Hey, it’s the best time ever to get all of the non-statist, liberty-lover Connor Boyack’s educational materials (except his monthly Free Market Rules). If you are a liberty-lover you will want these resources. These are truths are country is founded on, no longer taught in schools!
If the Founding Fathers were alive today, they would buy these books for their children!
Are you fed up with socialism and communism being taught as truth? Then get these books to help you and your children know what a freedom-based society looks like.
I had an enlightening evening with Connor a few years ago when he came and spoke to my Hero Project class end of year ceremony/party. You can read about that here. I love the heroes he chose to speak about. These were all true heroes who stood up to government that overstepped its bounds. People like Alexander Doniphan, Edward Snowden, and the brave Unknown Protester, from June 5, 1989.
Would you like to know how you and your children can recognize when this happens? Get these books and resources, read them, and talk about them! They are written for ages 5-11 but older ages can still learn from them, including adults. They take hard to digest books like F.A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Edward Griffin’s book, The Creature from Jekyll Island and put them in digestible format.
This bundle includes three brand new e-books created for families to use together in the weeks ahead during social distancing and quarantining:
13 Questions to Level-Up Your Family Dinner Conversations
Subtle Ways Your Kids are Taught to Embrace Socialism
10 Tips for Raising an Entrepreneur
The bundle also includes these items:
All 11 Tuttle Twins books
All 11 PDF activity workbooks
All 11 MP3 audiobooks
The Tuttle Tales family card game
The three ebooks listed above
Passion-Driven Education (PDF, but paperback for the first 250 orders)
That’s $265 in content for only $60! This deal will be disabled soon, so grab yours quick! Go here to get it before the sale ends Wednesday night, March 25!
No coupon needed! This price is nearly 80% off!
As a gameschooler, I’m excited to get the new Tuttle Twins card game and test it out!
Enjoy this interview here with Connor by Tom Woods on how freedom-based economy can be taught to children.
Long live freedom in economy, education, and all aspects of life! It can only do so if we the people educate ourselves about the principles of liberty, and then ACT on the principles and hold ourselves and our elected officials accountable!
FTC Disclosure: I receive a commission if you purchase this bundle using the links above. The cost is the same to you and the money I earn helps to run this blog.
What did you learn from studying Jacob 5 for last week’s Come, Follow Me Study of the Book of Mormon? I’d love to hear your comments. Please share below in the comments section.
I thought it was the perfect allegory to be reading during our social distancing time. I’m sure God planned it this way. He knew the pandemic was coming, and He knows that the allegory of the olive tree has answers for us during this challenging time.
I learned from Professor Tyler in the video that the Lord of the vineyard, Jesus, doesn’t just do pruning, digging, and dunging actions to all of the House of Israel. All those actions happen to each of us on an individual basis as well.
Here is what I perceive each action symbolizing:
pruning = cutting or taking something away and out of our life, such as the death of a loved one, loss of money or job, loss of friends, loss of anything held precious by us
digging = stirring things up so that our spiritual and/or physical food is not the same way as it used to be. This could be all the things above, plus things like moving, new neighbors, change in boundaries of your ward (church congregation), change in the arrangement of anything you are used to. Like having to be quarantined. Also change in having to do anything.
dunging = something in our life that seems bad, offensive, and smelly, like dung, but it’s really fertilizer. In other words, it has the potential to create new growth in our life of something even bigger and better than we ever dreamed of. This could be a new phase in life, unkindness directed toward you, any bad thing like an accident or loss as above, but also any trial.
These three things of pruning, digging and dunging are all “tests, traps, and trials” that happen on each of our Hero’s Journey/ Covenant Path. Each one of them can be a test, trap or trial or a combination of two or all three. God, through Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, allow each of these actions to happen on each of us to benefit us. It’s so interesting that vs says that all those things the Lord of the vineyard did were to “preserve” the tree. Likewise, all the pruning, digging, and dunging that God sends our way is to preserve us. True, some pruning, digging, and dunging comes through our own choices or through other’s choices as well. We can all turn it to good if we turn to God through the choices.
My family is going through something right now, which started way before the pandemic, that seems like dung. It’s a huge trial. I’m holding on to all the hope in God I can muster that this seemingly bad thing has all the makings of a huge great blessing in my life. Then we have the pandemic, a new trial, on top of that trial. I trust in God that He knows the end from the beginning, and that despite all the bad things involved in this pandemic (death, suffering, money loss, jobs lost) new wonderful blessings will emerge, bigger and better than we ever dreamed.
Sorry for the lull in posting my #abookandagameaday challenge, this social distancing thing has changed my schedule a bit so I’m adjusting. The afternoons are more full of free time for my kiddos so I’m finding the balance of work (meaning supervision from me) and free play. I can’t exactly remember what books went with what days so the following is my best guess.
Here’s what we did the past week:
Thursday 3/12: We went to visit some friends’ alpaca ranch. Our game for that day was playing with alpacas. Or rather feeding alpacas and learning how to peacefully interact with them. 🙂 I was OK with just taking pictures. I’m totally not much of an animal person which is funny because my bachelor’s degree is in zoology.
