How we spent the Easter Triduum and Easter Sunday :)

A blessed, beautiful Easter to all of you! :) I hope the glorious joy and peace that comes with Easter is still very much evident in your hearts and homes — after all, Easter has just begun! (We're celebrating for 50 Days, how awesome is that!)


Anyway, I know I shared with you in a previous post how we planned to "do" the Easter Triduum and Easter Sunday, so I just want to share what we actually ended up doing.


On Holy (or Maundy) Thursday, we ended up attending the Mass of the Lord's Supper at Sacred Heart Parish, a church near my in-laws' place, instead of at our parish here in our village in Cainta. You see, hubby's grandmother, who is bedridden and ill, also celebrated her birthday on the same day, so we went to their place for her birthday celebration with family members on hubby's side.


We ended up staying longer than planned, even staying overnight (the kids were having so much fun playing with their cousins and bonding with family, they didn't want to leave anymore). So we weren't able to do our own washing of the feet ceremony as a family and also skipped the online Visita Iglesia. We did try to teach the kids about the symbolism behind Jesus' washing the disciples' feet (love and servanthood) and also watched these videos with them:





For Good Friday (God's Friday!), we went back to our apartment in the morning and attended the Good Friday/Veneration of the Cross service in our parish. The kids were kind of tired when we got home, so we didn't do any crafts but just enjoyed spending time together. I'm grateful that Tim was mindful of the fact that we were fasting/abstaining on that day, and he contributed in his own way by "fasting" from the educational computer games which he loves to play.


Holy Saturday was spent cleaning up our apartment in preparation for our Catholic group's prayer meeting on Holy Monday. It was "summer cleaning," for us, since we don't really experience spring here. :) I also prepared the eggs and stuff for the kids' Easter Treasure Hunt, a modified version of the traditional Easter Egg Hunt. :) We didn't get to go to the Easter Vigil though. Hopefully next year.

Easter Sunday saw us attending morning Mass at our parish and going to my dad’s for lunch. We were joined by my youngest brother and a few Youth for Christ (YFC) leaders and missionaries from Timor Leste, who are here for the YFC International Leaders Conference this weekend. It was great to catch up with them and speak in Tetun again! (We used to be based in Timor as missionaries).

The kids had a blast hunting for goodies on their Easter Treasure Hunt and eating the Easter cake their Tito Jay brought for them. 

All in all, it was a truly blessed Easter for our family. I only hope and pray that the seeds of love and life in Jesus will continue to be sown in our kids’ hearts, as well as our own, throughout this Easter season and beyond, and eventually, bear good fruit. In the future.

Enjoy the rest of Easter, everyone!

P.S. Sharing some of our pics with you. :)

I forgot to include this pic in my last post. :) These love notes from Jesus were the last Easter "treasures" in the kids' treasure hunt on Easter Sunday. 

Hubby, me, my dad and our Timorese brothers and sister

Alleluia! :) Kids with their Tito (Uncle) Jay

Ready for our Easter Treasure Hunt! :)

Treasure under Lolo's pillow 

Where to next?! :)

Treasure under their cousins' pillow (The cousins were not present, though..)

More treasures! :)

Our Easter cake. C/o my brother. :) Store-bought from Red Ribbon, hehe!
Didn't have the time to make a genuine Resurrection cake, but I hope we could do it next year! (If we have an oven by then! LOL!)

Of course, we had to have a candle-blowing ceremony! :)

The kids enjoyed playing checkers with their Tito Jay back in our humble home. :)

On Smart Parenting: 6 Things To Try With Your Kids This New Year

The New Year is now upon us, and many of us have already gone back to the daily routine of going to work, doing household chores, and taking care of our children (not that the latter stops during the holidays – parenting, after all, is a 24/7 task!). Most of us too, have probably made our New Year’s resolutions (and hopefully, have not broken any of them yet); and taken steps to improving ourselves. It is a new year after all!

Since we’re on the subject of “new,” we might as well try out new things too –stuff we’ve NEVER experienced nor done before. This year, we suggest six things you may want to do with your kids to make this year one of your most memorable yet!

1. Create your own storybook(s).
If your children are anything like mine, they probably love pretending to be the hero or heroine in the stories you read to them. This year, why not make your kids’ fantasies in a way come true – by making your own storybooks with your kids and other family members as the main characters? 
 
As a family, come up with different “plots” for your stories. You could base them on your family’s personal experiences, or draw inspiration from other books. 

You may also want to choose which “genre” you’d like your book to focus on – inspirational, biographical, comedy, horror, general fiction, etc. Don’t pressure yourselves, though – remember that you’re doing this just for the fun of it! 

If you have older kids who can already write and draw, involve them in the “creation” of the book by having them write parts of the story or illustrate the story.  Smaller children can contribute by having their own “pages” in the book – let them scribble or draw to their heart’s content on blank pages that can be “page breakers” in your book. 

If you’re really ambitious, or find yourselves enjoying this activity, you may even want to write sequels to your book in the future. You never know - your literary creations may even get published, like the Giuliano family’s book “All the Way to God”, which stemmed from a simple family bedtime routine.
 

2. Make your own documentary film or music video.
If you’re not the writing type, you may want to have a go at making your own family film instead. This could take just a few minutes of your time; alternatively, you may want to make it a year-round project. 

