I just love this story I found recently. Every October as the weather turns cold, the first freeze comes (which for this year, happened this past Thursday morning), and Halloween draws nigh, I focus on heroes. I turn Halloween into Heroween. I love to learn about everyday people who are heroes because of their willingness to change in following a call to help, a call to change, and ultimately a call to come unto Christ and be transformed by Him.
The following is an amazing story of a man. Morgan Wolsey was a baptized member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but he hadn’t been to church in almost 40 years. Nevertheless, his stake president over him felt that the Lord Jesus Christ wanted Steve to be the next bishop of the ward. Despite Steve’s habit of smoking cigarettes, he agreed to the call. Go here to read the story, you will love it!
I just love how sometimes Jesus calls people we don’t expect to certain positions. I love that Bishop Wolsey really sought to make a difference in people’s lives, to serve them, and be the best bishop he could be. I love that despite our past, we can all be different in the next moment, and then make a new decision, and continue building on our new decisions. Jesus gives me the hope that I can continually make new decisions! I know that because of the power of Jesus, if we let it into our lives, we can all change and become who God wants us to be.
Do you want more hero stories? Click below:
-a woman who forgave those who dealt her injustice, Julie Mavimbela
-a young boy living in Africa who received a copy of the Book of Mormon, read it, prayed about it, and felt a witness from the Holy Ghost that it is true. Here’s the link to his story.
This is such exciting news! The project I have dreamed about and worked on for over a year has finally come to fruition!
It’s a website all about Christian-based read-aloud books and Christian-based, American family traditions, organized by season and month. If you are an American Christian mom who loves to connect with your children through reading aloud and family traditions based on American Christian holidays, you will love this!
This is what I wish I had had when I was a young mom. With this website, you can find all the seasonal-themed read-alouds that your book-loving mama’s heart could ever enjoy! I coded the website myself, and that part took over a year. I took a class to learn HTML and CSS in order to do that part. It was hard, like learning a foreign language. I’m so happy that I pushed through and did it! I’ve been compiling a spreadsheet of read-alouds and traditions that go with each month and season for over 8 years. This has been hard work but at the same time pure joy for me! One of my favorite things to do is to make lists, because yeah, I’m just nerdy that way, so my list-making heart was in heaven.
Just go over here to use it: christianfamilyreadloudsandtraditions.com. Click on the name of a season to get to the lists. Each season has three months. Under each month, you will see the following sections of lists:
-picture books
-chapter books to read aloud or for older children to read to themselves
-family traditions to go with the holiday(s) and seasonal theme of the month
-traditional recipes (according to the Pioneer Woman, a great source of traditional American food. If you want to adapt the recipes to be more whole foods-y, sub melted butter for any vegetable oil that’s called for in baking).
-books for parents to read to themselves to enlighten themselves about the holiday(s), the history behind the holiday and associated traditions, and seasonal themes.
I have the basic site done, but I will be continually adding to the lists because, like I said, I love lists and that means I love adding to lists! I’m also going to add more categories for the lists, like traditions for work, play, mealtime, travel, extended family, and more. Right now the lists above are all related to the seasons and holidays.
I do hope you will check my new website weekly, if not daily! Have the tab open for your public library at the same time so you can go put all these fun books on hold. Happy reading and family-traditioning!
I’m so excited to announce that a project I’ve labored over for years is finally done! Several years ago, I got this idea to make a calendar for moms who are in love with children’s picture books and chapter books like I am. At the time, I had the following thoughts:
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I had a calendar that celebrated the birthdays of children’s book authors, like Beverly Cleary and Tomie de Paola?”
“Wouldn’t it be even more wonderful if the calendar had funny and meaningful quotes from these authors and other fun people?”
and
“Wouldn’t it be even more and more wonderful if this calendar also had suggestions of picture books to read to celebrate the birthdays of these authors of children’s books, as well as seasons and holidays?”
The more I thought about such a calendar the more I loved the idea! I knew it would be so fun for me to see authors’ birthdays and book suggestions to go with holidays on a calendar, so I decided to make the calendar myself.
After many tests, traps, trials, and tears, the calendar is finally done! Hoo-raaay!!!!!
I designed it to be an academic-year calendar, so that means it starts in September 2023 and ends in Augus 2024. I’m bummed that I didn’t get it done in time for the pages for September 2023 to be used for planning, but such is my crazy busy homeschooling mama life!
