Hooray! The latest episode of the Faith & Family podcast is available — featuring Rachel, Lisa, and Arwen. Go listen now!

That they come down the slide together with these grins?

Or that Big Brother turns around instinctively to help Little Brother off the slide?

It’s hard to watch the news these days without a tightening feeling of panic setting in.

I listened to the radio yesterday afternoon and learned not only that face masks are ineffective protection from swine flu, but that my best bet is frequent hand washing and breaking that bad habit I have of kissing strangers on the mouth.

I found myself watching Janet Napolitano on the news last night and let me tell you … the woman inspires something in me but it’s not confidence.

That’s why I found it so refreshing to listen to Ron Paul’s take on the swine flu “crisis” this morning. I may not need to hole up in the crawl space and board up the windows just yet.

HT: Inside Catholic

Hooray!

Sister Patricia Proctor (whom many of you know from her popular Joy Notes) is guest blogging this week at Faith and Family Live.

True to her nature, Sister Pat is already blogging up a storm — about finding God and about Susan Boyle and folding T-shirts.

Come on over and say hello!

I’m taking the fact that I’ve slipped right back into home life with hardly a glitch as proof that the only plates I dropped last week and over the weekend were in fact the melamine.

I met so many wonderful people at the New Jersey conference — author Susie Lloyd, the fabulous Michelle Reitemeyer and some of the lovely ladies at Building Cathedrals, among others.

Note: I did not wear jeans to the conference, but many of these photos were taken as I was about to leave.

Also Note: If anyone named Thomas McDonald (who writes for the National Catholic Register) and his charming wife Elizabeth should happen to claim that they helped me sneak into the conference center a day early and have photographic evidence that I goofed around while there … they are totally lying.

I leave tomorrow for the CHAPLET conference in NJ. This means that today I feel like this lady, but I’m not looking quite so elegant.

Please head over to Faith & Family Live today to share your Small Successes. I really love reading readers’ contributions each week.

And now a quick blessing for any of you who might be spinning plates today too: May the only ones you drop be the melamine.

Have a blessed day!

Technical difficulties. Sorry for any disappearing posts or “new posts” that aren’t new.

Figuring it out.

And by the way? I am enough. I do not need another unpredictably hormonal creature in my life.

The back of the kids’ wagon: