Epiphany ends the Twelve Days of Christmas. It is the day we celebrate the three Wise men coming to see Jesus. Traditionally, this is a time when Catholics will bring in a priest to walk through the house and bless the home for the New Year. It is at this time that we also find a small basket of blessed chalk at the back of our church, which we take home and use to mark our doors with: 20 C+M+B 22 "with the "20 "being the millennium and century, the "C" standing in for the first Wise Man, Caspar, the "M" standing in for Melchior, the "B" standing in for Balthasar, and the "22" standing in for ..read more

I attended a college session last week with Jonathon van Maren where we learned about the scourge of porn in our society. It was highlighted that the average age at which boys are introduced to porn is between 9-10 years of age. The average age for girls is between 11-12. Over 80% of all men in Canada look at porn regularly. It is also the assumption that all young men entering the seminary are actively looking at porn, and that 53% of clergy regularly look at porn. Last year, one of the five major porn sites logged 575,000 years-worth of hours—in just the past year! There are 8760 hours in a ..read more

As we celebrate St. Valentine’s Day today, I have to admit that I’m a sucker for a good love story. I’m biased in that I particularly like the love story I share with my spouse. Unlike many of our other Catholic friends who met and married young, often during or right after college, my husband and I met after we had both hit the age 30 mark. (We mentioned this recently to our twin 6 year old daughters and both their mouths dropped open, agape at the thought that mommy and daddy are older than 30! “We didn’t realize you were THAT old!” one of them said.) We met on a Catholic dating website. I h ..read more

Homeschooling is something my husband and I were discerning since the first of our fourteen children arrived. It was something that I definitely did not want to do … but had resolved to undertake if God asked me to. It was the early 2000s. Homeschooling was still considered slightly backwards, summoning images of “weird,” strangely dressed, socially awkward, uncultured kids, sheltered by blissfully ignorant parents. I had known a few families that challenged this stereotype, but was still aware of the stigma attached to homeschooling. When we had some of my husband’s friends visit us, they ask ..read more

The latest Disney hit movie Encanto is filled with several musical scenes and catchy lyrics. Before my kids had even seen the movie, they were singing refrains from the songs that they had heard from classmates at school. Their particular favorite: “Surface Pressure.” It wasn’t long before all of my children had caught on and it was as if they were themselves an endless Encanto soundtrack. Several mornings in a row I found myself waking up as my alarm went off with these lyrics in my head. “Who am I if I can't carry it all? If I falter… Who am I if I don't have what it takes? No cracks, no bre ..read more

I was once a young mom attempting to attend daily Mass with my three little ones (ages 3, 2 and 1). One morning, an older woman approached me and inquired as to whether or not I fed the children prior to Mass. I assured her they were well fed and she scrunched up her nose and shrieked, "Reeaally? Cause they're so loud and whiny, I was sure that they must be hungry or something. Maybe it would be better if you left them at home." I was a little tenacious back then … *awkward pause Okay, I'm still tenacious. I'm working on it. I told her that Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me ..read more

“So, as a parent, do you think about your kids’ vocations?” Recently, I called up a friend of mine who, unlike me, actually has children, to ask for some tips for this series of posts that I will be writing for the Me and My House blog, on the subject of Catholic parenting and vocations. So I started with the above question, and this is what my friend had to say: “I remember before my kids were born, I had given all of this thought to like, you know, all the morals and values and philosophy and theology that I wanted to instill, and then we brought our first child home from the hospital and I ..read more

At the young age of 23, I held my firstborn in my arms and felt an overwhelming love like I had never felt before. I was made for this. I am a mother now. My husband and I would spend hours just looking at her, examining her features, absorbing her sweetness, and growing more and more in love with her and with each other. It felt so right and good that the love we shared for one another was now embodied: a new creation, an eternal being whose life will always be so intimately tied to ours, the fruit of love, our child. The deep love for our baby fuelled a strong desire to give her the best of ..read more

One of the best resources for Catholic parents (besides the Me & My House program, of course!) lives very close by. It is the mom and dad in the neighbourhood who are accumulating their wins and losses, all the while taking mental and conscious notes of them. “We’ll never let our kids do that again!” “We’ll definitely be doing that with our next child.” Statements like these are gold. They are nuggets of wisdom gleaned through hard earned experience. In many ways, they are like the final pages of a book that reveal whether all of the tedious pages before it are worth the effort. Are you th ..read more

Being a Dad is awesome. Dads are their children’s heroes. When I come home after work, my youngest stands at the railing waiting for me to pull up in the mini-van, yelling “Dada, Dada!” My four-year-old wakes up in the morning, finds me and just wants to snuggle before beginning the day. Dads are known for putting together great race tracks. For being able to have a civil discourse about politics, as much as slime or snot. For building fires, forts, fixing cars, and capturing pesky raccoons. Dads are awesome. Our children will understand discipline, justice, mercy, love, courage, and the sacr ..read more