This is the story of my life...

I've been reading a lot of wonderfully descriptive day plans and organization-focused blog posts lately and gleaning so many good ideas from them. I think the new year turns our minds in this direction, doesn't it? Streamlining. Focusing. Prioritizing. But, I've been sort of avoiding writing my own post detailing our daily routines. And, I wasn't sure exactly why I didn't want to do it, until it hit me today.

Today, in the Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett, we read a beautifully written description of the Wright brothers' first successful flight at Kitty Hawk. We all remarked on how well written the story was, and how it piqued our interst, even though we are a bunch of girls with very little interest in aeronautics. A little later, after lunch, I was sweeping the floors, thinking about what made that story so good, so much fun to read, and I was hard-put to lay my finger on one thing. Great descriptions. Appealed to the senses. Graceful flow of words. Informative. Kept our interest. Led up smoothly to the climax. All these things, yes, but more than each of these things.
And, that's when the connection came to me.

We have a basic routine to every day; we do have a chore sharing regimine and homeschooling guidelines that we follow. And they're important to the efficient running of our lives, but they don't tell our story. We're a homeschooling family and though that fact is important, it's not essential to our character. We have a large family, but we don't hang our hats on that. We run a fairly orderly home, especially for the numbers that shelter here, but that isn't what we're all about, either. All these things describe the structure of our story. First person, limited omniscient, prose. But, though they support and reflect it, they are not the theme of the story.

Here's the theme: We're a Catholic Family.

Everything else comes from that fact. In creating our home, we've always tried to make that the background, the foundation of everything we do, philosophically and physically. Every decision we make, from how and where we school our children to what we eat at mealtimes (esp. on Fridays and vigils) reflects our Catholicism. How we dress, how we decorate our home, the books we buy, the movies and programs we watch are chosen through a Catholic decision making process. We want our Faith to BE the very air we breathe. It IS who we are.

This is a subject I can warm up to easier than listing out our homeschooling schedule (Though I may eventually do that. Who knows?).

Tomorrow I'll jot down our family philosophy, which serves as a loose rule for our lives. Right now, I'm going out with my two sisters, to celebrate my baby sister, Donna's birthday. So, I've got to get a move on! But here's a thought to leave you on:

Do you think that Faith can permeate too much into family life? It's apparently a common belief among some! I'm thinking about that concept, too, and will tell you tomorrow what I come up.