One girl got kicked because she got a little too aggressive in interacting. Lesson learned and she didn’t get kicked again. That night I had a parent-mentor date. I played football catch with my 10-year-old and then took him out for a treat. I surprised myself by willingly doing football drills with him even in the dark and drizzling rain. We played until it was absolutely dark. We ended up thrifting after the treat, imagine that, where he was delighted to find a golf club that I bought him for $2. He had been miniature golfing at the alpaca ranch house the weekend before and discovered the game of golf. The next day he spent hours outside playing with it. It’s so fun to see such simple pleasures. I didn’t track the book I read to him that night but he’s always good about asking me to read to him. I hope he keep asking for it even up until he leaves for home. Maybe we have started a reading streak like in The Reading Promise. My older kids never asked for my bedtime reading to them at age 10 like he does, they always just gravitated to reading on their own and allowing me to bedtime read when I insisted. For our books I read the one above and the one below. The Elijah book is a sweet passover picture book, which aren’t exactly abundant, and the one below is silly but not too silly. A good book for talking about the idea of introverts/extroverts.
The amazing cookies the alpaca owners served us!
Friday 3/13: My two boys played football. That night I got to play games with adults. See the games above at the very top of this post. Yep, we played all four: Say Anything, Spontuneous, Letter Jam, and Telestrations. It was a ton of fun! Say Anything is great a as a “getting-to-know-you” and “I don’t want to think too hard” game. I’m having fun getting with adults more often to play games that the kids can’t play, full of trivia questions and references that apply to Boomers (my husband and the older couples I invite) and Gen Xers (me and the younger people I invite). The night was totally worth it just to find out that my neighbors are totally into music lyrics (hence the wife won Spontuneous). Also to see the same neighbor smile more than I’ve ever seen her do so before. I’m learning my husband is really good at this game! He loves to break out into lyrical phrases I had no idea he knew!
Dear husband is digging up the lyrics in the deep resources of his memory, about to break forth in song.
Saturday 3/14:
The best book for Pi Day! Written and drawn in the same whimsical spirit of Dr. Seuss, but educational at the same time. I wish I had found this one in time to read to all the kiddos for our gameschooling Pi Day the Tuesday before. It’s easier to follow than the Sir Cumference book.
This was date night just for hubby and me, after having the group date night the night before. For the first time ever, we played a 2-player board game for our date. We need to do this more often! We were in such a rut of just always watching a movie at home. I picked Davinci’s Challenge. I have supervised this game for our gameschooling twice but this was the first time I actually got to play myself.
I figured out a great strategy that allowed me to win. It involves pattern building and recognition, based on patterns that all come from the Tree of Life/Circle of Life motif, so perfect for Pi Day.
While we played I had this music playing from a YouTube channel I just discovered, Sounds Like Reign. A wonderful date!
Even after date night, my little guy sometimes asks me to read to him for his bedtime settling down. I think I read the one below in addition to the Pi book above.
Sunday 3/15: This was my hubby’s birthday. We had a birthday party online for him to include my four adult children and the three still at home. He’s a big Dave Ramsey fan so we played “Dave Ramsey Taboo,” using my homemade Taboo cards below. It was a hit! We played brown-eyes vs. blue-eyes. It just happened to work out that way after I divided up the group so that a parent and one older child were on each team with two younger children. (The oldest two children had left at that point otherwise we could have had two big children on each team.) I texted pictures of some of the cards to the people who were remote.
For our book that day, we read the Book of Mormon, as we do every day. I gave hubby Fiddler on the Roof as his birthday gift in VHS format, found while thrifting of course. It’s based on a book. We watched Part 1 that night and Part 2 the next night. Such a bittersweet story and the songs are so wonderful!
Monday 3/16:
We had already planned to have spring break for our gameschooling group and spring break for seminary (which means no getting up at 6 AM and driving up into town at 7 AM) so social distancing didn’t change things for that. What changed was having no track practice to drive my son to in the afternoon. I went to the library anyway and I’m sooooo glad I did as that was the last day the library was open! I got restocked just in time! Whew! If only I had known I would have doubled up! I did gameschooling with my own kiddos anyway because I love games and I want them to catch this love of games, especially when this is such a great time when everyone should be home playing games, LOL! I had been itching to play Quelf since finding it while thrifting two weeks before, in what will forever go down as “The Wondrous Game Haul at my Local Goodwill Instead of the Goodwills Faraway Where I Usually find the Best Treasures,” the morning of March 6, right before the moms’ retreat. 6 games for $13.55 with two still brand new in shrink wrap. More on that here.
This was the first time I’ve ever played Quelf. Some of the stunts it asks you to do are a bit awkward and will put some people outside of their comfort zone. I found myself smiling when I did one just because of the sheer funny-ness/randomness of it. I can see that it would help to play this game with a willing crowd who aren’t afraid of randomness and spontaneity. I can see that my kids would enjoy this more with my nieces and nephews with all that youthful energy of their cousins. So I’m definitely bringing it on our next Utah trip. Also we will play it when all the older kids are here for sure. I’ve created a house rule that you can skip whatever card you don’t like and keep going until you find one you want to play. As we increase our level of skill and ability of sportsmanship, i.e. willingness to try something new and unusual and maybe hard, I will drop that rule.
I call it a cross between Cranium, Trivial Pursuit, and Fluxx. The stunts and questions are similar to Cranium and TP and the rules are constantly changing like with Fluxx. People find their inner actors. I like that it got my 15 year old to do a math problem without any prompting on my part. Did you know that 111,111,111 times itself creates a number palindrome for the answer?
Tuesday 3/17: We played Scotland Yard, which I had picked up thrifting two weeks before for less than $3.
It’s a great deduction and strategy game. Everyone but the player who plays Mr. X tries to catch Mr. X as he runs through London. The person who is Mr. X wears the visor so the other players can’t see his eyes looking at where he is. Mr. X puts his pawn on the map every six turns or so and then disappears. Bugsy (my 10 year old) discovered he liked sunglasses instead of the visor to block his eyes from our view. I enjoyed looking up the real sites of London in Google Maps, showing them to the kids, and finding YouTubes of some of the places, like the British Museum.
Tuesday’s book was:
Wednesday 3/18: Book was Fiona’s Lace which is the greatest St. Patrick’s day picture book ever because of its theme of Irishness and family roots and sacrifice. Such a great, wonderful book!
We played three games that day: more Scotland Yard, Getta Letter at dinner, and then Taboo with Dad after he got home from work, after dinner. We got to unbox the brand new Taboo game I picked up for $2.49 while thrifting. Woo-hoo!
I was surprised that Getta Letter was such a hit among all the kids. I let them pick whatever card/category they wanted to play. I picked this up years ago thrifting in Utah. It’s so old the mechanical timer is broken so I just used the timer on my phone. It’s the reverse of Scattergories. You are given a category and then say as many things in that category as you can, one thing that starts with each letter of the alphabet, with “XYZ” as one letter. We played to see who could get the most. I think the older son got 15 or 16. We had fun using our own made-up categories like “picture book authors” and “podcasts” and for the boys, “NFL players” and “country music songs.” My son actually beat me at naming podcasts. You could totally DIY this game, just toss out a category and have people write down answers. Don’t shell out the high price charged on amazon.
Later that night, after dad was here, we played Taboo. I was pleased to see my Taboo skills were as sharp as they were when I played this three decades ago. I loved this game as a kid! I even made a “Taboo Baby Shower” version for when I hosted a baby shower for my BFF from childhood. I feel like I missed out on a lot of great potential family fun nights not playing this game when my older kids were home. The game became a pleasant and faded memory instead of a key player and I regret that. So cheers for it coming back into my life. I like that the “buzzer” is now a mild squeaker that doens’t require batteries, instead of the harsh buzzer that does. Anyway, we played kids vs. adults then boys vs. girls and I won whichever team I was on. Ellie Dix in The Board Game Family book has Taboo on her “Top Ten List” of Dangerous Games but we didn’t have any fighting during it like she warned. Maybe if we had played with the older kids who are more sticklers we would have. Another great DIY game that you can adapt to themes as I did with Dave Ramsey above. Just Google for oodles of ideas for cards.
Thursday 3/19:
A comical Easter book, not really about Easter, just about an Easter egg. Very funny!
This one is a lovely dreamy book about the cycle of life. I love Charlotte Zolotow.
I wanted to play something involving music and the kids on Thursday. I had picked up Hummm…ble, a board game involving humming and “Name that Tune.” last fall and have been really wanting to play this ever since. It’s close to $70 on amazon. I found one for $2 thrifting. I like my edition better than amazon’s because it’s purple. Remember what I said about playing with Boomers and Gen Xers? Yeah this is a game for that. Not kids. It does say 12+ on the box. That would be 12+ twenty years ago, LOL! The pic below shows how excited they were to play it with me.
We used YouTube clips of a lot of the songs instead of humming them, with me taking an active role in cue-ing up the songs and encouraging them to just guess the title based on the lyrics. So instead of humming I let them hear the actual words. The 15 year old picked out “You’re the One that I Love” from Grease after I played it from YouTube. I love that it’s a great game for musical cultural literacy, and pop culture history as well!
Here’s how to make it more fun for them next time: let them pick whatever song they want in the category that they land on, if they are the clue-giver and don’t know the song suggested on the card. Then they can stump me, especially my 15 year old with his country music.
That was during the day. Then at night we played Brain Games. I love the question cards. The four categories are logic, language, mind and body, and vision. This is a great game for my kids Pyramid Math/Science Class. I’m going to suggest we play it virtually during the coming weeks of the school shutdown where we aren’t meeting in person.
I’m thinking next time we play Quelf I will put the mind and body cards from Brain Games in substitution for the Stuntz cards in Quelf, because they aren’t silly like Quelf’s are. I’m OK with silliness, to a point. Then let people choose.
Friday 3/20:
The boys played Stratego for our game of the day. I love seeing my kids visit classics from my childhood. This is technically my 26 year old’s game but he hasn’t claimed it and taken it with him yet. He’ll probably just buy his own when he’s done playing all his other more tantalizing games.
And that’s a wrap! Another gameschool week in the books!
Want a how-to on gameschooling?
