February -Blues, Blahs and a Birthday

I have a love-hate relationship with February.  The Feast of the Presentation is a tough feast for us.  Seven years ago we lost our fourth child on that day.  One never really gets over losing a child, it gets better with each passing year but we are always acutely aware of that absence.  Even the older children feel this sense of loss despite not having seen their brother in person.  They were old enough to remember me being pregnant and the trauma/drama of that event.  I have written about this many times in my old blog so I will spare you (and myself) the sadness of the re-telling. 

Today is the feast of St. Blaise, also the birthday of our middle child. For his birthday he wanted to go to confession but alas, due to poor planning we didn't make it.  After Mass this morning he asked if he could do the 33 days preparation for total consecration which sort of caught me off guard (in a good way).  He wanted his own copy of the book so we picked up one from the Lighthouse Catholic Media stand in our parish.

My oldest, 11 years old, made his consecration last year (he has renewed it once).  I told the others that 10 is a good age to be consecrated but the middle child thinks he might want to do it this year.  He will be preparing with me (for my renewal) beginning on February 20th with consecration day falling on the Feast of the Annunciation. 

As I type this, our resident baker (the girl), is baking the birthday cake because the boy only likes home made cake.  That comment made the girl so happy because that was a statement of approval of her baking skills. She is very meticulous about this cake in making sure it is according to his wishes (what color sprinkles, what color icing, etc)

I'll post birthday photos later and a couple things we are working on for Lent.

Hope you are all keeping warm this cold February day.