Sometimes it feels like taking care of Alex is enough penance for 10 Lents… however, along with giving up computer use during the day I am going to participate with SimpleMom’s  Project: Simplify.

I like the idea of doing 40 bags in 40 days but I have been slowly working at decluttering over the last few months and I think organizing my now decluttered spaces is what needs to happen more than anything.

With all the time that has been freed up from not using the computer I’m thinking I’m going to have one sparkly house come Easter!

I’m a little late getting this up, I’ve given up using my computer during the day for Lent and so blogging time has become rather sparse, especially with little miss Most of my plans for Lent this year came from the book “Guiding your Catholic Preshooler.” I really love that book and have incorporated a lot of ideas (such as the Lenten calendar above) into my planning.

We are keeping things fairly simple for Mary. She chose a toy (her camera!) to give up for Lent, we have a box for food for the poor that she picks an item for every day, and we are saying more prayers as a family every night before bed.

It is very important to me to surround my kids with good, living books. I find it is such a simple way to really bring Saints and the Church alive for them.

I scour used book websites and ebay to find some of the out of print books and this year managed to add a few I’m super excited about, like Mary, mother of Jesus and Saints: Lives and Illuminations

Here are a few more that I have out in our Lent/Easter basket:

I really can’t recommend The Story of the Cross highly enough. It is the best book I have found to bring the Stations of the Cross down to Mary’s level.

The Story of Easter is a really neat book too, it includes the history of Easter eggs and a few other Easter traditions and how they relate back to Jesus in a way that is easy for little ones to understand.

All of Brian Wildsmith’s books have stunning illustrations, I brought out Mary and The Story of Easter (which I apparently forgot to take a picture of). We love looking at the illustrations in his books.

I took out a bunch of Father Lovasik books for Easter, including Good Saint Joseph. We also have Father and Son to read for St. Joseph’s feast day.

Mary can’t wait for St. Patrick’s day this year. I’m not sure why but she is just so excited about it. Tomie de Paola’s Patrick and St. Patrick and the Peddler (which I can’t find a link for) are a couple of our favourites.

I could talk about books all day, I’ll blog a little bit more about what we are doing to make Friday’s and Sunday’s different next week.

The third Monday of Februrary is family day where we live. I was nervous my dear husband was going to be called into work but he wasn’t and we spent a wonderful day as a family. We started out with a special breakfast, ice cream and french toast with warm pear syrup.

Luke helped me make the pear syrup, he is my little helper any time I’m in the kitchen. He’s not a fan of loud noises though and often runs to his room and shuts the door when I turn on the blender (apparently it has a bigger motor than our lawn mower… no wonder it’s loud!).We got our vitamix from a lady on kijiji for $40. I didn’t realize what an awesome deal that was until I saw them at Costco this weekend for $500! We stopped and watched the demo and the things they did with the blender completely amazed me, I have been using it every chance I get since then!

After 4 minutes on high our pear syrup was almost boiling, it was really tasty!

After we finished the syrup we made ice cream. I was skeptical that we could make decent ice cream in a blender but I was wrong!

1 cup almond milk, a big spoon full of honey, a bunch of frozen peaches and blueberries turned into amazing ice cream. Mary and Luke thought it was the best breakfast ever!

I didn’t try it because I don’t like blueberries but hubby and I had some super tasty strawberry stuff after the kids were in bed.

Alex wanted some in the worst way. Unfortunately he’ll have to settle for fingers for a few months yet.

I have a feeling ‘ice cream’ for breakfast is going to turn into a tradition around here, they have asked to have it again every morning so far.

We spent the rest of the day playing games, building forts with our couches, and ended watching the Winnie the Pooh movie. It was a wonderful family day, we need to remember to dedicate days to just playing with our kids all day more often. 🙂

A new yarn store has opened in our town! So exciting, she is carrying all sorts of beautiful yarn at very good prices.

I am working on matching Milo vests for my boys for Easter using cascade 220 superwash in a very pretty blue/green color. I’m so in love with this yarn, it’s so soft and makes for enjoyable knitting.

My Lenten reading has begun, this year I’m reading The Domestic Church, Room by Room this year.

I’ve also been pulling out lent and Easter books out, I meant to have that done already but I haven’t had time to finish.

I admit, before we had kids I didn’t like Valentine’s day. I told my husband back when we were dating that I didn’t want anything for Valentine’s Day, I’m not into sappy holidays. Today we learned about St. Valentine and talked about ways to be more loving to people in our lives. It was tons of fun.

We started our morning with some pink, heart shaped french toast, pink juice, and berries. (see the pretty flowers my wonderful hubby brought me? He knows I don’t like roses or carnations, I got a beautiful boquet of daisies. I decided that I can make an exception in my no presents for Valentines for pretty flowers.)
We watched a couple Valentine cartoons and read the story of St. Valentine. Unfortunately dh had to work late so we decided to push our fancy dinner to a different night.

We dropped Mary off at school for her preschool Valentine’s party (which she has been talking about non stop for weeks) and the boys and I went and delivered a couple secret Valentines that we had packed up this morning. Luke loved sneaking up to their doors and dropping off our parcels.

I hope you had a great Valentine’s Day as well!

So this winter officially wins the ‘Best Winter Ever’ award. We have had the mildest temperatures anyone can remember and very very little snow. If we have to have winter this is definitely my ideal weather for it.

We managed to drag get ourselves out the door in time for 9:00am mass this morning, it’s amazing how much more day you have when you get out of church at 10!

We had a few errands to do, along with a few projects at home but afterwards (since it was +5°C!!) we decided to go for a walk.

Alex enjoyed himself from the comfort of my sweater. I love my beco. It gets used daily with my little monster.

We had a great time exploring the ‘forest of Mary and Luke’ which happens to include an old couch…

It was very odd.

We then walked over to the lake…

It was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday.