With Praise and Thanksgiving

The last weekend in March I had the great pleasure of attending a real life blogging conference! Like a real blogger! Cathedral of St. Paul Jacqui ,  Anna  and  Susanna  hosted the Catholic Women's Blogging Network Twin Cities get together at a stunning Summit Avenue mansion in St. Paul. Thirty-some wonderful Catholic women from the Twin Cities, the Midwest, and even Maryland joined up to talk blogging and really just to support each other and build each other up. My friend Monica encouraged me to go, and I signed up on a bit of a whim, figuring that if I paid for registration I'd be more inclined to go. If I didn't have a mutual friend link to one of the organizers, and if a couple of my most favoritest bloggers hadn't been speakers, I'd probably have chickened out.  In response to my evident nerves on the way, my husband wisely mused, "Well, if you're going to walk into a group of people you don't know, this is probably the best group yo...

I know a fair amount about myself, about my tendencies and my personality. I can't be the only one who likes finding out more about myself in this regard, as there are tons of profiles and quizzes and articles discussing these topics. I've known some things for a long while: I'm a reader.  I like things done correctly versus quickly. I'm an introvert.  I'm a picky eater, and I like mostly bland food.  I'm better at editing than writing.  I love organizing.  I dislike conflict. I'm a list-maker.  And in the last few years, I've learned that: My primary temperament is melancholic . My secondary temperament is choleric (so there's a teeny bit of extrovert in there). In Myers-Briggs, I'm an ISTJ . One of my gifts is administration, which is why I like paperwork, and love spreadsheets. I am loyal, in relationships but also in seemingly irrelevant things like making sure to read every post by my favorite bloggers even if the top...

It's been a while, so I'm going to link up with Kelly at This Ain't The Lyceum  for 7 Quick Takes today! I present to you seven random things I like, and for which I am grateful today. 1. Lent! Time to repent! I do like Lent, and with a weird rib-area cartilage injury and a bad cold to set the pace, it's shaping up to be a really Lenty Lent. I'm using the Blessed is She Lenten journal for my daily prayer time and am trying...t r y i n g this 5-Minute sacrifice. I did fairly well at it Wednesday, and pretty crappy Thursday. So there you go. Onward and upward. I will embarrassingly admit that it took me until my 35th year to realize that I don't have to read all the things on the interwebs, even if they are about a topic of interest to me. The webs are awash with posts about how to Lent, and but thank goodness I resisted the urge to click on all of them and just licked on this one  by Jenny at Mama Needs Coffee. Of course you know I want to share everyth...

Photography skillz: weak I had another post in draft about how hashtags don't do that much and I feel like contacting the White House, the VP, the First Lady and my state's senators (which I did) is actually more productive than sharing memes and hashtags on social media, but this is way more fun! I follow @ginnysheller on Instagram and I totally love all of her photos. Plus, she has a most adorable baby named Mabel, so I can barely even handle that. I can only aspire to her knitting prowess, but I thought it would be fun to link up with her Wednesday Yarn Along post anyway. Her blog posts are always worth reading, too, for what it's worth. She is thoughtful and wise and I'm always glad when I've read one of her posts.   I'm not working on anything fancy, knitting-wise, just a dishcloth to replace some that are wearing out. Color: Caribbean, because winter. I'm a little more into reading than knitting right now so this easy project is just ...

My new Out-of-Control Center The blog is still in the midst of an identity crisis, but that won't keep me from using up some of my beloved nap time alone time to pound away all my thoughts onto the interwebs. Pretty random thoughts coming up here.  Above: I was (am?) ever so sick of the mountain of miscellaneous crap that kept getting piled in the middle of the kitchen island, mostly by me. I'm famous for my "I'll deal with that later" piles, and then dealing with them by just making neater piles. I finally got fed up and decided to create a little, for lack of better word, control center. I'm in control of nothing, so the irony does not escape me, but I needed to see a clean island, at least for a few minutes. We had this old box floating around full of more miscellaneous crap, so I cleaned it out and made space for a couple of magazines and fliers I wanted to keep and added the little sorter for mail that needs attention. My planner fits perfectly...

Trying to link up with Kelly for 7 Quick Takes. I've never done it before, because I'm not a real  blogger, but it's a new year and I'm drinking peach whisky and orange juice, so I'm really living on the edge. You can read Kelly's fantastic blog, and link to other great blogs there as well. Once you're done here, I mean. 1. Earlier this week, I drafted up a post all about the feeling of refreshment, about how the new year brings me a sense of feeling refreshed. Or maybe that was just how I felt upon returning home from our 9-day, 2-state, 950-mile Christmas bender. Before I had time to publish the post, I was back my usual grumpiness and figured it wasn't "authentic" of me to post such a happy piece when I was actually a grouch. Although I don't really have New Years resolutions to post, I really do enjoy the excitement surrounding a new year and its potential. I'm still trying to take a moment each day to acknowledge gratitude, but I...