Here’s my intro to the #abookandagameaday challenge. Perfect now that we are all homeschoolers!
Here are two PDFs about gameschooling, including how to build a gameschool collection on a budget and instructions for how to play 7 games right away.
I just love March because of the themes of springtime, new beginnings, roots (natural for you if you are Irish and celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, if not Irish, just extrapolate the theme to your own ancestral roots) the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the Book of Mormon (its birthday is in March). To celebrate I’m sharing a list from my Celestial Family Devotionals ebook of songs and stories about those themes. Click on the links below to go to the song or story.
Use these songs and stories for your family devotionals. You are doing devotionals right? Here’s how to do them if you don’t know, in the video by Diann Jeppson above. With increased family togetherness forced upon us by the pandemic, this is the best time ever to learn how to hold them. Telling these stories I’ve listed here below in your devotionals will increase your family coziness during this crazy time. Use them while the kiddos are putting together a puzzle or doing some other activity with their hands busy and their brains available to listen.
I do devotionals on weekdays, in the afternoons, in addition to our family “PoWeR Hour” of the personal PoWeR actions of Pray, Read, and Write in the early morning before I have to drive to seminary. Sometimes, however, I will add a story from the list of stories below to our PoWeR actions in the morning or use it at dinner. Perhaps someday I will combine the two rituals into one. Sometimes I will text the story to my older, out-of-the nest children. You can read about how I discovered the power of doing my scripture study and prayer along side each family member doing their personal study, first thing in the morning, here.
Living By The Spirit8/84 (This article has many stories about teaching children to live by the Spirit. The paragraph that begins, “We’re on our third time through the Book of Mormon…” which includes a simulation done in a family setting is my favorite.)
Stories from the Ensign About Ancestry and Research
The Coronavirus, known as COVID-19, was recently labeled a pandemic by the World Health Organization. Thousands have died and there is much concern about the rate of there is much concern about the rate of the spread of the virus and its severity. Along with the Coronavirus, anxiety and concern are sweeping across the U.S. and the world.Today’s conversation with Sally Fallon Morell, the head of the Weston A. Price Foundation, empowers us to take our health into our own hands. Through a nutrient-dense diet, we can strengthen our bodies naturally and improve their ability to confront what may come their way.
Sally offers practical tips for boosting immunity including:
taking 1 Tablespoon of coconut oil per day
eating liver once per week
drinking bone broth regularly for detoxing
including saturated fat to safeguard respiratory health”
Read more of the synopsis and listen to the podcast here.
I recently listened to this book on audio for the second time. For my hsuband’s Christmas present, he asked all of our adult children and me to read/listen to it and 20 of Dave’s podcasts. He gave us the deadline of this birthday, which just happened. I am happy to report that I completed the gift. I enjoy listening to Dave, whether to his podcast, or his books, because I always feel a supreme sense of order. This is “core phase” for adults. I always feel encouraged and organized by listening. It’s always fun to play “what will Dave say?” as I listen. I hear the caller’s scenario and predict how Dave will reply, and usually I’m right or pretty darn close. I’ve called in and been on his show twice but that’s another blog post for another day.
This book is what inspired me to start our own Total Money Makeover. Which was a long time in coming. I “read” (really listened to it) on audio, borrowed from the public library, in the spring of 2012. It took us awhile to get serious about the principles, but we finally applied them starting in January of 2016, and then got debt-free in June of 2019.
This book is so wonderful! I give it five out of five stars! If you are in debt, I highly encourage you to read/listen to it. Even if it seems impossible or overwhelming because of all your debt, just listen or read to it and you will plant the seeds. They might take a long time in bearing fruit, as it did for us, but it will be worth it in the end!
You will learn why debt is so bad, how to get out of debt, and how to stay out of debt. The audio is extra fun because you hear it narrated by Dave himself so you hear all of his passion for avoiding debt!
Borrow it from your library on CDs or get it free in digital format using Scribd.
Here are some great quotes from the book:
“For your own good, for the good of your family and your future, grow a backbone. When something is wrong, stand up and say it is wrong, and don’t back down.”
“Change is painful. Few people have the courage to seek out change. Most people won’t change until the pain of where they are exceeds the pain of change.”
“You must walk to the beat of a different drummer. The same beat that the wealthy hear. If the beat sounds normal, evacuate the dance floor immediately! The goal is to not be normal, because as my radio listeners know, normal is broke.”
“Years ago, in a motivational seminar by the master, Zig Ziglar, I heard a story about how mediocrity will sneak up on you. The story goes that if you drop a frog into boiling water, he will sense the pain and immediately jump out. However, if you put a frog in room-temperature water, he will swim around happily, and as you gradually turn the water up to boiling, the frog will not sense the change. The frog is lured to his death by gradual change. We can lose our health, our fitness, and our wealth gradually, one day at a time. It might be a cliché, but that’s because it is true: The enemy of ‘the best’ is not ‘the worst.’ The enemy of ‘the best’ is ‘just fine.’ ”
“The typical millionaire lives in a middle-class home, drives a two-year-old or older paid-for car, and buys blue jeans at Wal-Mart.”
“Someone who never has fun with money misses the point. Someone who never invests money will never have any. Someone who never gives is a monkey with his hand in a bottle.”