Here are some ideas for your film or video project:
•    Make a documentary about your family and include interviews of different family members. You may want to make your own family tree before doing this. This would be a great way to teach your kids about their grandparents, ancestors, and other relatives.
•    Make a family video with compiled recordings of each family member completing these sentences (or something similar): “In five years’ time, I will ______________,” “I can change the world by ______________,” “I am grateful for ________________,” “I will stop _____________.”
•    Make a music video by getting each family member to sing certain parts of a favorite family song or hymn. You may opt to sing your parts in a certain way – dramatically, wackily, rocker-style, opera-style, etc. Have fun belting out the lyrics and dancing to the rhythm of the music! If you’re not shy about doing so, upload the video online for posterity - who knows, you and your family could become the next YouTube sensation!


3. Build your own family time capsule.
According to the U.S. Library of Congress, a time capsule is “a collection of objects put together to preserve the memory of a place, experience, or group of people at one point in time. People often make time capsules for special public occasions, and for others to open many years in the future.” People can make one to celebrate a family event, to remind them of a special experience, or to remember friends, family, or school – or something else important to them.

Building a family time capsule will enable you and your kids to go back in time and see your “past selves.” This will especially be a good thing to do if your kids are still very young. For detailed tips on how to make your own family time capsules, click here and here.

(This is the first part of an article I wrote for Smart Parenting Philippines' website. To continue reading the rest of the article, please click here.)

Thank GOD for our (locally-made) Jesse Tree! ;-)

In the Philippines, the Jesse Tree is not such a commonly-known Advent Tradition. (If we weren't homeschooling, I'd probably still not know about it now! hehe! Yet another reason why I'm grateful to be homeschooling, esp. after all my realizations after our TV interview)! ;-)

Since we wanted to include the Jesse Tree in our family's Christmas preparations this year, I thought I'd ask my friend and fellow Catholic pro-life and breastfeeding / babywearing advocate Buding about a locally-made version of the Tree that she and her friends were promoting last year. However, I never got around to asking her, and only posted a question about the Tree on Bistro 3846's Facebook page, which is where I first saw it last year.

I got a reply to call the Everest Academy, the first (and only, I think) Catholic International School in the Philippines, but didn't get to do so. Also, I thought the Tree might be out of our budget, which is, as you already may know, very, very tight (with hubby and I being lay missionaries and all :-).

BUT LO AND BEHOLD! ;-) God knows my heart's desires, even the seemingly "insignificant" or "petty" ones!

Out of the blue, Buding says she might be able to get me a Jesse Tree kit by the Mano Amiga mothers FOR FREE! ;-)

We just got it a few hours earlier (thank You Lord for Buding's generosity - she even had it sent to our apartment!) - AND I AM SOOOOO EXCITED TO USE IT!!! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! ;-) *squeals in delight*

Check out our fabulous JESSE TREE, proudly made in the Philippines! ;-)

The Jesse Tree kit by Mano Amiga mothers

 The kit is COMPLETE and a perfect gift for any family / individual - it has the "tree" (a tree branch nicely painted in gold, and "planted" in "silver" sand!); a box of 27 hand-crafted felt ornaments; and, a Jesse Tree Devotional Booklet, containing detailed instructions and a daily Bible reading / activity guide. ;-)

The ornaments are arranged by week (weeks 1 to 4) and labelled at the back per day ;-) 

All 27 Jesse Tree ornaments! ;-) Yey, no need for me to make our own! ;-) Day 28 and 29 have no ornaments thought; families are encouraged to hang a family photo, etc.

More photos here. :-) It's not too late to get your own Tree! ;-) Blessed Advent to all!

*Jesse Tree Advent devotional sets are now available for sale in Everest Academy Manila. All 27 handmade ornaments were crafted by moms of Mano Amiga as a livelihood program who are the beneficiary of this yearly project. Please call Everest Academy Manila for more information +632-8824981 :-) It is truly a Gift of Love!* - from the Bistro 3846 page. I received the Tree as a gift from Buding, who is part of the Mano Amiga team. 
:-) She did ask me to blog about it, but I told her that I'd blog about it anyway even if she didn't give me a kit. ;-)

Ideas for Celebrating Advent: Preparing for His Coming!

Advent is upon us! But what exactly is this blessed season all about? Let's take a look at just ONE of the definitions of Advent, from Catholic.org:

The word Advent derives from the Latin word meaning coming. The Lord is coming. We may reflect that every year at this time we celebrate his coming , so that in a sense we can lose the feeling of expectancy and joyful anticipation, because at the end of the season, everything seems to return to pretty much the same routine. If that is the case, then our preparation may have been lacking and we have therefore been robbed of much of the true meaning of this season.

During Advent we recall the history of God's people and reflect on how the prophecies and promises of the Old Testament were fulfilled. This gives us a background for the present. Today we can reflect on the past track record of God and so begin to understand what it means to us now for the sake of what is to come, in our own future and that of our world.

© Liguori Publications Excerpt from Advent - A Quality Storecupboard The Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer

And what better way to prepare for His coming than starting (or for some families, continuing) our own Advent family traditions? 

Here in the Rodriguez home, we're excited to do the following:

First up is the Advent Calendar from the Story of Christmas book set I bought at Fully Booked in Gateway Mall (I don't usually buy new, expensive books but I made an exception for this one!) 

You can also buy this on Amazon.