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At my high school in San Diego, you could see the ocean from the upstairs classrooms and if the surf was good, there were a lot of open desks in my math class after lunch. The coolest guys in school weren't football players, they were on the water polo team. Water...
A couple of months back the husband and I went to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier. (meh.) Before the movie we saw a trailer for a crazy-looking comic-book-based movie featuring what appeared to be an Ent, a sexy Wicked Witch of the West, that guy from Parks...
One of the great things about a good novel is how it allows you to transport yourself into a place or time or situation completely unlike your own and see what that's like for a while. Great picture books can do the same thing, and help my kids delve into new and...
Dear Newlywed, Congratulations! You're embarking on an exciting new chapter of your life. You've got hopes and dreams and plans. Plans, plans, plans. You've got the next few years mapped right out. You're going to finish school and you're going to pay off school and...
Just to continue my inexplicable trend of nonstop posting about a movie I say I don't particularly care for . . . here's a post I originally wrote for my friend Mandi's blog. But she's taking early retirement, so I'm moving it over here, just so it's not lost forever....
Welcome to Answer Me This . . . the internet's favorite virtual cocktail party* in which I ask six totally random questions and we all answer them and get to know each other a little better. Isn't that nice? *this statement may not be true. So, here goes this week's...
Last month, we went to France (you can find posts about the trip here). I had grand plans about all the things I was going to accomplish on the flight. Reading, writing, embroidering, catching up on sleep, etc. I did a tiny bit of the first, and some of the last, but...
Happy Sunday all! Saturday was Anita and her cousin Lucy's Olaf in Summer birthday party. I know, I know. I tried to explain the plot inaccuracies to them, but it's hard for my girls to hear anything lately over the sound of themselves singing Frozen all. the. time....
I'm going to let you in on a little secret. A secret known only to everyone who knows me in real life and all the people who like Catholic All Year on Facebook but no one else. Sometimes I put the Bumbo on the table. Okay, maybe it would be more shocking coming from...
This is me. I'm 37 years old. My hair is probably sixty percent gray now. And neither one of those things bothers me. Here's why: 1. I have no interest in misleading people about my age. Mostly because I would much rather people think I look good for forty than kinda...
via Pope Francis' comments at a weekly audience last summer really hit home for me: “This culture of waste has made us insensitive even to the waste and disposal of food, which is even more despicable when all over the world, unfortunately, many individuals and...
Dear People Who Are Mad About Valentines, There is a post going around called Overachieving Pinterest Moms Should Stop Making Valentines for Their Kids. "You know which parents I'm talking about. They spent hours on Pinterest, scrolling through idea after idea after...
Living our faith is a learning process. It is our privilege and our responsibility to know and understand as much as possible about our Church. But with great knowledge can come great frustration. I know, I've been there. As I lived my slow and steady reversion to my...
If despite reading my review of the first installment of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, you (as I did) still held out hope for improvement and wanted to see the second movie: The Desolation of Smaug, here's what I have to say about it . . . If you like no-look...
I had intended to write up a few posts in advance of the new baby, and schedule a couple each week. But that hasn't happened. Instead, this is my tenth post in as many days. Apparently, the new plan is to make you all so sick of reading my blog that you'll be grateful...
I love the tradition of Catholic schools and homeschool groups doing All Saints dress up days in lieu of Halloween costumes. (When my son was enrolled in Kindergarten at our parish school, the Halloween costume parade was the straw that broke the camel's back for us....
This week, I solve your problems. (I know, people hate that. But it doesn't bother me when *I* do it.) --- 1 --- Problem: You think cutting onions is unpleasant. Solution: I hate cutting onions, too. They make me cry. And not in an awesome BBC period miniseries kind...
It has been an interesting week on the ol' blogstead . . . --- 1 --- One of the main goals of my blogging has become trying to affirm the different but still good choices that different moms make. My audience is mostly other Catholic moms. We share the primary goal of...
In the early years of marriage and kids we lived in a series of small apartments and houses. I had a little system in which I allotted specific tasks to specific days of the week, which I had written down on a schedule that was taped up inside a cabinet door. I won't...
It's not you, it's me. I get that. I totally get that you guys are brilliant and challenging and that people love you. But I don't. I just can't. You guys are huge bummers and you make me want to drown myself in the bathtub to escape the futility and pointlessness of...
--- 1 --- Okay, maybe that's hyperbole. But SCIENCE says that women tend to have allergies and auto-immune diseases at a statistically higher rate than men, perhaps because they don't get exposed to as much immune-system-boosting mud and dirt as children. So here my...
This is not going to be one of those posts where I tell you what to do, because so much of this is going to depend on your particular kids and their particular environment. But I know it's something that young moms struggle with, that I struggled with, that I continue...
I've debated writing this post for a while, because really -- who wants to be the poster-child for "irresponsible pregnancy?" But, you know me, I can't resist a can of worms. And I think it needs to be said. So, here goes: You know all that stuff you're not supposed...
--- 1 --- I cannot explain why I find this so amusing. It defies explanation. I just really, really like it. I want to put a bunch of these up in my house and not caption them or anything, but just chuckle to myself every time I go by one. Or maybe if I ever have a...
Unless you were homeschooled yourself (which I wasn't) the decision to homeschool your own kids can feel overwhelming in a thousand different ways. It's easy to look at a really easy-going homeschooling Mom and say, "I couldn't live like that, I need order and...
--- 1 --- I see what you did there. And I like it. I hope everyone had a lovely Solemnity yesterday. We did! I really try to incorporate traditions, historical and/or from other cultures into our liturgical feasts. But there don't seem to be all that many traditions...
Perhaps this will be surprising in light of all my posts about traveling the world and throwing parties big and small, but I am an introvert. Totally. (Or maybe you saw this, so you already knew.) I'm not shy and I do enjoy interacting with people, but I don't find it...
Just a couple of weeks ago, in my seventh quick take, I mentioned that I'm not a believer in that oft-spouted mantra: "Hey kids! You can be anything you want to be!" Well, I still believe that (or I still don't believe it, I guess), but I recently read something that...
One isn't better than the other. They are complimentary. Both are good. Of course, that's easy for me to say, since I'm the flower. But it really does seem to be true of all the marriages I'm party to the ins and outs of. And it doesn't always break down according to...
In my last post: In Which I am Asked Not to Come to Mass . . . by a Priest, I mentioned that I would like to fill all cry rooms in the country with cement. You guys noticed. And some of you wondered why. Hannah said: I'm confused - what is it that you hate about cry...