I wish you nothing more than peace this holiday season.  I wish you, dear readers, the ability to pull back, to slow down, to just "be" with those you love. 

It's all too easy to be sucked into that hole of the holidays, the hole of consumerism and general busy-ness.  We rush around finding the "perfect" gift, attending parties, pageants, parades, concerts, plays, etc., etc.., etc.  We find ourselves perhaps a little saddened that we've purchased yet another cheap plastic toy destined for fall apart by summer, or forgot to send out greeting cards, or inadvertently didn't get the kid's teacher a gift.  We may be harried by self-imposed goals of baking, decorating, entertaining.  We might feel tremendous relief when it's all over.

All these things aren't bad in and of themselves, no, not even the cheap plastic toys.  But when we think that it is only these things that the holidays consist of, well, then it is no surprise when we feel a little empty once the holiday season is over.

This is a time of miracles.  Whether you're a believer or not, one thing is sure: it is not the things that make holiday memories, but the people you spend time with.  Time is perhaps the single best gift you can give.  It's impossible to package, but its reward is everlasting.  So, before you complain that you don't have time to interrupt your busy plans, consider this:

All you really have is time...make the most of it.

Laughable

Yesterday I received a letter from the local school district.  I opened it with some hesitation, wondering why the letter was only addressed to me.  I figured it had something to with homeschooling.  In fact, it was a letter stating that the local district is once again providing busing for those of us who live within two miles of the neighborhood schools thanks to the levy being passed in November.  "Funny," I mused aloud, "I wonder why it is only addressed to me, since this is obviously meant for most of us in this neighborhood." 

Then I read further.

In fact, this letter was not meant for everyone in the neighborhood...it was meant only for those who do not currently send their children to the public schools.  The rest of the letter was a very cordial "invitation" to enroll the children in the local school district now that the transportation issues have been resolved.

Because...you know...that was the real reason we were homeschooling in the first place.

Hmmm...'kay.

Like I said...laughable.

Facebook???

Bear with me while I attempt to get communications going between Typepad and Facebook.  If you haven't done so already, go read my previous post on thr Countdown to Christmas.

Countdown to Christmas

The traffic feed thing in the left sidebar has been showing a lot of folks traveling to the post "The Joy of Homemade Ornaments" from two years ago.  If you scroll down to the bottom of the post, I give instructions on how to make clay ornaments for the O Antiphons.  From that website, we read that "The seven "O Antiphons" (also called the "Greater Antiphons" or "Major Antiphons") are prayers that come from the Breviary's Vespers during the Octave before Christmas Eve, a time which is called the "Golden Nights.""  Thus, we've made it our family tradition to save these ornaments as a way to countdown to Christmas, hanging one ornament each night starting on December 17th.

'Tis the Season...

...to be crabby jolly...(yeah, that's it)...fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-laaaa

This is a snippets post, similar to Maryan's "Hitting the Highlights", though I don't expect to make it a regular thing...at least, I don't think I will!  Anyway, here is what has been going on in our lives since I last posted:

Basketball: We have two boys playing basketball this season.  Connor is in his first year with the local rec team (2nd grade, very cute organized chaos); John is playing on the local select team which plays in two different leagues as well as whatever tournaments are going on.  The result is usually around 3 games per weekend plus 3 practices per week.  John's team is also fun to watch as they are very well coached and the boys are all equally good.

Advent: Well, the Jesse Tree kit still has not been started.  What has it been now, three years???  ::sigh::  We still have our Advent Wreath tradition, though, and we do light the candles when we sit together for dinner.  So, at least it's not a total Advent bust.  We celebrated St. Nicholas day with stocking stuffers and cookies on the 6th, but we missed celebrating the feasts of the Immaculate Conception (8th) and Our Lady of Guadalupe (12th) due to minor ailments and general misery here. We do have the Christmas tree up, which makes its appearance sometime after our daughter's birthday (12/9).  The elves decorated it this year, which was completely fine with me.  See, that's battling perfectionism and lowering my standards. LOL!

Birthdays: Drew turned 6 on Thanksgiving this year.  Matt turned...37 on the 4th.  Lizzy turned 10 on the 9th.  Lizzy got her ears pierced, maintaining the tradition in our immediate family of getting pierced ears on a girl's 10th birthday.  She did great and is being very responsible caring for her own ears.  Hooray!  We get a short break between our family birthdays and that of our Lord, then another short break between Christmas and Aidan's 1st birthday (1/11).

Illness: what a great contribution to the general misery around here!  Sleeplessness came to us following the feast of St. Nicholas, with 6 yo Drew complaining of a toothache which wound up being an infection.  He just finished his course of antibiotics and is scheduled for a "nerve treatment" (root canal) for the offending tooth.  To add insult to injury in the misery department, Aidan decided it would be a wonderful time to sprout a couple of new teeth.  Oh joy!  So, for a couple of nights last week, it was fitful sleep at best.  Add on top of that a hubby battling a cold, which the baby now has.  'Tis the season to be crabby...

Relationships: Despite the illnesses, Matt and I went on a date on the 12th, with dinner and a show being the main attractions.  We left the somewhat miserable kids in the very capable hands of my mother-in-law and her mom...a great pair!  We dined at the local Ruby Tuesday's then went downtown to catch the opening night of Jersey Productions' "The Sound of Music" at the Aronoff.  One of Matt's kids from religious ed. was playing the role of Friedrich.  We had a great time and enjoyed it thoroughly.  Because of the illnesses, though, we've been forced to slow things down a little, which means a better opportunity to just be present to the kids.  That doesn't mean that things are peachy keen and super-harmonious around here.  It just means I'm not hurried or distracted doing "necessary" things...whatever I'm doing (like blogging) can be dropped so I can be present to whomever needs me at the time (like the 4yo asking for a bowl of cereal, or a baby with the sniffles wanting to nurse for the 100th time this morning...OK, it seems like 100).

School: We embarked on a really light schedule last week when the tooth fiasco hit, focusing only on history in the form of watching a video.  We watched Marco Polo, which was surprisingly "not suckish" (quoting oldest daughter).  It is nearly 3 hours long, though, so we watched it over the course of three days.  That was it...no reading, nothing else.  This week we are in full-fledged, albeit early, winter break.  We're not doing anything academic.  Despite that, education still happens.  The two little boys have gone through a wonderful phase of reading more or less solo and the little kids are right now watching Leap Frog's "Letter Factory" DVD.  The bigger kids have gotten hooked on an anagrams game on a handheld device someone gave to us (just like their mama has gotten hooked on Scramble on Facebook) and they are exercising their math skills playing some card game I have no idea how to play!  I'm hoping to watch Mongol this week so I can send it back to Blockbuster.  It is subtitled, not sure if it's in Chinese or what.  It's rated R for violence and possible sexual content...

Plans for the rest of this week include Matt and the little boys getting their hair cut, baking cookies and brownies now that our supplies have been replenished (thanks to Matt, who does a bang-up job shopping), stringing the outside Christmas lights on the porch and shrubbery, possibly wrapping Christmas presents, and maybe, just maybe, adapting the Jesse Tree kit to sew up some felt ornaments for our Christmas tree. 

I leave you with a Christmas photo, imperfect as it is: