The Triple B Blog Tour!

bbbHere’s a book challenge to get you thinking about some themes important to me, and, indeed, important to many of us — the dignity, gifts, and mission of women.

My dear friend, Pat Gohn, just released her first book, Blessed, Beautiful, and Bodacious: Celebrating the Gift of Catholic Womanhood.

I promise you, you’re going to want to pick up a copy of this book for yourself, and an extra copy to give away to a woman you love: maybe your sister, your daughter, or your best friend.

Pat is a wonderful writer…a real wordsmith with a gift for clear thinking, easy communication, and distilling complex themes into easy to digest thoughts. That’s reason enough to reach for the book, but the truth is that Pat has the heart of a catechist — she loves Jesus and wants you to love him, too!

She shares her faith journey with us like a beloved friend, a sister in Christ, and a spiritual mother.

I know you’ll love the book, but remember I said Pat is a catechist? Let her introduce you to the beauty of the book in her words and her voice as she explains a fun way to dig deeply into the book. Join me and nine other bloggers as we host a bodacious blog tour over the next ten days and give away copies of the book, too. Think of it as a do-it-yourself retreat!

Listen to the audio clip embedded below, and then go to Pat’s blog for more information on Ten Bodacious Basics…Ten Minutes at a Time!

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A conversation with Liz Lantigua

I’m over at CatholicMom.com today with a review and interview with author Liz Lantigua and her new book, Mission Libertad.

Check it out, the review, and the book! It’s a great adventure that takes us on a wild mid-night escape from Cuba, and the adventure doesn’t stop there.

See what Liz has to say:

Imagine the risk a family like Luisito’s takes even before they decide to get on a raft and cross the Florida straights. They must find scraps to build their homemade raft in a country that lacks basic needs. They need a place to hide the raft. They need to be extremely secretive so they won’t end up in prison. They have to make sure they are not caught trying to reach the beach by the vigilant comite de barrio, the neighborhood watch committee, who informs the government on the neighbor’s whereabouts. Then the most difficult part, saying good bye to the relatives they are leaving behind if they trust them enough to divulge their secret.

Read the rest here.

Review: Catholic Family Fun Book

The empty nest is getting closer and closer for me, and let me say, it’s something that I am surprised to be embracing in this season of my life.

A typical evening at home looks something like this:

Me: What do you want for dinner.

Honey: Oh, you’ve had a long day…let’s go out for a bite.

Nice, isn’t it? The rest of the evening might play out with us having a nice, quiet conversation on the porch. You know, about stuff that doesn’t involve a schedule, or somebody’s grades, or the orthodontist.

Rewind ten or fifteen years and the scene was very different. Dinner was a disorganized affair, with conversations that escalated into louder and louder expressions with everyone happily talking over each other. Perhaps it’s not the ideal dinner time for many of you, but in our home, it was the chaos that we enjoyed. The louder the laughter, the better.

How I wish we’d had Sarah Reinhard’s Catholic Family Fun in those days. Its subtitle, A Guide for the Adventurous, Overwhelmed, Creative, or Clueless pretty much describes my state of affairs when it came to managing three kids close in age, a household, a traveling husband, and the myriad after school activities that had me jumping through hoops.

The section on Traveling Food was the first thing I looked at. After so many stressful drive-thru meals, it’s a relief to see instructions for something that’s relaxing and enjoyable.

With my  youngest finishing his second year of college, I wondered,  as I was reading the book, if any of this was relevant to a middle-aged mom a little shell-shocked from the sudden silence.

The answer is YES. And it comes from an unlikely place.

You see, I thought I’d be putting the book on my shelf, using it when my nieces and nephews come to visit, or [gulp] saving it for someday with grandchildren.

What I forgot is that my husband and I are still very much a family. In fact, we were a family first, before the kiddoes came along, and now that they are scattering, we’re back to where we started, so to speak — with each other.

And we can benefit from many of the ideas in this book, too.

Each activity has a Faith Angle, and frankly, that’s the best part of the book for me. As adults we often fall into a routine (that’s good) for morning prayer or devotionals, and this provides many creative ways to explore the richness of our faith by shaking it up a little.

The next section, Making It Your Own, gives us the “permission” to adapt it to our needs. It’s perfect because of its versatility.

Pick up a copy and play…you’ll find something that works for whatever your family dynamic happens to be at the moment.

And remember to have fun!

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