I grew up in Rio, Brazil, where I graduated  with an Art degree from a small Catholic college. The seventh of a noisy, large and happy Catholic family, I came to the USA to pursue graduate work and met my husband Geoff, now a university professor and international scientist. Our seven children range from 10 to 23 years old and the two oldest have graduated from the University of Notre Dame. The third one attends The University of Dallas. Our family lives in a 1880s farmhouse on 18 acres north of Sioux Falls, SD where vegetable gardening is taken seriously and where a quite accurate number of outside farm cats is seldom known. Here we attempt to slow down the passing of these joyful years...

I have homeschooled for fifteen years and has used a variety of sources and materials. I feel privileged to be able to use Catholic materials and I remember when there was very little available. I am very involved in my local homeschool group, where I teach Art at co-op, and History and Latin to small groups of elementary school students. I also head our Tutoring Center where my Mapping class is probably the noisiest one.

 Writing and literature have been a passion since primary school in my native Rio de Janeiro and  I have done professional translation from Portuguese and reviewed children’s and parenting materials for ParentCouncilTM for almost a decade. My B.A. is in Art and my M.A. is in Aesthetic Studies: Art, Literature & Translation. I am on the editorial board of Mater and Magistra and love writing about the Catholic homeschool life. I have written a few homeschool materials including a series of three children's Ancient World plays, plays on Catholic saints, and I have also been contracted to write the workbooks for the Catholic Textbook Project History books. 

 I also write and direct drama for both elementary and high school levels. My last productions were a one-act play celebrating the 150th anniversary of Lourdes and a comedy entitled "The Inn at Ars". I have participated and spoken at the Minnesota Catholic Homeschool conference for the past few years. Future projects include expanding my master's thesis for publication and writing a book on the beautiful faith story of the popular Marian shrine in Brazil.