That sound stops me in my tracks everytime

D A G A play it twice and I will stop dead in my tracks. It is the beginning of the song (tab format) that my wife sang to me at our wedding reception.




At my brother-in-laws wedding this weekend I heard this song and it stopped me dead in my tracks. Unfortunatley, we couldn't dance due to the nursing baby but that didn't stop me from sitting with my wife and enjoying her company. I love you Dawn, my dearling, my Davy. Thank you for the wonderful weekend.



Under the Mercy,
Matthew S

Crossroads

Fatherhood is a journey that has many pitfalls. One of the biggest dangers is resentment over having to change the way one has to live life. As a father you are still in charge but you are no longer in control.

In my house we currently have six wills trying to make it through the day and I only have control over one of them. The other five wills intersect mine repeatedly, from wanting to snuggle and read a book to crashing headlong into mine over chores.

I have come to realize the as a father, and it holds true at some level for mothers, that each interaction with my children is a crossroads in my life and in my relationship with them.

Jesus spoke of roads and how we must travel. As the Word in the Old Testament we see rules for journies and as the Savior in the New Testament we see Him sending people out on roads to spread His message. He spoke of the easy road, the well traveled road and its counterpart, the road less traveled.

The choice between those two roads is the choice I face with every crossroads in my life. Fortunately, He is the way, the Truth and the Life, He set out on journies and it is thus that we have Him as an example.

As a father I am to represent God to my children in how I lead them down the road and in how I interact when I come to a crossroads. It is my hope that even when they are discouraged from failures that I can show them many things about God's plan and as I share myself with them sacrificially that their eyes may be opened to Christ through me, much like Christ did with His disciples on the road to Emmaus.

Under the Mercy,

Matthew S.

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Catholic parents face quandary over vaccine to prevent cervical cancer

Check out this Catholic Online Headline

Catholic parents face quandary over vaccine to prevent cervical cancer
www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=25010

I feel fortunate that I don't have to face for another five years or so. I hope they will find out anything that is bad that is caused by this vaccine so that I can make a more informed decision. Of course, can we really trust the same crowd that made the pill? When they were making the pill it started out for men. They stopped testing it because one man noticed testicular shrinkage and they restarted it on women. Well, a few women fell over dead and they just changed the dosage.

I know that this may sound like rambling but I think its my WCSS kicking in and wondering if its part of an agenda that someone is trying to do something to manipulate our children. I should recount my thought about cosmo the magazine.

The other night at work someone left an issue of cosmo out and it happened to talk about "The 75 positions" your man wants. They were all one line quotes from men about what turned them on, they were so self-centered it made me sick. It got me thinking though, if I were a guy cosmo is the perfect magazine, it is targeted at women and makes them think being a sex slave/slut is the only way to make their guy happy. If this magazine is run by a man its like someone that is tottally trying to manipulate our culture. Thank God I try to be a man and not a guy.

In other news I am working on focusing with dealing better with feelings of resentment as they come up, this is a parenting issue. Trying to relate better to my kids and not blow up at them. It is hard because that is how I was raised (or really what I remember of being punished) and I have lived that way for so long. I am reading the book I mentioned awhile back by Dr. Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters. It is a good read and changing the way I approach parenting as a father.

Under the Mercy,

Matthew S

parenting hpv std vaccine resentment fatherhood catholic

Money Kids get for Birthdays

One of the things that is very popular for our kids to receive is money for birthdays and other gifting occassions. We allow them to buy some things that they want with the cash and we also use it to go get things that they need. Problem today is that it was all in a pile and we were scratching our heads trying to figure out how much each kid had been given and how much eavh had spent without having a written record. Now, spending the kids money is my wife's area of responsibility for the most part.

Lets just say we were both stressing out but across the kids we got down to a nine dollar disparity from the initial 75 dollar disparity. We didn't come up with more money, my wife remembered the purchase of cookies at the mall (very expesnive, high overhead and good tasting from what I hear). Anyway, budget and money is something that is stressful but I would like to say that I am proud of my wife as she kept her cool, she did awesome. Dave Ramsey and is financial planning has really helped us out with dealing with finances and getting on a better track than we were.

