So I’m gonna be hosting a summer q and a call on June 13th at 8:00 AM Pacific 11. Eastern, I’ll put the link in the show notes. It’s free. You can come. And I’m just gonna spend 90 minutes rapid fire answering anyone’s questions about summer. But I’ve already started getting some questions ’cause I emailed this out to the list and said, Hey, reply to this email and let me know what questions you have.

And a lot of the questions revolve around the idea that there’s this expectation to make sure the kids have a really fun summer. And the guilt that we feel when we perceive that we’re not doing that. And one of the moms that asked me that question had a three-year-old and a one-year-old, and in my mind I’m like, girl, a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old don’t even know what summer is.

That is not on their radar at all. Like, you choose what you want to do this summer and then fit the kids in, which is what I would do with a one and 3-year-old, with older kids who are aware of the weather. I do like maximizing the use of the outside time, but I just don’t feel like it needs to be like Disneyland or a trip or something.

So the way we think about it in our family is that, you know, we have snow over the winter and it’s kind of muddy in the spring and then it opens up and it’s really nice for, I don’t know, four or five months. And so we, I try to get the kids to. Go outside early in the morning to be outside when it’s like cool, warm. ’cause then when it gets hot, hot, they don’t really wanna be outside as much. 

And so that takes a little bit of thoughtfulness on my part because they’re kind of cozy in the morning sitting and wanting to read an audiobook or play a board game or something. And I have to be like, no, go outside right now. Enjoy this yummy outside time. Because later when it’s hot, hot you can come in and then you can do board games, coloring, whatever it is. Legos. 

So that’s how I think about the summer. I think about, okay, the weather is great. How can we just really soak up and enjoy the weather? But I am doing that primarily in my backyard and we have five acres, so there’s a lot of fun stuff to do on our five acres.

But when I lived in the suburbs, I would take them to the park. That’s it, though. I would take them to the park and not even every day. I just did not feel this pressure to make the kids have a fun summer. And maybe that’s because I grew up with a single mom and I was just alone. So my summers were in the house, and if I could walk there, I could do it, and that was it.

So maybe just culturally I didn’t grow up, taking vacations, taking trips, doing super fun things. I don’t have this idea that, like, I don’t know that we do expensive schmancy things over the summer, so just know that it’s optional to have those thoughts. 

Nobody’s given your kids any thoughts yet? About the summertime, you can get a little kitty pool and be like, it’s cool that I fill this kitty pool sometimes, and you get to be in it, you know, you can make frozen yogurt popsicles, you can blend yogurt with fruit and put ’em in like silicon molds. And they’re pretty great. And I just think that’s an amazing summer right there. 

And so the pressure to do anything that you don’t wanna do, just. Check in with yourself, like where is that pressure coming from? Is it Instagram? Is it your mother-in-law? Is it your friends? Like, why do you think you need to do anything different than what you want to do this summer?

So that’s just framing the summer in one way around the kids thinking about, you know, what kind of summary do you wanna give the kids? I want you to also think about what kind of summary you wanna give yourself. Because your kids are gonna have way more summers than you, and they’re not even, most of them gonna remember this summer. Isn’t that crazy to think about? 

I mean, I have been a mom for 15 years and I just know the vast majority of my kids do not remember the vast majority of the summers, even though I worked so hard to do things with them, they don’t remember going to the park or the splash pad or the zoo when we lived in. Oregon. We were pretty close to the Portland Zoo and I would take them there. They don’t remember that at all. 

Now I went to the Portland Zoo ’cause I Sterling loved the Portland Zoo. I mean, I haven’t been there in years, you guys, so I have no idea what kind of crazy Portland situation is happening now. But it was clean and lovely when I lived near there, and I really enjoyed it. I loved animals and I loved walking, and we would like picnics. They had this beautiful grass in the middle of it, and I really liked it. 

So I don’t regret taking my kids to the zoo when they couldn’t remember them. Remember what we did. ’cause I enjoyed it. And so whatever I do this summer will be the same. I’m gonna pick the things that I enjoy and they can do them with me. And I’m not saying that I like forsake my kids and don’t do anything fun with them, but we go to the lake a lot. We have a lake here and we go. 

But the other day they wanted to go and I was tired. And I just said to my husband, I said, Hey, would you feel fine about taking them if I stayed home? ’cause I just don’t know that I wanna do that tonight. And he was like, yeah, but if he had said no, I would’ve said then I don’t think we should go to the lake tonight because I’m tired. And maybe it’s just that I just don’t feel like I owe these kids anything.

