Can I get an AMEN on how hard it is to get the family to church on Sunday morning? For real, y’all. It’s no picnic on school mornings either, but the difference there is that the grown-ups aren’t sticking around at school. As soon as the kids are settled, we’re free to get breakfast or...Continue Reading
Today begins Lent: to give something up or not to give something up? The pendulum keeps swinging, doesn’t it? For a while there, fasting from something was only a Catholic thing. Then a Christian thing. Then the fasting was scorned by Christians everywhere. Shortly after that it was celebrated. No matter what your decision, critics...Continue Reading
If you have ever worked at a ministry that can’t make payroll, you know the disastrous effect this has on employee morale. One week without compensation and employees start complaining. Their work becomes sluggish and negativity rules your workspace. Without a paycheck, employees feel unappreciated and unmotivated. This is exactly how volunteers feel when no...Continue Reading
Today’s Fraudulently Asked Questions is with all the Hergenrader Kids about the Week O’ Christmas Programs. As an audience member, I heard the rave reviews from the huge crowds. “Awesome!” “The kids did so well!” “How did they learn all those songs?” Now to hear from the stars themselves… FAQ #1: Catie, great picture! How...Continue Reading
We are up to our halos in Christmas Programs around here. Tonight all the kids are in the church’s Christmas program. Tomorrow night, they’ll all in the school Christmas program. You know what Christmas program practices are like? They are that hour before we have company come over to our house. They are stressful chaos....Continue Reading
Growing up a Lutheran in the ’70s and ’80s, potluck lunches were the best day of the whole month. Cliché, but true. And thanks to Garrison Keilor, even those who didn’t grow up Lutheran know about the Lutheran’s Love of Potlucks. This is most certainly true; no one can put together a table of mismatched...Continue Reading
Dear Catie… Remember how, the first time you put on this Westlake shirt, you stared at yourself in the mirror for a very long time? If seeing yourself in the uniform usually worn by your little brother and sister was strange for you, it was, perhaps, doubly strange for me. But you were unfazed. After...Continue Reading
(Ed. Note: No FAQs today as I’m writing the annual first-day-of-school letters to the kids. Here’s the first one, complete with tears and some extra pictures of the first day of school.) Dear Nate… You are full of surprises, kid. Daddy and I would have bet money the first day of school would be very...Continue Reading
Yesterday was the first day of school. You know that weird time-lapse trick that happens on really big days? The trick that makes normal 24-hour days feel like they hold an entire week’s worth of activities? Y’all. Yesterday was like ten days rolled into one. Before we even left for school, the kids had lived...Continue Reading
10. Driving through either Texas or the Midwest is boring–but for different reasons. In the Midwest, it’s corn field after corn field. In Texas it’s billboards. In Spanish. Either place, I tell my kids, “Let’s be quiet and look out the window for a while!” Their response is either, “But I don’t KNOW Spanish.” Or...Continue Reading
