Fr. Barron on New Year's Resolutions

From the Word on Fire Blog
 

On the fourth day of Christmas...

Jessica has officially spread her candy making addiction across the internet! Candy molds are so easy to use and the treats are adorable!

 

I made little boxes with 12 days worth of homemade candy treats using these two sets of molds for each of the kids. My only insistence is that they must sing the appropriate verse before they eat their treat!

Feast of the Holy Innocents

From Fr. Steve Grunow over at The Word on Fire:

One of the most cherished carols of the Christmas season is often presented as a melody without lyrics. For this reason, the tune is familiar, but the words of the carol are not. The carol of which I am referring to is known as the Coventry Carol, which originates in a 16^th century “mystery play” called the Pageant of the Shearman and Tailors. The play and the song concern the massacre of the young children of Bethlehem at the command of King Herod, a story that is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. The Coventry Carol is a lament that is imagined in the play to have been sung by the mothers whose children have been murdered by Herod’s cruelty; it combines the sound of their weeping with the gentle cadences of a lullaby:

Lullay thou little tiny child,

By, by lully lullay.

O sisters, too how may we do,
For to preserve this day;
This poor youngling for whom we sing,
By by lully lullay.

Herod the king, in his raging
Charged he hath this day;
His men of might in his own sight
All young children to slay.

Then woe is me, poor child for thee
And ever mourn and say;

For thy parting, no say nor sing
By by lully lullay

Go read the rest of his post!

On the Feast of Stephen

Good King Wenceslas by Ethel Larcombe

What kind of pizza does Good King Wenceslas prefer?

(from one of our Christmas crackers this year... 

see combox for punchline)

O Night Divine

...till He appeared and the soul felt it's worth.

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices!

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

May God continue to bless us with His graces and tender mercy.

 

Virtual Cookie Exchange II

They might not pretty but neither was a manger full of hay...

... until it was blessed by a Child.

Haystacks

1  12oz. bag chow mein noodles

1 C. peanut butter

2 C. butterscotch chips

1 C. salted peanuts (opt.)

Melt butterscotch and peanut butter together in microwave or stovetop. Pour melted mixture over peanuts and noodles in a large bowl. Stir until coated. Drop by teaspoon fulls onto waxed paper. Cool or chill until set. Super messy but super fun for the kids to make by themselves.

Find more delicious recipes at Catholic Cuisine!

Virtual Cookie Exchange

We have more to make tomorrow but here is some of what we have made today...

Christmas Mints

3 oz. cream cheese

2 1/2 C. powdered sugar

1/2 tsp. mint extract

1/4 tsp. water (if needed)

sugar sprinkles for rolling in

Mix the cream cheese and powdered sugar together. Add extract and water if needed to make the mixture pull together into a ball. Roll out marble sized portions and roll in decorative sugar sprinkles. 

We added green food coloring to half of our batch for some color but ultimately decided that we liked the look of the white mints in colored sprinkles better. Although, with enough green ones, you could make your own minty Christmas tree!

My giggly girls!

Find more delicious recipes at Catholic Cuisine!

O Rex Gentium

O King of the nations, and their desire,

the cornerstone making both one:

Come and save the human race,

which you fashioned from clay.

 I should have known better than to think I could pull off a cake like this with company coming three days before Christmas. We'll save that idea for another day. For today, Barbara's St. Elizabeth Crown Cake came to the rescue!

 

O Dawn of the East

Texas Sunrise Mocktail

Breakfast for dinner, always a huge hit. Key Lime Pie... not so much!

Not helpful!

O Oriens

O Dawn of the East, 

brightness of light eternal, and sun of justice: 

come, and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

O Oriens,

splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae:

veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

It wasn't quite dawn and I have no tripod. Most pictures are a little blurry, kind of like your eyes at 2am! Those of you using a reader will have to click through to see the slideshow.

O Clavis David

O Key of David, and scepter of the house of Israel, who opens and no man shuts, who shuts and no man opens: come, and bring forth the captive from his prison, he who sits in darkness and in the shadow of death.

I opted for the easy frozen Key Lime Pie! We'll see how the kids like it tonight!

Maybe it just needs a little love...

I'm not sure the neighbors get it, but it's cracking us up right now. 

Maybe I should get one of these to go with it?

 

O Radix Jesse

 ~O Root of Jesse~

I love Jessica's idea to pick up poinsettias for today's O Antiphon activity, but with a puppy in the house this Christmas, we opted for Jessica's other idea and made these poinsettias out of carrot cupcakes and fruit roll-ups!

 

O Adonai

Sunshine was the first to figure out that green gumdrops can be used to make a Christmas tree!

Poor St. Nick got stuck head down in the chimney of BigBoy's house.

Shortcake said this was a gumdrop car with a Rudolph nose and antlers on it. We've seen those a lot around here!

The Professor decorated his gingerbread castle complete with cannons and a coat of arms...

...and a sentry!

 

7 Quick Takes...

So, these are supposed to be totally random, huh? Guess I missed that. I'm not sure I can be random, but I'll try.

~1~

My husband and I have peculiar senses of humor as evidenced by all of the quirky TV shows we like that end up being canceled early! And the TV execs out there wonder why people like us don't watch TV? It seems like we just find a show we like and it gets the ax, so now, we just wait for the Netflix version so we can enjoy the shows whenever we like... up until the point that there aren't anymore! :(

~2~

Speaking of humor, or does that violate the rules of randomness, Husband was cracking up at Dave Barry's Guide to Holiday Gifts. We've actually seen the Flair Hair visor in person and in patriotic colors on the Fourth of July! I didn't know we were so close to coolness on that warm summer evening.

~3~

Now, the Rear Gear Pet Coverup was just weird. I don't want to be the one to clean that thing. The whole custom order thing is really strange. And what if someone decided to custom make one using a picture of their pet's rear? How exactly does it boost your pet's confidence to become the laughing stock of the dog park? I think Jenn needs to take a look at these things, especially in light of her whole Trucknutz post and figure out what we are going to do about them!

~4~

I think I'm done with all of my Christmas shopping. More of it was in-store this year rather than online. I put my foot down and refused to order anything that was being sold at 5 times the cost of the item in the stores. I just can't reward the kind of behavior that hoards children's toys and then tries to rake in the big bucks. Case in point... these little action figures. See the sticker in the corner that says, "Only at Wal-mart"? That's because these were only sold at Wal-mart for $5 each. Online... $15.99 which is down from the $22.97 they were earlier! Ridiculous!!!

~5~

I have only done a little bit of Christmas baking as of yet. We had an early Advent family Christmas party to attend so I made some biscotti and let the kids make pretzel dots. Mintylicious!

~6~

This week is all about cleaning out. The garage is on my "it" list right now since Husband has to help with that. Anyone else have this huge urge to purge right before the holidays?

~7~

Advent check-in: The nightly unwrapping and reading is probably the favorite of our Advent doings. I was thinking the other day that it seems like forever since I actually read picture books to my children. When your kids are early readers, they tend to grab the books out of your hands and go running off to their favorite corners to read them themselves. I really love this nightly little moment of curling up all together.
  
Happy Fourth Sunday of Advent!

O Wisdom at Mass

The children and I were able to go to Mass this morning where we heard the genealogy of Christ read by the wonderful new pastor. After making it through that 14 + 14 + 14 generational list of names, Father quipped, "Aren't you glad you didn't have to read the Gospel this morning?" The girls were giggling next to me, trying to hold back full scale belly laughs because not only can they say all of those names, but they can sing them, too... from memory! (And were probably doing so in their heads while Father was reading, hence the giggling). I threatened to make them prove it to Father after Mass and the giggles stopped! :)

Here's how we learned all of Matthew's begats and you can too!

BTW... There is a book based on this song as well. Ours came with a CD. I'm not sure if this one does.

Gospel acclamation:
O Wisdom of our God most High, guiding creation with power and love, come to teach us the path of knowledge.

Did you know that the Gospel acclamations will reflect the O Antiphon of the day from now until Christmas? I didn't. I love learning something new at Mass!