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The Freedom of Not Giving a Flying Flip
Last week, I posted a simple picture on Instagram with some words of encouragement to all the parents out there trying to parent and potty-train and tackle the plethora of other responsibilities that are a part of being mom and dad to people we adore. Seemed simple enough. Within minutes, one woman started sharing what I assumed was “just being helpful” potty training tips. I was sincerely grateful. Quickly, though, it moved to fear mongering about the harm I was doing to my child by delaying potty-training and finally to accusations that I was, in essence, being a bad parent by waiting until I thought my little guy was “ready”.…
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Thinking Outside of the Box & Growing in Trust
Hello everybody! This post is going to be a short one because we are coming off a busy week and are preparing for a little Garden Tea Party Fundraiser! I figured I’d share something that we are slowly discovering as we try to provide the very best education for our kids — with limited funds to make it happen. What we have discovered, is that, for most parents of big families, you need to learn to think outside of the box when it comes to helping your kids get to college. Most of us don’t have endless funds at our disposal, am I right? But just because you can’t personally…
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Notre Dame Burning, Holy Week & Being the Remnant
Most of you have likely heard about the devastating fire that burned down a portion of the beloved Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. I was going about my day on Monday, when my brother’s text came in, “Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is burning down”. And then I went on my phone and watched as the steeple topped into a blazing fire that encompassed the entire roof of the Cathedral. All I could do was cry. Then my brother began to send me texts reminding me of all the crazy adventures we had when we went to France on pilgrimage, May of 1995. Our first stop after a long journey…
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Attending the World Gathering of Families and Papal Infallibility
I am Catholic — like really, really Catholic. I’m also Irish — well, technically Irish-American — but that’s practically the same thing in my book. Which is why, when my niece happened to ask us if we were going to attend the World Gathering of Families in Dublin, it set us on a trajectory which we hadn’t anticipated. All of a sudden, we found ourselves booking flights and cars and Airbnb’s and 8 months later, we were in the middle of Dublin, alongside a sea of people, on the way to the Festival of Families. It was an amazing night. The Riverdance troupe almost brought the house down and Bocelli…
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Will He Find Faith? A.K.A. What’s Next?
We all survived our Irish pilgrimage — hip, hip, hooray — but the transition back has had it’s challenges. Not going to lie, I am also missing Ireland a bit — I wasn’t expecting to miss it like I do. It was a grace-filled time, Â and when a time of grace comes to an end, it is challenging to enter into “ordinary life” again — whatever that is. Honestly, I knew it would be beautiful and we would have fun as a family, but I was worried that the faith would be missing from our trip to Ireland. I wondered if all the priests would just be going through the…
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St. Peters Basilica: 7 Quick Takes
Rome — where do I begin?  On some level, Rome is like every other big city out there — traffic, noise, the constant activity of people doing all the things that people do in big cities.  But Rome is also strangely unlike any other big city in the world– it is literally bursting at the seams with all things Catholic — slowly the big city fades and you begin to notice that everywhere you look there is some aspect of our faith represented in living color. It is a city of pilgrims, of saints, of sinners.  In a real way, it is a city that belongs to all of us — for what else does the word “catholic”…
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Facing Our Fears
There have been a lot of really tragic events in the news lately, and it’s enough to make me want to stock up on canned goods and build a bunker — a place where everybody I love would live in relative peace, away from the rest of the world.  Does anybody else feel that way? But the thing is, we’re not meant to hide away in our homes because of the fear of what might be.  We aren’t supposed to have a spirit of fear or timidity, but one of power and love and self-control (2 Tim 1:7).  But when I look at my life, there are times when I definitely have…
