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As a Catholic mom, I'm always wanting my children and myself to seek God daily and encourage each family member to spend daily quiet time in prayer alone.  Our family prays together often and each morning we have our "Couch Catechism" family devotion time before our homeschool day starts, but making time for individual prayer is so necessary and fruitful, but can be challenging at times!

Holy Heroes, a wonderful company that offers products to "help you bring the joy of the Faith to your Family", has created the new Holy Heroes Spiritual Diary that is an excellent tool for the entire family (yes, for children AND adults!) to make spending time with our Lord not only possible, but also reflective and fruitful. The diary is intended to be used each day for about 10-15 minutes.  Holy Heroes sent me copies of the April 4, 2016- August 14, 2016 Spiritual Diary in exchange for this review.


So what is the Spiritual Diary?  Briefly, I like to think of the diary as a daily "date" with God as I use the diary to think, reflect, pray and write about what is on my heart, mind and soul.



Here is the description from the Holy Heroes website:

The ultimate diary to help children focus and reflect every day on what God is doing in their lives, and what He wants them to do tomorrow!

* Covers April 4, 2016 to August 14, 2016 (end of the Easter Season from the Annunciation through Ordinary Time to the Vigil of the Assumption)
* TWO pages for every day's memories, with questions to prompt spiritual reflection for children aged 7 and up.
* A step-by-step guide for Confession, plus removable pages to carry into the Confessional, with directions for confessing and space for a child to write down sins committed.
* Inspiring quotes from the Mass Readings and Saints for Sundays and Feast Days 
*The Prayer Intentions of the Pope for each month
* Daily prayers and an evening Examen for children based on the method of St Ignatius
* Pages for listing prayer intentions and people to pray for
* Much more to make this a daily resource and a keepsake for the future!

Here is a photo of the inside of the diary that I took to give you an idea of what each day looks like.  Each day doesn't have the exact same questions, but many questions are the same from one day to the next.  For more inside views, you can watch the video on the Holy Heroes website.   I love that the diary records feast days. (For example, Pentecost Sunday is noted in the photo for May 15, 2016)  I enjoy living liturgically with my family with food, fun and activities and being able to use the diary as a quick reference for upcoming feast days is a definite plus! 



I asked my children what they enjoyed about their diaries and here are their comments: 

Daughter, age 16:  "I enjoyed how the diary keeps a record of mass attendance and the last time I went to confession." 

Son, age 14: "I really like how the diary notes feast days which is a quick way to look up various feast days through the year." Side note: One day our family was wondering when a particular feast day was on and my son immediately got his diary out to look for the feast day date. :)

Daughter, age 11: "I like recording what I thought about and did during the day."

Daughter, age 8: "I love listing my prayer intentions in my diary to help me remember who and what I'm praying for each day." 

Daughter, age 2.5: She enjoys getting a hold of her siblings' diaries and a pen and scribbling in them. :) 

As a parent, I have enjoyed sitting down each evening with my diary to write in another entry.  It has helped me reflect on the day's events and I like that some of the questions focus on what I have been grateful for during the day.   Too often, I lay my head down each night and only remember the day's big challenges and headaches rather than all that I should be grateful for.  The Spiritual Diary has helped me redirect my thoughts to what went right with the day and be grateful for my many blessings.   I'm also more aware of what I want to work on spiritually for the next day since I'm recording my thoughts along my spiritual journey.  The Spiritual Diary is full of great prayers and information, but I think it could be an even better tool if the daily Mass readings were listed on each day to encourage users to look up scripture and pray with the Word of God while filling out the entries.
 
The Spiritual Diary takes self-discipline to fill out each day, which is always a challenge for me personally and with our busy family schedule.  We have skipped several days lately because of our hectic evening schedules, but I'm hoping to get back on track soon with our less hectic summer schedule!  Summer time is a great time to start using the Spiritual Diaries to form a consistent habit! 

I have found that when our entire family fills out their diaries at the same time together each evening we are more consistent so I always try to make this a goal. 


After you finish filling out the Spiritual Diary through August 14, 2016, Holy Heroes has the next diary for August 15, 2016 - December 24, 2016 for sale and you can order both as a set and save money!  Be sure to visit the Holy Heroes store for more details!  

For more reviews of the Holy Heroes Spiritual Diaries, you can visit the Holy Heroes website and Holy Heroes Facebook page to see what others are saying about this wonderful product that helps children and adults become more prayerful daily! 

Have a blessed week! 

Lenten Adventure is a free and fun resource for families to teach children and adults about Lent, Lenten traditions, liturgy, the Mass, and the Easter season!

A few years ago I met a Holy Heroes "celebrity" at a Catholic conference called Ignited By Truth.  I met the oldest daughter, Virginia, at the Holy Heroes/Belmont Abbey College vendor table and I just had to snap a picture of her to show my kids.  It was great to chat with her and her father at the conference.   My kids said "Cool!" when I showed them this picture.

We have been on the Holy Heroes Lenten Adventures so many times, my children love to see how the Holy Heroes kids have grown and they remember so much about what they have learned! 

I asked my kids what they liked about Holy Heroes Lenten Adventure and this is what they had to say:

Daughter, age 13: "I like that Lenten Adventure gives our family ideas about Lent.  My favorite video is when their little girl says "Uh, oh!" when the beans spill out of the sacrifice bean jar. "

Son, age 12: "The videos make me laugh and I like seeing another Catholic family celebrate Lent."

Daughter, age 9: "The kids make us laugh sometimes and they have cool videos where they act out Bible stories with costumes and with felt figures."

Daughter, age 6:  Holy Heroes teach me about God.  They tell me the colors of the priests' clothes. 

As a Mom, I love that my children get to see another devout Catholic family loving and living their Catholic faith.  The Holy Heroes family is a beautiful witness for Christ's Church and we are so thankful for all their time and hard work to provide such a great resource!  


Speaking of Lent,  I encourage you to join the "Keep Love in Lent" Blog Link-Up hosted by Catholic Bloggers Network with Monica, Chris, Tina, Lisa, and myself!  The link-up is an opportunity to share your Lenten ideas, posts, and traditions, which may include Holy Heroes.  It's also a way to learn how other families keep love in Lent!  :)  Details HERE! 

Have you voted for your favorite Homeschool Blogs for the 7th Annual Homeschool Blog Awards?  My blog has been nominated in the "Best Homeschool Variety Blog" Category! Go HERE to vote for your favorite! ;)

No Ordinary Blog Hop (NOBH) that I co-host has been nominated in the "Best Family or Group Blog".  Go HERE to vote for NOBH. Thanks!

Another great resource we love is the Holy Heroes website which has an Advent Adventure for families.  It is free to sign  up and each day our family gets an email with the next day's adventure lesson.  My children love to watch the children on the videos and hear the Bible stories and history of Advent.  Holy Heroes also has a Lenten Adventure in preparation for Christ's resurrection at Easter.  We participated in the Lenten Adventure for the first time this past year and we are enjoying our first Advent Adventure so far.   Holy Heroes is a great and fun resource and our family has learned so much together as a family about our Catholic faith with Holy Heroes!

So if you are looking for another great way to enhance your Advent season with your family, check out the Holy Heroes website and enjoy your adventure!

I am thankful for Holy Heroes and for my friend A.R. for reminding me that Holy Heroes is definitely a great website to share with others who visit my blog!