As to the rest of the world, my now 7.5 month old is actually crawling a little, most of it is belly army crawling but she does some real crawling. Of course, she can pull herself up standing on things too. That is scary. Maybe I will have to loud up blogger in draft and upload some videos for everyone to see. Would also give me a chance to compare it to myspace and youtube video features.

Today is the last day of my training at work and we are going to do some work on multi-tasking with the new computer software in a simulated environment. Tommorow I am going back to the center and will work on overtime shift one 1 of my 2 days off this week, but since that isn't my normal day off and it backs up to my normal two days off I will get 2 in a row after that. Of course next week I will probably have 4-5 12 hour days. This will be going on for the next 4 weeks or so and it sounds like we are probably getting ready to loose a few more people in the department, good for me that this will boost seniority but its going to mean a long long time of lots of overtime and the new stress of restarting homeschooling while I am running on low and it takes quite a long time for us to get people hired, trained and out working on their own.

Now, starting tommorow the older two kids are taking off with my parents for a Gulf of Mexico beach week in Texas. They are going to have so much fun on this trip and my wife and I will not know what to do with just two kids here at the house. I think we are going to rent a movie (Pirates of the Carribean 2) and then possibly try to go watch a movie as well or go out to eat or both. We are also going to have the assesment packet from our homeschool academy that we signed up for to go through starting this week. I am very excited.

Don't forget to vote in the Pocast awards for your favorite SQPN shows, and if you don't know what SQPN is, its a great Catholic Podcasting network. Kick the radio habit and get into podcasts, you can control the content and listen to stuff from EWTN, SQPN, and several other places around the net. On the left sidebar I keep a scrolling run of things that are in my MP3 player.

God bless, pray for us as we work on our children's classical education. Maybe I should blog about that and I am working on the topic idea for the Catholic Dads Carnival, suggestions are always appreciated.

Under the Mercy,

Matthew S


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The beauty of homeschooling

Well, its that time of the year again. No, not time to start homeschooling but wrapping up things for the year and working on planning for the next year. A few people I know are working to be teachers because they will have the summer off to be with their kids. While you do have more time off in the summer than someone that works year round I do know that teachers have to do continuing education and prep-work for the next year during the summer. The same is true for homeschooling parents.

We have to study curriculums, activities, evaluate the last year and enrich our knowledge base during the summer. The plus for us is that the students we teach learn with us throughout the summer. We also learn from them, their is not a big getting to know you period at the beginning of the year, we taught these kids last year and we have done things and grown with them all summer long.








We are in the mode of teaching our kids and they continue to learn, we undertake one of our fundamental responsibilities as parents to educate our children. My wife being a stay at home mom is home with the kids all the time, its a way of life. Its not a way of life without struggles (for both of us) but its a calling from God. Today is our cleaning day at the house and we worked all over cleaning and some of the kids learned new chores. Yes, the chore was cleaning the toilet bowl. This is another way that my wife is working smarter. Instead of sending the kids off to a corner and having to deal with them when they interrupt her work, she is working smarter and putting all of us to work on the weekly cleaning chores. She is working hard and working smarter!! Did I mention I love and adore my wife, she is just plain awesome and I am blessed by having her around.

Our kids are learning service to each other , their fellow man, as they do this work beside us. This doesn't make them perfect by any means, all of us in this family fall from time to time. However, we hope that the time we spend together and I with my daughters will help them to get a good start on the way of perfection. This spending time together and teach I think really fits John Henry Cardinal Newman's approach of "Cor ad Cor Loquitor". Hearts speaking to Hearts, that is how school should be, that is how we make a difference in the school that is life, that is what homeschooling is really about, the school of life.

Under the Mercy,

Matthew S.
p.s. Since this is emailed to you and you get to read it, I love you dearling.





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