The Wise Guys

The weekend after New Years was the Feast of Epiphany. For those of you who may not be "up" on your Catholic feasts, it's when we celebrate the Magi's visit to the baby Jesus. I had prepped Emma and Bradlee about this feast, telling them how we were going to hear this story at church the next day and they were pretty excited to hear about the, as we call them, "Three Wise Guys".


Well, fortunately and unfortunately, the kids slept until 10:15am on Sunday, which means there was no way to get to 11am mass...so we missed it. Tony had a DJ gig the night before, so we let him sleep and while the three of us ate our oatmeal I made for breakfast, I decided to tell them the story of the "Three Wise Guys"...Here's how they now tell the story:



A LONG LONG LONG LONG LONG LONG LONG time ago, there were three wise guys that lived in a desert. An angel came to them and told them that a new King, named Jesus, was born in a manger and they should take presents and go see him. The presents they took were gold, frankincense and myrrh and they got on their camels and started on their way to see Baby Jesus. They followed a really bright star to get there. One time, when they stopped at the watering hole, they almost left one of the wise guys there. That's because he kept asking, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" There were almost only two wise guys.


When they got to the manger where Baby Jesus and Momma Mary and Papa Joe were, Mary was SO excited and happy to see them. The animals had kept Baby Jesus awake a lot, so he slept the whole time the wise guys were there! So then it was time for the wise guys to go home, but an angel came to them again and told them that there was danger ahead, so they needed to go home a different way. The danger was that there was a really bad, mean king who heard about Jesus and knew people were calling him "King". He was really jealous, and didn't know that Jesus is the King of Heaven, so he told all the rest of the bad guys to kill all the babies in the whole world so he could still be king. Since there was no room in the inn, Baby Jesus had a really good hiding spot with the animals, and that's why he was safe.


So while the wise guys were going home, they started going the new way, and their GPS said, "Recalculating...recalculating...recalculating!" They got lost anyway, and so they stayed in the middle of the desert and started Wise Guys Pizza, which also happens to have a location in downtown Flint (2012 years later!).


The end.


Who says you have to go to church to have the Holy Spirit present!? These are my favorite "church" moments. Sometimes I get more out of times like this than I do when I go to the actual church, especially with all the new changes to the Mass. I love being able to pass my faith on to my children in my own unique way...and to watch them just grasp it with everything they have is even better.

Little student

Emma is quite the student. She needed help with her homework while I was making dinner, so I got her a clip board and let her sit on the counter! Look at that face of concentration..."fact families" are tricky! :)

Dinner

I had dinner with Buzz Lightyear last night!

Zumba Girl!

One of Emma's Christmas gifts from my parents was a 12-week Zumba class! Last week was the first week and I think it's safe to say she is HOOKED!!! The kids wear a pedometer each week to count their steps and try to beat that number each week. The first week, Emma took 1178 steps! Last night, she beat that by almost 100 steps! Go Emma, go!!

Of course, she had to get a special "Zumba outfit"!! :)

Results of Movie Night!

The first picture is how I left them when I went downstairs...

the second is how I found them when I went to bed! :)

Movie Night!

Tony had basketball tonight, so the kids and I made air-popped popcorn and are watching "The Smurfs"!!  Bradlee doesn't like popcorn (shocker...), so he's having Skittles! :)

Happy New Year!

May your best day of 2011 be your worst of 2012!