From Halloween to Hallowtide: A Look Back

I know that with Thanksgiving approaching, Hallowtide is now just a fading image in our rearview mirrors, but before all the jack-o-lanterns turn completely into humus, I wanted to share a little about how our Hallowtide traditions have changed over the past decade.  Suffice to say that how we celebrate today is a long ways from how we started.

I still remember, with a bit (okay, a lot) of nostalgic longing, the first Hallowtide that I celebrated with my children.  After years of infertility, being able to finally celebrate with my own child was a big deal to me. That was in 2010, and I didn't even know then that Hallowtide was a thing; it was just Halloween to me, so how we celebrated was very secular, i.e., candy and costumes.  And even though we didn't go anywhere on Halloween, I still remember the joy I found in gathering up miscellaneous items around the house and making my son's first-ever costume and snapping a photo of him. My husband took delight in adding the sign to complete the outfit.

The first costume for my first kid, Halloween 2010.  Pretty scary, eh?

It was great fun putting together a costume for my baby in 2010, but little did I know then that a year later, I'd have TWO little ones to dress up.  This was a bit more challenging, but with a little creativity and a lot of duct tape (used only on the costume, I promise!), I came up with costumes inspired by two free plastic helmets that they got at the local fire truck parade the month before.  It was very cute and not a bit liturgical.

Two little firefighters, Halloween 2011.

What I thought was challenging in 2011 became almost impossible in 2012.  This was the year I became a stay-at-home mother, and my two boys were now very mobile, very strong-willed, very exhausting toddlers. I was in full-on survival mode, hence I skipped the costumes completely and just went for the Halloween t-shirt. I think I threw some chocolate candy in a bowl for them, based upon their faces in this photo.  That year is kind of a blur, and the last thing on my mind was trying to teach my kids about saints, or feast days, or anything other than basic commands like "sit" and "stop" and "don't touch".

"I love my Mummy" and
I'm coming for her. Halloween 2012.

By the time Halloween of 2013 rolled around, I was starting to find my groove as a stay-at-home mother, as evidenced by the fact that not only were my boys back in costumes, but I also somehow managed to bake and decorate two kinds of sugar cookies for the holiday.  I'm not sure what came over me. Of course, there wasn't a saint among them, and my boys remained holy terrors.

There wasn't anything much scarier than when these two
got that look on their faces.  Halloween 2013.

Two years into being a stay-at-home mother, I realized that it was a very rewarding gig, but I really didn't know what I was doing. My children were feral, and my attempts at trying to instill any sense of virtue in them were falling flat. So, I did what any desperate mother would do; I searched for an online community that might offer some kind of moral support and helpful advice. That was back when blogging was still popular so, I hopped on the bandwagon. I began reading Catholic blogs (and started this one) and that changed EVERYTHING. Within a few months, I had found a network of mothers trying to raise their children in the Catholic faith. Reading those blogs, I was intrigued by their attempts to bring the faith into every facet of their family life, including how they were celebrating holidays and liturgical seasons.  I found myself wondering if I should do the same. 

At first, I was hesitant.  Although dressing kids up like saints seemed like a fun and catechetical thing to do, I worried about depriving my children of the secular version of Halloween, so I tried to give them both.  

Secular costumes for trick-or-treating, Halloween 2014

Halloween AND Hallowtide cookies, 2014

Obligatory pumpkin carving, 2014.

Attending our first
All Saints Day party, 2014.

The first saint costumes I ever made, 2014 
(St. John Bosco & St. John the Baptist)

Halloween 2015 wasn't much different than 2014.  I was still doing two sets of costumes, still trying to take the kids trick-or-treating, and still trying to keep a foot in both the secular world and liturgical world.  It was a lot of work, but I thought it was necessary in order to keep my kids both Catholic and "normal".  Only later did I come to realize that being both a devout Catholic and normal in the eyes of society may be mutually exclusive!

