Saints, Paper Priests, Fall Photos {7QT}

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My sister got this Happy Saints card set for John Paul to celebrate his upcoming feast day, but they're an even bigger hit with the twins!  Oh my goodness, it's adorable - they just want me to flip through the cards and they'll fire off the names in the most adorable little toddler voices.  They did it Tuesday night when we had a priest over for dinner (and we'd had the cards for...  4 days?) and named every. single. saint. correctly.

So you might want to get your own set!  It comes with an e-book and tons of printables too, plus free shipping so the $25 price tag doesn't seem quite so steep.  And for those of you with kids who are SERIOUS about gender equality, there are 13 girl saints and 13 boy saints.  Cecilia was VERY pleased about this when she was lining them up!

--2--

And while we're talking Catholic stuff, this:

Father Peter Cutouts Booklet from Catholic Extension

If you click the link, you'll find 8 printable pages of old school paper dolls complete with EVERYTHING necessary for a pre-Vatican II Mass, old-style vestments, etc.  It's AMAZING.  Our printer is out of ink right now or I'd print the whole set out right now because I KNOW John Paul and Cecilia will adore it.  Can someone please assign this as a project for your kids and blog about it so we can see the finished product?

--3--

Bucket list update!  We made it to our favorite Fall Festival!

She did NOT want to wear leggings under any of her proposed outfits.  I finally convinced her of the necessity, and she understood why after she went down this slide!

This pose.  Kills me.  And those muddy knees?  Yeah, she was that dirty within minutes of us getting there!

She and Mary Claire are actually the exact same height, you just can't tell from the picture!

Really, really good at smiling.  Really good.

So big!!!

This picture REALLY makes me laugh.  Those cutouts never work when it comes to scale, but John Paul's expression combined with Mary Claire's confusion slay me!

And once again, Cecilia proving that she has Miss Photogenic in the bag once her pageant days (ha!) begin.

We got rained out before we had a chance to hit everything, sadly, but they're AMAZING and we got rain checks so we'll go back for a (hopefully) quick trip sometime before the end of the month.  Which will be exhausting, to say the least...

--4--

And a week-old picture just to contrast with next year's picture at the same Fall Festival when this little one is EX-utero:

35.5 weeks in this picture, 36.5 weeks now!  

I used some ThredUP credit to round out my maternity wardrobe with a jersey dress, a denim skirt (which is SO comfy) and a scarf (okay, not maternity) and feel like I'll make it to November without completely giving up on actual clothing!  As a side note, their mobile site has really grown on me, and you get free returns if you order from a mobile device so if you've been holding off on ordering, it might be worth a try!  Shipping was a lot faster for me this time around, so I wonder if they've done something new to improve upon that?

--5--

John Paul has been...  Something else this week.  

And not in a *truly* naughty sense, but he's doing stuff like getting out slices of bread and punching holes in them so that he can use it to celebrate Mass, but then he leaves crumbs EVERYWHERE.  

Or he decides to get himself a tea cup and saucer and make some tea with elderberry syrup because that's apparently his new favorite drink, but then he opens up the teabag and ends up dripping pink tea everywhere...

And he's convinced that he should have access to EVERY shelf in EVERY cabinet so now nothing's safe (including my secret candy stash) because he gets it down and tells me THAT is what he'll be eating for dessert tonight.  

Francine suggested hiding candy in coffee mugs, and I think that's probably the best possible solution.  But seriously - what the heck?

Oh, and today?  Today I noticed it had been quiet for too long, and found him in the basement with Cecilia, playing a game on the Xbox.  I'm actually surprised this hadn't happened before, but once again he's been banned from electronics.  Adolescence can't be worse than this, right?

--6--

What do you do to help keep things clean at home during the day?  We had a pretty good system down, including a 4 pm cleaning blitz, after which I'd send the kids downstairs to watch TV for an hour or so before dinner.  And TV time was conditional upon completion of any cleaning tasks.  But now they've decided that they'd rather just keep playing and NOT clean AND not watch TV.  Argh!!!  And they're actually mostly leaving me alone while I cook, so it's not horrible.  But then things don't get cleaned up ever...

What do you do to enforce a cleaning routine?  I've been TERRIBLE about it in the past, and I know it'll be better if we have an actual routine...

--7--

Go check out more Quick Takes at Conversion Diary!