The most exciting moment of my history as a blogger

I only have nine regular followers (according to the little sidebar on my blog, anyway).  I'm small potatoes in the blogging world.  So you can imagine my excitement to discover that a blogger from Georgia reads my blog!  Or has read it, at least once.  Kelly, from a blog called "In the Sheepfold", recommended me for a Liebster award, which is a kind of honorable mention for blogs with less than 200 followers.  Basically you answer a few questions, and then tag some fellow bloggers to do the same.  When I got to the end of her post and saw "Natasha" as the final person she tagged I thought, "No....it can't be me."  Then I clicked, and it was!  And I told Jeff as soon as he came in, as if I was famous!  And for a small moment, I was - if only in my own mind.

I am a few weeks late in doing this post, so I won't delay in getting to the questions.  But first let me encourage you to check out Kelly's blog - I found her through another blog I read by Rachel Balducci (Testosterhome.net).  She and Kelly both live in a Christian community in Georgia called the Alleluia Community, and I love reading their accounts of family life, both as Christian families in their own homes and as part of a larger Christian community who are accountable to each other.  If God aligned everything in my life just right I would love to start something like this here.  But for now, I can read and admire what the Lord is doing in their little corner of the world.

So - there are some questions with this thing.  And here they are:

1. Where were you on 3/13/13 when you saw the white smoke or heard that we have a pope?

We were en-route from piano lessons.  We had watched the first two burning of the ballots (the night before and early that morning) and knew that the timing of the third burning of the ballots would be somewhere around the time we get home.  We stopped at our store on the way home, and the person in front of me took FOR-E-VER to finish at the counter.  I wanted to shout, "I gotta go!  Don't you know we're waiting for a Pope??"  But I didn't (thankfully!)  The two older boys and I (and the baby) came in the door and turned the TV on, and saw the white smoke pouring out of the chimney. They were so excited!  The kids kept saying, "Go to Google and type in, 'who is the new pope?'" and it was a powerful testament, even in our modern-day world of information available on demand when I want it, to the beauty of waiting.  My husband was in town with the other three kids, and was able to make it home before the announcement of who the Pope was, so we got to see it all together as a family.  So many of our friends and family called us to see if we were watching, which added to the excitement for the boys.  When the Pope asked everyone to pray with him we all knelt as a family, and received his blessing right there in the middle of our living room, united with those present in Rome and everyone watching all around the world, all at that exact moment.  It was really beautiful.

2. If you had a whole day to yourself (without your kids or hubby) what would you do?

Something with my husband.  Oh wait, I forgot that it said "without your kids OR hubby).  Then I'd probably be missing him!  Actually just recently I was able to get away overnight with my Mom, and it was awesome!  If I really had to make do without my husband, I would most likely arrange to spend time either with my Mom or one of my close friends.  The hardest thing I find about making stuff like that happen is just coordinating babysitters and dropping kids off/picking them up - I tend to talk myself out of things that require too much work.  When I can just leave the house and go out, and come straight home when I'm done, that's when I really feel like I've had a break.  Which my husband is pretty good at making happen for me whenever I need him to.  

3. What was your favorite childhood cartoon?

Teddy Ruxpin and The Smurfs.

4. If you could visit anywhere in the world, where would you go?

It is my dream to go to Rome.  We really really (really) wanted to go there for a honeymoon, or within the first six months of our marriage, because they have a special Papal audience for newlyweds where you get an individual blessing from the Holy Father.  It didn't work out though, because as it turns out you need lots of money do take a trip like that (who knew?) and we didn't have it.  A few years ago I nearly had us talked into going for our tenth wedding anniversary, which is this summer, but as the time draws closer and with six little ones (ages nine and under) it is slowly becoming apparent that maybe we'd better shoot for our 25th instead.  But if money wasn't an option, I'd be there in a heartbeat.  And I'd take the kids - a friend of mine visited with very young kids a few years back, and she said it was a great place for kids.  She said every Catholic should visit Rome at least once.  I hope that someday I will.

5. What is your favorite prayer or devotion?

The rosary is our favorite family devotion.  When Jeff and I first started dating, some friends of ours said the rosary with their family every day at 9:00 pm, no matter who was there (their kids ranged in age from probably about six to seventeen) and it was so powerful to me to be present while everything in the house stopped and everyone prayed.  I knew I wanted to do it with my own family, but oh it was so difficult in the early years!  I think I had too high expectations (I experienced that after this family had been established, and didn't have small babies) and so often our "family prayer time" ended with tantrums - and not just from the kids!  It wasn't until we attended our first Family Camp, where the rosary is said every evening with all families present, and kids of all ages, that we really got the encouragement we needed.  We saw that kids really can do it, that all these other families do it, and what is reasonable to expect of them (and also what is not).  We do a shortened version (three Hail Mary's instead of ten) mostly for the youngest ones.  It has been a real blessing to our family life.

6. What is your favorite “go to” outfit to wear?

Jeans and whatever shirt I happen to grab to go with them.

7. What is something that not many people know about you?

That I was a huge wrestling fan growing up, and watched WWF (now WWE) with my dad.  And I loved Brett "the Hitman" Hart.  I even asked Santa to get me to meet him one year, but Santa left a detailed letter outlining all the reasons it wasn't practical for that to happen, all of which I accepted because I was a good kid like that.  And also that I believed in Santa until I was fourteen.  No joke - I even stood up to the mean kids in my grade nine class who cornered me one day and said, "you can't be serious!" And I responded, "you're wrong, I know it's true because I asked my Mom and she told me, and my Mom wouldn't lie to me!"  

8. Are you a Downton Abbey fan or a “what’s all the fuss about” girl?

I'm curious about Downton Abbey, and I wish I had a reliable way to watch it.  But we don't have network TV, and it's not available on Canadian Netflix.  I know there are ways to watch it online, but I'm never certain if those websites are legit if they don't come from the Networks themselves.  And I suppose I could buy the DVDs, but I don't know if I want to invest myself into a show that much. If it was something I thought Jeff would like, and that we would watch over and over again, I might consider it.  Until then, I'll just have to find someone to lend it to me (or wait until it finds its way into the Canadian Netflix lineup).

9. How did you meet your hubby?

We went to the same high school.  We never met until May of my graduating year at a youth rally, but apparently he knew who I was long before that because I used to hang out in the halls at lunch with my friends, and I sat right in front of his locker.  He was such a tease when we were at the youth rally and I started having a crush on him, but by the time we came home he had started dating another girl.  They broke up not long after, and our prom was coming up, but I already had a date by then so I set him up with another friend so that he would be at the prom with us.  He came to the same party as me after the prom, but didn't stay the night because he was leaving on a trip to Steubenville the next day.  We didn't see each other again until the fall when I, then a university student, thought it would be fun to visit our old high school. My friend and I went together, and I had him on my mind.  I searched all throughout the school and couldn't find him, then decided to check the library on the way out and he was there.  We exchanged numbers, and the rest as they say is history.

10. What was your favorite song/album/band/artist growing up?

Oh, how my taste in music has changed!  In my younger years I was a big New Kids On the Block fan (who wasn't??)  We had a cousin living with us when I was in middle school who introduced me to hard rock (Warrant, Poison, Skid Row).  Then when I got to high school I couldn't believe the school had a band - I thought they were just about the coolest guys around!  They played Pearl Jam, I Mother Earth, Moist, and others, but my favorite from those years was Our Lady Peace.  Now my music repertoire has grown to include many more varied artists and genres, but most of these still have a fond place in my heart.  Except maybe New Kids...

11. What is a lesson you've learned that you want to pass on to your children?

The biggest gem I've come across recently has been through Communion and Liberation, that reality is always positive because it is the only moment that is given to us, and it is the only moment in which Christ is waiting to encounter us.  So regardless of what the particular circumstances of that moment are, in every moment we can either choose Christ, or not choose Him.  It goes along with the teaching in "Abandonment to Divine Providence", that the souls who are attentive to the Lord's providence in every moment, seeking Him and seeking to do His will, that is how we will be most at peace, because it is turning away from God that disrupts our peace.  Consequently, doing the Lord's will brings peace even in the most difficult of circumstances.  This is my lifelong focus, where my efforts are focused (if I am concentrating on focusing them and not allowing myself to be swept away in my circumstances) - this is the constant call on my heart.  To say, "where are you Lord, and what do you want from me now?" And if I can teach my children not only to always be looking for Him, but also (and this is big for me, sinner that I am) to know that even if I didn't look for Him before, that I can look for Him now, that each new moment is a new opportunity for an encounter - then at least they will be pointed in the right direction.  

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If you've made it to the end, thanks for sticking it out!  I'm supposed to tag five more bloggers, but I don't know that many!  And I'll be honest, this is part of the reason I've taken so long to do this post.  These guys I'm pretty sure all have waaaaaay more than 200 followers, but I'll tag them anyway, if only to send you to their corner of the blogosphere and introduce you to someone you might never have found otherwise.  Check them out:  Clover Lane, 71 Toes, Bad Catholic, Danielle Bean, and Hungry Janey.

You can also read Kelly's Liebster Awards post (and see that she really did link to me!) here.