November 2014

Art Neeley came to visit us for a little while on November 1st! He and Jeff lived on the same floor freshman year at BYU and he also served in the Hansen's mission in Hamburg. He ended up finishing his degree at OSU and was back here visiting for a Blue Jackets game.

We went to the Haunted Railroad at the Ohio Railway Museum. It was a fun little outing and nice since they are usually only open on Sundays. Sarah kept pointing at skeletons hanging on the train cars and telling me "ghosties, Mommy!" 

The kids always love a little dip in the hot tub before bath time. Pictures never turn out very well, but you can tell they are happy. :) 

Eating roasted pumpkin seeds after church (with a vest on). Notice Jeff's typewriter on the table also.

Jeff painted the dining room one Saturday. It is SW Peppercorn, which looked blue against the wood trim but I still liked it. He didn't know I took this picture :)

Jacob and Rebecca did an after school Spanish class and I got to take the little girls to the Fiesta on the last day. Here they are singing songs for us...

...and making snacks to share!

The whole class! 

All done and ready for Thanksgiving! Thanks, Jeff!

Hannah had ear tubes put in in November. She was a very fun little patient at the hospital.

We had lots of fun waiting for her to go back and she had the time of her life not only riding these cars but also having my undivided attention. Doesn't happen very often!

Now I can't remember why I took this picture exactly but it does tell a few things about Sarah - this was probably a little bit before I took the crocs and hid them up in her closet because she only wanted to wear them and it was getting colder. That bag has been thrown away because she broke it carrying it around everywhere with her "fings" inside. Also, I love her smile and laugh. Such a great kid.

Sarah got really into coloring Charlie Brown pictures, and her favorite was Patty.

Hannah reading our Yankee Doodle book. One of my favorites.

Rebecca heading out to a birthday party. They had fun dressing up!

Raking leaves out back!

Watching people rake leaves out back.

Looking at the clock, I am guessing I was making dinner right then and took this picture. Sarah and Rebecca coloring, Jacob playing some game. Hannah off on her own...

No idea if that was the same night as the previous picture but she really is into just about everything. Never forget to put the groceries away, because you might have a helper!

My parents and Jamie and her kids came for Thanksgiving.

We made peanut butter pie,

cherry pie,

pumpkin pie,

a large bird,

and little turkey cup decorations.

Sarah loves sliding a chair over to the sink to wash her hands.

We have a lot to be grateful for! 

"Whenever I picture Dad, I think of him taking the meat off a turkey carcass." - Erin, Thanksgiving 2013  We had to take a picture again this year since Erin couldn't be here :) 

Reading with grandma, making castles, and this shows that Rebecca kept putting a space in the THANKFUL banner because thank is a word and ful is a word. :)

My nieces wrestling in the loft.

The girls visited the doll museum one day in downtown Worthington. It was a great visit with everyone!

Book Review: Parenting Principles - 31 Teachings to Raise Children in Righteousness

I received an electronic copy of David Christensen's new book Parenting Principles which contains 31 short, wonderful chapters about how we can apply gospel teachings to raising our children. I'm happy to be kicking off the book tour today here on my blog! 

I loved the simplicity of this book most of all. It is approachable and easy to read and not "I know more than you so I will share what I know" as some parenting books are. There is a reminder given at the end of each section that there are no rules and that parents should follow the Holy Ghost and use prayer first and foremost to know how to best raise their children. I love this reminder - isn't it easy to read parenting books and then try to implement everything (too much!), only to get frustrated when you realize it wasn't the best method for your particular youngster? 

There are wonderful stories from the author's childhood on a dairy farm and from others he knows that teach great principles about hard work, the safety in having boundaries, and other important topics for parents to consider when raising righteous children. I love how well he adds words from Latter-day prophets with words of scripture to really make the teachings he shares applicable to our day and any age of child.

I would love to share this book with one reader in an electronic format. Leave a comment below telling what your favorite scripture is that has helped you in parenting, or a great parenting technique you have used or heard of. I'll choose a winner at random in one week!

You can learn more about David Christensen at his author website here and you can visit his Facebook page also! 



Thank you to Cedar Fort for the chance to give my honest review of this book and for the giveaway copy! 

Book Review: 52 Weeks to Fortify Your Family by Nicole Carpenter

I received a preview copy of the new book 52 Weeks to Fortify Your Family: 5 Minute Messages to review for Cedar Fort, Inc. This book by Nicole Carpenter is an expanded version of something she posted on her website MOMentity that she called the Armor Your Children series. The idea is that you can spend a few minutes each day sharing a scriptural thought with your children that will give them something to think about throughout the day.

