Knocking things off my to-do list!  Yesterday, my mom and I took the boys on a little shopping venture.  I bought new shower curtains for the bathroom (liner and curtain, I should say), a new rug for in front of the sink (badly needed!),a matching hand towel, and a toilet bowl brush (fun fun).  Then, I splurged.  A beautiful hand soap dispenser caught my eye.  I loved its handsome shape, it’s crystal clear glass, and it’s slight green tint.  Just the thing to freshen up my tiny bathroom.  So even though it wasn’t on my list, I bought the dispenser.  Of course, I couldn’t ruin the perfect clarity with just any hand soap, so I hunted for an equally clear soap to fill this beauty.

I chose some fabric to make new curtains for the bathroom.  My to-do list only specified curtains for the boys’ room, but I didn’t see any bathroom curtains that I loved.  This fabric reminds me so much of the fabric in The Sound of Music.  Remember the old curtains that Maria transforms into play clothes for her young charges?

We ended a fun day of shopping with an evening of pancakes at our church.  My mom-in-law was able to join us for our church’s annual Shrove Tuesday Pancake Dinner.  I didn’t learn about “Shrove Tuesday” until we found our home in our current church family about 6 years ago.  I knew about “Fat Tuesday,” but as someone preparing for the solemnity of Lent, all the hullabaloo seemed pretty silly.  I like the “Shrove” version a lot better, even though the name itself doesn’t constitute any real difference in celebration.  But for me, words really matter!

On the day before the start of Lent, families and communities would make pancakes to use up many of the ingredients from which they would fast during the Lenten season.  In order to prevent temptation and the waste of perfectly good flour and eggs, people cooked up batches of pancakes!  Pretzels are another Shrove Tuesday tradition.  Monks baked small portions of dough twisted into the position of a praying posture.  Same reasoning.  Leaven breads would have been avoided during Lent, so pretzels were a nice treat with a special reminder of the season of prayer soon to come.  Wikipedia explains the term “Shrove”: “The word shrove is the past tense of the English verb to shrive, which means to obtain absolution for one’s sins by way of confession and doing penance.” 

Oh, and I can’t forget the “Pancake Fling.”  At the dinner, we also play some pancake games!  We compete to see who flings a pancake the farthest.  My hubby took second place, and our kiddos make wonderful attempts at the title.  So cute!  Then there was the Pancake Flip Relay.  Two teams raced down the floor while flipping pancakes in frying pans.  Our five-year-old did well, and his team won.  Of course, I was more excited to see how he has grown in confidence and cooridination since last year’s event.  What difference one year can make.

Welcome to Lent!