Disclosure: the link to Scribd is my affiliate link. If you sign up for Scribd, you can get two free months. The cost is the same for you and I get another free month. If you are a bibliophile like I am, you will love it! It gives you unlimited access to thousands of audiobooks and books in text format, more so than Audible. I have Audible too and love both platforms. Often I can find a lot more of what my children are reading for their homeschool subjects/classes in scribd than in Audible. I can also get sheet music, documents, magazines, newspapers, and picture books in Scribd. I can also get all the Little House books in audio and text, and many other read aloud chapter books for the kiddos, that I see recommended on readaloudrevial.com, on Scribd. I hope you sign up and enjoy it!
I got the cute head topper, which matches the tablecloth, from the Pioneer Woman party goods aisle at Walmart. Lesson learned: Just keep the candles far way from the plastic caketopper, otherwise the lit candles will melt it, as you can see on the left!
This past Sunday was dear husband’s birthday. So I made him the two-layer cake above, entirely out of ice cream. (Here are the directions for an ice-cream cake.) In the midst of the panic going on right now, it was nice to have a Sabbath Day where I could stay at home all day and have a cozy family celebration. As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I had received an email earlier in the week that our church was cancelled because of the pandemic and that was actually a relief. It meant I got out of accompanying the ward choir’s performance which I was just a lee-tle stressed about because based on past experiences of accompanying in sacrament meeting I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to see the chorister and she has certain pauses in the music that I hadn’t fully marked on my copy of the sheet music. I had thought about calling her to ask her more about that and hadn’t so when church was cancelled, I thought, whew, I got out of that one. Now the regular accompanist (I was filling in as a sub) can take over. Also having church cancelled meant I could get extra sleep and relax a lot more than I usually get to do on Sundays. I did end up taking a hot soak in my tub and a two-hour nap in the afternoon, something I hardly ever get to do, and that was glorious! After the nap, the kiddos and I worked like busy beavers to make dear husband his requested birthday dinner of lasagna. It was so yummy!
It’s the Pioneer Woman’s recipe on her site. You can read my take on it and get the link for the recipe here. I highly recommend it. I always get rave reviews when I serve it! I was feeling too lazy to make my low-carb, grain-free version of the Trim healthy Mama lasagna here so I indulged in the wicked pasta.
As homeschoolers, we are already used to using our home for more than just a motel, an entertainment center, and a place to eat. We use our home as a place to study and learn. We use it as a place to get to know each other. We use it as a place to create. So I am not freaking out about being home more in this pandemic. (I am soooo happy about it! Almost as happy about the Church leaving the Boy Scouts! It means we get to push the “pause” button on the treadmill of life! More than just the Sabbath-day pause button. I get to have a week off of driving to seminary that starts at 7:25 AM and driving to Mutual and Primary Boy activities on Tuesday nights!)
This was a welcome opportunity for “homechurching.” I insisted the kiddos dress up in Sunday best as we usually do for the Sabbath Day. I invited my adult children to join us via video chat and we had a mini worship service, minus the passing of the sacrament. Two of my adult children and my three littles were there in person. I shared my sacrament meeting talk that I gave the Sunday after last Christmas because some of my children left the day before to go back to Utah so hadn’t heard it. After one of my sons shared a story from his mission to Argentina, the two adult children had to leave so I did some “Come, Follow Me” study with my littles.
Earlier, in my personal study, what I call my “PoWeR Actions” for Pray, Read, and Write, or what Becky Edwards calls Heaven Journaling. I got this amazing revelation from using the question in the Come, Follow Me Study Guide for Jacob 1 that says the following:
Think about your own “[errands] from the Lord” as you read Jacob 1:6–8, 15–19 and 2:1–11. Why did Jacob serve so faithfully? What does his example inspire you to do to magnify your Church callings and your responsibilities at home?
As I pondered that question, I realized, that “Hey, my roles of wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, sister-in-law, and cousin are callings too! How can I magnify those? and what does it mean to magnify them?”
I immediately thought of this example of a little girl who magnified her office as a daughter. It is from the January 2012 issue of the Friend, called, “Chocolate Cake.”It basically tells the story of a little girl who earned a whole dollar by babysitting a non-family member for a whole week. This story obviously took place a looooong time ago, LOL! AS a kid, I earned a dollar an hour, over 30 years ago. Anyway, after she earns her dollar, she wonders what to do with it. She thinks about all the things she’s been lusting after, a hair ribbon, a drawing pad, and pencils. She goes to the store to decide what to buy. As she’s walking around the store, she remembers it’s her dad’s birthday tomorrow. She realizes that she wants to use her money to please him, by surprising him with a chocolate cake. That’s another way we know the story is old, is that she can buy all the ingredients for just a dollar! So she buys the ingredients, gets up early the next morning, and has the cake all cooled and frosted by the time he comes home. He is definitely thrilled and pleased by her surprise birthday gift. She feels satisfied that she spent her hard-earned money on something to please her dad. Ahhhh! So sweet! It brings tears to my eyes. I want to be more like that little girl, willing to sacrifice for my dear family members.
