When should you open your mouth?

We were simply commiserating over children when she blurted it out. “You know my children were conceived by in vitro fertilization don’t you?”

I was stunned into silence. What could I say? [...]

What was your Christmas shopping experience like? Did everyone have clothes on?

Last week, like most dads, I spent a great deal of time with the kids looking for that perfect gift for Mom – at every store in Northern Virginia. We always take in the sights. You know, looking at all the festive sweatshirts, drinking some peppermint coco, admiring the decorations, seeing in-the-flesh exploitation of barely legal men and women marketing expensive clothes. Wait, you didn’t have that same experience?

“Do you remember that girl, Marisa?”, was how the conversation began.

How could I not? She was the cute one who sat behind me in Latin class in high school.

The pages in my yearbook are filled with grimace inducing pictures of our awkward adolescent selves, bad haircuts, cryptic references, best friends, and roller coaster loves and hates.

Oh yes, our loves were epic!

Let the eye-rolling begin.

As it is the Christmas Holiday season, I thought Catholic Dads might have a little more time to read a lengthier post than usual. It is also slightly more tangential to our theme than usual, but I hope it may prove interesting. It is a short fable. – Our family – one might almost say [...]

Learning that love is multiplied and not divided is crucial to what we do as fathers.

As Catholic fathers, the concepts of self-sacrifice, dying to self, and the greatest of loves… are not foreign to us. They are the definition of who we are as Catholics. Living these virtues is not only heroic, but it is Christ-like. It is our calling as fathers. Having children shouldn’t be something that makes us, or anyone for that matter, think that we are some how dividing anything. More children does not divide time, money, resources, and most importantly it does not divide love.

I’m pretty rushed at present, trying to get lots finished before I close the business down for the Christmas holidays, to spend time with the family. So just time for a brief post today. However, I have just started to read a very thought-provoking book, by an English Professor of Education, James Tooley. It is [...]

Congratulations to my brother, Shoe, and his wife, Girl Friday, on the birth of their first born daughter, Babs!

This week we celebrate another milestone as Antonia turns 21. So that’s it: officially grown up. The first of our children to emerge at the other end from our slightly odd approach to parenting (at least by modern standards). So it is interesting to look back. Ant is currently at University, where she is studying [...]

In any family life there are major milestones that mark the way. These things stick out in our memory.

In between signposts is a lot of highway. It’s not particularly interesting, but it must be traveled in order to get to the next waypoint.

I’ve been on that highway lately, in between nowhere and somewhere else.

It may be, as you read this, that you get the impression I am repeating myself (if you were around here last year, and have a very good memory). There’s a reason for that, and it’s called tradition. There is something wonderful about growing up with an annual cycle of practices which grow ever more [...]