"Return to me with your whole heart."

First, the knitting part of our portion.

This weekend I finished the hat and mittens for Bug's friend Rachael. Her coat and snowpants are two-tone purple, and so are her hat and mittens now! I used my own pattern for the basic hat and mitten, and the design is from the Setsedal mittens from the Folk Mittens book. I used Cascade 220 and had quite forgotten how lovely and bouncy it is to knit with. Not that I don't still love my more bargain yarns or anything, but Cascade really is a joy to knit.

But all was not rosy this weekend. The Bug went sliding with her Brownie troop on Saturday and returned quite early. First, she got hit very hard by another girl on a sled. She got up and went right back up for another run, but then told Papa she didn't feel good. She came home and took a nap on the couch. Quite unlike her.

She didn't seem like herself at all, and that should have been a clue for me, but I let her go on a scheduled sleepover with a girl from her class. Luckily they don't live far away because her friend's mom called at 9 to tell me that Bug had just gotten sick and wanted to come home. So she packed her up and delivered her to me. She had quite a fever, so we dosed her and put her to bed. She spent most of Sunday on the couch eating saltines, ginger ale, and Tylenol. She was disappointed at missing her sledding day, her sleepover, catechism class and church. All in one weekend!

So this morning I felt her head and she was a bit warm still. I was ready to keep her home one more day for good measure but she assured me she felt great and wanted to go to school. So a couple more Tylenol for good measure and off she went. I thought she still seemed a bit lethargic, but otherwise okay. Here's hoping she doesn't need to come home.

In other news, Lent is right around the corner. As in it starts on Wednesday. Sister and I went to Nashua yesterday to hit Trader Joe's and we discussed what to give up. It's really hard this year since we're both on pretty strict diets and have already given up stuff that we would normally have reserved for Lent.

I'm leaning toward not so much giving something up as doing something extra this year. I think I may try to reclaim Sunday again like I did earlier in the year. It worked, for awhile. So with an eye towards examining my conscience and using Joel 2:12-13 as my guide, I'm going to spend Lent concentrating on these three questions:

1. Does God hold first place in my life, or have I allowed myself to become the servant of money, popularity, success, or anything else? (I actually think I do pretty good with this one, all in all. I would say that if anything I put my family above all else, but as my marriage and family are my chosen vocation, that can't be all bad. But it's a question to bear in mind, certainly.)
2. Have I given priority to God on Sundays and holy days by attending Mass and making a special effort to seek him? (Certainly I go to mass every week. And I think being in the choir and a cantor has allowed me to served Him more fully. But I am going to make my church life the most important thing on Sunday, and I'm going to try to avoid those things that turn my attention from Him. Plus I'm going to practice my psalms more diligently than ever so that my offering can be as good as it can be. Even the easy ones.)
3. Have I nourished my love and knowledge of God through regular prayer and Scripture reading? (My bad. I pray all the time, but in a casual devil-may-care kind of way. Me and God are pretty informal most of the time. I'm going to try to focus my attention more during prayer, and I promise to not do all the talking. And I'm going to pick my Bible up more often than just to look something up. It's not a reference book, after all.)

It's kind of a random Lenten sacrifice, and certainly harder to measure than say, giving up chocolate or something like that. It's easier to offer up your failures and shortcomings when they can be quantified. I mean, either you ate the candy or you didn't. My plan is going to be harder to assess as far as success or failure is concerned, but I think with this kind of sacrifice, even if I'm less than perfect, I'm still better for it.

And after all, only God is perfect.