Sanford & Sons and an Elizabeth Foss article

2 articles on Gov. Sanford and family below:

by Kathryn Jean Lopez on NRO
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZWU1NDc3ZDI4YzQyYjhiZjljZmZmYmZlMGUyNjM3ZGQ=&w=MA


by Elizabeth Foss for the Arlington Catholic Herald
http://www.catholicherald.com/opinions/detail.html?sub_id=10598

Happy Fourth!
CMM

Developing Families with Personality - free talk by Cormac Burke

Developing Families with Personality

Hear a talk by Cormac Burke
author of Covenanted Happiness and Man and Values: A Personalist Anthropology

"Does your family stand out from others, not for its comfort or for the number and quality of its gadgets, but for its vitality, for the quality of its family life? Does your family influence the social atmosphere it is involved in, or is it more influenced by it?" Cormac Burke will address these questions and more in his talk.

free admission and open to the public
Oakcrest School
850 Balls Hill Rd
McLean, VA
Tues. Apr 21st at 7:30pm, doors open at 7:15pm
RSVPs requested but not required: ParentEducation@oakcrest.org

A professor of Modern Languages and Doctor in Canon Law, Cormac Burke was appointed a Judge of the Roman Rota by Pope John Paul II. During this 13 years at the Vatican, he taught Anthropology at the Studium Rotale as well as Canon Law at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. The National Federation of Physicians of the U.S. accorded him the 1994 Linacre Award for his writing in the field of marriage and sexual ethics. He is the author of numerous books including Covenanted Happiness, Conscience and Freedom, Man and Values: A Personalist Anthropology and Authority and Freedom in the Church. Cormac Burke currently teaches at Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya.
Read Cormac Burke's lecture on "Developing Families with Personality" and his other writings at: http://www.cormacburke.or.ke/node/631

I'll see you there!

Clare

Spring Has Sprung

Daffodils- William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

My favorite poem

In The Spirit of Hot Momdom...

I challenge all you moms out there to join me, yes ME, in the Army 10 miler one year from this October...for those of you who write yourselves off as unathletic or nonrunners, let me remind you that I not only just gave birth to my third child in three years, but have not run a mile since I was forced to in my 6th grade gym class. Those of you who are runners may doubt my ability to meet my own challenge, and you may be right...but it's something to shoot for!

Why, you ask am I inspired to do such a thing? I am finding that exercise is an increasingly imperitive tool in my calling as a wife and mother. As I am drawing dangerously close to 30, I need the "umphp" that it gives you to have the energy to get through the day and honestly, it gives me a release and time of recollection--some "me" time, if you will that serves my family at the same time--that's the kind of "me" time that can be truly "Guilt free".

William Tell Overture

Celina found yet another awesome thing to post. This is hysterical.

Building Cathedrals

(I don't know who the author of this piece is. Celina past it along in an email)

I'm invisible.
It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the
lack of response, the way
one of the kids walks into the room while I'm on the
phone and asks to be
taken to the store. Inside I'm thinking, "Can't you
see I'm on the phone?"

Obviously not.

No one can see if I'm on the phone, or cooking, or
sweeping the floor, or
even standing on my head in the corner, because no
one can see me at all.

I'm invisible.


Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more:
Can you fix this?
Can you tie this?
Can you open this?


Some days I'm not a pair of hands; I'm not even a
human being. I'm a clock
to ask, "What time is it?" I'm a satellite guide to
answer, "What number is
the Disney Channel?" I'm a car to order, "Right
around 5:30, please."

I was certain that these were the hands that once
held books and the eyes
that studied history and the mind that graduated with
honors - but now
they had disappeared into the peanut butter,
never to be seen again.

She's going ... she's going ... she's gone!
One night, a group of us were having dinner,
celebrating the return of a
friend from England . Janice had just gotten back
from a fabulous trip, and
she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed
in. I was sitting there,
looking around at the others all put together so
well. It was hard not to
compare and feel sorry for myself as I looked down at
my out-of-style dress;
it was the only thing I could find that was clean. My
unwashed hair was
pulled back in a ponytail and I was afraid I could
actually smell peanut
butter in it.

I was feeling pretty pathetic, when Janice turned to
me with a beautifully
wrapped package, and said, "I brought you this."

It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe. I
wasn't exactly sure why
she'd given it to me until I read her inscription:
"To My Friend, with admiration for the greatness of
what you are building
when no one sees."


In the days ahead I would read - no, devour - the
book. And I would discover
what would become for me, four life-changing truths,
after which I could
pattern my work:


* No one can say who built the great cathedrals - we
have no record of their
names.
* These builders gave their whole lives for a work
they would never see
finished.
* They made great sacrifices and expected no credit.
* The passion of their building was fueled by their
faith that the eyes of
God saw everything.

A legendary story in the book told of a rich man who
came to visit the
cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a
workman carving a tiny bird
on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked
the man, "Why are you
spending so much time carving that bird into a beam
that will be covered by
the roof? No one will ever see it."

And the workman replied, "Because God sees."


I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall
into place. It was almost
as if I heard God whispering to me, "I see you, I see
the sacrifices you
make every day, even when no one around you does. No
act of kindness you've
done, no sequin you've sewn on, no cupcake you've
baked, is too small for me
to notice and smile over. You are building a great
cathedral, but you can't
see right now what it will become."

At times, my invisibility feels like an affliction.
But it is not a disease
that is erasing my life. It is the cure for the
disease of my own
self-centeredness. It is the antidote to my strong,
stubborn pride.
I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a
great builder. As one of
the people who show up at a job that they will never
see finished, to work
on something that their name will never be on. The
writer of the book went so far as to say that no
cathedrals could ever
be built in our lifetime because there are so few
people willing to
sacrifice to that degree.
When I really think about it, I don't want my son to
tell the friend he's
bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, "My mom
gets up at 4 in the
morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand
bastes a turkey for three
hours and presses all the linens for the table." That
would mean I'd built a
shrine or a monument to myself. I just want him to
want to come home. And
then, if there is anything more to say to his friend,
to add, "You're gonna
love it there."
As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We
cannot be seen if we're
doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that
the world will marvel,
not only at what we have built, but at the beauty
that has been added to the
world by the sacrifices of invisible women.

The Power of Positive Thinking

- Avoid perfectionism!