Housekeeping

Hobnobbing with some cool (Catholic) cats

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I spent today at the Syracuse Catholic Women’s Conference and it was ahhhhmazing! Not only did I get to wear this fun distressed-type textured shirt that I can’t wear in my daily mom life because the baby likes to pick at the seams, but I got to hear the amazing Simcha Fisher speak (and see her beautiful baby Corrie!), as well as Sr. Miriam James Heidland, who is one of the most amazing women I’ve ever heard, and Fr. Andrew Apostoli, who spoke about Fatima, which, as you may remember, was a big turning point in my faith life. Extra great was that I got to go to the conference with my childhood best friend, the one who I went to Fatima with. Great great day. I posted some pictures on Instagram, which don’t nearly do justice to how very cool the whole thing was.

I also prayed for all of you during the beautiful Mass. ❤

And guess what? I have a really really fun consultation lined up for Monday! A tiny hint: it may or may not have to do with an unseen house and an unscripted life … 😉

I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the weekend!!

P.S. to my last post

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I forgot to say — I prayed for you all during the meeting today, during the beautiful Mass we had, and I asked each of the relic-ed (?) saints to pray for you all as well. You’ve all been such a blessing to me! ❤

Some new tabs, and angel names

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I did some housekeeping yesterday and just wanted to point out to you all:

And happy feast of St. Michael, St. Raphael, and St. Gabriel! I’d hoped to do an angel-names post today but it looks like my day will likely be too busy … if you wanted to leave your ideas for names for the angels in the comments, please feel free!

Happy Labor Day!

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My oldest was born in September, and my baby shower was right around Labor Day, so you know there were all the Labor Day jokes and even my cake said, “Happy Labor Day, Kate!” 😀

My little blog has felt a little like a pregnancy — months of growing and changing and developing — and I was so excited to see that I passed 100,000 page views yesterday! I started this blog last June, but didn’t have any real readers besides my mom (ever faithful) and one of my closest friends until January, when I posted ideas for Simcha’s baby. And then — whoa! So I’m fairly confident in saying nearly all of those 100,000 page views happened between January 8th and yesterday. I know that’s small potatoes compared to some of you amazing bloggers, but it’s way more than I’ve ever seen in any of my blogging efforts (I’ve had a couple others). And it’s all because of all of you!! So thank you thank you, again, for helping me create this sweet community, I’ve loved every minute of it. ❤

I’d long looked toward 100,000 views as my personal benchmark for upgrading the blog to a custom domain, and I did so this morning, so while you will still be able to get here via sanctanomina.wordpress.com, I’m now the happy owner of sanctanomina.net. A small thing but a big thing I think, as it seemed so far in the future when I set that goal, and now here it is.

I’ll be posting today’s consultation in a bit, and otherwise I hope you all have a great day!

You light up my life

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I know I’ve gotten gushy on you before, but I just want to say it again — you’re all so great!! I just finished up responding to some emails and putting together consultations and I’m just constantly blown away by the great people this blog has connected me to. What a blessing to “know” so many faith-filled people! I love each and every one of your stories, and I constantly feel the amazingness of the privilege it is to be invited into the intimacy of your families. God is so good. ❤

I’m still a little behind …

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… I’m not sure why exactly — maybe the power outage of the other day? Or just summer, with its swimming and sun and not-sitting-at-the-computer-as-much? Whatever it is, this week I really feel like I’m scrambling. I know I still have a couple people I owe emails to, and I’m just about caught up with consultations — I don’t think anyone’s fallen through the cracks? But if you’re waiting to hear from me and are worried you might have gotten lost in the shuffle, please email me!

A quick pop-in (& Laudato Si’ reflection at CatholicMom.com)

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I hope you all had a great week! Our vacation is best explained by the fact that my boys are counting the days until we go back (we’re tentatively planning a similar trip in Summer 2017 so they have a lot of days to count). We actually did really great! And it was basically as I’d thought — we needed the same things for the week as we do for an overnight (pack and play, diapers and wipes galore, bathing suits, beach towels, sippy cups, clean clothes, paper/crayons, etc.), with the sole addition of a few more clothes and underwear.