So in honor of that little girl who magnified her calling as her father’s daughter, I am showing pictures of the various chocolate cakes I have made through the years (the good ones- they haven’t always turned out, LOL!) and then my recipe for a grain-free, sugar-free chocolate cake over here.
I read this story years ago and loved it. It really drove home to me the point that as family members we can go out of our way to do special things for our family members and that’s important. Even if nobody else sees it. Even if it doesn’t get shown on social media. Even if the result isn’t perfect and/or pretty. After all, “The most important work will be within the walls of your own home,” said David O. McKay.
I realized that to magnify means to “make larger.” It means to make the role or calling more visible. Doing so makes a greater vision of that role, so that when people think of that calling, they know more of what it can involve, because the picture of what it can look like, the vision, has increased. Not to glorify the person doing the work of the calling, but to glorify God. Our most important callings are that of family roles.
This is the card my children gave to me that came with the best Mother’s Day gift ever last year: a yearly subscription to Audible! Yes…my adult children were really thinking about me and led out in magnifying their “calling” as their mother’s children and totally nailed it on what they could do to please me for Mother’s Day!
So I’ve been thinking of examples/stories of what I’ve heard of people magnifying their “callings” as family members in the following roles:
husband
wife
father
mother
daughter
son
brother
sister
cousin
niece
nephew
grandchild
Whew! Then we have all the “half”, “in-law” and “step” modifiers you can add to all of those which “round out” to be the same roles, actually. I couldn’t think of examples for every role but this is what I came up with:
-brother: I have a friend who says that one of her sons helps his little four year old sister say affirmations each morning to help her start her day on a positive note.
-aunt: My sister, Emily, would take my older children swimming when they were 7 and under, when I was a young mom, giving me a much needed break.
-father: I’ve heard Pres. Henry B. Eyring talk about how he lovingly would create gifts for his children that he hoped would inspire them to do great things and aim high
-grandfather: I have a friend who said that her children’s grandfather had a standing weekly date to call his grandchildren and read stories to them over the phone.
-grandmother: My own grandmother was a high school home economics teacher. She loved sewing for her granddaughters. She sewed anything she could think of for us, elegant velveteen, lacy “Nutcracker” type dresses for us at Christmas, pillowcases, even underwear! In the summer when we would stay for a week when my parents went away for my dad’s work, she took us to her classroom and taught us, meaning my sisters and me, how to sew. The first article of clothing I ever sewed, was a pair of shorts, under her tutelage during our “summer sewing camp.” I was so proud of those shorts!
-extended family member: a woman in a previous ward had a Sunday tradition of getting out her collection of blank birthday cards every Sunday to write Happy Birthday greetings to all her extended family who had birthdays in the coming week and then she would mail them out, of course.
-I’ve heard of a grandmother who takes her grandchildren for a day so parents can go to the temple
We have so many chances to magnify our “homemade” callings of wife, sister, mother, niece, daughter, granddaughter. I hope these examples give you some ideas. I would love to hear any examples you have. Please share them in the comments below. I especially want to hear about magnifying the “uncle” role.
As it says in the song, “Have I Done Any Good?” by Will L. Thompson
There are chances for work all around just now,
Opportunities right in our way.
Do not let them pass by, saying, “Sometime I’ll try,”
But go and do something today.
‘Tis noble of man to work and to give;
Love’s labor has merit alone.
Only he who does something helps others to live.
To God each good work will be known.
(Chorus)
Then wake up and do something more
Than dream of your mansion above.
Doing good is a pleasure, a joy beyond measure,
A blessing of duty and love.
Get my modified version of the Trim Healthy Mama Trimtastic Chocolate Cake here.
This one’s about the guy, Edwin Binney, who invented Crayola crayons, and his cousin, C. Harold Smith. So fun! Now I know where the business name “Binney and Smith” came from.
This one above is a fascinating look into colonial times. It features the story of a real young woman, Amelia Simmons, who learned how to cook as an indentured servant for a family of little boys in the late 1700s. She determined to make the first American cookbook, using local New England ingredients, like cornmeal and squash. I always thought Fanny Farmer was the first person to write an American cookbook, but according to author Deborah Hopkinson, it was Amelia. This story shows how she received the honor to bake Independence Cakes (one for each colony) to serve at George Washington’s inauguration in New York City, and includes the recipe to make 13 cakes, including 20 lbs of flour! Thanks to Amelia, who introduced the word “cookie” to American readers. The word cookie came from “koejke” which Dutch settlers used.
What would it be like not to know how to read until you learn at age 116? This is the amazing true story of Mary Walker, who lived to be 121. She was born into slavery and lived until 1969. When she felt lonely, she read from her Bible.
A very sweet book about a very sweet man. Who doesn’t like him these days? My third book that I’ve read about him.
I love this book because it shows how to be inquisitive. Which we need some modeling of because as we grow up in this screenful, pre-programmed world we sometimes lose it. 🙂
I think it’s super cool that Tom and John were so different, but still friends, but then they became enemies. Their story is an example to all of us that we can be friends with someone different from us, and if we fight, we can forgive and start over. I also love that Benjamin Rush, a mutual friend, helped to get them back together. It just makes me wonder if I could do the same thing for any warring friends I might have.
