Who Else is Looking Forward to Fall?

I've had enough of this heat and dream of cooler days ahead. Just thinking of it makes me want to bake a pie and watch some football...okay maybe not so much on the football LOL!

Speaking of fall...the parish festival is around the corner. Only a month away! Our group will be sponsoring a booth and we still need lots of help getting it organized. If you can help in any way, please let me know. We're planning on working in 1 hour shifts so that nobody gets stuck at the booth the whole time. We also need help setting up etc...

This should be a great way for our group to reconnect after a busy summer and a chance to help the church community at the same time.

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DONATIONS! DONATIONS! DONATIONS!

Donations for the festival are needed as well so please let me know if you can contribute any of the following:

1. Money for the big toys and to fill in
2. Big prizes for bingo and contests
3. Small prizes/trinkets for the games

Mostly at this point, we need prize donations for Mexican Bingo and money. Anything will be appreciated. The big toys (bounce houses) will cost us about $500. Anything left over will be used to fill in for what we are lacking.

Save the Date!

Our next activity will be on Saturday, June 26th. Please check back SOON for details!

Hint: We'll be getting our hands dirty in the afternoon.

Prayer Revisited

I wish I could say that I have been spending so much time praying since our last activity that I haven't had time to update this blog. That would be an acceptable excuse wouldn't it?

Probably not...but not because I haven't been praying! I guess better late than never so please enjoy the few pictures I got at the dinner with Brother Simeon.

Who would ever have thought a monk could be so FUNNY. I have an entirely new perception of monks and learned a few little tid bits about how they live and work together. Very interesting stuff.

A few of us hanging out before the meal.

Can you say YUMMY?

After the meal, we all went in and sat on the couches for an entertaining and enlightening discussion on prayer. Brother Simeon had several great suggestions for prayer and helped us to define what prayer actually is and why we do it. I especially liked how he reinforced the importance of attending mass on our prayer lives vise versa. He said that many (our age especially I'm sure) think that we don't need to go to mass and we can just pray on our own. He said that might be fine for a little bit but the less we attend mass the less we pray and the less we pray the less we attend mass. We NEED both!

Thank you to those that attended. I enjoyed the fellowship and look forward to future activities soon. God Bless!

Dinner With Br. Simeon Spitz

Mark your calendars for March 27th at 6pm to 8:30pm!

We'll be gathering at the rectory for a meal followed by a discussion on prayer with Br. Simeon Spitz. Br. Simeon is from the St. Gregory's Abbey in Shawnee, OK. He is the newest monk in Oklahoma.

Father Boeckman said it best when he described our topic for the evening:

"There is a strong desire to pray inside all of us. However, we need to nurture that desire, we need to stoke that desire for it to play a bigger role in our lives. Whether you are married, single, a priest or a monk, prayer is not easy but it is essential. Br. Simeon will share some on prayer and he will lead those present in a dialogue of what prayer looks like in our own lives. God is the one who teaches us to pray, to make prayer as natural as breathing."

Please RSVP if you haven't already. You can email me at cari.earley @ gmail.com by Wednesday, March 24th.

Meanwhile, you can learn more about St. Gregory's Abbey at http://www.monksok.org/.

Childcare is available with advance notice.

Crested Butte Slide Show

We had a fantastic time on our trip to Crested Butte. I'm personally glad that we went and have some great memories and made some new friends as well. Just putting this slide show together makes me want to go back already.

You can enjoy the slide show in two different ways:

1. Just click on it and play directly from here.

2. Or, click on the "scrapblog" logo at the bottom right corner of the slide show box. That will take you to the Scrapblog website. From there, you can select to watch it in full screen mode (at the top right corner above the slide show box). This mode is a little slower between slide so you have more time to view them. Also it is much bigger and easier to see everything.

Don't forget to turn up your sound!

Also, fyi, anyone can order this slide show to be printed as a photo book. Just let me know if you are interested and I can get the details. It is through the website I created it on. I can also save it as a pdf or (I think) burn it to a DVD.