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Have you heard about this book yet?  Have you read this book yet?  If you answered "No" to either question, you will hear about it right now and hopefully you will want to read it SOON!

I first "met" Jennifer Fulwiler through her blog, Conversion Diary by Jennifer Fulwiler.  I love following her fun and faith-filled posts.

I then got a chance to hear Jennifer speak at the Ignited By Truth Catholic Conference at the end of March 2014 and I stalked her to meet her in person and get a picture with her :) Here we are after one of her talks.

Jennifer referenced her book during some of her talks over the conference weekend.  Many people, including myself, pre-ordered our copy of  Something Other Than God: How I Passionately Sought Happiness and Accidentally Found It, and anxiously awaited for the release date of April 29!

I couldn't wait for my copy to arrive in the mail!

My copy finally arrived on May 1 and I was so bummed when I got it!  Why you may ask when I just said that I was anxiously awaiting its arrival?  Because when my copy plopped on my front porch I was in the middle of life with my 5 children in the middle of the day and I had loads of laundry waiting to be folded in the basket.   All I wanted to do was ignore the laundry and my kids and start reading the book NOW!  The thought even crossed my mind that I should lock myself in my bathroom to start reading the book in hopes that my children would not notice that I was missing.  Really, I did think of this "plan".


I didn't lock myself in the bathroom and ignore the homeschooling, laundry, and the caring for my children that I needed to do, but if I did, I'm sure I would have read Jennifer's book in a matter of hours vs. the 3 days that it actually took me to read it as I juggled my busy family life.  

So where do I even begin to say just how much I loved reading Jennifer's conversion story from a once happy, atheist to a now happier Catholic mom with a beautiful family?  I can sum up my thoughts about her life story with what I said as I read the last line of her book and closed it....WOW!

As someone who has always been Catholic (a.k.a. "Cradle Catholic") conversion stories fascinate me because I grow deeper in my own faith and gain a deeper appreciation for it.  I always love seeing how God's grace and blessings lead converts to the faith through sometimes the most unusual paths.

Jennifer's journey from only believing in the material world for most of her life and not acknowledging God to now a Catholic mom of six children was fascinating, riveting, completely honest, inspiring and entertaining at times!  I couldn't wait to read more and more as her thought-provoking questions for her own life caused me to ponder many things in my life as well.  

Photo credit: wallpaperswide.com

I was especially interested in how God blessed Jennifer during her difficult pregnancies as she and her husband, Joe, trusted God more and more with all areas of their lives. (By the way, I can't help to think how much Joe's patience and unconditional spousal love played a major role in Jennifer's conversion.)  I just kept thinking that ALL the insulin shots and several finger pricks I had to give myself for gestational diabetes with my last two pregnancies didn't seem so bad after reading how much pain and uncertainties Jennifer had to overcome with her pregnancies.  Throughout these chapters, I kept asking myself, "How is God going to help Jennifer and Joe out of this difficult situation?" My curiosity kept me turning the pages. 

Jennifer is such a great writer using descriptive language.  With her words I was able to vividly picture what she was writing about.   There were many descriptive lines in her book, but one of my favorites was when she was describing her first confession experience.  Her choice of words spoke to my heart as I recall feeling a similar way during my confession experiences.

I highly recommend everyone read Jennifer Fulwiler's book, especially anyone seeking, searching, and questioning what is Truth and love.  It will inspire and entertain you cover to cover!

You can purchase a copy of  Something Other Than God: How I Passionately Sought Happiness and Accidentally Found It  from Amazon HERE. 

Enjoy and God bless!

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Last Sunday, April 27, 2014, our family celebrated Divine Mercy Sunday and the canonization of 2 Popes by 2 Popes.  You can read about how our family celebrated this historic day in Church history HERE.

One of the joys of homeschooling my Cupcakes is that I get to learn about our beautiful Catholic faith with them.   We celebrated the election of Pope Francis last March 2013 and we all learned so much about this process.