I mean, I owe them a relationship with the Lord. That’s what I really feel like I owe them. I owe them teaching them how to pray and have a real relationship with Jesus Christ. So when they leave my house, that is the guy that they rely on. They rely on me until I can hand them off to him. You know? That’s kind of how I think about it. I just do not think that I owe them any kind of summer. I think everything we do is like a cherry on top of just like having a nice life. 

So, I want you to also consider what are your goals over the next three months? And I’m not trying to add hard work to your life. You may say, my goal is to be present or calm or make memories with the kids. Those are excellent goals, but notice how even just stating them as goals changes the level of intentionality. 

Oh yeah, I’m gonna have a summer. How do I want my summer to be? What am I gonna work on in June and July and maybe August? It is funny, as somebody else emailed me and said, our summer is a third over, because in some parts of the country it starts way early and kids go back to school.

I know somebody else was telling me their kids go back to school at the end of July, which is crazy to me because in the Pacific Northwest, kids go back to school usually after Labor Day, like in September. So we’re all kind of in different places, but whatever the summer is left for you, what do you wanna do?

How do you wanna grow? Where do you want your mind to be? And I want you to think about yourself a little bit every week, and I hope that when you guys hear me talk. That you don’t think that I come off as like super self-centered and I just don’t care what kids want. I promise. If you were a fly on the wall in my house, it wouldn’t feel like that.

I just know deep down that if moms don’t take care of themselves, they don’t do a good job of taking care of everybody else. So I just think it’s really important that we take care of ourselves, that we enjoy our life, that we enjoy living. And however you’re living is how you’re modeling it to your girls who might be moms and to your boys who will be men who support their wives taking care of their kids.

So I want it to be really, really normal in my house that they watch me have that conversation with my husband, where I go, you know what? I’m just tired. My energy’s low, and I don’t wanna go to the beach. Can you take ’em? Do you feel up to taking them? And if not, let’s stay home and do something together. As a family.

I want them to watch that play out so that they feel empowered later to be moms who can say, I’m tired and I actually don’t wanna do that. And I just promise you that my kids in 10 years will not remember the random Tuesday that I was too tired to go to the lake. And we do go to the lake and they do go camping and they go to the rollercoaster park.

At least once, sometimes twice in the summer, they get these reading passes through homeschooling. So if they read all these books, they get a free pass and it’s a super fun day. So they get to do things. But this like pressure to make summer magical for kids, especially at the cost of your piece. I’m just not on board with that. I want you to think about and really pray about where God is calling you. To grow. 

So I wanna share some new resources that we have. And it’s funny, by the time I get to this podcast, you guys where I announce something, it has just been so long in the making, at least six months. So it’s really fun for me to finally be able to ship something and press publish and have you guys get it.

But one of the things that we wanted to do as a company was, we were asking this question. Like, how can we solve problems for people for less than $30? I just really liked that question because of course we go to the internet and everyone’s trying to sell us something, and it just feels like everything is so expensive.

And so I wanted to solve people’s problems. I thought for less than $30, that’s this thought that I had. And then I really sat around and thought about, okay, what were the problems that I think moms really need. To be solved. And so then we made courses around those problems and we’re going to launch them all today. They’re out.

So you can get each of these courses for $27, or you can get all of them for our summer bundle for $57. I don’t know how long we’ll run that summer bundle. Definitely through June and July. So I don’t know when we’ll stop doing it, but at some point. But certainly for the whole of the summer, you can get any one of these courses for $27 or all of them for 57, which I think is really exciting.

So I’m gonna explain them to you and why I think moms should be interested in them. The first one is Keep Your Cool and Keep Your Cool is a program designed to help you not yell at your kids over the summer. And it’s a little bit kind of what I was talking about earlier in this episode, which is just deciding what kind of summer you wanna have, what are the rules and how can you stay home throughout it?

Because they may not remember the summer of 2025, but they will in general remember how they felt living at home. How did it feel? What kind of environment was it? And I don’t want you to put so much pressure on yourself that you think you’re never allowed to have a bad day or be grumpy or tired. I’m not saying that.

But if the consistent energy in your home is running around feeling stressed, yelling, being exasperated, feeling overwhelmed, they will feel that from you, and they will. Kids tend to attribute it to weird things like, oh, she doesn’t like being a mom. And of course none of you would say that. I mean, certainly there are days that we’re like, Ooh, this circus is a little crazy.

