Ideas for Celebrating the Feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary (Oct 7)

This year's Feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary also falls on the First Friday of October - a double reason to celebrate! I am SO excited for our monthly ROCKERs meeting later at the Medela House! We will be treated to an interactive multi-arts and storytelling/ sing and dance along session c/o our friends at My Masterpiece Movement. Yipeee! Praise GOD ;-)

The kids and I will be going to New Manila by taking the FX to the LRT station, then we'll go by LRT (Light Rail Transit, or train in other countries, hehe) to Gilmore St. and walk to Medela House (the Medela Moms Beng and Maricel are Catholic homeschoolers! Awesome!). I'm sure we'll have lots of learning experiences along the way! ;-)

Since it's the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, we will also go to Mass at St. Pio Shrine (at least I am hoping we can!) and try to do one or two of the following activities (which you may want to do too, and don't forget to scroll down for some helpful videos):

- For TeacherMama: read and apply this article on "Exploring Mary and Motherhood"

- Do coloring of the Rosary / Mama Mary pages. The mom behind Family Feast and Feria has taken the time to scan coloring pages of the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries here, and provides the link to the Luminous Mysteries too, which you can go to directly here. There is also a coloring page from Domestic Church here. You can also take a look at the one recommended by Catholic Mom here, Waltzing Matilda here. (Lightbulb moment! We can do this while praying the Rosary too! hehe).

Happy Feast Day St. Michael, St. Gabriel and St. Raphael!

I started off this day with a reflection about St. Joseph and Mama Mary, which was inspired by some videos I watched with the kids. What a fitting way to start the day!

The Three Archangels with Tobias by Francesco Botticini from

friendsofart.net

Today, on Michaelmas, besides celebrating the feast day of St. Michael the Archangel, along with Saints Gabriel and Raphael, the other archangels, in various ways, let's pray for our families, and all families everywhere. Let us especially pray for protection from the evil one and for stronger families built on the ROCK of Christ.

Here are some prayers to get us started from a website about St. Michael:

Novena to God's Love - by a fellow Catholic homeschooling parent

NOVENA TO GOD'S LOVE
by Bo Sanchez, fellow Catholic homeschooling parent and founder of the ONLY Catholic Filipino homeschool provider, Catholic Filipino Academy


Today, I receive all of God’s love for me.
Today, I open myself to the unbounded, limitless, overflowing abundance of God’s universe.
Today, I open myself to Your blessings, healing, and miracles.
Today, I open myself to God’s Word so that I become more like Jesus every day.
Today, I proclaim that I’m God’s Beloved.
I’m God’s Servant,
I’m God’s Powerful Champion,

And because I am blessed,
I will bless the world,
In Jesus’ Name.

Amen.
---------------
Praying for blessings upon us all! ;-) 

Educating for Eternity

"Of course, our most important goal is to educate our children for eternity. How? By living and being what we want our children to be. We must be truthful, brave, forgiving, thoughtful, faithful, virtuous, self-disciplined, kind and cheerful if we want our children to be! Our Faith is caught, not taught... we can't give what we don't have. Overwhelming? Not when we remember that a baby learns to walk by falling! God measures our effort and appreciates every little thing we do for love of Him. He invites us to keep "walking" and grow more in love with Him each day."

- Introductory page, Educating for Eternity: Kindergarten, Catholic Heritage Curricula

This made me cry. I have been unkind, unforgiving, thoughtless, and angry a lot lately, especially to Tim. Lord, thank You for the reminder. We are educating for eternity. And no matter how many times I may fall, You will always be there to help me "walk." Please be with us as we begin our homeschool journey for real very, very soon.  Amen.

Painting shows a baby walking to his father. by Vincent Van Gogh

Confessions of an Imperfect Parent

Since it is still the season of Lent, which is known to be a time for going to confession and changing one’s sinful ways and bad habits, I thought it would be apt to make my own confession of sorts here. It would be my way of seeking “absolution” for everything that I have done wrong lately.

At my blogs (Truly Rich Mom and Teachermama Tina), I try to be positive and upbeat in most of my posts, though there are times when I can’t help it but be honest about my feelings of sadness and disappointment. This is one of those blog posts where I am going to be honest.