In our family, we usually read from the Book of Mormon each night before the kids go to bed, but I really wanted to try to fit in trying this book out in the mornings, but it proved to be a little bit difficult for me. I have 2 in school who are eating around 7:10 AM, and 2 little ones who are sometimes still sleeping then or who are also eating, and I realized our morning routine is not always the same each day. So I didn't try this book out as well as I hoped that I would, sad to say. But the format of the book is such that I can pick it up and begin again any time, and I like that. (Note: I reviewed an electronic copy of this book and I think if it had been a hard copy I would have been able to test it out a bit more with my kids!) Maybe we will try it at dinner time and see if that is a little easier.

I gave a copy of this book to my older sister for Christmas because I felt like it was something that would help her as a mother of 4 children (a little older than mine). I hope she is enjoying it!

I like that the book doesn't have to be done in order. It doesn't start in January or anything like that, it just has numbered weeks. And while some lessons might reference the previous week's thoughts, it is very easy to skip around as needed. If you feel like your children might need some thoughts about obedience or tithing to follow up after a Family Home Evening lesson, this book will be a great resource for you. There are General Conference talks that go along with the topics, questions to help children think about things further, and even a quote that I think could be memorized during the week you study the topic.

I feel like this is the kind of resource that parents wish they could have, lots of great thoughts/scriptures at their fingertips, all organized and ready to share with eager learners. When I discussed kindness with my children, we were all able to share some interesting thoughts. I really believe that having gospel conversations with my children is important, and I feel that this book provides a great jumping off point for me and other parents to be able to do just that.

Book Review: I Want to Be Baptized, by Annalisa Hall

I am posting this a couple days later than I should be. A couple months ago I was sent a digital copy of Annalisa Hall's new book I Want to Be Baptized to review. I read it with my oldest, who will be baptized this coming year.

The book goes through all of the things that baptism means and everything is taught by a big sister to her younger brother who is preparing to be baptized. Jacob and I really enjoyed reading this book together and it helped serve as a great jumping off point for some pretty meaningful discussions. We look forward to continuing to read it. Because Jacob is the oldest, I also loved that it showed him how he will be able to be the good example for his younger siblings when the time comes for them to choose to be baptized.

We think that Corey Egbert's illustrations are really fun and they help explain some of the more symbolic aspects of baptism in a way that not only went along with the text very well but also that made it easier for a child to understand really important doctrine in a simple way. And we loved that the boy is missing a tooth--a detail pointed out by my observant little boy!

Many thanks to Cedar Fort Publishing for letting us review this simple but very helpful book.

Book Review: Walking With the Women of the New Testament by Heather Farrell

Have you ever been talking with a friend, the really good kind of friend, who has probably known you for a while and she (I'm using feminine pronouns because I am thinking of my girl friends here) just gets you?  Maybe while you are talking you realize just how great your bond is because she understands the struggles you have had, how much you love to do something, or how much you struggle with a weakness. Maybe she has those same struggles, likes, and weaknesses, but maybe she is just really fabulous at relating to you. Maybe she helps you see how you can become better and maybe she helps you become better. She believes in you, and maybe it's because she's been there before or maybe it's because she just has a great ability to help others reach their potential. Maybe you can see a bit of yourself in her or she can see a bit of herself in you. It might be that not everyone has a friend or a sister or a mother like this, but oh how I hope you do.

But let's back up a bit to where I mentioned seeing a bit of yourself in someone else. Sometimes this can happen with people in our lives, or for me it seems it happens most often with my children. But I have had it happen when I read books before and I love how eye-opening it is to be able to relate to someone, whether fictional or historical, because it gives me an opportunity to reflect. Anything that helps me to be able to improve myself in an uplifting way that doesn't make me feel guilty is a great thing.

I have been following Heather Farrell's blog Women in the Scriptures for almost two years now and was really excited about her book. I started reading Walking with the Women of the New Testament a couple weeks ago and I'm still working my way through it. The artwork is pretty eye-catching, kind of like photographs and watercolors in one. Mandy Jane Williams did such a nice job with these pictures. The book goes in chronological order through the New Testament, beginning with Elisabeth, and details the accounts and experiences of dozens of women or groups of women. I feel like a review needs to be balanced so I will say that I found a few spelling and grammatical errors that bugged me at first but one that made me laugh. In the section about Mary, the mother of Jesus, it refers to Gabriel and then later Gabrielle. :)  I promise the author did not really try to add more women to the New Testament in this book, since that was just a spelling error, but in general it was so great to see that there really are more women in the scriptures than most casual readers would realize. We really need to look for them, and Heather's book encourages us to do just that.

