Today’s hero story is about Vicky Tadic. She lived in her native land of Bosnia and Herzegovinia, where she met the Rowe family. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Rowe family held church services in their home in Bosnia and Herzegovinia. The Rowe family had moved there from the United States and spoke English. Vicky and her siblings played with the Rowe children, who were their next-door neighbors. As the only one who knew English in her family, Vicky was the translator for the two families. She noticed something different about the Rowe family and asked Mrs. Rowe about it. You can read the rest of the story here.
If you want more stories of heroes, go get my free Family Devotionals Ebook here, then head to the October section to read hero stories. I also love to read hero stories in the form of picture book biographies. Go here to get a list of those.
It finally feels like fall is here! We had a storm last weekend to bring in lots of rain and a little snow. Since then, it finally feels cold enough to wear a jacket. I got my garden all harvested before the storm hit. In addition to that bounty, my son and I have been picking apples from the neighbors’ tree. He’s been using the “apple slinky maker” to slice them up, then putting the slices in our food dehydrator.
I love fall with all the bright colored leaves and the smell of fire in my neighbors’ fireplaces. I love the feeling of harvesting and preparing for winter. I love to focus on heroes as we face Halloween. I learned from a friend to call it Heroween. I’d rather focus on heroes of history and dressing up like heroes instead of focusing on terror, blood, and gore.
To celebrate Heroween, my version of Halloween, I’m going to highlight a hero hopefully every day for the next week or so, even after Halloween/Heroween is over. I’m always one for stretching holidays out, even the official holiday day is over. Then I will share stories about gratitude for Thanksgiving.
If you want to know more about Heroween, go here. If you want to read more of my thoughts about Halloween, go here and here.
Now on to today’s hero!
Today’s story is about Geoffroy Koussemou. You can read his story here. He grew up in Benin, a country in west Africa. His wonderful story shows faith in God, determination, service and testimony. I just love it!
If you want more stories of heroes, go get my free Family Devotionals Ebook here, then head to the October section to read hero stories. I also love to read hero stories in the form of picture book biographies. Go here to get a list of those.
Hey, here’s another fireside with Dan Debenham of Relative Race! I’m so thrilled about this! Watch below!
I watched this next one below months ago and have been hoping another one would come out.
This time Dan is joined by Rebecca, from the champion Team Black of Season 3. She now works for the production company of RR. This is so awesome! Use the timestamps below to watch the first video above if you want to skip the congregation noise at the beginning. I love that the missionary sisters’ musical number is the lovely song “Gethsemane” by Melanie Hoffman. (Go here if you want to learn more about that song.)
If you watch it you will learn some juicy secrets about the show. Enjoy! If you want to know why I love the show so much, go here. Watching this show, specifically the moment the person meets a long-lost relative, is one of the fastest ways someone can feel the Holy Spirit.
Then here’s another fireside with Team Black of Season 6, Jen and J.D. Barnes. It’s so good! You will learn even more juicy secrets about the show. They are such a cute couple! Jen is such a supportive wife and J.D. is like a cute teddy bear. He must make an amazing lacrosse coach. His story is so fascinating. When he finds out he has a sister as he meets her, I just teared up. Jen and J.D. are probably my all-time favorite team from the show, because they are about my age and I relate to them the most because J.D. has roots in Nephi, Utah like I do. When he met his aunt Linda I thought wow, she reminds me of my aunts who grew up in Nephi, LOL. It’s funny how people sometimes remind you of other people from the same place.
Here’s a new podcast from the people at Bibliofile about an old book, Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott. This is a subject I love! The podcast is all about which movie adaptation of Little Women is better: 1949, 1994, or 2019. You can read what I wrote about the latest Little Women movie over here.
It’s interesting that in this podcast the people doing it say that Louisa May Alcott hated Amy’s character. I’ve been listening to a new fan fiction book in Scribd all about that premise (go here if you don’t know what Scribd is). In real life Louisa was the favorite aunt of the daughter of May (the real Amy). She ended up taking care of May’s daughter, Lulu, after May died. Amy was and always will be my favorite character, so if it’s true that Louisa sent hate towards Amy’s character, it didn’t work on me! What do you think? Do you think Louisa hated Amy’s character? Which character is your favorite in Little Women?
Today at church I got to hear from a man in my ward who educated us, the congregation, about the flag of the nation of Georgia. He said he likes to fly it on the Sabbath Day, as well as the weeks around Christmas and Easter. That’s because, he told us, it has 5 crosses on it to represent the 5 holy wounds of Jesus. These are the wounds Jesus received when He was crucified, one on each limb and then one on his side. He also referred to Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s talk “Lifted Upon the Cross.” In this talk below Elder Holland explains why members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints don’t generally use the cross on their buildings.
Whew! Our new homeschool year is back in full force, including gameschooling every day. I had to adjust my expectations of how many games I could play over the summer. My goal was to keep up the #abookandagameaday challenge, but with other summer activities like gardening, swimming and playing (including thrifting) with my daughter and her boys, my grandbabies, I had to scale back. I was doing well if I could do either a book or a game a day. I finally convinced myself it was OK to wait until after Labor Day to be super consistent with a picture book and a game a day. I also found some great games while thrifting, which will be the topic of a separate post. OK here goes for all the fun games we played in September and so far in October.
I played this one for a game night with friends. Then blessedly, I got to play it again, this time with my family during a mountain cabin weekend family retreat. I just love this game! It is so simple yet satisfying. In this game, you are trying to get one of the players to say a word, but each of the other players can only give a one-word clue. Get it? That’s why it’s called “Just One.” Unless you are playing a three-person game, then you can give two separate one-word clues. That way the player who is the guesser for that round has four clues. If any of your teammates write down the same word, that word is thrown out. This encourages each player to think “outside the box” when coming up with a clue. I played this with my mom and dad. My mom and I were supposed to get my dad to guess “series.” The obvious clues are “world” and “baseball” right? But I figured my mom would think of those. So I thought hard and came up with “ordinal” and “episode” and my mom wrote “TV” and “books.” It was so fun to see my dad think about and guess the right answer of “series.” This is a co-operative game where you as a team see if you can guess 13 out of 13 correct.
Say Anything is a great getting to know you game. It’s best played with people you already know. Players take turn being the judge and reading a question. Then the other players supply the answers. The judge votes on his or her favorite answer. Then everyone else has to guess what the judge picked. It calls for creative thinking. I love it.
Next we have Moods, one of my new favorites. Go here to read the story behind how I got it. If you play with people who are willing to let go of their self-consciousness and practice their acting skills, you will have some laugh out loud moments. If you play with people who don’t want to act, don’t bother with the game, move on to something else.
Image Credit: amazon.com
This year at my homeschool co-operative school (commonwealth) I have been asked to teach two groups: boys ages 8-11, and then boys and girls ages 6-7. My co-mentor brought Apples to Apples one week to play with the 6-7 group. I initially thought they were too young, but I played the game with three little girls, who seemed to enjoy it. I think it’s because they are all advanced readers. Next time I want to bring the Jr. edition and see if they like it even more.
We had my sis-in-law, her husband and her son over for game night. While my son and his cousin played Catan, the adults played the games above and below. Fun, fun, fun! I just love all of these. It’s just so interesting to see if you can figure out what other people are thinking, in Druthers and Truth Be Told. You can read about Druthers here. Then Linq is a fun word association game. You have to have at least 4 people to play. It’s kind of like Chameleon, but with just a pair of words, the “link” hence the name, Linq. Why people have to reinvent the spelling of words to get a game to sell, I don’t know.
Bits and Bytes teaches basic logic as an introduction to learning coding. I’m excited to play it with my grandson when he comes to visit next.
This is my new favorite game. It’s called Welcome To. We borrowed a copy of it from the public library. (Yes, my library has games, how sweet it is! It’s like they thought of me!) I love playing it so much, now I am going to get our own copy. In this game, you get to be a subdivision developer. You win by getting the most points, which comes from building parks, building homes with pools, building groups of homes (estates) with fences around them, and planning the order of the house numbers wisely. It’s like Quixx with a purpose. See my winning paper game below, where I scored 102 points! I like Quixx OK but this one is so much more fun. It has the “press your luck aspect” of Quixx with putting numbers in a sequence has but more variety and meaning.
On days when my son wants to get our “game a day” session over with quickly, because he “has so much stuff to do,” he will grab the above game. It has the same mechanics of the original Ticket to Ride, but uses taxi cars instead of train cars and goes A LOT quicker. He always beats me! I hate the rule that when someone has only two taxi cars left, then each player gets only one more turn. So last time I convinced him to drop the rule. I wanted to finish my last route and needed two more turns, not one. Yep, I totally believe that one can negotiate rules and change them if everyone playing agrees.
Last but not least is this game published in the early 80s I picked up while thrifting. It’s nothing to rave about. Just a typical roll and move trivia game, involving questions about geography, animals, and survival skills. I just may ditch the board and put the cards on my dining room shelf for going over with my kiddos while we eat. I have a bunch of collection of cards now that we rotate through during mealtime. Occasionally we play an actual tabletop game during mealtime, which you can read about here.
New to gameschooling? Check out what I have to say here and get two free PDFs about it.
Wow! What a marvelous treat I had this past week listening to Dr. Ross Baron, a professor at BYU-Idaho. Two of my children had the privilege of attending his classes as students there. They say he is their favorite professor. Born and raised in a Jewish family, he converted to membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at age 18. He served a mission for the Church in Argentina. Now he is a husband, father, and professor at BYU-Idaho. I love his conversion story!
Here are some unique things he says that he has done (copied and pasted from his bio page at BYU-Idaho’s site).
Swam across the San Francisco Bay for the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon.
Went on The Price is Right and won a stove, a mop, and a barrel sauna.
Went on the History Channel to represent the Church.
Participated in a radio show in Southern California where callers could ask me any question about the Church.
Played the drums with a group of institute students at the Hard Rock Café in Los Angeles.
Played the Drums at Guitars Unplugged in the Fall of 2005 and the Winter of 2006 (Our group made it to the “Best of” both semesters).
Played chess in the US Open Tournament in 1991 in Los Angeles (My first match was against Arnold Denker who had previously beat Bobby Fisher . . . he worked me!).
Have spoken at Christian Colleges and Universities on the Church.
Led 6 Community Firesides about the Church where thousands attended. This is featured on the Website Fairlds.org
What a fun and smart guy he is! I hope you enjoy these videos below that he did with John Bytheway and Hank Smith. I’ve put some time stamps for Part 1 copied and pasted from YouTube. My favorite thing he said is that “fasting is the best-kept secret in the Church.”
I missed posting the debrief of Season 10 Episode 2, but here’s the debrief for Episode 3. You can watch Episode 3 here on byutv.org. My favorite moment was probably seeing Shawn react when he found his cousin, who appears to be half black. I think we all thought she was related to Shawn’s racing partner, because he is black, but no, she was Shawn’s biological cousin. It was Shawn’s birthday too so that made the day extra special too. Go here to see why I love Relative Race so much. It has become a Sunday tradition for us. If there is not a current season showing on Sunday nights we watch reruns at byutv.org. I always do a puzzle while watching. It makes for a lovely Sunday afternoon where I can truly unwind from the week and have some mental rest.
Here’s the puzzle I finished just today during my last Relative Race bingewatch. There is more tonight as I get out a new puzzle and watch the premiere of Episode 4. It’s very fitting that the puzzle is all about families, as I put it together while people fit the pieces of the puzzle of their family tree together. I thought of my maternal grandfather as I watched it. He loved Norman Rockwell’s art. So the family feels were all around me today.
My ingenious 13-year-old used one of my yellow squashes harvested from my garden to help prop up our TV screen in the living room.
Here are some thoughts on this past weekend’s General Conference. If you don’t know what General Conference is, go here. It’s basically a meeting where we get to hear from prophets and apostles of God, on the first Saturday and Sunday every April and October. This one was probably the easiest one I’ve ever enjoyed.
If you are a mom like I am, you know that Sunday, the Sabbath Day, isn’t completely a “day of rest.” Maybe unless it’s Mother’s Day. On General Conference Sunday it’s even less of a day of rest. If you are a mom like me, on Sunday, you still get to fix food, or get people to help you fix food, then get people to help you clean up, or do it all yourself. You still have to watch the clock to make sure things happen. You can’t just lie down to the wild abandon of a nap whenever you want on that day, unless you are OK with certain things not happening. I like certain things to happen after church, like the following: home church with the Come, Follow Me curriculum, a bountiful Sunday dinner, some kind of visiting with extended family or friends, which may include Sunday gameschooling, listening/watching Relative Race while putting together a puzzle, some parent mentor/child meetings, and some kind of planning meeting with my husband to talk about the family’s needs, the family’s schedule, and the budget. (Needless to say, I can’t fit all that one on top of the four hours of General Conference on GC Sunday.) All that being said, and I hope that didn’t sound too whiny, I do get a break from some regular weekday duties on the Sabbath. I hope you as a mom do too.
When I was a young mom, General Conference was always a tricky time. I never got to take notes what with the baby or toddler always wanting to grab my pen. It was a battle to keep the seven kids quietly engaged in something not harmful while we were watching the sessions on TV. I always got out General Conference packets full of coloring pages and General Conference Bingo and such things, but that usually lasted only maybe 10 minutes for some of the children. The break in between sessions was never long enough to feed the family, put the baby/toddler or toddlers down for a nap and clean up after the meal. I often ended up feeling frustrated by the time Conference was over that I didn’t get to just sit, relax, and listen or that the baby didn’t sleep for all six hours from 10 AM until 4 PM. The solution: I hung in there and eventually my children grew up! I’m sorry the solution was not something magical. Five out of my seven children are out of the nest. It’s been a while now that I can take notes and not have someone grabbing at my pen or pulling on me.
