I have a dear friend I met through homeschooling who first introduced me to the idea that the gospel of Jesus Christ is embedded in fairy tales. I had never heard of this before. I was immediately fascinated! So I got this copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales shown above at a thrift store and have read them to my children on and off through the years. I admit, some of these stories are so horribly strange! I often am left scratching my head when the story is over, wondering exactly how that story relates to the gospel.
So today I’m highlighting this podcast by Sarah Mackenzie of the Read Aloud Revival Podcast over here because she is bringing up this idea again to my attention. I’d love for you to listen and tell me what you think. Yes, I can see how Sleeping Beauty and Snow White show the symbolism of Jesus Christ as the bridegroom waking up the bride (more on Jesus as the bridegroom here, which I’ve been thinking a lot about lately) but I don’t see the gospel in many of the Grimms’ obscure tales, such as The Fox and His Cousin, or The Louse and The Flea.
Now that I’m pretty much unpacked and organized from my move, I’m hoping to blog every day. Today’s blog is a review of this wonderful product I found during our move. It is Red Ruby Sliders. These are like little “slippers” to put on the bottom ends of chair legs that sit on hardwood floors, not carpet. This new home has a lot of hardwood floors. The landlord asked us to use furniture pads under the end of any furniture leg or corner for any furniture we put on the hardwood floors, in order to prevent scratches. After seeing the ugly long gouge made in the floor of one of the rooms by a previous careless tenant, I was convinced of the need for using pads. The landlord left a package of large pads in each room. (I confess, my untrained eye, without my glasses on, and my uninformed brain looking at these from afar thought that these pads from the landlord were packages of Oreo cookies sitting on the windowsills when we first toured the home LOL!)
We used the pads left by the landlord up and then bought smaller pads for the legs of our dining room chairs, shown above. (I just love, love my new dining room with the bookshelves!) You’d think putting the pads on the chairs would be a “one and done thing” but nope. Those pads were so annoying! Anytime I used these chairs, mainly for mealtime, I would get up and walk away and discover a pad stuck to my shoes. Ugh! The adhesive was not very strong.
When on a visit to ACE Hardware to get something else, I found these Ruby Sliders. They looked like the perfect replacement for the chair pads. So I bought a pack and tried them out. You simply stretch them over the bottom of the chair legs. We’ve had them on for over a month, and none of them have come off because of the quality industrial glue. The pads stay stuck to the silicone caps. I love them so much I went back to the store and bought enough for the rest of my chairs and replaced all the old pads. I chuckled to myself as I left the store the second time. I hadn’t read the packaging close enough the first time and thought they were called Ruby Slippers. Guess I have too much Wizard of Oz on the brain, haha, although I don’t know why, I haven’t watched the movie in decades.
Bottom line: if you want to protect your hardwood floor from getting scratched by furniture legs, these are the best. They are easy to get on and off, they are transparent so the beauty of the wood of the furniture leg will still show, they glide over the floor easily, they don’t scratch the floor, and they are made to fit most legs of chairs. Probably not anything like fat square legs. The company website is here or you can find them at ACE Hardware. I’m not getting paid to promote these. I just found a product I love and am sharing how great they are.
Even though I mostly eat carnivore these days (mostly meat, some Greek yogurt with stevia and pumpkin pie spice, and then all that plus some low carb veggies on the weekend for more variety) I still like to follow Serene Allison and Pearl Barrett of Trim Healthy Mama fame. I have all their cookbooks still, even though the THM diet didn’t work for me to lose weight. You can read about that here. I was excited to find a THM cookbook used at a thrift store last fall for $2 to replace the same version I had at home that was falling apart after much use and water damage. It’s the one pictured below. It’s fun to hear in the video I posted down at the bottom of this post that Serene was actually in labor when they took the photo on the book cover below. I couldn’t even tell she was pregnant!
I don’t want to get rid of these books yet as I guess I figure that maybe someday I might cook their recipes again for myself and my family. For now I enjoy feeling so satisfied with meat and yogurt with one or two meals a day, and not having to eat the rest of the day to maintain my weight after using the carnivore and then the keto diet plus intermittent fasting to lose weight. I also like having the recipes available for my children to use. Right now we have four teen and young single adult children at home again (the number changes every season) so they fix their own breakfast and lunch, and are rotating dinner prep duty. I don’t expect them to eat carnivore and want them to have a variety of recipes to pick from. Mostly they use my Pioneer Woman cookbooks or recipes from the Internet. None of them have food issues so they don’t have to worry about eating carbs and having the carbs trigger cravings and overeating. I have found that the carnivore and keto diets are the best way to minimize cravings. The THM diet just stirred up my cravings. Even when I was strict and measured everything and restricted myself to the recommended numbers for two weeks I didn’t lose weight. It was refreshing to hear in one of their videos in the past few months that they acknowledge that some people don’t lose weight on their diet, including Serene’s husband, Sam. They found that he needed peptide hormone therapy to help. They have had experts on their podcast sharing information about that which I am still in the processing of understanding. They have also launched offerings to help people get this hormone therapy.
OK, I am digressing, so back to the topic of favorite THM recipes. Some of my favorite THM recipes are the Frappa drinks, the Lazy Lasagna, Stew of Love, the Cranberry Wassail, the Trimtastic Zucchini Chocolate Cake, and Skinny Chocolate. Serene says her favorite is the Yuck Yum Bitty drink. I think Pearl says that her chili recipe is her favorite.
It’s fun to watch and hear from Serene and Pearl in this latest video, as they share what recipes they still use and what ones they made only once and forgot about. I loved hearing that they are coming out with a new book, Trim Healthy Wisdom, maybe at the end of this year or beginning of next year. I’ll definitely be getting it to add to my collection. They said that it will include Serene’s perfected sourdough bread recipe so I’m looking forward to seeing that.
Look at this deer I randomly saw on my walking trail this past week! Oh my! So cool! It didn’t run off after it saw me! It just quietly bent down to take a cold drink in the stream by the trail. I’ve been walking at least an hour a day at least 4 days a week the past two weeks. I found this cool walking trail not far from my home and wondered why I hadn’t been using it before, in the past almost 4 years since moving here. Well, it’s because I didn’t know about it. I just love it! It is a tree tunnel. I can go walking there anytime I want and feel like I’m in a forest on the east coast instead of in a suburban desert.
For my Come, Follow Christ study this past week my family and I have been studying the Anti-Nephi-Lehites in the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. They were a group of hard-hearted bloodthirsty souls who softened their hearts and converted to Christ, due to the missionary efforts of Ammon and his brethren. In Alma 26 we seen the sons of Mosiah talking about their reasons to rejoice in Christ. That made made me ponder about all the things I have in my life that bring me joy, with it all because of Christ because He created all things. It’s his light that sustains the world and guides it. He works in partnership with His Father, our Heavenly Father, and the Holy Ghost, to facilitate my life.
Alma 26:16 quotes one of the missionary sons of Mosiah, Ammon, as saying the following:
“Therefore, let us glory, yea, we will glory in the Lord; yea, we will rejoice, for our joy is full; yea, we will praise our God forever. Behold, who can glory too much in the Lord? Yea, who can say too much of his great power, and of his mercy, and of his long-suffering towards the children of men? Behold, I say unto you, I cannot say the smallest part which I feel.”
That’s how I feel. I rejoice in Jesus Christ being my one clear, sure path to heaven. That brings me a lot of joy! When I was a younger mom I used to wonder what it would be like to be a millionaire. I wondered what it would be like to go about my day with the knowledge that I could spend whatever money I wanted because there was plenty more where it came from. I remember hearing a speaker at my church share the truth that when Jesus Christ atoned for our sins on the cross at Calvary and in the Garden of Gethsemane, it was like he gave us a spiritual blank check. Because of Christ’s atonement we are each inheritors of spiritual infinite amounts of millions. I can feel like I am heir to a millionaire because I am an heir to a spiritual millionaire, our Savior.
I also rejoice in this promise from Alma 26:22:
“Yea, he that repenteth and exerciseth faith, and bringeth forth good works, and prayeth continually without ceasing—unto such it is given to know the mysteries of God; yea, unto such it shall be given to reveal things which never have been revealed; yea, and it shall be given unto such to bring thousands of souls to repentance, even as it has been given unto us to bring these our brethren to repentance.”