I have been struggling a lot these first weeks of Lent with questions about our parenting style. Honestly, I have no right to claim being a “perfect” parent to our kids, especially to our eldest, our strong-willed little boy. In fact, I am far, far, far from being the mom (and wife! Haha!) that I want to be. People who read my blogs and Facebook updates may think otherwise, but I am coming clean here. I AM TOTALLY NOT PERFECT.

In fact, I am ashamed to say that there are times when I can be a downright nasty, mean, people-should-report-me-to-child-protection-agencies mom. There are days when I end up losing my patience, snapping at the kids, and being physically harsh. Honestly speaking, I am NOT a fan of corporal punishment and believe that discipline is about teaching more than punishing. However, there have been many occasions when I have failed to “practice what I preach.”

There are times when I end up feeling like I am a Tiger Mom in the worst sense, and can only pray that my kids will not end up broken and bitter like the many young people I have encountered, especially during my time as a missionary to the youth. I don’t want my kids growing up thinking that I don’t love them or am always angry at them.

What I hope and pray and wish for is that our kids will grow up to be God-fearing, secure, confident and emotionally stable individuals, no matter how imperfect I am as a mom (and Hubby is as a dad). I want them to know that our decision to have them in Timor Leste on mission was born out of our desire to witness to God’s love and faithfulness, and that our decision to finally settle in Manila was born out of our desire to share God’s message of hope, forgiveness, peace and love in our own homeland.

Our family in Timorese attire during our CFC Timor Leste community’s farewell party for us

To continue reading this post, please go to my article on Philstar.com's Unblogged section by clicking here. :-) God bless all parents everywhere! :-)

1st Sunday of Advent - Happy New Year!

I rejoiced because they said to me, “We will go up to the house of the LORD.” (Psalm 122:1)

For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed; 12 the night is advanced, the day is at hand. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light (Romans 13:11-12)

Happy New (Liturgical) Year everyone! :) Just sharing with you some pictures of our simple celebration of the 1st Sunday of Advent :) 


We went to mass in the morning. In the evening, Tim and I made our family advent wreath using this link from Catholic Mom: http://www.catholicmom.com/advent_wreath_craft.htm.

Look what we made! :)

This is fun! :) Even if I am sleepy already! 

I modified the craft a bit and we used some real wax candles (previously used) instead of making paper ones. We just covered them in purple paper, and the pink one we used one that was left over from my niece's baptism (she's 10 years old now! haha. Talk about saving one's memorabilia!)

Our family Advent wreath

Then we prayed as a family together. Lolo Mon and Lola Tita led us. We used the prayers from this link: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/prayers/view.cfm?id=952 and the readings from this one: http://www.amazingmoms.com/htm/christmas_advent.htm.

Lolo leads the prayer

Papa helps Tim light the first Advent candle

Lola reads the Bible reading with the theme: HOPE

Singing Isaiah 60 together

Kuya Tim accompanies Papa on the saxophone

Good job Kuya!

Time to blow out the candle!

It's always nice to celebrate Advent and the coming of Jesus with family, especially by creating your own family traditions. Now I'm thinking of something else to do to make CHRISTmas more meaningful for the kids, and us kids at heart too of course!

How about you dear readers? How are you celebrating Advent and CHRISTmas this year? :)

Disciplining Your Child

The Catholic Filipino Academy held a parenting seminar on "Disciplining Your Child" last September, and the expanded outline of the seminar was recently published online. Here is the link to download or read it: http://catholicfilipinoacademy.com/uploads/Oct2010.pdf

Hope this helps parents everywhere who have been struggling with how to discipline their kids (that includes yours truly! You'd know this if you are friends with me on Facebook! hehe) Hubby and I are both guilty of not being inconsistent in how we discipline Tim, and many times, we have been more physical with him than we should have (this is me publicly confessing our parental sins, people!). I only pray that God will mold our hearts and break them if needed, so that we can become the parents Tim (and Rysse) deserve. It is really true what was said at the 3rd Philippine Homeschool Conference: "parenting is heart work and hard work!" We need to be reminded of this always! Especially since Kuya Tim is turning out to be a very strong-willed little boy.

It's always encouraging to know that whenever we have struggles like these with our kids, God's grace is more than sufficient for us! I personally want to thank God for leading me to chat with Teacher Mom Josette the other day - her reminder that prayer, regular participation in the Sacraments, and adoration can really change one's way of dealing with the others around her, especially one's kids. This advice came at the perfect time, when I was beating myself up over how I had failed to use gentle discipline on Tim. Thank You Lord for such divine appointments! :)