Hallowtide 2015
(St. Joseph & St. John Bosco)

Halloween 2015
(A pirate & his black cat)

And then Dominic joined our family in 2016, and I was back in survival mode with a 2-month old and two still-feral 5 and 6 year old boys.  Needless to say, something had to go, and that was trick-or-treating.   My husband and I were done loading kids into car seats, driving around in the cold rain after dark, and waiting in traffic jams and candy lines for sweet treats just so our kids could have the wonderful experience of greedily hoarding candy and scarfing down too much sugar, which took feral to a whole other level. Instead, I replaced it all with buckets of candy that I bought (and moderated) and called it all good.  It was one of the best parenting decisions we ever made.  It would be another year, however, before it finally dawned on me that if I didn't dress them up in secular costumes, they would still turn out okay.

Let's hear an Amen for Halloween-themed
sleepers that just zip up!  Halloween 2016

This little guy insisted that it wasn't Halloween
 unless he got to dress up like a cat again.  Halloween 2016

And if brother dresses up, he wants
 to, also.  Halloween 2016. (Wildlife ranger)

For Halloween 2017, we continued with the tradition of carving pumpkins and eating candy (purchased by Mom), but the confidence I gained from ditching trick-or-treating the year before gave me the courage to finally do away with secular costumes completely. Instead, I encouraged the boys to put their thoughts and efforts into which saint they would like to represent for All Hallows' (Saints) Day. I thought I might be in for a fight, but once I assured Joah that I would never throw away his cat costume (and I haven't), and that he could pick a saint who loved animals as much as he does, he was all for it.  It also helped that I promised them that I would make chocolate chip "pumpkin pancakes" for supper, and while I didn't realize it at the time, a new Halloween supper tradition began.

Halloween 2017.

Pumpkin pancakes for supper, Halloween 2017

Mom-approved candy, Halloween 2017.

St. Francis of Assisi, Hallowtide 2017

St. George, Hallowtide 2017

A (very mobile) St. Dominic, Hallowtide 2017

We mostly repeated the process in 2018, but the boys kept upping their game with the saint costumes. With the time I saved in not making secular costumes, I was able to put more time into helping them with their saint costumes.  John really wanted to be "a saint with a beard", so I made a beard for Moses, and sewed a tunic for St. Francis of Assisi.  

Halloween 2018

Halloween 2018

Moses, St. George &
St. Francis of Assisi.  Hallowtide 2018

By the time 2019 rolled around, liturgical living had become for us a way of life and feast days, and saint stories, and solemnity celebrations were being incorporated into our entire year.  And although we still carved pumpkins and ate candy on Halloween, the focus of this holiday for my family had turned completely around from where it had been five years previous.  It was in 2019 that I first started referring to "Hallowtide," and our entire family was enjoying the new way that we were celebrating so much, that we wanted to share it with others.  So, that year, our entire family dressed as saints.  We all wore our costumes to Mass on All Saints' Day, and after Mass, we invited everyone to our home for an All Saints' Day party.  It was great fun, and my kids and our friends still talk about it today.  

This little guy, however, was missing his cat costume,
 so we dug it out for him for old time's sake.  Hallowtide 2019.

The family that wears saint costumes
together, stays together.  Hallowtide 2019.

Making soul cakes for the
 party, Hallowtide 2019

A feast of saint-themed snacks
for our guests. Hallowtide 2019

And then, in 2020, the world changed, and the idea of hosting a party in our home was out-of-the question.  It was this year, more than any other, that I was so thankful for the liturgical living traditions that we'd already established in our family.  It was also in 2020 that I realized that we had not yet fully incorporated the last piece, perhaps most important part, of the Hallowtide puzzle into our lives. Pandemic deaths seemed to be all around us now, making us more fully aware of the significance of All Souls' Day.  And so, it was in 2020 that we added cemetery visits on All Souls' Day to our Hallowtide traditions.  On that day, we visited five cemeteries. I asked the kids to choose a headstone in each one, make a chalk rubbing of the stone, and record the name of the person who it belonged to.  We said a decade of the rosary at each of the five cemeteries, then came home and added the names we'd recorded to our our Poor Souls candle, which we lit each evening when we said our family rosary (another tradition we started in 2020).  It was a lovely and meaningful end to our Hallowtide, and one that we repeated again this year.  

Hallowtide 2020.  This time, we placed our jack-o-lanterns
on the graves of our 3 babies, weaving many of our Hallowtide traditions together.

St. Isaac Jogues, Hallowtide 2020

St. Joseph, Hallowtide 2020

St. John Bosco, Hallowtide 2020

All Souls' Day at the cemetery. Hallowtide 2020.

Which brings us to now, and the recent end of another Hallowtide.  How much my children have grown in these years!  How much I have grown! I am much different than the mother I was ten years ago, when I blindly followed the mainstream, doing things without knowing the reason for doing them.  I will forever be grateful for the blogs of 2014 (especially Catholic All Year ) that led me down this path, and for the many mothers out there who are also doing the same in their families.  It is primarily through their inspiration and example that I am learning how to live the faith with my children in my own home.

Hallowtide 2016.

There once was a time when I worried that we were depriving our children of Halloween. Now, I believe that they have something even better. They have Hallowtide. 

Hallowtide 2021

Hallowtide 2021

Hallowtide 2021

Hallowtide 2021
St. Christopher, St. Roch, & St. Luke

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

 “Mom?”   “I don’t feel so well.”  

And so it began.  The end of our summer vacation before it even started.  Or shall I say, the end of MY summer vacation.  The one I’d spent a week prepping food for and three days washing clothes and packing suitcases for.  The one I’d planned so well, jockeying around dental appointments, co-op meetings, therapy sessions, and various other activities just so that we could find 5 days in a row on the calendar of free time.  The one that I’d researched and made phone calls for in order to secure tickets at a reasonable price.  The one I’d been dreaming about for months as I dug potatoes in the hot sun, threw laundry into the washer, washed another sink full of dishes, and cooked another meal.  We hadn't taken an extended family vacation since June 2019, and I was beyond ready to get away. Just a few more weeks, I’d say.  Then, a few more days.  Then, a few more hours, before I could escape it all and just go have fun with my family.   Five days of me and the boys and my husband getting away from the reality of chores and obligations and appointments and just having an enjoyable time with each other.  I couldn’t wait.

It’s just car sickness, I told myself, as I tried to clean the vomit off my little one’s carseat with an old napkin and wiped off his clothes while keeping one eye on the vehicles whizzing by us.  But when it happened again an hour after we’d stopped traveling, and I felt his forehead getting warmer and warmer to the touch, I knew it wasn’t carsickness.  We made him comfortable in the motel room and for the remainder of the trip, that’s where he and I stayed, while the rest of the family enjoyed the summer vacation that I had planned.

My husband, being the good sport that he is, offered to take a turn staying with our sick child in the room, so that I could go out and have some fun, too, but I declined.  As much as I would have enjoyed riding the log flume and eating ice-cream with my older boys, a bigger part of me felt like I needed to be with my sick child.  So, I encouraged them to go on and have a wonderful time and assured him that I and the little one would be just fine.  And although I had initially expressed bitterness at the circumstances (“WHY DID THIS HAVE TO HAPPEN NOW??”, I had exclaimed the night before), once I accepted that I had a child who needed me more than I needed a vacation, my soul finally began to feel peace again.  It was as if I could hear God saying, “Okay, pass this test,” and, I think I did pass it, even if I didn’t get an A+.