Oh well! You can still enjoy the illustration, quotes, and picture book suggestions. In addition to the features I just mentioned, this calendar also has the following:
-charming, vintage illustrations from Jessie Willcox Smith
-little-known “holidays” like “National Quilting Day” and “National Cousins’ Day”
-a “year-at-a-glance” with all the days of the academic 2023-2024 year on one page, in the front of the calendar
-a tracker in the front of the calendar where you can list the titles of books you hear about that you want to read
-a tracker in the back of the calendar to record the books you read aloud so you can look back and remind yourself and your children, “Wow, look at all these books we read!”
So, if you love reading aloud children’s books and celebrating American Christian-themed holidays, you will love this calendar! You can order it here, from the BYU Store, and have it shipped to your home, for $13.95 plus a shipping and handling fee. Currently the sale price is $13.95. That price will go up on Wednesday Nov. 15 to $17.95 so order it now! When you order it, you can also buy some books too. If your order totals $75 you don’t have to pay for shipping, with promo code 75SHIP (think Christmas!).
The BYU Store has been my favorite retail place since I was in fourth grade. It’s where I spent my babysitting money to buy all the Anne of Green Gable and Emily of New Moon books when I was in jr. high and high school, along with many other books. Then when I was a BYU student, I would reward myself for doing my homework with a visit at the store to browse all the books for 30 minutes or so. Then I would alternate that treat with a visit to the library, which is next to the Store. It’s definitely one of my happy places, so I am so pleased that my brainchild is now in the BYU Store, both the brick and mortar and online stores. I hope you enjoy it! Go get yours today here!
If you want even more picture book and chapter book suggestions for each month, season, and holiday, please check out my new website here. It’s all about celebrating life with children’s books and family traditions, categorized by the seasons and months.
Last Saturday was such a beautiful day! The bright blue sky, red, orange and yellow leaves provided the perfect backdrop for celebrating the life of the mother of my childhood best friend. Nancy, the mother, passed away a few weeks ago. The funeral and burial were on Saturday. It was so wonderful to see her posterity and posterity in-laws, 55 and counting. I hadn’t seen my childhood chum in person in over ten years. It was so fun to see all the grandchildren of my friend’s mom. I had fun matching up the children to my friend and her six siblings. I was delighted to hear stories of Nancy’s life told during the funeral. Despite the sorrow, it was a great reunion. I also got to see and talk with other childhood friends and adults from the neighborhood where I grew up. This was the same neighborhood where Nancy and my BFF lived. My childhood friend and her brother sang the song below, at the funeral. It probably brought tears to every single person in the room. It certainly did for me.
This funeral, in combination with the funeral of my uncle two weeks ago, has caused me to be reflective of memories, life, and death. If my uncle was the source of memories about the fun that can be had with living in a desert, swimming, reading comic books, and playing with Fisher Price Little People and board games, Nancy is the source of memories of slumber parties involving singing around a player piano, eating popcorn, watching Shirley Temple and Disney movies, and drinking smoothies before they were a thing. Nancy was the wife of the man, whose funeral I was able to attend almost five years ago when I happened to be in town, after moving to AZ. (I blogged about it over here, in the middle of a post recapping my Thanksgiving week in Utah in November 2018.)
The same neighbor spoke at both funerals, which was super interesting. It is so interesting how we all change and grow as we learn to relate to each other. We produce results that are the harvest of our life, and then we die. But the death is not the end! Because of Jesus Christ, we will live again! We will continue to learn and grow and love. We can be with our loved ones forever! Those who have gone on before us are yearning to be with their loved ones, just as we yearn to be with our loved ones who have departed. They can be with their loved ones with the power of temple ordinances that flow from Jesus Christ.
Here’s a story about that! The cemetery photo at the top reminds me of this story. The story is by Hildo Rosillo Flores, from Peru. It’s in the October 2007 Ensign magazine. As a newly baptized member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he took up the charge to find out about his ancestors and do their temple work. He had trouble finding some of his grandparents’ names. He went to a cemetery where he thought the grandparents might be buried and diligently looked at each headstone with no luck. He decided it was time to go.
He continues:
“Ready to leave, I turned toward the front gate. But just as I took my first step, I felt two hands take hold of my head from behind and turn it toward a certain spot. My eyes rested on a small, dirty headstone that was level with the ground. I looked behind me to see who had grabbed my head, but no one was there.
“I walked to the headstone, lay on the ground, and cleaned off the inscription. With great gratitude, I read the information I was looking for: Isidro Garcia Rosillo, died August 1, 1934. Francisca Espinoza Berrú, died January 31, 1954.“
Those were the names he was looking for! I don’t know who it was who moved his head, and he doesn’t say, but I believe it was one of his ancestors who wanted temple work done. Brother Flores did the ordinances for these ancestors, as Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 15:29, “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?”
Brother Flores concludes the story by saying that he knows he was guided by the Lord to find his ancestors.
I love this story! I love knowing that our ancestors’ spirits live on, anticipating the reunion of their spirits to their bodies because of the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ. I love doing temple work. It gives me a lot of comfort and peace.
If you want more stories about families, family history and temple work, please get my Family Devotionals Ebook here and turn to the August section, which contains stories about those topics.
After we got back from my uncle’s funeral last week, I thought how wonderful it was to see so many cousins and other relatives. I hadn’t seen some of those cousins in 28 years! Funerals often feel like big family reunions. I just love that so much, but then it hit me, that everyone gathers, but then they leave. I had the thought that my aunt would be going home to an empty house because her husband wouldn’t be there. I actually don’t know if it’s true. She does have six children, all out of the nest, and probably some if not all of them were going to stay there a few days, or maybe even weeks, I hope. Eventually, however, probably they will have to leave and return to their own homes. That made me feel sad. I know God is in the details, though, because the next morning, he led me to read this story in the Gospel Library app of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s called “Peace in the Shadow of Death” from the December 1982 Ensign magazine by Carol Jardine. In this story, the author, Carol, lost a husband to death. Before the death, he was prompted by the Holy Ghost to stop praying for him to be healed and to accept his impending death. Go read it here. It’s just so wonderful how God prepared her for this parting by prompting her to pray and read the Bible, which brought the Holy Ghost’s assurance and comfort to her, along with the feeling of comforting spirits from beyond the veil.
I love especially this part of the story:
“As I closed the scriptures and went to Lynn, his heartbeat was slowing down. I leaned over the bed, laid my head next to his, and held him in my arms. As I talked to him I felt that he heard me and knew of my feelings, even though he was unconscious. For a time I was desperately unhappy. I didn’t want to be parted from him, even for the rest of this life. Then I felt his arms encircle me, bringing me strength and comfort. The pressure of his arms was tangible, and I had to look at his arms lying beside him on the bed to realize that it was not his physical arms that were around me. At that moment, I sensed that we were not alone in the room, that other spirits were attending us.
“Finally, as I lay close to him, I felt Lynn’s heart stop beating, and I was surprised to find I was truly happy for him. The serene look on his face assured me that his sacrifice had been received with joy, and that he was at peace. I continued to hold him for a time, but then I realized that after his spirit was gone from the earthly tabernacle there was little reason to stay.” (from the story here)
I love that she was led by God to accept the death. Then, after her husband died, and she had the sudden realization that she would be going to an empty home and living alone, she then felt the same feeling of love, as if loving arms were hugging her, reminding her that she wasn’t alone because God loves her.
The story doesn’t end there! She was taught more from the Holy Spirit in less than a week later, when her mother died. If you haven’t read it yet, and are just reading my summary, again, go read it here. You will be glad you did! I can’t do the story justice by just my summary. It’s so sad that she lost her husband and mother within a week apart to death. I’m grateful that she learned the importance of following the Spirit, so she can let the Spirit guide her to have her godly desires. In this case, she could have had the blessing of talking to her mother one last time, but she missed it because she didn’t follow the Holy Spirit. After that experience, she resolved to follow the Holy Spirit more than ever.
That story gave me a lot of comfort that my aunt never need feel alone, and in turn, none of us never need feel alone. If we are standing with God, showing him that we want to do His will by drawing to Him with prayer, service, and reading His words, we can feel his Holy Spirit. We can feel all the fruits of the Holy Spirit: joy, peace, comfort, and love. If we miss opportunities to follow His Spirit, we can repent and turn to God again. What joyful news!
The image above shows all the symptoms that the carnivore diet eliminated or alleviated for Tammy Peterson, wife of Jordan Peterson. Wow! That’s all the inside stuff. To top it off, her body looks like it’s in the shape of someone in her 20s! Watch below to hear her tell of how she discovered the carnivore diet, and how it helped her, her daughter Mikhaila, and her husband Jordan. For Mikhaila, it was specifically the lion diet, which is just beef, salt and water.
