2019 On the Fourth Day of Christmas...

...the theme I gave my post: FOUR Instagram Accounts

First Day of Christmas Posts: ONE Ambitious Idea
Second Day of Christmas Posts: Sea TURTLE Vacation
Third Day of Christmas Posts: THREE in One God

Everyone has their social media of choice. With new options appearing regularly, I don't bother trying to keep up with the "it" app. Truth is, everyone taps out at some point. Here is what I currently monitor:

• Personal Twitter: @WordNerd80 -Feel free to follow but I don't do much but follow other accounts.
• Professional Twitter: @EduCroupe -I love connecting and sharing on this account. It is all focused on education. Feel free to follow.
• Team Twitter: @RISDiTeam -This account focuses on best instructional practices especially when using technology and highlights the cool stuff happening in the district where I work. Our whole team monitors this one together.
• Personal Facebook: I only have a personal one of these. I made a decision to keep this from also being professional. I'm pretty particular about who gets to friend me on this one, and most of my posts come from Instagram. 

Then there is Instagram. As of today, I have four accounts through Instagram:

• Personal @WordNerd80 -This is set to private since most of my posts involve my kids and family. I am very particular about who follows the account. If I cannot figure out who a person is by their profile picture or username, I delete the request quick, fast, and in a hurry.
• Professional @EduCroupe -Not a lot happens here actually. I post a lot during conferences. Most of my professional posts happen on Twitter. However, it is public so feel free to follow.
• William's @will.croupe -NO ONE UNDER THE AGE 13 SHOULD HAVE AN UNMONITORED SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT. Seriously, read all the Terms of Service for various social media apps, and you'll see the rules. Some are even set to 18 years of age. This is all tied to data mining and such. It is a legit rule by the Federal Trade Commission: Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA). However, I want to help my sons understand best practices for social media. I opened an Insta account for my oldest. I monitor it and help him post to it. There has not been a lot of activity, and I am okay with that for now. Feel free to follow him, but the same rules apply that I use for anyone requesting to follow me.

And as of today, I have a Bookstagram account! I debated creating one for a while. There are many reasons why people create Bookstagrams. I desire more accountability with reading. I love to read. I used to read a lot. Then life started happening and reading fell to the wayside. My goal with a Bookstagram is to create a record of my reading to reflect on as well as build a "support" group to encourage me to read more. If I know people are interested in what I read next, then I will feel more inspired to read rather than binge watch television or movies. We shall see. 

Feel free to follow me: @BiblioLydia and I am always looking for fave Bookstagrams to follow.

2019 On the Third Day of Christmas...

...the theme I gave my post: THREE in one God-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

First Day of Christmas Post: ONE Ambitious Idea
Second Day of Christmas Post: Sea TURTLE Vacation

I love God. I love Christ. I love my faith. I love being Catholic. This is a truth about me that I have not always been comfortable sharing.

Unfortunately, society seems insistent on boxing people into black and white categories refusing to acknowledge how multidimensional people really are. For example, exclaiming I love being Catholic does not mean I believe Catholicism is perfect. It also does not mean I am unable to be open-minded and accepting of other points-of-view. If anything, learning about other belief structures helps me better understand my own. It encourages me to learn more about why I choose to believe the way I do.

I grew up Catholic in a protestant heavy area. Many times I was condemned to hell by peers simply because I was Catholic. I will never forget the day someone told me I wasn't Christian because I was Catholic. It sucked. The worst part was that I did not understand my own faith enough to speak up and explain why the misconceptions these people had about me were wrong.

For many years I struggled with various aspects of my faith. Sometimes it dealt with my feelings of unworthiness. Sometimes it was a joke someone told involving my faith that left me feeling awkward. Sometimes it was a person spewing incorrect and poorly informed "facts" about my faith at me and not being able to address them. I did not want my children feeling stuck the same way. I promised myself to be better for them.