Which has gotten me to thinking a lot about all the little tests that come with being a mother.   If nothing else, motherhood has been the most effective means God has found in teaching me just how much I need to grow in humility although, marriage is a close second.  Both involve relationships that cannot be navigated well without a continual outpouring of grace from Our Lord, of that I am sure.  I could almost feel the grace come into my soul in the form of acceptance of the circumstances that had caused my vacation plans to unravel.  It’s as if, once I did the work of having a more humble heart, God gave me the ability to accept what I could not control, and my bitterness and disappointment just melted away. Acceptance must certainly be one of the many gifts of humility, and it is a feeling that is still somewhat foreign to me.

It has been (and probably always will be) my greatest challenge to humble myself enough to be worthy of this gift of acceptance.  I struggle to see whatever unfolds before me as part of God’s divine plan. Instead, I want to “fix” every situation, every person, and make things “better”.  Only, too often, my desire for control and fixing makes things far from better. It often looks like me criticizing my husband for not hanging up his shirts, instead of thanking him for bringing in the laundry.  It looks like me yelling at my kid for spending 2 hours doodling on his homework, instead of seeing him as a person who is far more creative than I will ever be.  Sometimes it looks like me wanting to find a part-time job so that I can be regarded as "successful", instead taking pleasure in the success of being able to prepare healthy meals for my family with fresh food from my garden and keeping a tidy home where they feel comfortable. 

A few hours before it was time to head home from our vacation, my little one was feeling better, and asking for potato chips.  When he figured out that he’d missed all the planned vacation fun because he’d been so sick, he was disappointed, and his little lip began to quiver and his eyes fill with tears.  I hugged him and assured him that he would get another chance.

And he will.  And so will I.  And perhaps the next attempt at taking a family vacation won’t go as planned either.  Or maybe it will.  Either way, I know that if I have a humble heart, trusting that God always works all things for our good, that He will again give me that gift of acceptance.  In the meantime, I guess He just needed to remind me that sometimes, a vacation is less about escaping my reality and more about finding it.

 

We finally made it!

 

My 5 Tips for Taking Kids Hiking in the Rain

Linking up with Kelly over at her blog today.

Check out her post and others at this link.  Thanks, Kelly!

Yesterday, we went hiking, my family and I.  This is not unusual for us.  We hike a lot.  At least once a month, sometimes more often.  We live smack dab in the center of a National Forest, so there aren’t many other options for entertainment.   Thankfully, there aren’t many other things we’d enjoy doing more.

The unusual thing about our hike yesterday, however, was that we hiked in the rain.  Now this may not seem all that unusual, but given the choice, most people would not hike in the rain.  Or should I say, most adults would not hike in the rain.  Kids?  They love it.

I have come to know this after spending years as an outdoor educator.  Yesterday, we had planned to hike with 7 other families.  As it turned out, 6 of those families backed out of coming at the last minute.  The reason?  It was raining.

So, we hiked with the one other family that showed up, and our boys had a blast, just as I knew they would.  The mother and I, whom I only knew casually, got much better acquainted, and bonded over our mutual agreement that kids are anxious about enough things these days, why make them anxious about the weather, as well? 

Skipping rocks in the rain.

When we got home that afternoon, it was still raining.  My son, who was already wet from the hike, asked what he could do, and I suggested he take the firewood off the front porch and return it to the woodshed.  Without hesitation, he agreed to do it, and a few minutes later, I looked out the window to see him loading wood into the wagon.  In the rain.  He was wet but working, and it dawned on me that children who play in the rain become adults who will work in the rain.  And in a world where time is money, that just might be the edge they need someday.  I spent my professional career working with men and women who were required to perform most of their assignments outdoors.  So many times, projects got delayed significantly due to inclement weather.  Not because the weather prohibited them from completing the work assigned, but because they were unwilling to work in less than perfect conditions.  It cost the government tons, not to mention the frustrations that came from incomplete projects and delayed timelines.  All because it was raining, or too cold, or too hot, etc, etc.

Moving firewood in the rain.