Probably not a true biography as it’s about not just one person, but two people. So maybe the biography of a friendship? Just like the one about John and Tom. This one’s about Noah Webster and Ben Franklin’s united effort to create a new alphabet for American English. Fascinating!
This is my favorite picture book on George Washington because of Cheryl Harness’ gorgeous watercolor, outlined in ink, illustrations. I also love all the classic, great stories of George that show his noble character. But if you are reading this to kids under 12, don’t bother to read every single word. It’s too much for them. All the words and all the details on the maps are for adults. Check out Cheryl’s other picture book biographies, of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. They are all fabulous.
This one is cute for introducing kids to the amazing, inventive life of Ben Franklin. you might need to clarify that Ben didn’t really have a talking mouse. 🙂
I heard about the story of Emily Roebling from Ramona Zabriskie’s Wife for Life book, which I read over a year ago. Emily is an example of a “Wife for Life,” because of how she helped her husband in his quest to build the Brooklyn Bridge, a feat of engineering, which in turn helped build their marriage. Fascinating! I enjoyed reading this book to my 9-year-old. I love picture books about real people that tell real stories in a short amount of time and leave me feeling so good. It’s just inspiring and amazing and wonderful to think that someone, especially a woman in the 1800s, could just decide that she can study something and be an expert on it, without going to formal school and getting a degree in that subject. Emily’s father-in-law, John Roebling, who started the Brooklyn Bridge, died, after getting tetanus while working on the bridge. Then her husband, who was left with the task of finishing the bridge, got ill and bedridden. So she took over the monumental task of being the liaison between her husband and the crew, communicating his vision and instructions, getting the bridge finished! Amazing! I’m going to get the book about them by David McCollough in Audible to get more details.
Is there such a thing as a biography of an animal? This is another true story. It shows the power of people to cause change. I love it!
This book, by the author of Snowflake Bentley, is such a fun celebration of the life of Alice Waters, the founder of Chez Panisse, a famous restaurant, and her passion for uniting people with wholesome food. I love Alice’s idea of the Edible Schoolyard.
I love this picture book story of the life of Booker T. Washington. He was an amazing man. I didn’t know he was so visionary that he literally built the school that he founded brick by brick, even making the bricks himself, after intense study. In this age of easily accessible tutorials, he leaves us no excuse for not accomplishing our dreams. The watercolor illustrations are just lovely.
Here are more. I don’t have time to comment about them, just go get them. You will love every one!
(The rest of these below aren’t picture books. Just so you know that I know.)
The Faithful Spy is a graphic novel, not a picture book, about a theologian turned spy who felt duty bound to assist in the plot to kill Hitler. The mesh of words and illustration by the author/illustrator John Hendrix is amazing. I wish I could have learned history in my youth reading books like this and Nathan Hales’ books, along with picture books.
Here’s one about an underrated hero in American history: Nathaniel Bowditch. He was a mathematician who wrote a guide for ocean navigation, The Practical Navigator. According to this site, he “made seamanship a science and left all mariners in his debt.” Why I didn’t learn about him in public school, I don’t know. It was only until I homeschooled my own children that I discovered the man and this book.
So this one below is not a picture book, or for children, but I’m including it here as I transition to talk about biographies for adults. It’s not a biography per se but the story of three famous men and their life with food, so that’s sort of biographical right?
I saw the book above in the gift shop at Colonial Williamsburg and so hunted it down at my local public library as soon as I got home. I didn’t know that Washington was such the fisherman. It includes recipes for such things as Jefferson’s ice cream (with a copy of it written in his own hand!) and Boston Baked Beans. If you are like me and don’t drink alcohol you may want to skip all those parts about their fascination with spirits.
The rest of these aren’t particularly for children either. I’m listening to these in Audible as “treats” every Thursday when I take my long drive home from my homeschool group meetup (90 minutes one way) after the kids fall asleep in the car:
Last but not least I have to mention Louisa May Alcott and her mother. This one is actually a children’s biography of Louisa that I read aloud to my kiddos a few years ago…
and then a “bio” of sorts of Louisa and Abigail May, her mother, and their mother-daughter relationship, for adults.
You can read more about the book here! It is a gem! If you want to go deeper, read the compilation of Abigail’s letters and diary entries in this book below, by the same author as above. She is actually a grand niece of Louisa.
So I’ve been lusting after the card game Codenames for some time. I heard about it when it was brand new and got it for my older daughter’s fun Christmas gift four years ago when she was in college. (See my post about my “three-gifts-for-Christmas tradition” here.) I had never played it or heard about it, but liked what I read in the description on amazon. I risked that it would be a hit. Turns out, I was right, as it has became a highly ranked party game (#2 Party Game on boardgamegeek.com) and she loves it too. (I know the lid in the pic above says #1 but it’s since been edged out by Decrypto.) Daughter #1 hasn’t ever lived for longer than 4 months at home since being in college and is now married so we haven’t played the game much because she keeps it with her, imagine that, LOL!
You can’t tell, but the Hilton cousins on the long table are playing Disney Codenames.
