Happy Monday! After more than a week off of school, we're back today... And the kids seem to have forgotten what school is! Of course. We're nearing the official end of our year, and it's so hard to keep up the momentum when the weather is gorgeous and everybody wants to play outside! Gotta keep trucking along for another month at least, and then hopefully we'll have managed to do what's necessary to take a nice long break.

Just Because, Volume 12

Happy Monday! (Late, I know... Easter Monday jellybean hangover, I suppose?) We're enjoying glorious weather and I've been puttering around, listing clothes I'm cleaning out of my closet on Instagram, eating too much candy, and generally having a lovely day!

Just Because, Volume 10

Happy Monday! Less than two weeks until Easter!! I'm hoping that we have daffodils by Easter Sunday, it seems to be taking them forever to bloom this year... Some have buds, at least, so maybe it'll just be a waiting game until the rest catch up? We planted *so* many bulbs in the fall, it's hard to wait for the blooms! Our lilacs also have a ton of buds, but I think we've got more than a month before they actually bloom, everything's been a little late this year. 

Just Because, Volume 9

Happy Daylight Saving Time... Or something? Definitely not my favorite time of year, but the kids have been waking earlier and earlier so I guess I'm glad that now 6am is actually 7am? It just makes it so much tougher to get school started in a timely manner! I suppose we only have 2.5 months more of it before we go on break for the summer, though.

Just Because, Volume 8

Here we go again! We got the peach trees pruned this week, which is a huge relief because they really needed it!! With a week of warm temperatures coming up, I'm trying to decide if I have the energy to brave our local arboretum with the kids, though we've got a busy schedule so it may not be possible... It closed to the public early last spring so we really missed a ton of beautiful growth, and I'm looking forward to going with everyone when things have begun to bloom! Maybe we'll wait a couple weeks and go when the daffodils are all blooming.

Just Because, Volume 7

Monday, here we go again! We really enjoyed the warm, sunny weather this past week, and I can't believe it's already March!! I'm on the lookout for crocuses in our yard, but I haven't seen anything yet... I think everything needs to dry out a bit after all the rain we've gotten, and the snow only *just* finished melting. Hopefully we get some sunny days this week to dry things out, because we're going to get started planting our cold crops in the next couple weeks!

Just Because, Volume 6

Monday again! We are due for some unseasonably warm weather this week and I cannot wait. I'm feeling just about done with winter, but I have to remind myself that even though March is coming up and feels like it should be spring weather, it takes us until solid April/May to really get there.

Just Because: Volume 5

Happy Monday, and happy almost-Lent! Our weather lately has felt sufficiently Lenten, so I think we're all ready for simple meals, praying the Stations of the Cross, and adding some extra sacrifices to our days. 

I'm working on a second volume of my ever-popular meatless meals for Lent post and would love to see your suggestions in the comments to give me some inspiration! I've got a couple recipes I really need to get written down to share with you all, because we've added some staples to our repertoire since I wrote that first post back in 2014.

Just Because: Volume 4

Happy Monday! A quick reminder that February is the shortest month, and soon it will be Lent (Speaking of which, here are all my helpful links for Lent in one place!) and then it will be Easter and then warm weather has to be on the horizon, right? Flowers! Sunshine! My apologies to those of you in Canada and the like, who have so much longer to wait than others of us...

Just Because: Volume 3

Happy February!! I'm so excited to read what you write this week! We're enjoying our first big(ish) snow of 2021, complete with popcorn and hot chocolate. Very important fun to be had!

Just Because! Volume 2

I loved reading everybody's posts last week! If you're new to linkups or it's been a while, please make sure to link to a specific post, not just your website in general. And please make sure to link back to this post so that your readers have a chance to read what others are writing, as well. (I had trouble even finding blog posts on some of the links!) 

Just Because! A New Linkup

My blog feed has been dwindling every year, ever since social media started appealing a little more and long-form blog posts became few and far between... I miss reading what my friends have to say, and I've heard so many others say they wish "old fashioned blogs" would make a comeback. Well, let's start a revolution!

Top Posts of 2018

We're nearing the end of the year, so I suppose it makes sense to do a roundup of this year's most popular posts—overall, my page views definitely went down significantly because I discontinued the My Sunday Best linkup, but my Sunday stress levels also went down because I wasn't trying to squeeze in a post, so the trade-off was worth it to me!

January's most popular post:

Social Media and the Death of Authentic Friendship — I love the dear, dear friends I've made through social media, but it's always incredibly depressing to see how easily people write each other off solely because of arguments on social media.

