Today Bethany is back with some encouraging words about words! One thing I am learning to appreciate more and more about the people and rooms around me is their general appetite for books. Since the beginning of time, or at least my time, my parents have modeled honest book obsession. This love would have burst out even if they hadn’t intentionally tried to pass it on. It is a […]
Read More →Category: Family
Training Our Children to Help with Household Chores
In the days when our children were little, I used to jokingly wish we could afford to hire a maid once in a while to help with routine household chores. Well, that maid never made her appearance. Instead, we decided to hire our own boys. Why not pay them to do work that we would be willing to pay someone else to do? Suddenly our live-in mess-makers became live-in maids […]
Read More →Some of My Favorite People
I just spent almost four days with some of my very favorite people! All my daughters and daughters-in-law (along with their children) ran off to the beach for our annual girls’ weekend away (while the guys did their man thing in the woods). We had sunshine, beach walks, singing, way to much food, and lots of time to talk (when we weren’t trying to keep up with five grandchildren!) Rebekah […]
Read More →Helping Our Children Remember God’s Hand in Their Lives
Last night we watched reminders lighting up the sky all around us. Fireworks, sparklers, booms, and cracklings all helped us remember the battles that men fought to earn our country’s freedom. Independence Day commemorates the beginnings of our nation, and if we want to do our job well, we will take advantage of the holiday to teach our children about God’s hand in our country’s history. Memorials are powerful teaching tools. […]
Read More →Loving the Bible in a Hands-On Way
I remember waking up almost every morning to my mama reading her Bible on the couch. I was completely fascinated by the whole thing–the special colored pencils, the special black pens that she had a never-ending supply of, the pictures and notes she drew in the margins. We’re not very alike, but the fact that she drew rainbows in her Bible is a good indicator that we’re related. 🙂 I, […]
Read More →Musings on a Cat Mess
I didn’t step in it – this time. But my husband did, in the dark as he left for work early in the morning. Then he walked through our room, back out, and through the entire house to the back door. I know, because his footprint was in the mess our cat had very rudely deposited on the floor during the night. The trail went from one end of the […]
Read More →Don’t Give Up!
Tomorrow our second-born son celebrates his 26th birthday! He is the son who made me wonder if I wanted to be a mother anymore. 🙂 He is the son who was toasted at his wedding by one of the men in our church, who smiled as he said that years earlier he would have voted Joseph, of any of the little boys in church, most likely to end up in […]
Read More →Against Tolerance…
Those of you who have children online, children who follow blogs — do you know what they are reading? The internet and social networking make it much more difficult to know our children’s “friends” and the people who are influencing their thinking. People “come into” our homes through the internet that we may never “meet”. And just because a blog is written by someone who claims to be a Christian […]
Read More →Mother’s Day Thoughts
“…for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5, ESV). Last week I spent a little over thirty-six hours on full-time duty caring for two of my little granddaughters, with two of their little cousins joining us for the evening. Those thirty-six hours were filled with: Unproductive and oops-too-late runs to the bathroom, punctuated with hilarious comments and sweet hugs Total meltdowns over a cat that was innocently sleeping […]
Read More →The Advice Book: A Treasured Graduation Gift
It’s been almost ten years since my homeschool graduation party. I got some great presents, and I can still remember some of them: A family heirloom pocket watch. Pens and notebooks. Generous friends and grandparents gave money, which helped me buy my first digital camera. Most of these gifts have been used up (or become seriously outdated), but my most treasured gift still sits on my bookshelf, and I still […]
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