But we love being moms and so keep your cool is really about staying calm over the summer, which does have a lot of variables. That is the thing about the summer is that it just, it ranges widely around how we live the summer. The other thing that I cover in that program. And this is optional, but I think it’s great, is how to teach your kids how to do chores.

I think the summertime is a great time to do that. And like I teach in that class, you think it’s gonna take two times. If you show a kid how to sweep two times that, then he’ll be a great sweeper. But it isn’t. It’s way more times than that, and if you just prepare your heart to know that it’s more times. But by the end of the summer, you have a sweeper who really can sweep well. 

Where you walk back into a room and you think, oh my goodness, that’s actually done. That’s done the right way. It is totally worth the training. I am training one of my kids to sweep right now, which is super fun, and just thinking of more and more things the kids can do to lighten the load on my husband and I. ’cause there are eight of us that are in the house all the time. 

So we’ve already trained them to do dishes and laundry. And then the third category is what we call special projects, which is mostly about batch creating food, some batch creating sausage for the morning. They make bread now. Oh, I feel like there were a couple other things that fell under special projects, and so we’re just continuing to add to that list now as the boys.

Forest is gonna turn eight this summer, and by eight I’m like, yep, you can do more things. And then even the seven and 6-year-old will be kind of more on tidy patrol. But I think it’s just, it’s well worth the effort. You guys, of teaching kids to do chores. I like to do that over the summer because we’re all home and so it’s just a good time to create those routines.

So keep your cool course number one. Course number two is money, confidence, and so I made this course just to help women feel like they can talk about and think about and manage money. So I help you identify your childhood money story. Everybody has a money story. And then I help you rewrite your money story.

And I made this program both for people that are struggling financially, like paycheck to paycheck. Lots of debt, trying to figure that out. And for people who have really grown beyond whatever financial level they grew up with, there’s something very strange that happens when you start making a lot more money than you grew up with.

Nobody teaches you how to do that. There’s no like introduction to being at that new level. And so I talk about that as well because. It just has a very different set of challenges, but it is challenging and trying to decide, you know, how do we spend our money? What is appropriate? What is too frivolous? What would God want us to spend our money on? 

And I also talk about the different ways that you can invest money. And my thoughts about that. And I really just, I promise you that after two hours you could feel so much better about how you manage money, because a lot of us. Get to the end of the week or the month, and we’re like, oh my goodness, where did the money go?

And I will show you how to answer that question both through budgeting and keeping track of transactions. And it’s just not as complex as your brain wants to make it sound. And the truth is, your brain doesn’t want you to think about money because it knows that you’re gonna make yourself feel really bad when you’re doing it.

So let’s say that you know that you’re spending more money on restaurants than you want to. And your brain is just knows that you’re gonna get this verbal lashing over it. Well, of course it doesn’t want you to look at your budget and see how much you’ve been spending on restaurants, but the truth is, you can decide how you wanna talk to yourself.

And I wanna be a woman who feels confident around money, talking about money, saving money, managing money, tithing money. We talk about that, and I’m willing to pull my head out of the sand and say, what is going on? I wanna be on top of it. And it doesn’t take like special brains to do that. Everyone can learn the basics of finance and manage their money well, and it will probably require you to figure out what your existing thoughts about money are.

So one of the ones I really like to challenge is you have to work hard to make money, and money doesn’t grow on trees. And it takes a long time to make money. Like just none of those are true, which is so crazy. And my favorite one is that money doesn’t grow on trees ’cause it’s literally printed on paper, which is literally made from trees. And the government can just print money whenever they want using the trees. 

So money grows on trees the way that we do it. And I also included 50 side hustles for moms, Catholic moms to make more money. And I spend a long time doing that, and I think it’s really, really fun. That’s not the solution for everybody, but for those of you who want to make more money from home while raising your kids, I think there’s some really great ideas that work really well for the, you know, stay at home mom lifestyle.

Okay, that’s number two is money. Number three is how to say no. I’ve been wanting to release this for a really long time. It’s a course around boundaries. Boundaries around, you know, volunteering, school commitments, things that your friends ask you to do, things that your parents or your in-laws kind of pressure you about.