This past General Conference Sunday, my daughter-in-law fixed a pumpkin pancake dinner for the family to eat between GC sessions. With that, plus the leftover charcuterie board items from brunch, and the snacking people did after the last session, nobody was hungry for the chili supper I had planned for 5 o’clock. I saw people snacking at 4 and asked if people would still be hungry for chili in an hour and they all said they were OK with not having it. So I ended up not fixing the chili like I had planned. Hooray, I finally got a true General Conference Sunday day of rest from fixing dinner.
Here are my favorite quotes from the 2-day General Conference. These aren’t exact quotes, but paraphrases. The text of the talks is not out yet for me to get the exact quotes. I’m not putting quote marks around these sentences, so know that I’m not quoting exactly. You will get the gist of what they said, even though I’m not quoting them word for word. I did find some graphics with quotes from the Instagram page of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which I am sharing as well.
God is using more than one person to carry out His work. -Pres. Dallin H. Oaks
We need to be aware of others not of our church who are in the service of others. -Pres. Dallin H. Oaks
They who wait on the Lord will be renewed with the Lord’s strength.–Elder Uchtdorf
Before I share any more paraphrased quotes, I’ll share a few more random musings:
Someone besides Elder Uchtdorf did an airplane metaphor! It was Elder Dale G. Renlund. I love that he compared taking off on a runway that is not yours like receiving revelation for people outside your stewardship.
I’m going to get out my continent puzzles every time we have General Conference to keep learning the placement of different countries, so we can have a reference when different countries are mentioned, especially when new temples are announced. These puzzles are a lot easier to do than the world puzzle I sometimes get out.
Speaking of which, 18 more temples were announced! Yay! The list is here!
I love that Pres. Nelson invited us to focus on temples in ways we never have before. So I’m pondering on how to do that.
I am definitely going to see if we can hang out with my sis and bro-in-law at least once every Conference weekend, to watch it together and eat yummy food. They moved to live within 30 minutes of us this past May. So we got together for the first time this past Conference and had so much fun. It felt like Christmas! We had super easy meals of a yogurt sundae bar for brunch and pizza for dinner. Now that between the two of us couples we only have 3 kids left at home, it was very manageable to do this. Back in the day when all of our combined 13 children were at home, it would have been a zoo. Oh how life seasons change when one is a mother!
It is wonderful to have the brunch during the AM session, then go outside between the two sessions. We went to the park with my sis-in-law’s dogs during the break. The boys got to go “dog surfing” with the dogs pulling the boys on skateboards. So fun! I loved seeing the dogs so happy, running around so joyfully. See photo below. That dog in the foreground shows the picture of pure happiness.
OK back to the scheduled sharing of parphrased quotes.
Bless your children, whether they are 5 or 50!–Elder Hugo Montoya
Revelation is not like a nonstop flight, it’s done incrementally, line upon line.– Elder David A. Bednar
Let the standards of Jesus Christ be your new normal.– Elder Rafeal Pino
In marriage there should be no superior or inferior partner. Spouses are to be full, interdependent partners.–Elder Ulisses A. Soares
Nurturing and providing are opportunities not exclusive limitations.–Elder Ulisses A. Soares
As our church membership becomes more and more diverse, we as a Church must be more and more welcoming. –Elder D. Todd Christofferson
Elder Christofferson told of a story from author Rod Dreher who wrote Live Not By Lies. So cool!
Compensatory powers come to those who keep their covenants. –Elder Neil L. Andersen
The reward for keeping covenants is heaven’s power. –Pres. Nelson
With keeping our covenants in Jesus’ name, we can overcome this sin-saturated world, because of Jesus’ power. This includes overcoming: arrogance, pride, immorality, greed, jealousy, hatred, and anger. –Pres. Nelson
Growing to love God, and His Beloved Son Jesus Christ is more important than anything else.
The Savior blesses us with kindness, generosity, peace, rest, and self-discipline. –Pres. Nelson.
General Conference is coming! It’s this Saturday and Sunday, October 1-2. I invite you to watch it! It is a twice a year event where you can watch and listen to prophets and apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Watch it here.
Here are some resources to enjoy the event and make it seem like a holiday. I love the idea of having special food, decorations, and activities to make it extra special. Here are some ideas for that, which I wrote up a few years ago.
Tree of Life Mothering 