Monthly Round Up: April 2026

In September 2025 I gave up all social media, I mean all: Instagram, Facebook, even my Pinterest. There were many intertwined reasons that led to this decision, and even Will got rid of Reddit off his phone (because, let’s be honest, that’s Instagram for dudes), underlining both of our decisions was that time with our family is of utmost importance. Additionally, there was so much rage bait BS nonsense, and it was only getting worse in the second Trump regime.

There are things I miss, yes, but the pay off has been glorious. However, I really did enjoy the weekly recaps I used to do every Sunday afternoon. To replace that (in a manageable and sane way) I want to do a monthly round up here on the blog. Some pictures, some meals, other musings, whatever I want to share that month.

This book was integral to my “tech exit” – I encourage everyone to read it!

What We are Doing

The month of April is the only month of the year without any school days off! WILD. I however took 2 days off: Good Friday to attend children’s stations with the preschooler and a half day later in the month for his Kindergarten preview. I really hate taking off ever, but that anxiety as eased a bit (because it had to) with William now in school.

Holy Week coincided with Florida’s State Science Fair so that means Will was gone Tuesday-Thursday. Thank goodness my mom could step in and help; I have no idea how I would stay sane otherwise! This year my eldest is starting to understand so much more and it was rewarding with the ritual sinking in. We try to be very intentional each Lent with our mortifications (nothing series you guys but it’s something) and William took it upon himself to voluntarily give up fruit gummies.

We started up the season of swim lessons again, twice a week. Coinciding with swim, William was also finishing up a kids running series and we started Saturday morning soccer. We did not intend to be in 3 activities at once, but we missed the winter sign up for soccer. I was incredibly apprehensive with all these extra curricular activities, but we are doing a better job of dividing and conquering as a family.

Read more: Catholic Culture: Ash Wednesday Trumps Valentines Day

What We are Cooking

We gave up all meat at dinners, except twice a week, during Lent so I made sure we ate meat every day for dinner of the Easter Octave! And since we also give up all sweets during Lent (except for the two Solemnities) we also had sweets every day of the Octave. We even made Resurrection Rolls and some red-blue-white sundaes for Divine Mercy Sunday. We don’t normally eat or keep sweets in the house (they get devoured too quickly), but I am pledging to have dessert at least on Sundays in the 50-day Easter season. Maybe I’ll work up the effort to actually make something but for now we are going to continue to chip away at the vanilla ice cream I bought for our Divine Mercy Sundaes.

Here were some of our favorite meals this month:

• Broccoli, Cheddar, Kalamata Olive Pasta with Rotisserie Chicken (a college staple for me)
• Chicago Style Italian Beef (I served it on Hoagie rolls, added lots of peppers, and baked french fries on the side)
• Picked up a Lazy Moon Pie to share with some international friends (IYKYK…oh they were surprised!)
• Corn Chowder from Around the Catholic Table
• Taco Bar with friends for a relaxed Sunday dinner
• “Viral Tik Tok” Baked Boursin Pasta (modified by adding frozen peas & pine nuts)

What We are Reading/Watching/Listening To

My boys love any books about construction, trains, planes, and (recently) pout pout fish, so those have been on constant rotation for bedtime reads. I am trying to more consistently read longer books after the 2 year old goes off to bed before the 4 year old joins him with Beatrix Potter and chapters of the Magic Tree House series. As I write this, it is a reminder to me that it has been too long since we visited the local public library!

I have slowed down a bit this month in my book reading but I started and finished Festive Faith and all the companion books. I also read The Liturgical Style Guide (noticing a theme?). In all honestly I am not going to give glowing recommendations. They both should be books I loved, but I have a theory that I am actually saturated out Catholic liturgical living books and it is time to shift to a new obsession. There was nothing new for me in either book.

I was planning on re-reading Wuthering Heights. Not because the new movie came out, I actually had no idea until I picked it back up. I loved the book as a teenager but I forgot how much I hate gothic novels so idk if I will manage to finish it. Instead I am listening to a lot of podcasts. I keep up weekly with The Economist and I finished a Mao Zedong & Mughal series by Empire podcast. I just became a paid subscriber to American Medieval and I have just about listened to all the episodes so far.

William’s VPK classroom has been working on the animal kingdom and they watched a few episodes of Zoboomafoo, that was such a forgotten core memory of my childhood so I let him watch some at home. I also watched the Assassin’s Creed movie one night while folding laundry and actually quite enjoyed it.

JMF