Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Now I am just not able to celebrate EVERY feast day, to the extent that some other Catholic mama's are talented enough to, but I AM enjoying trying to do some fun things on at least the major ones and other special feasts as well. The Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is special in my family, because my Great-Grandmother, long ago prayed to OLMC when her son, my Grandma's brother, was dealthy ill. (Back then you died from illnesses and there weren't vaccinations) Her prayers were answered, and so she kept her promise of to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, making yearly pilgrimages to a shrine to her in Chicago and having a special devotion to her.

Today, we went to the Marian Center and got brown scapulars (long overdue I know!) and ended up getting a bunch of other stuff which is terrible but how can you resist when your kids are begging for religious items??! :)

We read the story of Our Lady of Mount Carmel from "A Saint a Day" while eating homemade carmel apples the kids made. And I presented them with the scapulars. Later, I said we could have carmel sundaes- they are going to pretend their ice cream in the Mount and pour carmel sauce on it. Haha! They sure are getting spoiled today, as this evening we have Maggie's wedding rehearsal and dinner at Joey Buona's pizzeria!

I promise I am not going to start documenting everything I do with my kids in photos- I'm not quite together enough for that. I take plenty of photos, but I miss out on taking plenty as well, b/c I am of the belief that it's better to be in the moment enjoying things with your kids than always focused on getting the perfect scrapbook shot to immortalize it. The memories and actual events are more important! However, I thought I'd share my photos since when I do these projects my apples are not all lined up perfect- they're messy and gloppy looking, and my kids are not perfectly groomed. Sometimes I see photos on other blogs and think how can you do projects with kids and have these picture perfect well displayed results? And it becomes an excuse to feel like, well "I" couldn't do that... but it's the doing that matters and not the result, when it comes to little ones, and I'm sure these are great memories for them!

And yes, my kids were actually watching "Electric Company" as I snapped the first picture of them, because I am a very imperfect mom who is blatantly using TV so I can frantically try to clean the house while Leo naps for some houseguests who are staying here this weekend for the wedding! Just thought I'd share that with you all... :)