Ten on Tuesday {Volume 2}

This post brought to you by phone blogging, since morning sickness still hasn't disappeared, so I'm doing lots of lying in bed...

Small House Living, Standardized Testing, and Belly Banishers (7QT}

 We live in a 3-bedroom house. With 6 kids. It should probably feel tighter than it is, and it actually *does* start to feel pretty tight during the winter when I can't get the kids outside as often as I'd like. But people have asked how we make it work, so here's how!

7 Quick Takes on the State of the Blog

You wanted to see how we decorate for different liturgical seasons... We don't do much. We clean off the buffet that was covered with junk for the past month, though!

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First of all, THANK YOU to those of you who filled out the reader survey that I posted! Your responses are super-helpful - I know a lot of people read without commenting (which is totally fine! It's so hard to find time to comment, so I totally get it), which often means I don't really know what posts people actually find interesting and which ones are total flops.

For instance: My "Week by Week" posts seem to be statistically the ones that people enjoy reading the most, but they get far fewer views than, pretty much any other posts, which made me think nobody cared (although I didn't care about that, because they're the posts my kids will be interested to look back on).

Anyway, lots of people said they wished I would write more about homesteading & homeschooling & teaching the kids about the faith. And one reason I don't write much on those is...

Social Media and the Death of Authentic Friendship

Once upon a time, I was a young(er) mom, just starting to stay at home with my 2-under-2 kids after having worked full-time for a while. I was in the same situation so many new moms face in this modern age of opportunity: I was lonely.

I didn't know where to go to meet other moms like me. I didn't know how to get a feel for whether other moms actually were like me. Having made friends with lots of wonderful people whose worldviews completely opposed mine in college, I just wanted some fairly crunchy, Catholic, stay-at-home moms with whom I could talk about cloth diapers and breastfeeding!

I found a decent amount of that (minus the Catholic part) in our local La Leche League group, although I still felt like a bit of an outlier... Where could I find moms just like me?

Enter Facebook. "Groups" were just getting to be a more popular venue, and the curated news feed was beginning to be a possibility. If someone started posting things with which I disagreed, I could hide them from my news feed or even unfriend them! (I do highly recommend unfollowing as an option in many cases, but that's not my point here.) In no time at all, I'd created my own virtual echo chamber, and it was GREAT!

It was also horrible.

12 Top Posts of 2017

2017 was not a year of a ton of blogging... For the most part, I got my two posts per week published (the Week by Week posts & My Sunday Best) and not much else. There's just a lot of life going on, and not a lot of overflow time for blogging. If nothing else, I'm really happy that I got the weekly posts done because we'll be able to look back on those memories for years to come! Based solely on page views, here are the posts that ended up being most viewed in 2017:

My Sunday Best, Volume 69: Bloggers on a Trampoline

30-some Catholic women bloggers (along with 8 babies, and 5 babes in uteri) descended upon Ana Hahn's house yesterday and between mimosas, coffee, and sangria, had some lovely and fruitful discussions!

Also a little bit of trampoline jumping. Or sitting, in some cases ;)

Pregnant Twins and How to Get Rid of Your Tummy {7 Quick Takes}

It's been ages since I last wrote Quick Takes, and the kids are magically playing nicely together upstairs... Let's see if this'll last! Edit: It lasted approximately 3 minutes after I started writing this. Of course!

Affiliate links included:

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I told you ages ago that I was exercising for Lent - I've been slooooowly making my way through an exercise program and it's actually been amazing! I'll do a full review soon, I hope, but my Diastasis Recti is healed (those pesky separated abdominal muscles), I'm MUCH stronger (I can get into the giant van without having to grab the handles with both hands and heave myself in), and I have greatly increased energy levels, despite fairly terrible sleep from the baby.

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Library fines. Do you pay them? Do you make your kids pay them? I've been paying ours, because 100% of the time the fault is mine (don't want to drag everyone to the library, forgot to renew books, couldn't renew books because too many fines have accrued...). But right now there's a missing book (from this series, which is really fun!) and that's NOT my fault! And I really want to read it! So we'll see how I deal with those fines whenever it's located... Off to clear our account of wrongdoing today!

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But I'm renewing this gem of a book, and adding it to my wish list! And it convinced me that we need to make the switch to raw milk, whenever I actually get my act together and fill out the forms...

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Oh gosh, these two recent conversations with the twins? Amazing.