1. Please excuse the slow blogging. The beginning of the New Year is always hard for me for some reason – the End of Christmas, the beginning of Ordinary Time, the cold the dark – bleh. It is also hard for me to get the kids back into the routine of homeschooling so we went by baby steps this week – slowly but surely – starting with the beginning of the French and Indian War in history and all the various sciences for all the children.
2. I probably will not see much of my first born until the end of February or thereabouts. He is
- working full time as an EMT 1 1/2hours a way.
- volunteering at a local community EMS which helps pay for his-
- paramedic training which is at least three nights a week and includes –
- his clinicals which are mostly Saturdays and Sundays.
The boy barely rests! And yet I am very proud of the way he is working so hard towards his goals. I would also point out that all the years of swim practices in the wee morning hours has given him the self-discipline to work his 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift.
3. One Life to Live ended it’s 41-year run yesterday. I have watched soap operas ever since I was a little girl living on my grandparents farm. Then it was The Guiding Light, As the World Turns, Secret Storm, Edge of Night and even General Hospital. But I remember talking over the stories with my mom and grandmother – I love serial dramas.
One of the times of my life that I will always cherish was the year my oldest was born. I was exclusively breastfeeding him and as he was a very big and always a very hungry baby, I used to just hold and nurse him in the afternoons while watching my favorite soaps, All My Children, One Life to Live and General Hospital. I felt a little guilty about that at the first – sitting around watching t.v. in the afternoons, but at the time it was just what my baby and I needed and I remember that time very fondly.
Several times they dealt with the death of a child, and those were always very moving to me.
4. One of the things I love about facebook is keeping in touch with my younger nieces and nephews. One of them wrote this week how she wished she had never gone to college because it was so hard to pay that $225 a month for her student loans. I gotta make sure I show that to Sam and Gabe to encourage them in their studies and College Plus.
5. This video is all over Facebook and the internet this week. I was going to write a counter to it, but I found this response which does a very nice job of it!
6.
“Ordinary Catholic families cannot survive. They must be extraordinary families. They must be, what I do not hesitate to call, heroic Catholic families. Ordinary Catholic families are no match for the devil as he uses the media of communication to secularize and de-sacralize modern society. No less than ordinary individual Catholics can survive, so ordinary Catholic families cannot survive. ”They have no choice. They must either be holy—which means sanctified—or they will disappear. The only Catholic families that will remain alive and thriving in the 21st century are the families of martyrs. Father, mother and children must be willing to die for their God-given convictions…” !
~Father John Hardon SJ
7. This will put a smile on your face!
