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Today was a day of honey do's. Yes, as usual we went to Mass and stayed for donuts and fellowship. However, it was cold today. When we got up this morning, it was -9°F. It was not encouraging us to get out of the house even though we are working to avoid cabin fever.

When we got home from church, Michelle wanted to totally switch our master bedroom layout. The kids enjoyed watching us tear down the room, do the furniture shuffle, and get things back together. Claire helped with dusting the bed frame, end tables and dressers since they had to be cleared to be moved.

Later in the afternoon I had a bunch of smaller honey-do's. I let Claire help me out wherever she could. I put up some towel hooks near our showers. Claire thought it was neat that we could mark the wall and then drill a hole in it. I put a door lock on the entertainment center to keep the boys from continuously rearranging our CDs and video tapes. Lastly I changed the doorstop on the boys' room from a spring type to a solid metal post type so that they would stop playing with the doorstop when they are supposed to be taking a nap. Many times we would put them down and 10 minutes later hear the "boing" of the door stop followed by a bunch of giggling.

For dinner we ate some carry out Italian food from Besta One and lit a fire in the fireplace. By that time Michael was getting pretty irritable. We think he's cutting a new tooth, perhaps a molar. He's got all the classic signs: hands in the mouth, streaming nose, irritability. On the other hand Claire lost a tooth, her fourth, this evening. I had worked with Claire to loosen it up by means of a slip knot on a piece of dental floss but we didn't get it out. She continued wiggling it and at bedtime Michelle was able to give it a little tug. Since this was another top tooth, it really gave her a "hole-y" smile.

Claire has tomorrow off from school in honor of MLK day. She also has Tuesday off due to teacher training. She plans on playing with her good friend from school tomorrow.

This upcoming week I give a talk at our parish RCIA on the Eucharist. There is just so much to say about the Eucharist it's really going to take some work to organize my points into some semblance of order. I picked this topic this year since Claire is going to be receiving her First Communion later this spring. I figured the preparation for RCIA would help my CCD instruction with Claire.

I was trying to figure out why I find so many Sunday homilies to be fluff, so non-compelling, so Catholic-lite. I noted that almost all problems mentioned in a Catholic homily are social ills, collective problems: the poor, the sick, the destitute, the needy, those without faith. There is hardly ever a mention of personal sin anymore: extramarital relations, divorce, living together, abortion, immodesty, pornography, scandal, calumny, etc. I guess it would strike too close to home. We like to think of sin in the abstract collective sense so that our personal culpability is diminished.

I'm not saying homilies should be fire and brimstone, but by side stepping personal sins as these, there gives the appearance of acceptance of these as not sinful anymore. It also tends to make the Faith too comfortable and without daily challenge and struggle. It's enough to make you wonder why the early martyrs gave their lives up for their beliefs. There had to be more "meat" to it than social justice issues.

It's getting late and (unlike Claire) I do have to go to work tomorrow. Before I go, I wanted to mention a little pun we noted earlier today. Many know that we often call the twins our "do-bees". Well next month we'll have the do-bees and the newbie. *grin* As I typed this, Michelle was thumbing through a baby name book searching for more options. She came up with one she hadn't thought of before: Ethan. Hmmmm.... Thoughts?