Mom and Harville gave Jake a movie for his birthday, PAUL VI.  I watched it twice.  It is the best movie I have seen in a long time.     One of the best lines is in a conversation in which the young Karol Wojtyla approaches the current pope, Paul VI.  They are at…

     Ron went to Houston this weekend to be with his Mom in the hospital.  Our kids were terribly disappointed to not be able to go see their grandparents and great grandparents near Houston.  So even though I was solo, I arranged for play dates on Fri. evening and all day Saturday (after soccer…

     I had a day that was like being a Carmelite nun!  Poverty, self-denial, and bliss.  The wreck of a day was drenched in the Spirit of God.      Annie is a complete catastrophe.  She is teething: drooling like a faucet, fever, runny nose, cranky.  She wants you to put her down.  Then…

I love P.E.!  So fun to see so many moms and so many children!

A hard subject–These are my thoughts, for what they are worth.  Read at your own risk!       If there is one thing I have learned in my imperfect search for what is most true, it is that you cannot excise people out of your life.  While some relationships come to a natural end (such…

Look at all that basil!  We have mountains and mountains of it. Now that’s A LOT of pesto sauce! We also have watermelons growing.  I can’t believe it!  Watermelons!      We even have a cantaloupe that is growing by accident–it is on a vine that has sprouted out of our compost bin.    …

     Jake is such a good student.  But he has a problem, on the level of a clinical disability, with spelling.     I gave him a spelling test.  20 words from the level lower than his other schoolwork.  10 words learned, then 10 more, then a test.      He got 3 words wrong–about…

    Had a fun-filled evening with Ron, Mom and Dad at a mexican restaurant! Celebrated Dad’s 76th birthday!  My favorite thing about the evening–in addition to Mom standing up and singing harmony with the mariachi band–was that they knew all the words to “Down in El Paso.”  That’s pretty darn impressive–there are LOTS of…

     Today we celebrated Jake’s birthday.  We had an action packed Labor Day weekend, complete with boating, sleepovers for the kids with grandparents, donuts, swimming, kneeboarding, and the like.      But today, topping it all off, we had cake, gifts, a movie at home, and a swim in the pool.  I’ve never heard…