Momming
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Why I’m Always Late and Other Thoughts on Lent
Well, we’re two days into Lent and so far, so good. How about you? One of my resolutions for Lent came on a Friday, a few months back, when my 6 year old turned to me as we shuffled into the “cryroom/confessional/people trying to avoid the shame of everybody knowing they’ve arrived late” section and asked me, “Why are we always late?” Doh! It was a perfectly valid question — one to which I had no valid response — and so I just stared into those little brown eyes and replied, “We’re not always late”. Which is technically true. We are not always late. On most Sundays, we manage to…
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The Importance of Summer Days
Ah, summer, I just love summer! For me, just the word SUMMER makes me smile. It brings to mind images of sunshine, sundresses, laughter, celebration, swinging on porches while crickets chirp nearby and epic family adventures. How about you? I suppose if every day were as carefree as a summer day, summer wouldn’t be as special as it is — but every day is not like a carefree summer day — and that is why summer has a special place in my heart. When I talk about Heaven with my kids, it is the days of summer that most quickly come to mind. When I envision the place that God…
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Happy Birthday and What Our Kids Teach Us About Really Living
Today we celebrate our sweet girl — now a young woman — so hard to believe it’s been 20 years since the first moment I saw her beautiful, little face smiling back at me. She taught me so much about being a mom. Honestly, sometimes I feel like I need to apologize for knowing so little about what it really meant to be a mother when she first came along. Her siblings have her to thank for teaching us the most important lessons in life — and what it means to really love somebody. As an aside, CHECK OUT ALL THE GEAR in this photo. It was the closing Mass…
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Shoutout to all the Catholic Women, Living the Lives they Were Meant to Live
I just love irony, how about you? I love it so much, that once upon a time, we gathered a bunch of young adults in the French Quarter of New Orleans to film a Chasity video. Talk about irony! Speaking of irony, I like to call this my “ironic homeschool mom outfit” — ironic because one of the cliches for an NFP-practicing, homeschooling-mom of 6 kids is that we all wear denim jumpers. Honestly, after wearing this around town for one day, I gotta say that I actually love it. Super comfy. Maybe they are on to something — whomever they are. I decided to take the stereotype even further…
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Since We’re Basically All Homeschooling, Time For a Pep Talk
It feels like it’s time for a homeschooling pep talk — or maybe it’s just me that needs it right about now 😂. As a lot of parents are basically being thrown into homeschooling for at least a few months, consider this my “it’s all going to be okay” post. And it really will be okay — maybe even better than okay — because as a parent, no matter where you send your kids for “school”, you are always going to be your kids’ primary educator. You are always going to be the one your kids look to for the answers to life. So don’t freak out if you find yourself…
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I’m Exhausted and A New Podcast
Guys, I am physically and emotionally exhausted by the sadness hitting the newsfeeds right now. I really wanted to write a post about the Catholic View on Racism, but it will have to wait until next week. It’s just too much right now. But here’s a quote from one of my hero’s John Paul II that sums up it quite well: “In the last decades…marked by the worrying resurgence of aggressive nationalism, ethnic violence and widespread phenomena of racial discrimination, human dignity has often been seriously threatened. Every upright conscience cannot but decisively condemn any racism, no matter in what heart or place it is found.“ John Paul II, 2001…
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Birthdays and Learning to Forgive
Yesterday we celebrated this girl! She’s grown so much since these pictures were taken, but her smile can still light up a room, and her laughter is contagious. You don’t see her a lot in this space because I decided long ago to try to give the older kids their privacy — but let me tell you, we are so proud of this young woman and just marvel at the ways she’s growing into such a beautiful woman of faith and integrity. She was the first person to ever call me “Mom” and she was part of a very important lesson I had to learn after a very traumatic birth…
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Chickens and Kids (2020 Revamp)
Once upon a time, I decided I really, really wanted chickens. I spent countless hours perusing Pinterest to find out everything I needed to know about chickens. Then I spent countless more hours convincing my husband that chickens were an amazing idea and we could weekend warrior a coop–no problem. Finally, I had him convinced, and the weekend warriors became embattled, broken down, over-worked, embittered serfs, subject to the chicken empire we had established. And on a dark night, just when my husband had lost the will to live, the coop was finally finished! How peaceful it was to watch them scratch and peck, lay beautiful eggs, and come…
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Talking to Your Kids About Sex
A number of years ago, I was asked to testify before Congress on the issue of abstinence education. I guess you could say it was because I had “survived” the sexual experiment that so many kids my age had been subjected to — in our schools and in the media we consumed. I guess you could say I had “survived” all the obvious (and not-so-obvious) messages pushing kids my age into the world of “safe sex” — whatever that was — to the detriment of our hearts, minds, souls and bodies, too. I was one of the 90210, Dawsons Creek, Friends generation of kids that didn’t actually buy what they…
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The Nobility of Being a Homemaker in a Career-Obsessed World.
In recent weeks, there erupted a bit of a storm around the question of married women working outside of the home. There was one man in particular, who shall remain nameless — well known in the Catholic Youtube world — who claimed Church teaching makes it clear that it is sinful for a women who is married (with or without children) to work outside of the home. You can imagine the barage of fighting that ensued after such a statement — with so many Catholic women working in different capacities, in and outside of their home, paid or unpaid. Honestly, I find statements like that to be highly inflammatory (and…