This week’s product is a deck of cards featuring artwork, text, and images depicting the classical works of Western civilization. It is called Classics Cards. The deck comes from The Refined Schoolhouse over here. Cost is currently $64.99 for the deck of 148 cards.
It’s a simple product with potential for great impact for education. The subtitle of the product is “A Daily Introduction to the Classics.” That’s how I strive to use it, as in daily, but I sometimes forget, truth be told, LOL. I keep it at the bookshelf by my dining room table, with this poetry book, and my decks of trivia and other question cards from games, and some of my mealtime games.
The idea is to do one card a day and the poem of the day from the poetry book at dinner time. Then we do some trivia questions and a getting-to-know-you question or two. One side of a Classics Card features the artwork or the image of something to do with the classical work or the creator of the work. The other side has an excerpt from the poem, or bio info about the creator, or a description of the classical work, and often the date. Sometimes it has a QR code to scan so you can instantly listen to the classic if it’s music. Sometimes the images are in full color, but mostly they aren’t. The 4″ x 6″ cards are fairly thick and durable to stand up to lots of use from little hands.
My only two minor complaints about this product are:
I wish the box was made out of thicker material and that the bottom flaps were sealed. The box, including the bottom flaps, are flimsy compared to the size of the deck of cards they all contain. It is easy for the bottom flaps to get loose, letting the cards easily slide out the bottom. I fixed the problem by sealing it all with packing tape.
I wish that this product had come out sooner, like over ten years ago, LOL! I wish I had had this deck when all my seven children were at home. I’m thinking of all the possibilities these cards open up. You could easily go through all the cards in less than a year. You could even go through them twice in less than a year, since 148 x 2 = 296. 296 is less than 365 days. You could review them as a family year after year. You could use them as flash cards, showing the front to see if anyone remembers what the picture is about. After reviewing them multiple times, you could try giving out little key words or phrases to see what your children remember. You could buy two sets and play a Memory game. Since most of the cards have a date on the back, you could play a Timeline game, like over here. This product is a homeschool mama’s dream! I give the product 4.9 out of 5 stars!
I’ve been feeling this mixture of melancholy, family love, joy and curiosity. A couple of weeks ago, I got word that my Uncle Lou, my mom’s brother, passed away. He was 92. He’s the boy, holding the dog, in the photo above. My mom was the baby of the family, the littlest girl in the photo. I got to go to the funeral for Uncle Lou this past weekend. Wow, what a wonderful, emotional trip down memory lane. The funeral was held in a little town in southern Nevada, called Overton, where my mom and uncle grew up.
She grew up playing with cousins a lot because her dad had brothers who lived there and worked with him as farmers. She still has a lot of relatives living there, including cousins, nieces, and some of their descendants. As a kid we made a trek to this town to see my grandparents once or twice a year, either at Easter, or Thanksgiving. If we were really lucky we got to make the outing for both holidays each year. We had a bunch of cousins who lived there as well. One bunch of cousins, Uncle Lou’s family, lived behind my grandparents. It was super fun to go back and forth between the houses, through a gate in the backyard fence. Then my grandparents built a new house, their dream house, that was about two blocks away. It was a mansion compared to their old home. What fun we had there as well!
The whole town was just a magical wonderland. It was always either hot or hotter, having no winter with the nasty cold, wind, hail, sleet, or snow of Utah. I only remember it raining once in all my visits there. The place boasted palm trees, red rocks, mountains, and strange, rare tropical fruit called pomegranates that grew on trees in people’s yards. This wonderland was so warm that one of our great aunts used a golf cart as her main mode of transportation. Imagine! This all seemed like something straight out of a fairy tale story book.
One time when I visited, I got to play with kittens, at my grandparents’ home. How delightful! I never knew creatures could have so much fun with just a piece of yarn. All the other times the fun animals featured were Uncle Lou’s cats and his two dogs (George and Cocoa). He had so many cats, I can’t remember their names. It totally doesn’t surprise me he is holding a dog in the top photo, as he had such a huge love for having animals as friends. Amongst the photos displayed at the funeral was a framed photo of one of the cats.
This magical place also had a porch swing, and a trampoline at Uncle Lou’s home. Often, we found inside a treasure trove of piles of comic books featuring Archie and Lulu. Such things did not exist at our home. Beyond his home, the town had swimming pools, a movie theater, friendly people, and loads of cousins, (first cousins, second cousins, first cousins once removed, and probably other iterations I don’t even know about). All of this amounted to lots of play, play, play. I have such fond memories of the whole place. It wasn’t Uncle Lou, but a different one, who owned a hamburger joint on the main drag called “The Desert Freeze.” It was in front of his and my aunt’s home. My siblings and cousins loved going there to get soft serve ice cream. It was a long walk, but we could walk from the cousins’ home to the Desert Freeze. The hot air of the desert surrounded us like an oven, which made the ice cream even tastier.
In this time of the late ’70s, we, my siblings and cousins, loved watching the Muppet Show in my grandparents’ big living room on their big TV. These cousins were the children of Uncle Lou. To this day, any time my kids watch a Muppet movie, the music takes me back to that living room with the happy feeling of cousins watching with the adults in the nearby dining room talking and laughing. All was well! For Christmas one year Uncle Lou and Aunt Diann and the cousins capitalized on our love of the Muppets by giving us a record album of the soundtrack of the Muppet 1971 TV special entitled, “The Frog Prince.” We played that record over and over!
Sometimes we got to go visit Lake Mead, which was nearby, and go swimming and tubing. Uncle Lou’s wife Aunt Diann had yummy brownies to eat on those lake outings. Whenever I eat the gluten-free brownies I blogged about here I think of those lake trips.
Fisher Price Little People Photos Above and Below Credit: etsy.com
At Uncle Lou’s house, which was behind my grandparents’ home, we, my sisters, cousin, and I, played a lot with Fisher-Price Little People. We had an elaborate ritual preceding the play. Whoever was being the most self-aware at the time would call out “first dibs.” Then the rest of us would call successive dibs. Then we would pile all the people, buildings, furniture, and cars into the middle of the playroom. Then we would take turns picking one thing from the pile, going around and around until every item was claimed.
With each mini-collection under our temporary stewardship, we would set up the town with our goods and act out fun scenarios of neighborly and domestic bliss. It seems like the cousins had all the FP Little People sets we had, like the village and the camper, plus the cooler Sesame Street and castle sets. They also had the cute blue house with the yellow roof and the groovy A-frame vacation house.
As we got older, we graduated to the more mature indoor activity of playing a lot of board games. Of course, we already knew about the run-of-the-mill fare of Monopoly, Risk, Sorry, and Clue. We had most of those. But here in this vacation cousinland we found the never-heard-of-before exotic games. It was at Uncle Lou’s house that my siblings and I learned about the word game Boggle, and the unusual, more sophisticated Parker Brother games, including Pay Day, Trust Me, Masterpiece, Billionaire, and Inventors. Overton had no big box store like Target or Walmart (I don’t think it does to this day), and this was before Amazon. Uncle Lou must have picked up these games from one of his many trips to Las Vegas. Oh, the hours of fun we had playing so many games! Inventors was my favorite. It had this cool gadget that you would use to put these metal clips on cards to represent the inventors’ patents. I still plan on finding it on one of my thrifting jaunts. I know I can buy it on etsy or ebay but I’m holding out for the thrill of finding it so much cheaper at a thrift store! It was just a few years ago that my mom told me that my dad and Uncle Lou used to pull “all-nighters” in their younger days, playing Risk together. This is all where I must get my love of board gaming! (If you’ve never read any of my stuff on using board games for homeschool, go here. If you want to read some of my board game reviews, go here.)
Sometimes we went camping with these cousins, and other cousins, like to the Grand Canyon, McCall, Idaho, or Pine Valley, Utah. One of my mom’s Overton cousins lived down the street from Uncle Lou. She had a swimming pool, so we often got to go swimming there. If we couldn’t go swimming there, we would go to the community pool. Decades later, whenever I go swimming in a chlorinated pool, the pattern of diamonds that I see in the water reflecting the sun, and the heavy chlorinated smell, usher in memories of Cousin Vacationland: palm trees, clear blue skies, sunshine, and the heavenly feeling of relatives surrounding me.
All these feelings of fun, love, family togetherness and happy memories came rushing back to me as I drove into the valley and attended Uncle Lou’s funeral with my husband this past Saturday. I love the tribute to the wisdom of a father, to Uncle Lou, that my cousins had placed at the table as we entered the viewing area. See photo below.