Over the past few years I tried learning my faith better. Of course this proved difficult because I'm human. Then during Advent 2018, I received a cool gift from my Faith Formation co-teacher: Every Sacred Sunday Mass Journal. It is a book with all the weekly Mass readings. There is room for notes, reflection, and goal setting in terms of my faith. I accepted the gifted and worried if I'd keep up with it every week.

See, I'm really crap with daily devotional stuff, but it turned out I did just fine with once a week. I ABSOLUTELY LOVED USING MY EVERY SACRED SUNDAY BOOK. Every Sunday I took notes on the Homily, thought of things to be thankful for, jotted down things to pray for, and set a faith goal for the week. It drew me closer to my faith. It gave me a little more confidence in understanding the Scripture each week. I wanted to do more, so I started listening to daily Scripture readings with Gus Lloyd on the Catholic Channel on Sirius XM (he also shares on FB). THEN I wanted to learn more. I turned to books, podcasts, and Twitter (obviously). It turns out there are a lot of Catholics out there just like me. We love our faith but struggle. I was not alone!

In particular Girl, Arise! by Claire Swinarski left me in tears. Swinarski is known as the Catholic Feminist which caught my attention. Her book spoke to me on so many levels. I still struggle with some of the topics she addresses, but I am okay with that. The Catholic Hipster Handbook by Tommy Tighe introduced me to Catholic Twitter which introduced me to more Catholics I now follow. Two podcasts I added to my library: The Catholic Feminist (as mentioned above) and Jesuitical.

Things you need to know about me and my deepening understanding of my Catholic Faith:

• I will not judge or condemn others who are different from me (I know how that feels, and it's the pits.) Keeping an open mind is something I take very seriously. I want people to be comfortable being their authentic selves around me. 
• I will always struggle with aspects of my faith, so please don't assume I blindly follow and believe everything ever dictated by Catholicism. Simply ask me how I feel about it.
• I will be offended by an inappropriate joke and/or snide remark about my faith. This does not mean I don't have a sense of humor. I am allowed not to find it amusing. 
• I will make mistakes. I am human. My poor choices or screw ups don't negate the goodness of my faith.
• I will do my best to inform others about my faith. The best way to shut down ignorance is to provide knowledge.    

It all boils down to this: God is love (1 John 4: 8), and the two greatest commandments are loving God with all my heart and soul and my neighbor as myself (Matthew 22: 37-39). As long as love inspires the decisions and actions I take, I am doing the right thing. 

2019 On the Second Day of Christmas...

...the theme I gave my post: Sea TURTLE Vacation.

Still a day behind on my 12 Posts of Christmas goal, but I am determined. Check out the first post here.

My youngest regularly mentioned going to the beach. He never saw the ocean. He wanted to build a sand castle. Etc. It. Was. Constant. For a while the concern involved his inability to swim. My oldest learned at the YMCA, but we did not stay as diligent with my younger son.

Interestingly enough, he taught himself how to swim. That kid jumped right into our pool and started moving. My MIL decided it was time. She offered to treat us to a trip to the beach. This past summer we packed our bags and headed to South Padre.

Let me take a brief moment and readdress my anxiety. As mentioned in First Day of Christmas post, my stress levels remain a constant 11 on a scale 1-10. Here are all the reasons I had no desire to take my family to the beach:

1. Flight issues 
2. Flying with children (you never really know how that will end up)
3. Pressure issues for me since my ears are messed up
4. Loss of luggage
5. Bad weather
6. Getting lost trying to find the condo
7. Sand-I don't like sand 
8. The boys liking the idea of the beach more than the actual beach
9. Sunburn/heat exhaustion
10. Crowded beaches
11. Undertow drowning one of us
12. Sharks-they are getting bolder you know
13. Jellyfish
14. Salt water stinging my freshly shaven legs (seriously, that hurts yo)
15. Losing my children at some point (airport, restaurants, beach, wherever we've never been before)
16. Children being kidnapped

Basically, I dwelled constantly on the one million ways we were never going to survive this trip.