I’ll be spending the next few days catching up on email, and I had some really fun name convos (thank you sisters and sisters-in-law and Mother dear!) and spotted some great names (a couple of which I posted about on Instagram), and encountered some sobering name info, all of which I’ll tell you about in upcoming posts. I’ll have a consultation posted tomorrow morning as usual, and some birth announcements to share as well. August is off and running!!

But my real reason for breaking my Sunday blog-fast and popping in here is to direct you to the CatholicMom.com Laudato Si’: A Community Conversation reflection on Chapter 3, which I’d mentioned recently. Every Sunday for eight weeks two CatholicMom.com writers will offer short reflections on their assigned chapter. This week is Chapter 3, and I have the privilege of being one of today’s writers. It’s not name-related, but I hope you’ll hop over there anyway, and maybe even leave a comment. Reading my one chapter — which is all that I’ve read of Laudato Si’ so far — was amazing; as I told friends, it was hard for me to imagine what Pope Francis could have possibly written about in the other chapters, so chock-full was Chapter 3.

Alrighty, I’m signing off until tomorrow!

 

A few things before we *gasp* leave on vacation

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I’m terribly sorry for neglecting you all yesterday! I meant to post and the day just got away from me. If you can believe it, especially after my St. Anne’s Shrine post in which I emphatically declared that traveling with little ones is very low on my list of things that I’m willing to do, I am getting us all ready to go away for a week with my parents, siblings, their spouses, and their kiddos. We leave tomorrow. I know.

We’ve never done anything like this before, but the opportunity to be all together for a whole week — which hasn’t happened in at least … seven years? I think? Maybe longer? was certainly not something to be passed up. My boys will be seeing the ocean for the first time, which we’re all excited about, and hanging out with their cousins (also all boys), which we’re all excited about too. We’re staying in one big house (all twenty of us) that has a washer and dryer and kitchen, so I’m actually not stressing too much about it at all. I feel like I really don’t have to do much more than I had to do for the overnight we did at my mother-in-law’s house last weekend. Maybe a few more clothes? I’ll let you know next week if I was right. 😉

In the meantime, I wanted to assure you that I will have a consultation posted on Monday — WordPress has the handy feature of deciding when posts post, so I’ll write it up before I leave and schedule it to post Monday morning. I don’t know if I’ll have internet access or not — I’m assuming I will, at least occasionally — which only means that I might not be able to approve comments from people who have never commented before, and that I’m not planning any posts for next week.

But I’ll be back with a vengeance after that! Hopefully I’ll have spotted some great names or had some great name conversations (my sisters and sisters-in-law are good like that) that I can tell you about, and there are some upcoming births I’m excited about (Jenny Uebbing I’m looking at you!), and a couple other things I want to blog about, so August will be fun.

I hope you all have a wonderful week! And I’ll leave you with this, which is exactly the kind of thing I thought I’d find when I was writing my middle names article for CatholicMom.com (I didn’t find it though, and Barb only tweeted this to me after my article posted). I’m fascinated by this — have any of you had this experience or know someone who has?

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St. Anne giveaway #9 — The End

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I just posted the pic of the very last of the St. Anne giveaways — a holy card of the Shrine with medal and shrine info on the back. I have four, so the first four who email me at sanctanomina@gmail.com will get them!

Thanks again for celebrating my first blogiversary with me! You’re all wonderful!! ❤

St. Anne giveaway #8

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I just posted the pic of today’s giveaway — a holy card of the St. Anne’s Shrine with a medal and prayer on the back. I have four, so the first four who email me at sanctanomina@gmail.com get them!

I’m on my way out (to teach NFP of all things! Please pray for the couple I’m teaching), so I won’t be able to check email until later tonight … I’ll email back the winners then!