Some of these women we know more about, and others are just mentioned in passing in the New Testament. But instead of just aimlessly speculating about them, Heather puts things into a proper historical and time-period appropriate religious perspective and then makes suggestions about what could have been. And she also does a most wonderful job of relating these women to our day, which brings me back to my earlier points and might be the reason this book resonates with me so much.

The last few weeks have been quite emotionally challenging for me. As someone who has dealt with mild depressive episodes in the past, I know my "warning signs" and can recognize when I need to switch gears to work through the darker periods that I can sense are coming. But the hard part is that sometimes the warning signs phase feels like the dark periods and I just don't know when it might end. I am doing fine, just trying to observe the waterfall of my thoughts from behind it instead of underneath, if that makes sense.  So the other day I was having a pretty rough day, just not feeling great about myself and really not wanting to do the dishes or shower or anything really. My younger kids were down for their naps and there was just a little while before it would be time to pick up the older kids at school. I sat down to continue my reading, even though I really just wanted to sleep and zone out for a bit. I pulled out this book and was so comforted by the passage about Mary Magdalene as soon as I read it. Heather writes, "The story of Mary Magdalene gives me great hope. She reminds me that there is no sickness--physical or mental--that Christ cannot heal." That was something I needed to read, right then. It lifted me up and I felt spiritual strength being poured into me that helped me get through the rest of that afternoon.

Reading about the daughter of Jairus also gave me great peace where the author likened physical death to spiritual death and reminded me that the phrase "she is not dead, but sleepeth" can be applied to people who may be wandering in spiritual darkness right now but who will someday return to the light.  There are sections here about barely mentioned-in-passing women in the scriptures like Paul's sister that remind us that righteous people we read about in the scriptures often had righteous examples to follow -- and maybe those examples came from their mothers, grandmothers or sisters.

We can learn from the women whose stories are in this beautiful book and I believe as we study their lives and experiences that we will truly feel like they are dear friends.

Disclaimer: I was given a copy of this book to review from Cedar Fort Publishing in exchange for my honest review. 

October 2014

The month began with General Conference. It was so wonderful - I feel like it always comes at the best time for me. A little while after school starts again and things get scheduley and busy and then comes this great reminder of how important the Gospel is in our lives. Love that feeling of being re-centered and reminded! 

This little friend had her first birthday. She's my favorite one year-old in the whole world. 

On Hannah's birthday, Rebecca was running around in a fireman costume (see her hand there) AND Jeff brought home an adding machine he got at an antique store. The children were quite enthralled with it and are still mourning that the machine took its place in Jeff's office on campus instead of remaining in the garage. Several times I'd be looking for Jacob in the house before mealtime or something and I'd find him in the garage, calculating. Well, really, adding. It is pretty amazing. 

Jacob finished his soccer season. He had fun with his friends from school and their team played pretty well, very well for some of the games. I will confess to being glad to have our Saturday mornings free to do what we want now and no practice Tuesday nights, but it was a fun few weeks. 

Here are five of the six of us at the ward Halloween party for church. We snagged best group costume: fire truck, flame, firefighter, ladder, and dalmatian (minus her ears).  Jacob went as R2-D2 but people thought he was a fire hydrant. 

Kendall came to visit! My cousin came from Idaho and stayed with us for a few nights while he was looking for work and coming to a school orientation in Findlay, OH. So good to see him again, it had been a long time!

Taking out the pumpkin guts. She was very much wanting to plant the seeds right then but somehow I convinced her it wouldn't work unless we waited until Spring...

Jeff;s handiwork, stellar as usual!  Tinkerbell, Yoda, Butterfly and one we'll call Fun With Different Drill Bits. 

There are better pictures of them all looking but Hannah's face cracks me up in this one. Trick or treating was on the 30th so we got all that fun out of the way before the school parties. 

Trick or treating in effortless style...

Our school does a costume parade every year. So fun to see everyone!  And I thought it would be fun to count Elsas but in the end, keeping track of Sarah getting in and out of the stroller and there being at least 6 in just the kindergarten classes made me rethink that idea. Rebecca went as Fancy Nancy this day, a last minute decision. 

Jacob as R2-D2. His friend from class was "The Banana Lady," as he called it. 

Sometime around Halloween Hannah showed her ability to stack popcorn flavor containers. I think I snapped the picture just as she swiped the top one off the stack very quickly. 

Jacob at his class party on Halloween. They had early dismissal that day (end of the quarter) so it was fun and fun and more fun. Then they came home and we had some more fun!

The Kindergarten party was pretty happenin', too. She told me she wanted to be Fancy for the picture, because Fancy Nancy.