40 Days for the Lord

Now that Holy Week has arrived, we are finishing up our Lenten sacrifices and preparing for the Church's most important week of the year.

Our Lenten sacrifices this year were composed  of a couple of different things to help the girls understand what it's all about.  Instead of offering up one thing for all of Lent (which is hard for us adults, let alone a 5, 4, and 2 year old!) we made a Lenten calendar with a different sacrifice on it for each day...except special feast days and solemnities.  My favorite one was, only say "yes, mom/dad" (instead of complaining) for the whole day!

We also made a salt-dough crown of thorns like we did last year where the girls take a thorn (toothpick) out each time they do a sacrifice throughout the day to try to lessen Jesus pain.  The goal is to have a 'thornless' crown by Easter so it can be filled with flowers on Easter morning.

Another thing we did this year was 'bury the A-L-L-E-L-U...(not supposed to say the word yet :)'.  I basically printed out the letters to spell the word and then we hid it (or put away) for all of Lent to symbolize Lent as a time of repentance and focusing on the Lord's Passion.  On Easter morning I will get it out and use it as decoration on the mantle.  It was a fun way to teach the girls what the word means and why we aren't rejoicing until Jesus has risen!

You can see the letters peaking out under the paper...not a very clever place, I know.

On Friday nights during Lent we have tried to do the Stations of the Cross as a family.  It is hard to make it to Church on Tuesday nights to do them with our parish, so we made a kid-friendly version to do at home.  I printed off small pictures of each station and put them in their own plastic picture frame.  I also got a small candle to place in front of each picture.  Each time, we start with all the candles lit and after we pray at each station, one of the girls blows the candle out in front of it.  It was a good interactive way to keep the girls' attention and help them to learn something at the same time!

Notice the girls sitting far away from the candles so we didn't have any incidents with the fire :)

I am excited about the next four days (the Easter Triduum) because we have a lot of special foods and activities planned for the girls to help explain the meaning of each day.   I found most of the ideas at catholicicing.com and catholiccuisine.blogspot.com.  They have so many awesome ideas, I wish I could have done everything they suggested, but I had to just pick my favorites so I wasn't in over my head.  I will share how everything went next week.  Until then, enjoy the rest of Holy Week and have a blessed Easter!  Wish we could spend it with all of you!

Hugs!