These are the only ones I actually have in my possession.  I have never planned my reading before, and I know better than to try to tackle a whole bunch of books, or lay out a month-by-month plan. That would mean sure failure, because lots of books will come up throughout the year that shoot right to the top of my list. So I picked eight (but actually 14) from my extensive Pinterest board and semi-committed to them by writing them in my planner. In pencil. I haven't included any audio books, but I have a large Audible wishlist and I'm sure I could find some from my list on audio book at the library.  Without further ado, here are my book goals for 2017: Little Women  - Lousia May Alcott. I had hoped to finish this one in December but I have probably 250 pages left heading into Christmas Eve, so let's be real. I love it, though!  The Family That Overtook Christ -  M. Raymond. This is the favorite book of my super-holy priest friend and he basical...

My nightstand. See below for details.* I started something new (besides ye olde gratitude blog) in 2016 and the end of the year has me wishing I'd always been doing it: keeping track of books I've read. I've always been a reader, but reading as a hobby became a casualty of parenthood for me. Then, when I became more interested in learning about my faith, I inadvertently stopped reading everything else, feeling like somehow any reading that wasn't furthering my knowledge wasn't useful. I'm glad that time has passed! I follow a couple of bookish bloggers (namely Haley and Christy ) who inspired me to actually keep track of what I read. It's nice for me as a stay-at-home mom to see something I've accomplished and completed, since so much of my work really never gets completely finished. My list has been a great tool for me to recommend books to others or to help me remember authors I'd like to read more of. One of my resolutions, if you will, ...

Couple of these people are just killing in in the bangs category.  December 20th is the anniversary of my beloved Grandma Bess's death, and this year marks 10 years since she passed. I can hardly believe it's been that long. I remember the day vividly (especially that part where I was crying on my way home from work and almost caused a crash). Having celebrated her 95th birthday three months earlier, her death didn't come as a surprise to any of us, but that doesn't make suffering a loss like that any easier.  I like to think Grandma and I were kindred spirits. I know she had a unique relationship with each of her 16 grandkids, but as the youngest one who lived close enough to visit often, she and I shared a closeness that made me feel so special. I spent more time with my other grandma, and love her so dearly as well, but I felt a different and special bond with Grandma Bess.  We shared a love of reading and I delighted in her storytelling. She was the Stanl...

Pardon the yellow-ness. I blame the lamp light + yellow bedspread.  I'm rereading Louisa May Alcott's Little Women  right now. I was inspired by this podcast  (and this one ) to revisit a book I know I read at least once or twice as a girl, but haven't thought about in years. I've been carrying around an old copy from my beloved bookish grandmother, and I finally decided to crack it open. I remembered the basic premise, but almost none of the details and I'm finding it to be delightful. As in, I am delighted each night when I read a chapter before bed.  I particularly love this little passage, when Mrs. March is talking about the girls' father being gone to war, and how she has the strength to withstand the difficult times:  "If I don't seem to need help, it is because I have a better friend, even than father, to comfort and sustain me. My child, the troubles and temptations of your life are beginning, and may be many; but you can overcome...

How cute are these two little reindeer? The boys made them at the public library's free craft today. I am loving our local library more and more. The librarians are friendly and helpful, and the little boys love story time there. We do miss our old library's wiggle room, but we've spent at least a couple of hours at the new one every week lately and I'm so grateful for it.  We stopped for coffee (hot chocolate for the guys) afterward, so that boosted my mood some, too. Counting the Christmas cookies and samples we got at the grocery store, the day ended up not being as bad as I'd expected. I'll take what I can get!  Aside: I got to thinking today after our library visit how enthralled I am with libraries in general. Collections of books. Information. I love to just browse. I love the smell of books (you won't get that unless you're a book nerd, sorry). I think I inherited a softspot for libraries because my beloved Grandma Bess was the libra...

Not a paid endorsement. I wish. We just actually really like these books.  I think I mentioned last week that I had finally gone through 3,000 pictures on my phone and done some organizing with the zillion screenshots I'd taken of all the things. One of the categories with the highest amount of screen shots was books.  I started a list in Evernote when I read this blog post from Haley at Carrots for Michaelmas. I took her recommendations and read through the comments. Between these suggestions and all the random Instagram screen shots I took from my favorite moms, I compiled quite a list! And it is paying off! I know there is value in letting the kids choose their own reading material, but only one can kind of read, and so they pick the first thing they see with a superhero or sports figure on it. The sports ones I can sometimes stomach (even the one about the rules of hockey), but the superhero ones they've picked have been painful. I keep hearing about how har...