And just deciding what things you wanna do and what things you wanna say no to, and how to do that in a really loving way. And I also talk about how to set boundaries with yourself. And I think that’s the deep work, which is how do you build up trust with yourself that you’re a person who. It does what you say you’re gonna do, even if nobody’s looking. I’m just talking about the things you want to do for yourself. 

And so many of us have blown that for so many years that we think it’s just over. Like it’s just done. Like we’re not a person. We can’t trust ourselves. Well, I can’t sign up for that program, or I can’t change the way that I’m eating or exercising or learn something new ’cause I won’t follow through.

And we just have created this identity around not being a person who follows through, but you can change that. I definitely used to think of that about myself, and now I don’t. I have a much stronger filter on the front end of what I would commit to. So I say no a lot, but when I say yes, I’m gonna do it and I trust myself to do it.

And that feels amazing. It feels really great to trust yourself. So it’s not just about boundaries with other people, but it’s about boundaries with yourself as well. And I have a special class just for husbands because. We just have no leverage on husbands, and so I think boundaries are especially tricky in marriage because a boundary requires a consequence and there’s just not a lot of consequences that you can appropriately. Give your husband. 

And so one of the easy ones that I talk about is, Hey, if you’re gonna raise your voice while I’m talking to you, I will leave the room. That’s a really healthy boundary, but I think that there are a lot of hinky. If you don’t act the way that I want you to, then I’m gonna withhold sex from you, or I’m gonna cold shoulder you. Or those things are just not very healthy. 

And then of course, the biggest boundary that I don’t think that we should even talk about is, you know, if you do X, Y, Z, then I’m leaving. And I just think threatening divorce is never helpful unless you’re in a physically abusive marriage and you’re pretty much ready to leave.

But that is just almost nobody that I ever talk to, and so I don’t think it’s ever worth talking about that. But then it kind of just leaves you in this place where like, ugh. How do I protect myself? How do I stand up for myself when I have no leverage on this other human that I live with and I’m choosing to do life with?

But I think that there are some really lovely and beautiful ways that we can set boundaries that honor and respect marriage and the husband and you. And so I cover those as well. So the next course, which I am very excited about, but a little nervous. Because it’s unlike anything I’ve ever done before, is iman a course around how moms can save time using ai.

And AI is really gonna be like the internet. You’re not gonna be able to opt out. So I know right now some of you think it’s just like Chat GPT, which is a software. And some people are choosing to use it, but it’s not like that. It’s going to be integrated into everything. It’s gonna be integrated into all of our shopping experiences, and pretty much anything you use on the internet will be integrated into ai.

So I want you to know right now that you don’t have to like go form an emotional relationship with an AI chatbot. Right. You don’t have to do that, but it is going to be part of your life and you are going to have to teach your children how to use it and manage it. And so it will not be optional. 

But I show you how I use it. I really like the way that I use it. I feel really good about it, and I think it’s so great for meal planning and just helping you think clearly because when you’re in a stress state, and I talk about this all the time, when you’re stressed, your thinking power analytically is very low. It’s poor. But just having to sit down and type out the problem that you’re trying to solve will calm you down.

The process of having to articulate it through a keyboard will calm you down, and then you can just work through whatever it is with ai. I actually think that it’s pretty good at coaching and therapy. If you pop in and say, Hey, I’m struggling with this and I want you to ask me questions like you were Dr. Bob Schu. I really love Bob Schu, who’s a Catholic psychiatrist, psychologist. 

It will do it and it knows that I’m Catholic, so I always say, just don’t ever recommend something to me that goes against the Catholic faith. It just has not been squirrely for me, and you’re not gonna abdicate your thinking.

So I challenge it. Sometimes it’ll say something, well, I don’t like that. Try again or give me a different option. I just, there’s a lot of fear around it, and I think it’s because it’s unknown and I have no doubt, you guys, I have no doubt that it will be used for great evil in the world, but so is the internet, so is the internet.

So I talk about all of that and I give you 60 pages of prompts. Prompts are the things that you put into AI to then begin a conversation with it. And I’m gonna add this. This week. So. If you buy it today, it might not be there, but it will be by Monday. I have been using it for weight loss and loving it.

I worked with it to kind of create the philosophy that I wanted, and then I had it ask me about all the foods that I liked and didn’t like, so it just knew the ones that I liked, and then it meal plans for me and tells me everything about what I’m eating. And when to eat it. And then if halfway through the day, the day hasn’t gone the way that I want it, I’ll just pop in there like, oh, this is different.