I just love this promise! It’s so tremendous! We can know “things which never have been revealed.” It’s all conditional on us doing those four things mentioned: repenting, exercising faith, bringing forth good works, and praying continually. I recently heard a fellow Latter-say Saints express the truth that praying is repenting. Reading your scriptures is repenting. I had never thought about it that way.
In our process of moving and unpacking and organizing the past few months (it never seems to end!) I’ve had a lot of negative thoughts from satan go through my head like, “oh it’s so awful you can’t live in a bigger house,” thoughts of comparing my material blessings to others, thoughts of feeing sorry for myself that I’ve had to move three times in nine years when my sister has only had to move once in her married life of 20+ years (!) Oh how would it be?!?! And when she did move she didn’t have to do any of the packing because the professional movers did it all. Yes I admit it’s hard not to be envious of this! These scriptures I just mentioned and others help me to let go of those negative thoughts the enemy throws at me.
Reflecting on the random things that bring me joy also allow me to quickly dismiss those negative thoughts. Here are some random things that bring me joy that have happened lately:
-the walking trail I mentioned above
-bacon and beef, which I eat almost every day and don’t get tired of
-seeing one of my Veggie Gal friends (the one who rescued the bird in the story linked here) at a thrift store and discovering that she loves to thrift too! Now I have another thrifting buddy to text my discoveries to!
-this new home I’m in has such a better view from the front window than the old one. I sit and eat breakfast and look out the window at the mountains and absolutely love it
-my new house has a front room that doesn’t seem very big from the outside. It’s technically a living room but we are using it as the dining room, as it is off the kitchen and the only place in the home that makes sense to have our dining room. This dining room feels bigger when you are in it inside. It has a long wall. Before I moved here I was so excited to line it with bookshelves. My former home did not have any long wall because of either a doorway or window interrupting it. So that meant no ideal wall to line with bookshelves. So even though I miss the cheery yellow painted walls and French doors of the old place, I just love this new place because of this wall. My friend Katie convinced me to get new IKEA shelves to give it a uniform look, instead of just having a mish-mash conglomeration of all my old shelves. Can you believe I’d never been to IKEA before? So back in June off my husband and I went to get some. I just love my new dining room/library with all of these shelves and baskets! The baskets hold all the quiz game cards and conversation cards I like to use at mealtime, mostly dinnertime. This is not ALL the books I own but most of them. The rest of them are all on shelves downstairs. For the first time in our married lives, we are able to have most of our books together on nice shelves. I love it! I’m sad I didn’t get a “before” photo, with all the piles of boxes of books lining the walls, looking so chaotic. So even though I hated moving, and the move was arduous, as many moves are, it was a blessing in that for the first time in almost 4 years all my books are unpacked and I can access them! In the old house some of the books stayed unpacked in the garage, other books were in the upstairs bedroom which was packed with other stuff in front of the bookshelves, so it was hard to get to the books. Therefore I didn’t access them and I forgot what book was where. I just love my new dining room/library!
-I found this darling desk for only $50 used on KSl Classifieds. At first I had the desk by the IKEA shelves then decided to move it and replace it with another IKEA Billy bookshelf to match the other side. It would be nice to now get some white chairs and white dining room table to match the shelves. Ultimately I also want to add curved tops to the IKEA shelves to match the curved top of the desk.
-I just love the crown molding around the windows of my new dining room. It has been so fun to get out my Independence Day decorations and deck out the crown moldings with my banners and garlands. I’m sorry the tablecloth isn’t ironed in the photo below…too much unpacking and organizing still on top of regular living to stress about ironing tablecloths!
-one of my single adult sons told me of a recent decision he just made to save the rest of his kisses until he is engaged. Not quite the Duggar level of “pure” courtship that I idealize (waiting to kiss until married), but we are getting there! I’m so thrilled that he came to this decision without any input on my part. He realized the truth of what I heard John Bytheway say, “When you give out your kisses like they are free samples at the grocery store, they are as valuable as free samples at the grocery store.”
-this same son asked me about natural family planning. He said that when he helped us move he noticed one of my books about it in a box he moved. So I told him a bit about NFP. He said that when he’s married he wants to use that method. This makes my naturally crunchy mama heart so happy!!!!! My heart is turning backflips and cartwheels over this!
-my teen daughter decided to go to the temple preparation class for our ward/congregation. I am so pleased about this!
-my mom crocheted these gorgeous flowers for me. I love how they go with my different Pioneer Woman tablecloths.
-it’s summer so I can lie in the sun for a little bit daily like I’ve blogged about here
-thrifting treasures continue! I found some 2 x 2 IKEA kallax shelves at the thrift store for only $15! They are regularly $45. I’m building a similar bookshelf as the one in my dining room pictured above for my office/school room in the basement, but it is black. Then I found a 3×4 black kallax shelf on KSL Classifieds for $80. So then I just had to buy another 2×2 to complete the look. I got some beige bins this time instead of baskets like above, along with birch colored drawer inserts. We got it all built on Saturday and a lot of the cubes filled but I’m still organizing it all. So when I’m done I’ll share the finished look. I’ve also found a bunch of other fun stuff like a beautiful white chair to go with the white desk I bought used shown a few photos above, and some fun books, including the Food Nanny Cookbook which I borrowed from the library (and returned after devouring it) over 14 years ago and never bought. I found it for only $1.50 at D.I. in perfect condition in June. I had found it a few months ago as well, again at D.I. but it had a bent and torn cover. I told myself to wait for a nicer copy to come along, and it finally did. I also found three adorable photo frames in colors I love. For years I’ve had this photo of my husband and me from a Valentine’s Day church dance, back when we had only three children. As soon as I saw this frame at Savers I knew it would go well with our photo. So now I have this photo on my kitchen wall and love it! Sorry for the glare on the glass in the frame. It looks better in real life.
I also found this frame while thrifting and used it for an image I found in a church magazine. I love how the lavender in the image and the aqua color of the frame pair well with the other frame. They are both on my kitchen wall.
-My other single adult son came home from Maryland so we get to have him for 6 weeks until he moves out to his own apartment for fall. He wanted to watch Fiddler on the Roof as a family so we’ve been doing that. That’s probably my second-favorite musical, after the Sound of Music. This son is so sweet to me. Whenever he leaves he comes and gives me a hug and calls me “Dear Mother.” This is such sweetness making up for the few years we had of him being a rascal.
-some of my children gave my husband a BBQ grill for Father’s Day. This is something I’ve wanted for over a decade. We finally have one! In the old days sometimes the kids would take our huge electric pancake griddle outside and we’d have a cookout that way with burgers and dogs. Now we can finally have a real one. So I’m using the Food Nanny’s idea of Saturday night being grill night. I’m also asking my husband to be in charge of prepping and serving Saturday night dinner.
-My husband and I had a disagreement. I prayed that his heart would soften to my point of view and it did and he apologized. We had a great day together last Saturday with him running errands for me while I organized my aforementioned black IKEA shelves and then we dejunked our bedroom together. We capped off the day with a family BBQ using the new grill, then we had a movie date night in bed. I once again was blessed to find a great movie about married love. Stay tuned to hear about that movie.
-Yesterday we celebrated the 23rd birthday of one of my sons. We gave him an electric guitar! That spurred on the idea for three of us to make music together, my 14 year old on drums, 23 year old on guitar, and me on piano. I’ve always wanted to have a jam session with my children and this was the first time we did it, because we finally have a trio in the home who can each play an instrument. It took us a bit of time to figure out what we could all play together. Since it was the Sabbath Day we settled on “Gethsemane” by Melanie Hoffman and used the interactive feature on the music library page of churchofjesuschrist.org to transpose it into a key our guitarist could play since his capo is missing. Right during the climax of the song, when you sing “the hardest thing that ever was done, the biggest battle that ever was won,” our drummer (the 14 year old) got bored and had to add more, so he started clashing his cymbals. My 23 year old shouted, “Hey you’re ruining it!” and then burst out laughing. He said it was like the scene in Muppet Christmas Carol during Fozziwig’s party. The muppet Animal is in the background with the band, placidly dinging the triangle softly. Then he gets bored so he starts beating on the drums and cymbals, unleashing all his energy. He hijacks the music to turn it from a soft romantic tune to a rambunctious jig. We then all laughed so hard even more after watching the clip on YouTube. The Animal part starts at the 1:44 mark.
I’m looking forward to many more times of making music together. When I focus on all these positive things instead of the negative, my heart is just so happy. We are “prospering by degrees,” as it says in the Book of Mormon. Despite trials, we can all prosper by degrees as we turn to Jesus and look for the reasons to rejoice.
Last week I had a serendipitous event that delighted me so much! I got to play the fabulous game pictured above! Hooray! I’ve had this game for five years now. I’ve attempted to play it a few times, but the rules book overwhelmed me sooo much that I just didn’t get past reading the rules to play the game. So, it has sat unplayed on my shelf for five years. That all changed recently when my 22-year-old son arrived home, on Independence Day, after being on the U.S. east coast for a few months. He left Maryland on the Saturday before, drove to Maine to see my sister and her family, then left my sister’s on Monday afternoon and got to Utah on Thursday morning, during the grand parade. Wow! That’s some serious long-distance driving. Only for the single twentysomething life LOL!
He unpacked, and we ate a yummy BBQ dinner using the Freedom Loving Conversation Starters from this list I’ve linked over here, from Jennifer Flanders. Then we watched Episode 2 of the John Adams HBO mini-series. It’s a family tradition to watch it every year, because so far it is the best video depiction I know of that shows the Second Continental Congress in action declaring independence. After the movie was over, we had our homemade ice cream (also a tradition for the holiday) and then our relatives left. The other kiddos disappeared in bedrooms to do their own thing, my husband took a nap, so Mr. L was my captive audience with nothing to do. Yay! Of course I thought of playing a board game together. I gingerly suggested this game, in light of the patriotic theme of the holiday, and surprisingly he took me up on it! He agreed to read the rules, digest them, and teach them to us. I roused my husband after my son had read the rules and asked if he would play it with us. I was surprised that my husband agreed to do it as usually he only wants to play a game if someone in the group has played it before.
I was delighted by how fun and strategic it was. It was actually simpler than the rules book made it out to look. Just to clarify, this game is a simulation of the Constitutional Convention not the Second Continental Congress, which Independence Day is about. Some of the same people were involved in both events however, and both events took place in the same place, so the game still fits the theme of the day, patriotism. In the game, the goal is to get the most points. You get points in three ways: being on the winning side of the vote, winning debates (no actual debating is involved, it just means you place a marker on the debate track), and having people in the spillover room (I can’t remember the name) after the round of voting is over in the main assembly room.
Each player has a hand of cards, with a different Founding Father on each card. Each card has symbols to denote the causes or factions the person was aligned with, like Anti-federalists, Federalists, Small States, Big States. Those symbols determine where you can put the person/card on the debate track or on the floor for the vote. Each Founding Father has a “special power” kind of like the characters in the Villainous board game. Watch out for George Washington, as he can end the vote at any time so that you can win without waiting for the normal threshold of six “yeas” to be met. He’s powerful! There’s also a Founding Father card that antidotes that power preemptively. I was so glad I played that card when I did as my husband revealed he was about to play his George card. Ben Franklin also has amazing powers, as befitting the great statesman. I love the “flavor text,” which is the paragraph at the top of the card that teaches you real history about the real person. So you can be learning history as you play, if you take the time to read the cards.
Watch the video below for more about it and then go get the game! Play it anytime you are with people who enjoy learning about American history and also enjoy strategy games involving resource management.
Now that I’ve played the game, I hope to play it around every Independence Day and Constitution Day. I just love the vibes! I’m also going to add it to my list of July activities on my family traditions website over here.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus Christ has sometimes referred to himself as the Beloved Bridegroom? I have. It all started when as a 12-year-old I went to hear a speaker at my church speak about the Parable of the Ten Virgins. (You can read more about the Parable of the Ten Virgins here.) The speaker was the artist, Gayla Prince. (Her website is here.) She displayed her painting depicting this parable. In it, the bridegroom symbolizes Jesus. Her presentation planted a seed in my heart. That night, I distinctly felt a determination that I would be like one of the wise virgins, ready to attend the wedding, aka the Savior’s Second Coming. I decided that I wanted to be ready with my oil in my lamp, not asleep. (Here is a link to a site that shows the painting I saw and what is possibly what I heard that night.
It has been about 40 years since I heard this but it sounds right.)
The Wise and the Foolish Virgin by Jan Adam Kruseman, Wikimedia Commons
Fast forward to more than fifteen years later, when I heard Donna Nielsen, the author of the book Beloved Bridegroom, speak at a homeschool conference. I was fascinated! I asked for the book for my birthday and read it as a young mom of 3 kiddos. I enjoyed it and set it aside on my bookshelf. Well, it’s time to dust off and revisit this classic!
There’s so much more for me to dive into about this concept. I definitely want to read the book again! This desire to revisit the concept was rekindled this past spring. I experienced a Biblical Wedding Simulation back in April, courtesy of Marc and Tracie Hyde, of biblicalwedding.com. It was all so meaningful and beautiful! To attend the event, I took my 14-year-old son with me and a girlfriend. A big thank you to my friend Katie Hansen of houseoftheobok.org for hosting the event.
At the event, we got to experience firsthand what an ancient Hebrew wedding ceremony was like. This ceremony has so much symbolism involving the plan of salvation. Below you will see a bit about what it looked like at the start of the simulation with the wedding canopy erected in the front of the room. First off, we were divided into groups to sit at tables. Each person at the table was assigned a part of the wedding party: the bride, the bridegroom, the mother of the bride, the father of the bride, the mother of the groom, the father of the groom, the best friend of the groom, etc. Each table had a complete wedding party.
Credits for Photos of Wedding Simulation Above and Below: biblicalwedding.com
We followed the timeline of everything involved with an ancient Hebrew couple preparing for a wedding, including the betrothal and the time of separation and then the ceremony. It was both so educational and enjoyable. I got to go off with the sequestering “bride” and her “party” to a different room, while the “groom” and his party prepared his new “home” for his bride out of construction paper.
As the bridal party, we prepared a wedding bouquet and garlands. Then we came back into the room where the wedding ceremony was enacted. Interspersed into all of this we got quiet time to write down reflections. It was all soo beautiful!
Then the next month of May, my friend Katie and I each took a son, who are friends, and some of their friends, to the Layton Utah Temple open house, before its dedication. We were delighted to see that the Bride’s Room in this new temple features front and center, a huge painting of the Savior, to remind all the brides that he is a spiritual bridegroom to His Church of covenant people, the bride. The next month, in June, my niece got married in the same temple. (This temple is within walking distance of where I used to live in Layton. It was twilight when we drove over to take a photo after the wedding reception, and we still had an hour’s drive left to get home. We missed our curbside grocery order pickup as a consequence, but it was worth it to see the temple’s majesty and peace.)
Then in the end of June, here came along this video about the same topic, below. Thanks to The Stick of Joseph YouTube channel and the guest who appears, Andrea Woodmansee. I learned so much more about the wedding symbolism, Jesus Christ, and the plan of salvation. It’s all so amazing and beautiful!!! I even learned about the how the logo of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints connects to the wedding symbolism. It sounds like the book Andrea is writing about this will be like a sequel to Donna’s book. I can’t wait! If you want to learn more about the symbolism, go here and scroll down to get a study guide and a script for hosting your own Biblical Wedding experience!
Does anybody use periods in acronyms anymore? Not many. I added the periods to the acronym FEAST above in the title of this post to emphasize that each letter stands for something. In this case, we are talking about FEASTing on the word of God, the scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I watched this video below which explains FEAST while getting ready for church this morning. It is sooooo good!
I just love that Brother Halverson has linked a word that involves enjoying everything involving food, the color, the nutrients, all the physical, mental, social, and spiritual aspects of food, which is the word feast, with the spiritual food that is the scriptures. It’s torturing me to put photos of food up right now while I’m fasting on Fast Sunday. I just love food!
Here is what each letter stands for:
F= Find the principle
E= Explain the principle
A= Apply the principle
S= Share the principle
T= Testify of the principle
Wow, this is so powerful! Brother Halverson states that not only is this a formula for finding more meaning in the scriptures, but this is a formula for ministering to others or giving a talk in church. It’s all so wonderful!
If you want more, here’s the website from Deseret Book that this lesson comes from. Go forth and FEAST!
P.S. If you want to dive deep, read what I’ve blogged about food, nourishment, and feasting here.
In light of the upcoming holiday, I finished listening to this book in audio. It was so delightful!
