7QT Friday- Bits and Pieces

Another Friday (or as I keep seeing all over social media FriYAY!) is here. 

1. Vacation Box- PARIS, France

You may recall that we found a neat way to involve the girls more actively in the works of mercy by making a vacation box to Hawaii for a couple near and dear to our hearts.  It was such a fun project and such a neat way to spread love to others, that we have completed another vacation box.  This one for a dear woman whom we decided would enjoy a trip abroad to the lovely, fashionable, and romantic city of Paris.  

The trip took her to Paris where she "visited" the church of the Miraculous Medal, Sacre Coeur, and even attended a ballet while enjoyign some French cookies of course and learning a wee bit of the French language.  

The girls also arranged for her to "journey to" the Arc de Triumph, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and they designed 3 very fashionable ensembles for her to wear on her trip.  And of course some macaroons.  One could have much more fun with the food aspect of a "vacation box" if you live near to the recipient, but we've had to make ours somewhat simple in that regard because our recipients live out of town.  

And a note to explain a little and just because.  :)

We already picked our next recipient and decided we'll be taking her on a trip to the Swiss Alps.  Stay tuned...and share ideas if you send a vacation box to someone you love.  :)

2.  Due Date

Today is Kolbe's due date.  It's so weird to say because he's been with us for a whole TWO weeks.  But this is technically the day that he was "due" to make his way into the world.  He chose a pretty awesome day to surprise us though (Mother Teresa's birthday). 

Happy two weeks, Little Man!  

3. Library trip

One of the first outings I ventured out of the house with 5 littles in tow for was a trip to the library to refill our bag with fresh titles.  The effort to make the trip was well worth the quiet and peace that comes for several days after a trip to the library.  We have many little "readers" in this house for which I am very grateful.  

I found these two like this just a couple days ago.  My heart melted.  Not even kidding.  

4.  Chapel Veils

My sister in law, also Laura, makes custom chapel veils and has just started up a shop on Etsy.  Check out her work and grab a veil for yourself, a loved one, or even your child making their first communion.  She has done some lovely work and she can work with you to make your veil (or a gifted veil) just what you want.  

(picture used with permission)

5. Little Bro

In case you were wondering the girls are still completely in love with their little brother and they ask me constantly often if they can hold him.  

 

Daddy loves his snuggles with Kolbe too when he returns from work.  

6. First Day of School pictures

We started nearly two weeks ago at this point, but it's been busy around here, so I haven't got all these cute shots up on the blog yet.  Enjoy. 

This one cracks me up.  I told them to squish closer together.  Sophie wasn't enthused about the idea.

7.  School

It's been a breeze so far.  Kayla has been so responsible and comes and takes care of her school work almost on her own each morning.  She reads like crazy in the afternoons and is gearing up for her first ever book report.  Elise (and Ava too) are working with me each morning and are doing a great job with letter sounds and numbers currently.  We are having a lot of fun and can't wait for lots more throughout this school year.  There have been some tantrums some days too, but that's to be expected.  I'd want to play all day too....

How was your week, friends?  

Link up with Kelly from This Ain't the Lyceum with your 7 Quicktakes for the week.  

Works of Mercy with Kids: A Vacation Box for the Homebound

Generally I don't like to share things like doing works of mercy because the point is to love others and care for them, not tell everyone about it.  But I have found it a little challenging to find great ways to bring the works of mercy to life in age appropriate ways for my kids, so I'm sharing an idea that we came up with that might be something others would be interested in doing with their young kids as well.  

If you are familiar with the Works of Mercy, there are both spiritual and corporal works.  This vacation box idea is something that helps us practice two corporal works of mercy: 1. Visit the sick and 2. Visit the imprisoned as well as one of the spiritual works of mercy: 1. Comforting the sorrowful.  In our family, we don't live close to any relatives especially the ones who are getting a little older.  We can't visit them regularly, but we wanted to find a way to bring them joy and show them how much we love and care about them, especially since some of them are sick and homebound and perhaps a bit lonely at times.  And some of them are caregivers for those who are sick and homebound which means that they too are often unable to take much time for themselves.  

For our first vacation box, we chose to send a wonderful older couple who is very dear to us to Hawaii.  Here's how we did that in our own special way.  

This is our Hawaiian vacation box, created with love by 3 sweet little gals, ages 3, 5, and 7 with a tiny bit of help from their littlest sister (18 months).  

We decided Hawaii would be a fun place that the couple would love to visit if they could, but since they can't, we would bring it to them as best we could.  We brainstormed ideas for pictures that they could hang up around them to make it look like they were in Hawaii.  As you can see from the top picture, that included palm trees, tropical flowers, pineapples, a dolphin swimming, lots of blue ocean, and a bright sunshine.  Kayla drew all the pictures and she and her sisters colored them in.  

Even sweet Sophie joined in for an ocean picture, scribbling blue crayon on a paper that one of her sister's later finished.  

We also thought the couple might need new swim suits for their trip, so Kayla designed some.  She really got into it.  I simply drew her an outline

We gathered some other fun items to send along with their sweet artwork that would help to create the ambiance of visiting the Hawaiian islands: some tropical flower hair clips, Hawaiian chocolate covered macadamia nuts and chocolate with mango, Mai Tai mix (not pictured), leis, a bunch of little drink umbrellas, and a coconut bra.  

I added this little surprise for the girls.  I made a little Hawaiian postcard and put it in the box, self-addressed so that the recipients of our box could send the girls a little message "from Hawaii" because everyone knows when you go on a tropical vacation you send postcards to people you love.  

So there you have it.  

We are working on ideas for another vacation box for someone special.  Where should we send her?