We play it when she brings it home for Christmas and at cousin reunions and love it too. I’ve seen it at other family reunions as well. Like when I went to my husband’s Hilton Family Reunion and the grandkids were playing the Disney Codenames version. Amazon has it with over 6000+ reviews giving it a five star average rating.
I had just played Codenames one week prior for our World War 1 Movie/Game Night, having to borrow the game. I made my own agent cards/word cards using keywords from the WW1 book that we read for our Hero LEMI project class. i just took a bunch of index cards and wrote words on them. You can adapt Codenames for any subject you are teaching, making it great for gameschooling.
So…imagine my pleasant surprise when I went on my latest thrifting jaunt, during my small window of time available after the 8 AM Goodwill opening for the day and before 8:15 when I pick up the older kiddos from seminary. This time I had my 10-year-old in tow, and he found Codenames casually tossed askew on a shelf amidst housewares, still in shrink-wrap, for $2.99! And with my educator’s discount, I got 20% off that! God was definitely watching out for me. He knew I’ve been wanting this game for some time and blessed me with it. Yes, I could have bought it at Christmas time with my budgeted Christmas money, as it’s only around $15 on Amazon, but I chose to do other things with the money.
You can bet we played our new Codenames game for the next Family Home Evening after getting such a great deal on it. Sorry about the maps underneath the cards cluttering the view. I keep those on the table under plastic to capitalize time with my kids’ brains while they are eating. A trick I learned from LaDawn Jacobs.
I also got Taboo, brand new in shrink wrap, for 20% off $1.99, and four other games, including Quelf. I saw Quelf in a Chinaberry book catalog like 10 years and have wanted it ever since. That one was 20% off $1.99 as well. Score! I got 6 games total for $13.55. Yum! See all the games in the photo below.
That was the beginning of my amazing weekend last week. The day before, on Thursday, I also felt God working in my life as He brought a copy of the Zeta Mathusee Teacher’s book into my life. Most people aren’t thrilled to stumble upon the teacher’s edition of a math book, but when you are me, who knows she had bought the book a long time ago (with my career of homeschooling spanning 20+ years I have most of the mathusee books, DVDs, and manipulatives) but then you have a son who starts the Mathusee Zeta book but claims that the teacher’s book is lost, and you search yourself and can’t find it, then you are thrilled! This book is like gold to me, as I have to be out the door at 2:45 every weekday to take him to track practice and need to correct his math work for the day without having to think about it. Teacher’s edition of math book with answer key = time saving for this homeschool mama = peace.
My homeschool mom friend who owns the farm with the twin baby goats we visited last Thursday had it sitting on her shelf, looking very unused at the moment, as it was jam-packed in between other books. So I asked if I could borrow it, not wanting to shell out another $35 on ebay or $40 on the official mathusee site. She graciously agreed to let me borrow it, so I am feeling very blessed indeed. I did not want to buy another one, especially when I know I’ve had a copy in this house for the previous four older children and most likely some careless child lost it. I’ve probably even bought it twice and was not about to buy it again. God is so great! He prompted me through the Holy Spirit to walk around and look at all her books on her amazing bookshelf that covers her whole wall and I was then able to see this much needed math book. The view of it was blocked by her dining room table and chairs. It was only after I got up and walked around the table to sit on the side closest to the bookshelves that I saw this precious math book.
So, back to my wonderful weekend, on Friday morning I bought the games while my two teen kiddos were at seminary, drove home to do gameschooling, then exercised and ate and packed and went off to my homeschool group’s moms’ retreat for a day and a half of estrogen-charged connection and the best food. I’ll have to blog about the moms’ retreat another time. It’s my 6th time with this group of friends and It’s always amazing. We’ve done it in the fall and spring, every school year. You can go here to read about my first one with this group as well as how to replicate your own, DIY. The photo below of homemade pavlova and flowers pretty much sums up the experience.
Yes, beauty and food! Delish!
Four years ago when I moved to AZ I felt lonely. Since then, I have been blessed with the resources, close friends/deep connections, and events that I was craving. I chalk it all up to following President Russell M. Nelson’s charge to step up my game with family history work and temple work from his 2017 RootsTech Presentation. Here is what his wife Sister Wendy Nelson said in the same presentation:
It is my testimony that however fabulous your life is right now, or however discouraging and heartbreaking it may be, your involvement in temple and family history work will make it better. What do you need in your life right now? More love? More joy? More self-mastery? More peace? More meaningful moments? More of a feeling that you’re making a difference? More fun? More answers to your soul-searching questions? More heart-to-heart connections with others? More understanding of what you are reading in the scriptures? More ability to love and to forgive? More ability to pray with power? More inspiration and creative ideas for your work and other projects? More time for what really matters?
I entreat you to make a sacrifice of time to the Lord by increasing the time you spend doing temple and family history work, and then watch what happens. It is my testimony that when we show the Lord we are serious about helping our ancestors, the heavens will open and we will receive all that we need.
I had been doing the work in Utah, but then when we moved four years ago, I got out of a regular schedule. When I heard the above words, I got back into the work regularly and I have seen the promise come true, with my thrifting treasure hauls, more friends, closer friends, my homeschool group, getting out of debt, and angelic protection as evidence.
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Tree of Life Mothering 