I love hearing about our nation’s history in the context of the colonial women who shaped the Revolutionary War. We see/read/hear so little about them in movies and history textbooks. It’s about time a book like this came out. Thanks to Ms. Cokie Roberts for creating such an accessible book. It was published in 2004, twenty years ago, but I didn’t read it until this current week. I finished it yesterday and I’m glad I did. It was worth reading! I give it 5 out of 5 stars.
This book features the following women:
-Abigail Adams
-Deborah Read Franklin
-Eliza Pinckney
-Phyllis Wheatley
-Mery Otis Warren
-Catherine Littlefield Green
-Esther DeBerdt Green
-Martha Washington
Here is a video with the author sharing about some of the women mentioned in the book, at a lecture at Mount Vernon. Ms. Roberts mostly talks about Martha and the history of the Mount Vernon getting restored due to the work of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. I blogged about that a bit here.) Skip to the beginning at 1:44 where the guy gives an introduction to the series of the lectures. If you want to omit all that, go to 8:10 when Ms. Roberts starts.
You will learn so many interesting factoids from this book, as well as read inspiring quotes. It’s a reminder that women, not just men, served the patriot cause well. We can learn much from their sacrifices. Here’s dear Abigail below speaking up about the sacrifices of women and slaves,
You can probably find this book at your local public library. If your library uses the Libby app, you can find it as an ebook or audiobook there. Or get it in Everand in both formats. Everand is a book lover’s dream! You can get access to unlimited ebooks and audiobooks to download and keep or just listen to once, for one low fee a month, all on your phone in an app. You can also use Everand with a laptop or PC. Go here to learn more!
Cokie has written two other books about women in American history: Ladies of Liberty and Capital Dames. The video below is an encapsulation of all three.
I’m so excited about this! My church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has released a batch of new hymns as part of a future publication of a new hymnbook. In my own congregation we have sung one of the new hymns “When the Savior Comes Again”. It’s so beautiful!
Here are all the details of the new hymnbook, copied and pasted from the church’s newsroom.
“The gradual release of the new global hymnbook of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has begun with the release of 13 new songs. This new music may be accessed digitally through the Sacred Music and Gospel Library apps and in the online Church Music Library at music.churchofjesuschrist.org.
“Small batches of new music will continue to be published digitally in preparation for the full hymnbook release, currently expected in print and digital formats by the end of 2026 in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. The hymnbook is anticipated to be available in 50 languages by the end of 2030.
“A new training video in the Church’s online Media Library assists ward leaders and those with music callings as they include new music in worship services. Latter-day Saints are encouraged to incorporate this new music in their personal worship and study, and a second video suggests ways to do so.”
The song I am most excited about being included is “Gethsemane” by Melanie Hoffman, performed below by some talented sister missionaries, and then below that, by the composer herself with her husband Roger Hoffman Decades ago I heard Melanie speak about writing this song. She was definitely inspired by the Holy Spirit to write it. It is so beautiful and touching!
I’m so excited to share this video with you all! It just came out on David Alexander’s YouTube Channel. I blogged about David a few months ago over here. He’s a former pastor who searched for the true church of Jesus Christ for 47 years. His search ended when he got baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His new video features Aunt Nancy, who I’ve blogged about before over here. Aunt Nancy is a treasured member of my husband’s mother’s side of the family, the Hiltons. It was 23 years ago last month that Aunt Nancy joined our family when she married my husband’s Uncle Lynn Hilton. It was a second marriage for both. I fondly remember their wedding dinner that we attended. I remember who was there and exactly what I was wearing, a knit floral top and denim jumper that could fit my growing belly. It wasn’t the most elegant wedding attire but it worked for the dinner. I was hugely pregnant with Baby #5. It was May 2001. We attended the marriage the night before we left for a family reunion in Southern California for my side of the family. She was a lovely bride and she is lovely to this day. In this video below, you will hear Aunt Nancy’s story. She grew up Jewish. She bears testimony of feeling the love of Jesus Christ and how she came to find His true authorized church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her story is so beautiful! Watch below!
If you want to read more of Nancy’s story including her later courtship and marriage to Uncle Lynn, you can find it in the book from amazon, shown below. Spoiler alert: my mother-in-law was the matchmaker! Another version of the story, called, My Burning Bush, is also on amazon and you can read it for free here. You can also see Aunt Nancy’s art and get free digital downloads of two of her prints here.
Tree of Life Mothering 