Then it was Pope Francis, along with former Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who canonized Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul II on Sunday, April 27, 2014.  I wanted to teach our family, including myself, more about the canonization process so every day last week we worked on The Canonization of 2 Popes Faith Folder Lapbooks that I purchased from Emmanuel Books HERE.

This was a great activity to do last week since the first part of the week we completed our annual end of year testing that is required by our state each year. So after each day of testing, it was a nice break to discuss and assemble the lapbooks together. 

The lapbook covered many different topics that you can read HERE.  We worked on a little bit of the lapbook each day, which took us about a week.  For each section, we would read it together, then we would cut it out and glue it to the folders in the area that was outlined.  There was alot of cutting and pasting involved, which wasn't what some of my children thought was total fun, but they survived and we all learned a thing or two along the way.  :)

I enjoyed the many conversations we had while doing this activity and my son was curious about how many Popes were between Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II, so we flipped through Lives of the Popes: Illustrated Biographies of Every Pope from St. Peter to the Present that I had to find out more information.  This is a beautiful, illustrated book with information about our first Pope, Peter, from 33 to 64 AD, all the way through to Pope John Paul II, who was Pope from 1978-2005).



Here are pictures from The Canonization of 3 Popes Faith Folder Lapbooks:



Such historical and exciting times we are witnessing in the Church today!  I'm hoping that celebrating such special days with food, fun, and lapbooks the memories of these times will stay with my our family for many years!

Linking to Catholic Bloggers Network May Link Up Blitz

Last week, I went to a local park with my Cupcakes and while I was strolling the baby, they rode their bikes through a trail to get to the park.  I spotted a black racer snake on the side of the trail and my son informed me that they are harmless.  My son then went to investigate and caught what looks like a snake, but is a legless lizard.  He knew right away that it was an Eastern Glass Legless Lizard. Here are a few pictures I took with my phone:

Today is one of those days that our home, our domestic church, and our universal Church will remember like the day that Pope Francis was chosen.

This day is historic in so many faith-filled ways and I wanted our family to celebrate it and remember it. 

Today is an historic day of 4 Popes. As stated in the link, "Never before have a reigning pope and a retired pope celebrated Mass together in public."

Today we celebrate the canonization of two Popes.  Jessica over at Shower of Roses has a great list of 7 ways to commemorate this joyous day with children.

HERE is a link to miraculous stories by two women who were healed through the intercession of these two popes.   Fascinating for sure!

Today is also Divine Mercy Sunday.  Find out more about Divine Mercy devotion HERE.  In this list of 21 Awesome Fact You Didn't Know about JP2, on fact #7 it tells the connection between JP2 and Sister Faustina and the devotion to the Divine Mercy image.
We also had some fruit from our "Divine Mercy fruit platter" filled with raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries.

And for dessert we colored Divine Mercy images that I printed out on card stock and put on top of our Divine Mercy "Sundaes".  Thank you Lacy at Catholic Icing for this fun and festive idea!


After our dessert, my husband led our family in The Chaplet of The Divine Mercy.

It has been a blessed day filled with a deeper love and understanding of Christ's universal Church and Jesus' infinite love and mercy!

After a beautiful Easter Mass, there was a big Easter egg hunt for the little and big kids outside of the church.  It was misty rain and cold, but that didn't stop the fun.  Our son found the "golden egg" for the older kids that had a nice green bill inside.  He was excited to find the big prize! 

Then we headed to my parents' home for more Easter fun!  My two older kids hid the eggs for my 9 and 6 year old girls and my parents put coins in the eggs instead of candy.  My girls had to count up the change and find the total.  A little Easter math never hurt anyone :)

My kids enjoyed this cute Apple Bunny craft that my Mom found somewhere on the internet.  Using toothpicks, the ears are jelly orange candy, the eyes and nose are jelly beans, and the whiskers are string cheese.  The tail is a white marshmallow.  My kids had fun using their creativity!