Can you rework my meal plan? And it just does it and spits it out. It’s amazing you guys. So I’m gonna add that in there. But the prompts are around, you know, school kids, discipline, cleaning, all sorts of stuff, and. It has a really nice table of contents, so you don’t have to scroll through 60 pages, you just look at the table of contents and then you can go where you want.

And this document is gonna be a growing document as I use it more and more. So that AI course is gonna grow as I use it more because we will, it’s gonna change and evolve, and I wanna make sure that we stay on top of it. But my hope is that moms use AI to buy back some of their time, to then spend more time doing slow, good, true, and beautiful things.

And I’ll have a different podcast about that, where I really think that we should use AI to think faster and better and solve problems quicker, and then use more time listening to music, flipping through beautiful coffee table books, taking walks with our kids, like we’re gonna have to work hard at putting beautiful things back in our lives, so that we’re not just living in a sterile like online. AI world.

But I’m not, I use it, I don’t know, maybe half an hour a day and it just, it helps me knock so much stuff out and get things done faster, and then I’m spending my extra time enjoying my beautiful life. So that is my hope for people. 

And then the last course is back to school. And back to school is not about ordering school supplies and getting ready for going back to school. Back to school is really about creating the philosophy behind how you are choosing to educate your kids and feel about their education. So it’s no matter what kind of schooling you choose, whether it’s homeschooling, public school, private school, charter school, virtual school, it doesn’t matter. 

One, I will help you decide what is best for your family. I’m telling you right now, you know, you know in your mama heart what each of those kids need, and it may be different for different kids. 

And then I really walk you through my process for what, believing that the kids are gonna be okay. Because so much of what feels really scary about school is we make whatever’s happening right now in front of us.

With the kids in schooling say something about their future and we’re like, oh no, if this kid doesn’t figure out how to read, if that girl doesn’t figure out how to pass this math class, if this kid can’t figure out how to turn in his homework on time, whatever it is, and we just think, oh no, if this kid doesn’t figure that thing out, their lives are gonna be really awful.

And that is just a false conclusion. It’s just not great thinking. And so I really lead you back to the Lord, back to peace, trusting him, trusting yourself, and then making school plans from peace. Because it does involve a lot of logistics. And yes, we do have to order some things, make sure they have the supplies or the clothes or whatever.

And then really, whether you homeschool or not, there’s just a lot of de moving pieces and details. But you can think about those in a totally different way where it doesn’t stress you out. So that is what back to School is about, and you can do it right now because it’s really about thinking about your philosophy around school.

But I promise you, if you do this, which takes I think less than two hours, you will feel so amazing about whatever your schooling choice is in the fall. You will feel so much hope around. Future for your kids, and that’s really what you want to feel. And that comes from the Lord. It does not come from the schooling choice that you pick.

So keep your cool AI boundaries, money and back to school. Hey, each of these are $27, but if you get all of them, they’re only $57 and I made all of them so that you could listen to them at the beach. You do not even have to watch anything. You just throw that headphone in your ear, my friend, and you just listen.

And if you’ve been around here for a little bit, you know that the things that I make are life changing programs and you’re life drilling. How could something that’s $27 change my life? It will, because everything that I do teaches you how to think about thinking. It changes how you talk to yourself in your mind, and it’s rooted in discernment and talking to the Lord.

And that’s just everything. You guys, when you really learn how to pray and let God be the driver of your life, and then you learn how to stop trash talking yourself in your mind every day, all day, your life gets so much better. And those are simple concepts that I can teach you and. You can come do any of those things with us in the community.

So we also have a community where we have coaching calls and a Slack community, which is, you know, we’re off of Facebook, but it’s the same thing. It’s just chatting. So you can also come join us and do any of those courses with us, because we have these general coaching calls where you just come and you say, okay, here’s my unique situation. Please help me, and I would love to help you. 

So on Friday, June 13th, come ask me questions about the summer. I’ll answer as many as I can in 90 minutes. I already have some killer questions and I cannot wait to share my thoughts with you. And if you can’t come live, just email me your questions ahead of time and I’ll try to get to them.

We will be sending out a replay and if you want to learn. How to not yell at your kids or how to leverage AI or how to set healthy boundaries or to manage money or to feel good about your schooling choice, any of those things over the summer, I have something for you and you can check it out. So if you wanna see all of those things, just go to catholicmomcalm.com and they will all be on our website.

Alright, my friends, I am praying for you. Please pray for me. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.