Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day

I knew how we would do this whole Ash Wednesday/Valentine's Day thing if we homeschooled and I knew how it was likely handled at the parish school our kids attended last year (if I had to guess I would guess that they had Valentine's day on Fat Tuesday), but as Valentine's Day approached I weighed how to help the kids understand the start of Lent with the parties they'd be having in their classrooms.

I had worked out that there was only one Mass at our parish we would be able to attend as a family and, while Ash Wednesday isn't a Holy Day of Obligation, I really wanted to make sure we all made it as a family, especially since the rest of the day was going to be busy.  So we made it to the 6:30 Mass, where James, upon receiving his ashes, turned around and said "Do you see this?  Do you see what I got here?!?!?" in his most excited voice as I ushered him back to our seats.

He was a tiny bit disappointed when he realized it didn't mean that he could make his first communion twenty minutes later.

Maggie's school made it pretty easy. Her teacher had let me know before hand that while they would exchange cards everything was going to be really low key and relaxed because the school has lots of kids from lots of different cultures that don't celebrate Valentine's Day.  And besides that Maggie's class keeps things a little more low key just so the kids don't get too thrown off their regular schedule (although I think it took weeks for everyone to recover from the excitement of Halloween).

And I did make a three minute vlog that zips through our day.  I had fun getting some little clips of the farms around the area that we live in, all covered in snow, and the houses covered in ice and even figured out how to add music, so I was kind of proud of this one.



Paul was able to visit Sadie's class, which I don't have video from, but which made her day.

And I think everyone has worked out what they're doing for Lent and had a good plan by yesterday and all the time spent in the car gave us quite a bit of time to talk and to watch a certain rosary based DVD that the kids have all loved since they were Jamesy's age.

Now for Day 2 of Lent.