Blog Archives - Page 13 of 25 - Greg and Jennifer Willits

Birthday Girl

Yesterday was Jennifer’s birthday and we did all that we could to try to give her the best day possible.

The day started early with all of the boys giving her her presents. When I was a kid, we usually did birthday presents at the end of the day. Now that we have kids, though, we always seem to give presents first thing in the morning, or right after school on school days. That way there is more time to enjoy the presents on the actual birthday.

One of the things we got Jennifer were new bluetooth headphones which she seems pretty happy with. I’ll post an Amazon link at the bottom of this so you can see what they look like.

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Hiking Priest

On yesterday’s special Birthday Bonanza show for Jennifer, one of the surprise guests we had on to wish her happy birthday was Fr. Leo Patalinghug from Grace Before Meals.

It was very funny having him on for several reasons. Number one, he was in the middle of nowhere on a hiking trip with several seminarians and young men discerning the possibility of entering the seminary. Can I just say I’m so glad our Church has priests like Father Leo? The fact he spends so much time in prayer and leadership in helping these young men who are considering an extraordinary calling in life is so very much appreciated. And since it’s the Year of the Priest, I thought I’d just point that out.

Anyway, the photo you see here was actually taken of Fr. Leo (he’s the one in the orange shirt) with a some college seminarians and potential candidates, standing on Wolf Rock and Catoctin National Park. According to Father, he’s “getting too old for these hikes with these young bucks!”

Hmm. Too old? And he’s just a month older than Jennifer. Hmm.

Anyway, one of the other funny parts of having him call in was that a lot of people tried to cover their voices yesterday. Fr. Leo did his best Pope Benedict XVI impression, followed by an impression of Yoda. The Yoda one totally threw off Jennifer, because she then thought it was another priest friend of ours, Father Roderick Vonhogen. I had a good laugh watching Jennifer struggle to figure out who it was on the phone.

So thank you, Father Leo, for calling in and helping to make Jennifer’s day special, and thank you for all you do in your own priesthood. We pray our Church will continue to cultivate priests who give their lives so selflessly for the good of the Catholic Church and the entire world.

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Eucharistic Congress Wrap-Up

The Eucharistic Congress in Atlanta is already a week behind us and I haven’t had a chance to post any photos or anything of our experiences. Sorry about that!

In a nutshell, the event was awesome. I felt as though both Jennifer and I were blessed with a tremendous grace leading up to our talk, and I was amazed at how calm we both felt.

If you’re interested, the talk is available as both a CD and DVD for purchase here. Proceeds go to help the Archdiocese of Atlanta continue to provide the Eucharistic Congress for free.

In addition to the talk, the highlight of the day, for us, was getting the above picture taken of Lily and Archbishop Gregory. We were waiting in the Green Room and he came walking in. My mom wheeled Lily up to him in her stroller and he plucked her right out of there. We were all very surprised and just absolutely touched by that moment. This’ll be a picture we treasure for a long time.

If you were unable to attend the Eucharistic Congress, the Georgia Bulletin has a lot of great stories this week giving full recaps of the event, including this story which has some quotes and a photo of us from the Congress.

To everyone who we got to meet that day, it was an immense pleasure. It’s always so great to meet listeners and people who have been affected by Rosary Army in one way or another.

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In the Hands of God

I had an overall pretty good Father’s Day yesterday.

I woke up earlier than expected and Lily and I headed over to my folks’ house to bring Dad a couple of things for Father’s Day. We stayed over there for about an hour before heading home where the boys were now waiting for me.

When I got home, each boy presented me with a gift (really purchased by their mom). What’s funny is that three of the gifts I got I had owned in the past, but for some reason no longer did. I’d recently talked about some of them, and mentioned regret at no longer having them, so Jennifer and the boys got them for me…again.

From Tommy I got Paul Simon’s CD “Rhythm of the Saints.” I used to have this on cassette, but I think it melted in my car years ago, so I was glad to get a new copy of this.

From Ben I got “Watership Down,” which I stupidly sold about 18 years ago when I needed to pay rent in college and sold a bunch of books.

From Walt I got “Replay” by Ken Grimwood. I loaned out my last copy (which was actually my second copy. I’d sold my first at the same time I sold Watership Down.) and that second copy was never returned. So this is my third copy of this book.

And from Sam I got a custom drawing in a frame. It’s actually quite nice, and it was a bit of a surprise to see a drawing like this from him. He titled it, “In the Hands of God.”

