Coming full circle...All Saints, All Souls

About a year ago (2006), I started a dabbling in the blogging world just to try it out as a way to record and reflect on our family adventures in Faith, field trips, teaching and learning. One of my early blogs was about taking the girls to celebrate All Saints Day and All Souls Day last October/November. I feel like I have come full circle as we celebrated the two again in 2007.

ALL SAINTS 2007

Cornflower was St. Thérèse de Lisieux "the Little Flower"for All Saints this year. Having been in the Little Flowers group for 5 years, it seemed appropriate as this is the final year of that program for Cornflower to honor St. Thérèse de Lisieux in this way. Her costume was a great hit at our Church's Trunk-n-Treat event where she helped give out candy and at the homeschool All Saints Party as well.

Poppy wanted to be a queen for preschool so we obliged her with a "Queen Helen of the True Cross" ensemble featuring a green velvet dress, black velvet cape with green piping and of course, a crown.

ALL SOULS 2007

The families that we are surrounded by in our homeschooling journey are such a wonderful support. Their dedication to their children and to their families' faith journeys is inspirational.

We all met for Mass and then at the cemetery with flowers, rosaries and memories of our loved ones who had died and our prayers for them and those people throughout the cemetery. We visited as we do each year the graves of parishioners and tended those that looked unvisited. We cleared the dead flowers and put flowers at those graves that had none. The children lead the decades of the rosary and despite the gusts of strong cold wind that began as we meditated on the Descent of the Holy Spirit (no coincidence there I am sure), the children loved doing this.

This was year 5 of this group gathering to fulfill our obligation to pray for the dead and to celebrate in memory our loved ones who are no longer with us. Everyone agreed that this was a tradition they wished to maintain in the years to come.

In OUR prayers we remembered my MIL, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, and children that we are separated from for now and live in hope of being reunited with one day.

May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.