Hosted by Jen at Conversion Diary.

Blessed Junipero Serra & the Carmel Mission: I can’t believe that it is July 1st already! Time just goes too fast! On the plus side, today we celebrate two great feast days, the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Blessed Junipero Serra. Living in California, on summer vacations we would often visit the various missions when we were younger. It’s funny that years later my parish church is the Mission San Carlos (Carmel Mission.) Brian and I were married here and our children were baptized here. It really is a beautiful Mission and it has the distinction of being where Blessed Serra is buried. If you are ever in the area, you should make a visit. In fact…

Founder’s Day: …if you’ll be in the Monterey Bay area tomorrow (Saturday, July 2) stop by the Mission for the Founders Day celebration. There is music and live demonstrations of how things were made during the early days of the mission (ie. food and crafts) and a special Mass at 5:30 PM. (There is a dinner afterwords but you need tickets for that.) It’s always interesting and a lot of fun.

Cars 2 is too scary for little kids!: We are big Pixar fans in our house with the favorite movies of the kids being Cars, Toy Story and Walle. Bella used to be obsessed with Cars and had all the toys for it. Now Andrew loves Cars (and inherited the toys) and was so excited to see the new movie for his birthday. Since I am the one who usually takes them to the movies, Andrew was excited to have a daddy date with Brian as his movie buddy. Bella had a treat and was movie buddies with my visiting sister. From what Brian told me, the movie started out okay but it was really violent and should have been rated PG not G. By the last third of the movie Andrew (who just turned 4) got too scared with all the shooting, cars dying and the bad guys trying to kill Lightning. He started crying so Brian had to take him out to the lobby. Bella finished the movie with my sister and she enjoyed it but she is 9 years old. So if you are taking your younger kids to see it, beware.

Is there such a thing as low cal food that’s yummy?: I’ve been trying to eat healthier so I can get off the rest of the baby weight (and then some) so I tried a Weight Watchers recipe for macaroni salad. I’m a little leery of “light” recipes but this was really good. I used bow tie pasta, substituted half the celery with red bell pepper and added a bit more fresh Italian parsley, which gave it a nice touch. It was really tasty. Check it out at Weight Watchers.com Recipies: Macaroni Salad

Summer Reading: Brian purchased the book Poor Banished Children and I hope to start reading it next week. There is an interesting interview with the author Fiorella De Maria over at Ignatius Insight. If I like this book, I’ll check out her other novels.

He can’t possibly be teething??: How soon can a baby start teething? Matthew is not yet three months but he is drooling and gnawing as if he’s teething. It just seems too early for that.

“JFT”: My “just for today” goals: First, when things get hectic I’ll recall today’s gospel reading “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” and I will turn my heart to Christ for strength. Second, I’ll get that overflowing basket of clean laundry folded!


That’s it for today. Have a wonderful 4th of July holiday! God bless America and watch over our troops.