The photograph doesn’t do it justice, but you can see Earth in God’s hands in the picture. And the beard rocks.

Thanks to Jennifer and the kids for the great Father’s Day!

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Sam’s Paper Droid Factory

Our son Sam can make just about anything out of paper and tape.

This week he has been making full-scale (or at least Sam-scale) versions of droids from Star Wars. It started with just the head of a droid, and then he started making the body parts.

He’s used a lot of paper and tape this week.

Then he surprised us today by using a digital camera to make his own sound-seeing tour of the “droid factory” he put in his closet, which is currently comprised of two Star Wars droids he made yesterday entirely out of paper and tape. I didn’t even know he knew how to make a digital movie using the camera.

So I put the video on YouTube and now you can check it out yourself. Check out the movie here to see Sam’s Paper Droid Factory.

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Black or Brown?

Because we’re speaking at the Eucharistic Congress in Atlanta this Saturday, June 13 (11:15 is our speaking time, don’t be late!), we’ve been scattering around buying clothes that fit and don’t look like we bought them before we even had children.

In other words, it’s been a long time since I bought a suit and Jennifer bought a nice, new, girly outfit.

But in addition to an outfit, Jennifer also wanted to get rid of the gray hair she has accumulated over the past year, since she hasn’t had her hair colored since before getting pregnant with Lily. The first picture here is of Jennifer with her gray exposed. The others show what has happened over the past four days.

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Summer Reading List Suggestions

On today’s show we took caller suggestions for great books to read over the summer months.

Some are for adults and some are for children and some are for both.

Have any other suggestions? Leave a comment and let us know!

Click through for the full list!

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Our Producer on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

On Friday’s show our producer Adam Hamway saw a Twitter alert (by the way way – you can follow Jennifer and me on Twitter, as well) from comedian Jimmy Fallon from Late Night on NBC.

Anyway, according to the Twitter alert, Jimmy announced he’d be in Times Square looking for people who could do impressions of famous people.

Adam does several. In fact, he regularly will appear on our show as various political figures and other celebrities, including the Easter Bunny!

Well, Adam ditched our show on Friday since it was starting at exactly the same time that Jimmy Fallon was looking for people, but he called in from Times Square as he was waiting.

Apparently, Jimmy Fallon challenged Adam on just about every name Adam had on his list of impersonations and it seems he made quite an impression on Mr. Fallon.

Last night, they aired all of the different impersonations from various people on the streets of New York and Adam was shown three times. At the end of the segment, as they went to break, Jimmy said in regards to Adam, “That one guy was incredible. We’ll have to work with him again.”

Needless to say, I imagine Adam’s spirits are probably soaring this morning.

Congrats to Adam. Here’s the video of Adam on last night’s show:

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Kid-Friendly Computer Options

On today’s program we discussed several free resources for protecting your children online. Here are some links from a recent PCWorld Article:

Quintura – Safe search engine for kids
Kid’oz – Free and safe kid’s web browser (requires Adobe Air)
KidZui – Another kid’s web browser
OpenDNS – What PCWorld called “The Big Gun.” Free server-level filtering for your home.

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Whack the Dog

Poor Jody.

Friday afternoon she was outside in the backyard playing with the boys.

They were running and frolicking, having the best of times.

There were tennis balls being bantered, and our dog Jody was having tremendous fun.

At one point, Sam took a plastic baseball bat and swung it at a ball.

Unfortunately, the boys have never quite grasped the lesson of looking around to make sure no one is around before swinging.

Jody, seeing a ball, took the full swing of the baseball bat right in the eye.

From our back yard we heard horrible blood-curdling screams coming from our children.

Jody’s right eye was swollen shut and appeared to be bleeding.

What was weird was she kept wagging her tail happily because she was getting so much attention.

Fortunately, several days later, Jody is doing fine and just this morning she is able to open up both of her eyes again.

But over the weekend, the boys were very generous with sharing their blankets and stuffed animals with her and I think she secretly enjoyed the extra attention.

Below are some other photos of Jody’s injury. But again, she’s doing great now.

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Phenomenal Video for Mary’s Month

This is one of the best videos I’ve seen in a long, long time.

This is what Catholic New Media is all about. This simple little video packs a huge whallop. Major kudos to the people who produced this.

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Greg’s iPhone Apps

I just took some quick screen shots of the apps on my iPhone since we were talking about phone apps on the show today. Here they are. Any others you’d suggest?

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