However, I do realize that a lot of people, especially mothers, are not sure just HOW to enjoyably hike in the rain with their kids.  Obviously, getting cold and soaked is a very unpleasant experience, and if you have cold and wet children, then the whining begins, and they will drive you totally nuts, and you will vow to never, ever take them out in the rain again.  I know. I’ve been there.  So, I decided to share a few of the things I have learned after years of taking kids (and myself) outdoors in rainy weather.  

1. Get rain pants.

I think most parents have a rain coat for their child, but I have seen very few people show up for an outdoor activity in wet weather wearing a pair of rain pants.  Get some.  Not only will they keep the kids a whole lot drier, but they will also prevent the mud that they are sure to smear all over their rumps and knees from grinding into their clothing.   Plus, when it is time to put the dirty, muddy little rascals into their car seats post-hike, you can just peel those nasty rain pants off, put them in a plastic bag, and Voila!  You have kids with clean pants again.  No soiled car seat covers, and no mess in the car.  Rain pants are also awesome for putting over their pants when they play in the snow, or for just having on even when it is not raining, but the ground is wet.  I always buy the lightweight rain pants so that they are not too warm in the summer, and ripstop nylon is best because you know those kids are going to walk right through that briar patch!

My favorite rain pants and accompanying rain coat for kids are the Kids' Discovery Rain Pants and Jacket (pictured below), sold by LL Bean, but unfortunately, the big kids sizes are no longer on the market.  They do have a similar (more expensive) pair available and sometimes you can get them at a big discount on Black Friday.

My little hikers, six years ago.

Since I didn't want to pay that much nor wait until Black Friday, I recently purchased the Columbia Kids' Cypress Brook II  rain paints (available on Amazon) for one of my older sons, and so far, they are holding up well.  I generally have had good luck with Columbia brand kids clothing.

Oh, and one more thing.  When you get home with those mud-caked rain pants that you stashed in a plastic bag, take them outside, give them a good shake, then put them in the washer on the rinse setting. DO NOT USE LAUNDRY SOAP and DO NOT PUT THEM IN THE DRYER or else your rain pants will soon just become pants, and lose all the waterproof qualities that they once had.

2. Wear waterproof shoes

My boys all have waterproof hiking boots, but more often than not, when it is really wet or we have snow, they wear ordinary rubber “chore boots”.  Again, because it is often warm, I buy the uninsulated boots.  Pair them up with some wool-blend socks, and their feet will stay warm even if they get wet.  Heavier socks also prevent blistering.  

Some rubber boots hold up better than others.  I am not a big fan of the cutesy Western Chief boots, mostly because they have poor tread for slippery surfaces. I also tested the Crocs rain boots on my 9 year old and they lasted about 3 weeks. We have mostly been using the Ranger Splash series youth rain boots by Honeywell for our boys since they were 2 years old, and by far, they have held up the best.  Some sizes are currently available from Amazon, and I've also found them online at Wal-mart. 

Another plus to wearing these boots is that they have higher tops than most kids' hiking boots, which is something to consider when hiking in rattlesnake country.

And here’s a helpful hint…when wearing rain pants with boots, be sure that the kids pull their rain pants over the tops of their boots, not tuck them into the boots, otherwise, the water will just funnel right down into their shoes.  Somehow, this seems obvious to me, but I have learned that it is definitely not obvious to an 8 year old!

 

If you wanna see salamanders,
you gotta hike in the rain.

3. Wear a ball cap. 

Pull a raincoat hood over a ball cap and unless you are facing the wind, the rain will run down your hood and away from your face.  And if you have a kid who wears glasses, they will still be able to see, at least until they decide to turn their face up towards the clouds and catch raindrops on their tongue!

Watching mist rise above the river
in between rain showers.

