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Messy Family Project
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EMPOWERING MOMS AND DADS TO EMBRACE THEIR CALLING

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Live Course: April 13-16, 2023

Family Board Meeting Course
Get reinspired and reenergized in your family life! Join us for our LIVE course in April. Registrations now open.Learn More

Join us for the Easter Season!

Join us for Cana90 this Easter Season
Cana90, our Lent and Easter program, is perfect for couples to grow during Lent and for families to strengthen their family culture during Easter. There's still time to join us for encouragement and ideas!Sign up for Cana90
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We serve messy families!

We believe that being a good parent starts with being a great spouse. But being a good parent or even a great spouse is hard, messy work. And we're not meant to do it alone! So join us on this journey, because we believe that not only is marriage and family life a path to holiness, but it’s an incredible adventure!

Podcast Episodes
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MFP 228: Educational Choices
Since parents have given children their life, they are bound by the most solemn obligation to educate their offspring and therefore must be recognized as the primary and principal educators. This role in education is so important that only with difficulty can it be supplied where it is lacking. ~ Pope Paul VI, Declaration of Christian Education Educating children is one of the most important and daunting tasks parents must face. For some parents who have good resources at their disposal, the...
MFP 229: Stories from Saints Alive!
When we look at the lives of those who have faithfully followed Christ, we are inspired with a new reason for seeking the City that is to come and at the same time we are shown a most safe path by which… we will be able to arrive at perfect union with Christ, that is, perfect holiness. - Lumen Gentium, 50 One of our great gifts as Catholics is the “older brothers and sisters” that God has given us in the saints. There are saints for every personality, vocation, and even job type! In this...
MFP 227: Parenting Adolescents and Artists
Children have not been given to parents as a present, but as a trust for which, if lost through their negligence, they must render an account to God. ~ St. Alphonsus Ligouri Raising teens is an art, not a science. It takes finesse, subtleties, and nuances to get it right. Children are pushing back and trying to become independent adults while they are still not yet ready for the responsibilities of adulthood. How do you slowly give them more freedom while making sure you don’t give them TOO...
MFP 226: Lent and Your Marriage
Each day be conscious of your duty to be a saint. — A saint! And that doesn’t mean doing strange things. It means a daily struggle in the interior life and in heroically fulfilling your duty right through to the end. ~ St. Jose Maria Escriva One of the things we teach couples all the time is that marriage and family life is your path to holiness. So the celebration of Lent and Easter should look different if you are a married person! Sacrifices and commitments that take away from your...
MFP 225: Encouraging Femininity
“When she’s in your company, your daughter tries harder to excel. When you teach her, she learns more rapidly. When you guide her, she gains confidence. If you fully understood just how profoundly you can influence your daughter's life, you would beoverwhelmed, or both.” ― Dr. Meg Meeker All girls have a certain pattern of physical development that will change them into women, but these changes need to be guided, nurtured, and shaped by loving parents. The genius of womanhood is a great gift...
MFP 224 : Not Managing Boys, But Making Men
Manhood isn’t something that simply happens to boys as they get older. It’s an achievement – something a boy accomplishes, something that can easily go awry. If we ignore the importance of this transition, and fail in our duty as parents to guide boys through it, then we will learn the hard way why traditional cultures invest this transition with so much importance. - Dr Leonard Sax In today’s world we cannot assume that all boys will grow up to be masculine men. But this is the task of...
MFP 223 : Dating Your Spouse
"Creating informal rituals when you can connect emotionally is critical in a marriage" ~ John M. Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work Dating your spouse consistently is the easiest thing you can do to keep your love alive - and its fun too! We have been challenged recently to spend more time with each other and just have fun. Because our work puts us in each other's orbit all the time, it can be easy for us to think that we don’t need MORE time together, but we do. Date...
MFP 222 : Dealing with Anger
“Anger isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can be.” For some reason, dealing with sons and daughters can bring out anger in a person who has been mild mannered and easy going their whole life! Why is that? What we have noticed is that children do not create our weaknesses, they reveal them. It is good to understand why we react so strongly to certain situations in order to grow in virtue. In this podcast, we shed some light on the truth about anger, give some tools and ideas for handling...
MFP 221: Just a Kid in a Big Family
“The sacrifices our parents made to give us brothers and sisters is one of the greatest things they have done for us.” - Mike and Alicia Hernon We usually talk about family life from the perspective of parents. But for this podcast, we are going to take some time to talk about what it was like growing up in a family of 6 for Mike and a family of 10 for Alicia. We didn’t realize it as kids, but our parents' lives were really hard and they made a lot of sacrifices having the large families that...
MFP 220: Game Night!
The holidays are a perfect time for families to have game nights or even game days! Games teach children invaluable lessons about strategy, logic, and skill but also about how to get along with others, what consequences mean, and how to be a good loser and a gracious winner. Taking time to invest in games for kids is a great activity for parents and you may actually have fun too! See our list of games for families below to enjoy! Support our mission and choose a great thank you gift:...
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Growing a Family Culture: Increase the Power of Your Parenting
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When it comes to marriage and family, no one does it perfectly. But we can all learn how to do it better. Life is messy, but messy is the path to holiness. Join our member community and get access to all our courses and resources.

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From the Blog

Family

How To Choose The Perfect School For Your Child
Imagine that your oldest child is about to start preschool or kindergarten. You have a few options and feel overwhelmed by them because they all look wonderful. You and your spouse visit each school and then sit down to choose, agonizing over the options in front of you. You see the years of education laid out in front of your children and wonder how to choose the perfect school for your child. We hate to break it to you, but you can’t choose the perfect school for your child. It doesn’t...

Parenting

Parenting an Artistic Child with Virtue in Mind
Artistic children are such a delight, aren’t they? Their wonderful combination of ideas, unique quirks and abilities can really be an inspiration to those around them. Our artistic children are truly one of a kind. God created each of us that way! But there is something unique and special about children who are artistically gifted. They often hit milestones early, surprising their parents and those around them. They’re wonderfully creative and joyful to be around, especially when you’re...by Mike and Alicia Hernon

Parenting

Encouraging Femininity
Having young girls in your house might mean lots of dress up, tea parties and dolls. But it can also mean mud, sports practices and messy bedrooms. Our culture desperately wants you to believe that boys and girls are a blank slate, that they are neither boy nor girl at birth and that they can choose which to be. They couldn’t be more wrong. The truth is that our girls are distinctly feminine in their biological makeup - their brains are female! They have strengths that our boys simply don’t...by Mike and Alicia Hernon

Parenting

Encouraging Masculinity
It might seem pretty obvious but boys and girls are definitively different! Most parents could tell you a number of things about how their boys and girls are different and really, those differences go all the way to the brain, including how our eyes and ears work! Our culture so badly wants to tell us that there are no differences between boys and girls and that they can choose to be whatever they want. The truth is that there are major biological differences between the sexes. Boys tend to...by Mike and Alicia Hernon
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