Our Garden

This time of summer, Jobychayan could do a bit of gardening and some vegetables. It's so nice to see the beans, pepper and tomato growing. Children enjoyed digging and watering with their dad, obviously I didn't do much other than bit watering and plucking the first harvest. This reminded the moms who give the first harvest to Lord or sharing with others. 

Solemnity Of Feast Of Assumption of Mary

Since August 15, we celebrated the Assumption of Our Lady and also The Independence day of our home country. It is also called as Dormition or Sleeping of Our Lady in Eastern churches.

We had a beautiful sharing with children about Mary's assumption and about India's Independence day. Pointed out how pure Mary was and how damage sin can cause to soul. Since Mary was pure and white, fragrant like a flower, with fragrance around.Her body was so pure so Her son took her body to heaven.

We also talked about Mary's falling sleep, The apostles thought she was dead and placed in her tomb.St. Thomas was late, and so when the other Apostles took him to see the body, they found no body, just a tomb filled with fragrant flowers. Jesus had taken Mary up to heaven, body and soul.

There is a tradition of blessing herbs and fruits on this day.Sirach(24; 20-21) describes Mary as sweet smelling fragrance and see here. Lot of dishes in catholic cuisine for this very special feast day.Lots of crafty ideas can be found in Holy heroes and shower of roses. Some of the crafts created by kidoos

                           
                                               Annu's (Mother  Mary and cherubs)

                         Munnu's

St Maximilian Kolbe feast day

It was St Maximilian Kolbe's feast day on August 14th.Children listened to story of the  saint and colored his pictures I found in shower of roses. Prayer in rosary mom is beautiful.We could attend Holy Mass today.

Sports Day 2014

Our sports day was great with lots of sports like, dash, egg and spoon, obstacle race, high jump, long jump, throw, tug of war etc.Children were given lot of certificates and achievement medals.

Thanks Carol Budgells for organizing this day wonderfully.

Summer 2014

This summer we thought we have invited some of our homeschooling families for meal together. Children played together and had fun, parents as usual talked about homeschooling and lot of other stuffs.

Rini is leaving Manchester and going for wedding. We gave a farewell to Jithu and Rini.Bid Adieu

Home School Conference 2014

Teach camp for homeschoolers was organised by CEE(Christian Education Europe). Cefn Lea was the place of conference and had quite informative sessions on 'nothing is trivial', 'boy versus girls communication', 'juggling homeschooling'  and ACE (accelerated christian education & PACE), there were lot of fun for children and to explore themselves in the afternoon,  evenings ended with rally  with introduction, children's concert, worship. As a family, we all played various sports. Last week was really graceful with beautiful memories.We met a few Homeschooling families and stayed with another homeschooling mum of  7 children. 

Munnu turned 8

We had our Munnu's 8th birthday party yesterday. He would love to do a sports themed birthday with some games especially to play cricket with his friends.I convinced him to have his party in our garden and we could go to one of the nearby park to play sports.

The snack table was loaded with goodies. Cupcakes were decorated and put cricket toppers, chocolate footballs, crisps, pop corns, Twizzlers, fruit cocktail with melon and strawberry. Decorated the table with a cricket ball and made banners with cricket ball picture, decorated the wall with a cricket ball and a bat      cut out made by Munnu himself.

Add caption

Me and children together made a chocolate cake, decorated with desiccated coconut with green food coloring to look like the pitch, made cricket stumps and bails with flakes wrapped around with white icing, cricket bat and a ball.

The kids did play lot of football, girls versus boys and boys versus boys, some played trampoling, tennis . Children had some  hot dogs in our back garden. Munnu actually wanted to do some races, unfortunately time ran out so fast.We had the pinata for the children to break and it was fun .Our friend Pushpa was with us to help too. Thank God for Munnu's last 8 years with us .

Then towards the end , we all went to our nearby water park to feed the ducks and kids played some ball games in the park. It was a beautiful time and it was fun to put all these things together.