I love it! The tribute perfectly captures the wisdom of Uncle Lou and the grateful, respectful feeling I hope we can each feel towards goodly fathers and our Heavenly Father. It reminds me of the wisdom of good fathers and the ultimate wisdom of our Heavenly Father’s beautiful plan for each of us.
It was such a beautiful funeral. Uncle Lou was a wonderful man. He lived an ordinary life but touched people because of his love of life and his jolly personality. He was a great husband and father of 6 children. I loved hearing one of his daughters quote him as saying that the most satisfying, joyful day of his life was when he knelt across his bride at the altar in the St. George Temple and gazed into her eyes, as he was sealed to her for time and eternity by the sacred Melchizedek priesthood power.
It was fun to hear the memories shared by two of his daughters who spoke at the funeral. They shared how he loved all creatures great and small and took tender care of them. One time he was pulling a trailer with his truck down the highway, to go camping. He pulled over to gently remove a grasshopper off his windshield and deposit it safely into the grass on the side of the road. When one of his girls found that some mice had made a nest in the family’s mop, he set the mice free in a vacant field, saying goodbye to them in a squeaky high voice. He cared so much about his dogs and cats that he would taste-test the cat and dog food to make sure it would taste OK to them.
My favorite all-time memory of Uncle Lou is the time I was sitting in a math class in high school. It was the Monday after a BYU Football game. One of my close friends walked into the class late. She sheepishly confessed to me that she had missed the bus. Uncle Lou had come to her rescue by giving her a ride to school. He had been in town for the football game over the weekend, spending the nights at my childhood home. Somehow my mom heard my friend had missed the bus and got her brother to give my friend a ride to school. He didn’t even know this girl but was willing to give her a ride, just because he’s a nice guy. He was always willing to help someone out. He served faithfully in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in many callings. I am confident that he helped many people in those callings, which among them were temple worker and senior missionary.
I love that at the funeral, one of his grandsons sang the song, “I Know that My Redeemer Lives.” I too know that He lives. I am so grateful to know this, for it gives me the sure knowledge that someday, because of Jesus Christ’s redeeming power, we will see Uncle Lou again in a perfectly restored body. He will be robust with his hearing intact. The first thing my sister thought of the morning of the funeral as she awoke was, “Hey, Uncle Lou can hear again!” He suffered for a few years at the end with a loss of his hearing. His body was frail and tired. He was miserable, but now he has been released from all of his body’s limitations.
I love these Book of Mormon verses about death and resurrection. I believe these words!
“Now, concerning the state of the soul between death and the resurrection—Behold, it has been made known unto me by an angel, that the spirits of all men, as soon as they are departed from this mortal body, yea, the spirits of all men, whether they be good or evil, are taken home to that God who gave them life. And then shall it come to pass, that the spirits of those who are righteous are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care, and sorrow.”-Alma 40:11-12
The back cover of the funeral program had this quote from Winnie the Pooh:
“How lucky I am having something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
Yes! Because of Jesus, it is just merely a good-bye for now, but not forever. To Uncle Lou, good-bye for now. Thank you for being a kindly wonderful dad and uncle. Thank you for contributing to joyful memories of my childhood in the Cousin Wonderland you provided as a great father and uncle. Truly this is a joyful foretaste of heaven to come!
We had our first all-day rainy fall day yesterday. It felt like a Karen Carpenter song, as it was a rainy day AND a Monday. Ugh! I just felt slow all day, wishing I could have stayed in bed instead of going to our homeschool co-op. Nothing like co-op on Monday!!!! I mean, I enjoyed so many parts of it: the fact that I got to do a 10 minute-presentation to the moms on one of my many passions (family traditions), plus the fact that we, the moms, discussed Anne of Green Gables while making flower crowns. I’ve been wanting to discuss that book with other moms for years. So yay!!! But the rain poured all day until 6 PM.
My flower crown that I made in our Moms’ Class.
But a plus for the day was that, for the first time, I left the afternoon class of 6-7 year olds that I mentor with Katie Hansen of houseofthebook.org, feeling refreshed instead of feeling like I’d been wrestling with pigs, which every week had felt like that, until yesterday. The difference was her magical storytelling plus she let them draw the story in new notebooks she gave them, AND they each got their own package of crayons.