Unless of course this guy showed up. Then everything would be fine.

(TBH-I'm like this every time we have to take a family trip.)

We stayed on the beach in an Airbnb. We are definitely Airbnbelievers (new word). The place was a cute condo with two bedrooms and kitchen. We loaded up on snacks and breakfast foods. What I really love about Airbnbs is the ability to wash all our clothes before packing to return home.

The first afternoon we arrived and headed straight for the beach. We couldn't contain our excitement for Benji's reaction now that a five minute walk is all it took to get to the ocean. Wait for iiiittttt...

He was not having it.

He refused to go into the water. He refused to come out from under the beach umbrella. He was irritated with the sand (duh). We could not believe it. All his begging to get there, and he was ready to go home.

Well, it only lasted for that day. Fortunately, the next morning brought a different attitude. Benji dived into the ocean with all the gumption he uses in our pool at home. He fell completely in love with the beach. Ha ha ha. I guess he needed a bit of time to adjust. The ocean is rather large after all.

In the end, the trip provided amazing memories. The boys are natural swimmers and wanted to live in the water. We ate at interesting places, attended Mass as the beautiful local parish-Our Lady, Star of the Sea , went on a dolphin spotting tour, and spent time at Sea Turtle Inc. The absolutely coolest thing we witnessed was a baby sea turtle release. We happened to be visiting during hatching season. Every morning I would check their FB page to see if any sea turtles were ready to return to the ocean, and the morning before we left we hit the jackpot!

For the record, only 3 of the 16 things I worried about happened. I'm calling that a win! If you didn't see the pics as I posted them on Insta and FB, here are some of my faves:

  

2019 On the First Day of Christmas...

...the theme I gave my post: ONE ambitious idea for the next twelve days.

Okay, so it is technically the second day. Yesterday exhausted me, so writing a blog post did not happen. However, I set a goal to write one blog post for each day of Christmas. Trust me, I have enough to write about. Let's see if I can make it happen.

Christmas 2019 brought laughter, excitement, lots of love, and stress/anxiety/migraines. I realize most of the stress is self induced. Keeping lists of gifts, sending cards, decorating, and shaking my fists at people who don't see eye to eye with me on the whole "Christmas decorating begins the day after Thanksgiving and goes to the Epiphany." Why do I worry about these things? I have no idea. I'm convinced anxiety and stress are part of my DNA. Some would say it is due to my Enneagram Type 1 (wing 2) personality. Imagine me shrugging my shoulders since I really couldn't say. Then imagine me slowly lowering those shoulders because the tension is making it difficult to move my neck.

As always, we rocked our Advent wreath leading up to Christmas. The kids and hubs expertly ornamented the tree. Car radios tuned to three prominent Christmas only music stations. With our new and open kitchen, I expanded the Christmas decorations. We also attended Midnight Mass as usual. There was nothing to stress about. I just simply stress about everything.

Christmas day arrived and filled our day with so much joy that my anxiety disappeared faster than it took my kids to open all their presents. Ha ha ha.

Having family over to share in the joy of Christmas reminded me that in the end it doesn't matter that my new cookie recipe was too soft to use the cookie cutters or that my oldest wore his tennis shoes instead of "church" shoes to Midnight Mass. As the visiting priest pointed out on the last Sunday of Advent, Christmas is a time for families to be together. Unlike Dickens' Scrooge who wrapped himself in loneliness before encountering the ghosts of Christmas, Jesus came to be with everyone. I enjoyed being with my family so much, I barely took any pics. As self-appointed family historian, this is unusual for me. However, the memories we made acted as a great cure for my stress (and relentless migraine) without having to capture them on my phone.

I will say, one of my children asked for "one of those old fashioned cameras that pops the picture out." Perhaps the mantel of family historian is ready to be handed down?