 

4. Know how to find shelter.

When hiking anytime, but especially with children in rainy weather, it’s important to have a plan for finding shelter, if needed. I usually try to stay within 15 minutes of shelter when thunderstorms are around.   When the storm hits, we wait it out in our shelter.  I have a son who is deathly afraid of thunderstorms, and I think the best way to help him past his fear is to expose him in a safe manner to the storms.  When it is all over, he relaxes and realizes that he’s still okay.  Bit by bit, he is overcoming his phobia.  A vehicle or picnic shelter or cliff overhang or cave or even beneath a large evergreen tree are all shelter options that we have taken advantage of when caught in downpours or thunderstorms, although some shelters are definitely better (and safer) than others.  And yes, lightning is a threat at times, but that risk is still probably lower than the one you took driving on the freeway to get to the trailhead. 

Waiting out a downpour under a cliff overhang.
This one caught us by surprise, hence, no rain gear.

5. Stay warm.

I always say, “It’s all fun and games until the kids get cold,” and it’s true.  Regardless of whether it is raining or sunny, if the kids get cold, their fun is over.  For this reason, I am much less likely to take kids out in the rain if it is below 45 degrees F than if it is 70 degrees F.  Even if you dress them with all the best rain gear and boots and hats, they are going to get wet in the rain.  If you keep them moving, they can usually handle it if the temperatures are above 45 degrees, but you should definitely plan to pack some extra dry clothes for when they slow down and start to get chilly.  Generally speaking, adults will start getting cold before the kids do. If it is around 70 degrees or warmer, odds are those kids are going to ditch their rain gear anyway, and just want to get wet, because nothing feels better on the skin that a warm, summer rain.   When this has happened to me, I’m not above making them strip down to their underclothes before getting into the car for the return trip home. Keeping an old bath towel in the vehicle is a huge help at times like that!

 

My mostly dry hikers yesterday. As expected, one
of them ditched the raincoat and decided to just get wet.

So those are my 5 tips for how to prepare kids for hiking in the rain.  Of course, these same tips apply to adults as well, and I follow them myself (well, except for the stripping down to the underclothes part!). I encourage you to get those kids outside in all kinds of weather.  Life is full of enough anxieties; let’s not teach our kids to be anxious about the weather.   God gave us the natural world so that we would always have a place to play and imagine and grow.   Our Lord uses rainy days to bring life to the earth and even more so, to our children. I try not to get in the way of that.

 

He covers the heavens with clouds;

He prepares rain for the earth;

He makes grass grow on the hills.

                                           Psalm 147:8

 

It Started With St. Joseph's Day

St. Joseph's Day, 2019

It all started on St. Joseph’s Day, six years ago.

That was the day that I took my first step into incorporating liturgical living into our family life.  It was a spontaneous act, spurred by the influence and inspiration I was finding in relatively new bloggers who were sharing with the rest of us how they lived the Catholic life at home with their kids. 

I was still a relatively new mom. My oldest child was four years old, and I was toying with the idea of homeschooling because we didn’t have the option of sending our kids to a Catholic school (among other reasons).  But I had no example to follow, no upbringing that incorporated the faith into daily living (aside from grace before meals), and no idea how to make being Catholic something my kids would understand, let alone enjoy.  Raising children in a community where Catholics are the extreme minority made me even more determined to bring our faith into our daily life, and I knew making it fun was imperative.  I didn’t just want our children to know they were Catholics; I wanted them to WANT to be Catholics.  So, I did what I’d done two years before, when I was looking for a community that understood the experience of infertility from a Catholic-perspective. I started searching the blogs for the community that I couldn’t find next door, only this time, I was looking for experienced, devout, Catholic mothers who were teaching the faith in fun ways to their children.

That was in 2014, when blogging was still a “thing” and the blogging community was strong, and networked, and we were all learning from one another in more than 30 second sound-bites. With a little searching, I found blogs like Catholic All Year and Shower of Roses and Catholic Icing, among others. I dove into them, reading post after post, and was blown away by all that they were doing with their kids to live fully the liturgical life. Still, I hesitated, mostly because living liturgically the way those families on the blogs did just seemed so overwhelming and beyond my capabilities. My boys hated crafts and coloring sheets, I did not feel like I had the time to do so many of the things that I saw and admired on the blogs, and I just barely knew the faith myself, yet these blogging mothers were so well catechized.  So, I read about it a lot and did very little.

But the seed had been planted, and the Holy Spirit was watering it in my soul. It was on March 19, 2015 that I remember driving to pick up my two little boys at preschool when the thought suddenly struck me that it was St. Joseph’s Day, a Solemnity no less, and I, once again, was completely ignoring it.  It nagged at me, much as the Holy Spirit does sometimes, and I couldn’t shake the thought that I should at least do something to honor this Patron of our Universal Church and encourage a devotion in my sons to this model of men.  Still, it was already 2 p.m. and I didn’t have time to make or prep anything; however, I did remember reading that it was a tradition to eat cream puffs (zeppoles) on St. Joseph’s Day.  So, with only a few minutes to spare, I drove past my kids’ school, and went a few extra miles to the grocery store, grabbed a packet of eclairs from their bakery shelf, and then rushed back to the school to pick up the kids. It felt a little crazy, and much too unplanned for my comfort, but at least it was something.

When we arrived home, I made dinner, then told the boys that I had a surprise for dessert (since it was Lent, they found this very perplexing).  I cleared the table, put a statue of St. Joseph in the middle of it, unwrapped the eclairs from their cellophane wrapping, and served them on a plastic Disney plate. The boys were ecstatic.  Suddenly, they loved St. Joseph’s Day, and suddenly, I did, too! I snapped a couple of photos and shared them on social media to commemorate our first baby steps into liturgical living.

St. Joseph's Day, 2015

That was the beginning of a new way of learning for my husband, myself, and our kids.  As feast days would approach, I would research them and plan little ways to celebrate them.  And although our children focused mostly on the treats they were receiving, or the fun parts of the day, they also began to associate the activities with various saints, liturgical seasons, feasts, memorials, and solemnities.  But perhaps more importantly, I was learning along with them, and living the kind of life I wish I’d had as a child being raised in the very progressive post-Vatican II church of the 1970s.  In so many ways, sharing the faith with our kids in this way has felt like a second chance for me to learn and experience so much that I missed out on as a Catholic kid.  It has truly been a win-win.

St. Joseph's Day, 2017

This past week, for the sixth year in a row, we celebrated St. Joseph’s Day again.  Six years later though, it has now evolved into an all-day celebration.  Instead of a last-minute trip to the grocery, my son and I cooked in the kitchen together, making our own cream puffs side-by-side. 

St. Joseph's Day, 2021

My husband, a true carnivore who looks forward with great anticipation to Meat Fridays, took off work early so that he could put pork chops on the grill.  My other son, who loves working with wood just as St. Joseph did, worked in the garage on a craft made from pieces of cherry wood that he cut and sanded, turning each piece into a pretty little candle sconce. 

St. Joseph's Day, 2021

We invited a few (non-Catholic) friends over, and our two parish priests, and all sat down to a feast together, telling stories, and predicting whether or not St. Joseph was going to send us some sunshine on what so far, had been a very gray and cloudy day (he did).

As the sun set that evening, we finished up the dishes, swept the floors, lit the candles in our brand-new St. Joseph’s Day sconces, and said our family rosary.  The four-year old, wiped out from a day of non-stop activity and no nap, leaned against his dad and was sound asleep before the second decade.  In the candlelight, our statue of St. Joseph stood illuminated, looking down from the mantle upon our little family.  Later that night, as I kissed my oldest son goodnight, he leaned forward and said, “I wish every day could be like this,” then he drifted off to sleep, no doubt dreaming of cream puffs and the love of St. Joseph, and as he did, I recognized that my dream was already coming true.