All Saint's Day 2013

We decided to celebrate All Saint's Day with a small family party. (Scott missed the party after deciding not to take off work early due to already planned days off in the near future.)

Surprisingly just the three of us had fun. The party started with prayer and the Litany of the Saints. Asking all the Saints to pray for you brings a wonderful amount of peace and was a great start to the party. The boys made cupcakes as the first task. We read about what today was about and then read about how a saint becomes a Saint. Then we played several rounds of Saint Bingo thanks to Jessica at Shower of Roses and her All Saints Bingo cards. We then made crafts. You can never be too old for lunch bag puppets! We used Lacy's Saint Puppet Templates. Well worth $3! I'm sure we will make more in the future seeing that I'm well stocked on brown lunch bags and Tyler enjoys them. While each of us made a puppet (yes, even I made one-St. Francis!) we listened to our Glory Story CD on St. Therese of Lisieux. Next we had a Saint Relay Race. I got this idea from another blog (I can't find my bookmark to let you know where) and this was the hit of the party. The boys had to do the Corporal Works of mercy like the Saints do and I timed them. Caleb beat Tyler by thirty seconds. 
 
They feed the hungry like St. Elizabeth of Hungary by putting icing on the cupcakes we baked. They help build the Church like St. Francis with their legos. They prayed for the living and the dead like St. Cyprian by leading us in prayer. They clothed the naked like St. Martin de Tours by dressing a stuffed animal. They filled cups of water to give drink to the thirsty. They gave to the poor like St. Nicholas by throwing socks full of pennies into our bean bag game. Finally they taught the faith like St. Patrick by reading a question and answer out of the catechism. It was a long game, but much enjoyed. 

Caleb feeding the hungry.

 

Tyler building the Church.

Caleb building the Church.

Tyler clothing the naked.

Caleb clothing the naked.

We ended the afternoon with saint presentations. Each boy gave an oral narration on their favorite saint. Caleb choose St. Nicholas and Tyler picked St. Michael.

We did have a big mess to clean up afterwards!

We ended the day with evening Mass and the boys got to be servers.