All of that aside, just the rainy day itself was a little bit of a letdown after such a delightful General Conference weekend, which was this past weekend. We had relatives over both days: cousins plus my daughter and her little family on Saturday, then the same cousins on Sunday night. After so many years of living away from close family and friends, it’s so great to have people pop over all the time. God just orchestrated it that we moved back, then my husband’s sister and her family, then my daughter and her family this past summer.
Such a great combo: uncles, nephew, Legos, and General Conference!
I still figuratively pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming, that we are actually back with close friends and family, even though it’s been three years since we moved back. Not only that, one of my older children moved back in with us a month ago, to live here while he attends college, because he loves us so much! Seriously! He earned enough money over the summer to live on his own for the school year but he missed us the past 5 years that he’s been gone, so he asked to live with us. Score!!!
My mama heart just melts at this picture: one of my sons reading aloud to one of my grandsons.
He said he moved back home because he misses our little family rituals! That would be our nightly and morning rituals of family prayer and conversation and weekend games, and family mealtimes. This has been very validating for me. I’m hoping to capitalize on his enthusiasm and get us all singing a song or two every night, since he’s such a fan of singing. He is definitely my favorite child right now! (None of my children read my blog so I feel safe in saying that, LOL.) We also went apple picking with one of my grandsons on Friday! Pics of that coming soon!
For months, I have had a habit to accompany going to bed to give my day a peaceful benediction, or in the morning, to dissolve the sluggishness of early morning and to help turn on the brightness of hope found in Jesus Christ. This is the habit: I read stories from the Gospel Library app of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That’s how I found this story. It’s just so delightful! The rainy day yesterday reminded me of it.
Here is the story, called, “Faith Under the Overpass.” In this story, a young man named Greg decided to start a hay-hauling business with his brother. They carried hay from eastern Washington over mountains to the Seattle area with a truck to sell to farmers to feed their livestock. They went on a few trips with their dad supervising, and then they were on their own. On their first solo voyage without supervision, the pickup was normal.
“The return trip was uneventful until we noticed that it was starting to sprinkle just a bit. We immediately found an overpass on the freeway and parked underneath it just as the sprinkles turned into rain. We had not yet been able to purchase a tarp to cover the hay, and no animals can eat the alfalfa hay if it gets wet because it starts to rot and mold quickly. We knew that if we lost this load of hay, our business venture would probably fail.
“We sat under the overpass for quite a while, waiting for the rain to stop. Eventually, we realized that the Lord would help us if we prayed. My brother offered a prayer, and we waited. The rain did not let up. We decided that perhaps I, the elder brother, should offer a prayer. It started to rain harder. We sat there for what seemed an eternity. We knew that once we left the protective cover of the overpass, the next possible shelter was an hour away and home was another hour past that.
“Finally, one of us remembered the admonition that faith precedes the miracle, and we realized that we needed to exercise our faith. We put our trust in the Lord and left the cover of the overpass. To this day I remember every drop of rain that I saw land on the hood of the truck as we inched out from under the overpass. It was a severe trial of our faith, but by the time the cab of the truck was out in the open, the rain had stopped. The next two hours were filled with much prayer and thanksgiving.
“We made it home with our load in good shape, and as we were pulling the truck into the barn, the heavens released their pent-up downpour. Our business survived, and both of us were able to successfully fund our missionary service.
“Not all of my prayers have been answered this way, but I am very thankful for the lesson in faith my brother and I learned sitting under the freeway overpass in the rain.”
I just love that!!!! If you want more stories full of faith in God, please go here to get my Celestial Family Devotionals Ebook. It is full of enough stories you can read a new one almost every weekday for your family devotionals.
To continue with the back-to-school theme of fostering learning, my picture book of the week is Nothing Stopped Sophie by Cheryl Bardoe, illustrated by Barbara McClintock. It’s all about Sophie Germain, a German mathematician. Sophie grew up in a time when women weren’t expected to do much with their brains, unfortunately. She had a passion for numbers and even though her parents did everything to discourage her from studying math, she persisted. She would stay up late, studying in the dark with the candlelight from the stubs of candles. I’m so grateful for her and other women who showed the world that women have brains and can study and learn too. This is such a great story to share with both boys and girls, to show that girls can do math too. As a fan of math since my elementary school years, I can vouch that math is for girls too. I have always loved math and have always felt good at it. Kudos for Sophie for being a math girl who paved the way for other math girls after her.
Tree of Life Mothering 