Disclaimer: If you don't appreciate nerds, discontinue reading this post. A few of my "recently pinned" items.  Like many of you, I store thousands of photos on my iPhone. With Christmas coming up, both sides of our family are working on annual photo books which require me to weed through my zillion pictures and get them uploaded to the appropriate book creation website. I realized that in addition to pictures chronicling our family's life, I have many, so many , shots of funny memes I texted to friends and also more book recommendations than I could probably ever actually read. I also have a disproportionally high number of shots of the kids sleeping in weird places. Is that a thing? Today I finished up a week-long escapade through almost 3,000 iPhone pics. I deleted duplicates, memes and screenshots that were past their prime, and saved almost everything else to Evernote or Pinterest. I'm well aware that it's a silly thing, but it feels so good ...

I haven't really taken the time to organize my thoughts on this yet, but I listened to episode 38 of the Simple Show podcast yesterday, and immediately grabbed the book Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist from my Audible wish list. The podcast episode and the book (I'm almost halfway through) are really speaking to me. I've known since the beginning of the year that 2016 would be one of transition for us, and hoped that it would be one of discovery and of learning about ourselves and of trying to follow God's will in our lives. While I have found a few things the author has said to be a little contradictory, and while her theology differs some from what I have found to be true, I do like the basis of the book and I relate easily to what she is saying. Her story seems so similar to many women I've encountered, and since she reads the Audible version, it almost feels like she's a friend over for coffee, chatting about real life. She had found herself li...

I know I've mentioned The Simple Show podcast several times. The other day I listened to episode 23 with Anne Bogel of the blog Modern Mrs. Darcy . It seems all my favorite bloggers follow and love her, but I've resisted checking out her website for the simple fact that I already read so many blogs. I'm a loyal reader, so I read almost everything my favorite few publish, which can be a lot. I didn't want to add another to the mix, BUT I so enjoyed the episode that my determination started to waiver. When she mentioned a daily Kindle deals email she sends out, I was hooked. I don't buy a lot of ebooks, mostly because it hurts me to spend $10 on a book that I will likely read once and can't even really  loan out or give away. I know you can loan Kindle books in a limited fashion with Prime, but still. I do purchase them with giftcards or Deals of the Day specials. Anyway, Anne researches the best Kindle deals every morning and emails them out, so I subscribed. ...

I'm still coming down from the high of finishing the super long but interesting, (Kindle) page-turning, addictive book  The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt  by Edmund Morris last night. I know I've mentioned it before but it was so terrific! I purchased it for $1.99 impulsively a couple of years ago, around the time the PBS miniseries came out, I think. It's been sitting on my Kindle, but I have to be in the right frame of mind to start a book like that. Turns out it's exactly what I needed this summer. I'd like to produce some sort of intellectual review of it for you, but I probably can't in the 6 minutes I have to sit here and type. I didn't know around 99% of what I read (because I missed the TR parts of the miniseries, I suppose) and every section fascinated me. I realized that I do not and mostly likely won't ever understand politics or military strategy, but Morris did a decent job of dumbing it down enough that I could follow what what happening. Th...

It's been a while since I've shared some links. I've read and listened to lots of great stuff and forgotten most of it. Here are a few links I thought were worth sharing. I'm enjoying the #TheAsIsHomeTour on Instagram. Check it out. I would try to link to it, but I don't know my Instagram password so I can't log in on the computer. I'm so old! Ryan Bingham has a new song on Amazon's Songs of Summer Playlist - check out Kindred Mountain High. My heart gets all fluttery over Ryan Bingham music. Growing Up in the Age of Likes - The Washington Post  - terrifying, really. But I'm glad I read it. The Little Lepers in My Living Room - Dierdre Mundy - "As far as I can tell, Jesus is somewhat hysterical, extremely emotional and has unrealistic expectations for how the world should work. And he’s crying again." It's Time to Forget the Idea That We Can 'Get Back' Our Pre-Baby Bodies - Verily Magazine - yup.  Audiobook Recom...

In addition to gratitude, my other endeavor for the year is to read more. I sadly admit to being one of those people who just couldn't read actual books once she had kids. So busy! But everyone's busy and we should make time for what we love, so this year I vowed to make time, even if I could only find 10 minutes a day. I cheated a little bit, because i didn't technically  read Anthony Doerr's " All The Light We Cannot See ." I listened to it on Audible. All 16 hours of it. For several years I haven't really followed new fiction, but I heard of this through a couple of my favorite bloggers/book nerds and since I trust their recommendations, I jumped aboard the bandwagon. Apparently, he won a Pulitzer for it, so I guess I just missed the memo. Thanks, Audible, for helping me read while cooking/cleaning/driving! This is the type of novel I've always wanted to write. I don't feel like I can give it a just book review because the writing, imag...