Epiphany

One of my goals for 2025 is to do a better job of celebrating the liturgical year. I think one of the issues is that there are SO MANY feast days, and that there is a bit of deciding that has to be done ahead of time - that is, which feast days are we going to celebrate, and how are we going to celebrate them. So, to cut down on some of the decision fatigue, I went through our 2025 calendar, highlighted all the days we're going to celebrate and wrote down what we would do to celebrate each day. 

So, for example, for our patron saint feast days, we're going to eat something special and ask our patron saint to pray for us. We started the year with St. Genevieve's feast day - January 3. She is Alice's patron saint, and is also the patron saint of the city of Paris, where she lived. So for her feast day we had croissants for breakfast. :) 

Today we are celebrating the feast of Epiphany (a day late, oops), the day the Wise Men visited baby Jesus. The traditional way to celebrate Epiphany is by enjoying a King Cake with a little coin, ring, or bean baked inside. The person to get the little something is the King/Queen of the day and can decide various matters - possibly what is had for dinner that night, what fun activity is done in the afternoon, etc. So, today we had our first King Cake, and Dorothea was crowned Queen of the day. She was very excited about the prospect of bossing her siblings around a little today, haha!

 

Dorothea's Birthday

 Dorothea turned four this weekend! She was quite sick with a bad cough, but still managed to enjoy her day. 

Bike Jump Park

There's a bike jump park five minutes from our home, and we finally visited it on James's birthday! The kids had a grand time! 

June's First Holy Communion

June received her First Holy Communion a few weeks ago on the feast of Corpus Christi (which means body of Christ in Latin - quite the fitting feast day!). She had been looking forward to this day for a long time, and it ended up being lovely! 

 

Welcome to Eagle and the Rooster!

Hello, and welcome to my new blog, Eagle and the Rooster! And no, that title is not referring to one of Aesop's fables! Arenda means "Eagle" and Jeremy's last name means "Rooster." Thus and therefore, this little blog is all about life in our tiny corner of the world. 

And life here has been pretty good lately! Dorothea was born back in January, and she's been the much beloved centre of our lives the last few months. 

She really is a little darling! I wouldn't say she's the easiest of our babies (possibly the opposite?), but she is certainly a little ray of sunshine, and our lives are exponentially better because she's a part of them. 

The weather here has been getting more and more lovely the last few weeks. We've been taking more walks along the river trail near our home, and watching the world burst forth into its springtime glory. I think this next picture was taken about two weeks ago; you'll notice the cottonwood trees on the far side of the river had not yet leafed, but the willow was already fully leafed. And today, almost all the trees are fully green! 

Can you spot James in this next photo? 

We recently visited the new pump track near our home. It's a long track, with varied and interesting features, and the kids had so much fun biking around on it. We made sure to go in the morning, and the track was fairly quiet (it can get busy and rowdy in the afternoons). 

Here are a few more photos from daily life here.

James narrating his school reading to Dorothea. "So, Dorothea, there was this guy named Benedict Arnold, and he was tired of working with the Americans. So he decided to switch loyalties to the British instead!!" She looks pretty interested in 18th century history, I must say. 

Leo's been asking lately if it's his turn to do school. :) 

June lost another tooth! 

 

Sweetheart!!