Family Scripture Study

With Dr. J working so many hours I feel like a lot of the pressure of teaching our children falls on me.  I'm the one who helps them with their homework, who taught them to read, who teaches them how to take care of household chores, etc.  I feel a lot of pressure when it comes to their spirituality as well.  With Dr. J always working I take them to church mainly by myself, I'm the one who does family home evening with them, who answers their gospel questions, who prays with them each day and at all their meals, and who by default is in charge of family scripture study.  We've tried many things to stay regular in family scripture study but the truth is I HATE IT!  I just do.  The kids run around like crazy people, they fight, they ignore me, they don't listen, they talk back.  It's nutso!  Lots of changes, but the results are always the same.  Then I read about my college roommate Heather's family scripture study.  She reads to the kids out of the scripture readers and the Friend during morning breakfast.  I decided to give it a whirl.  The only thing that would have to change is I would have to pack lunches the night before.  So I packed the kids lunches that night and then the next morning while they were all sitting around the table eating breakfast I read them a chapter out of the Children's Scripture Reader and then a story of the Friend.  Here is where I confess we don't even have a Friend subscription I just have it delivered to my iphone and I read it to them off that.  And FYI you could probably do the same thing with the scripture readers on your Ipad although my mom pawned all the ones she had from when I was a kid off on me a few vacations home ago so I have one for each book of scripture.  We've been doing it two weeks now and I love it.  The kids are quiet, they aren't fighting, they listen, they participate and ask questions and if by some chance I don't remember to read the Friend or haven't gotten the reader out when they sit down they call me over and ask me to read.  THEY ASK ME TO READ!!!!  CAN YOU UNDERSTAND HOW MONUMENTAL THAT IS? It makes me feel good to start my morning with them that way.  I find that my mornings are actually a lot less rushed because I've moved some of my morning task to the evening and the less rushed feelings definitely results in less contention around other things in the morning.  Thanks Heather for the wonderful idea!

Book Reviews

The Round House - Louise Erdrich

This story follows Joe a normal 13 year old boy living on a reservation with his parents a reservation judge and an attorney.  One Saturday his mother goes into the office and doesn't return at her normal time.  When she finally appears she has been raped and beaten so baldly she is near death.  Joe and his dad are able to save her by rushing her to the hospital but while her body recovers her mind doesn't and as she slips further and further from her husband and son.  Her rape case almost completely stalls out hampered by the fact that no one is quite sure where she was raped because she absolutely refuses to talk about it, reservation land, federal land, county land.  Joe feels that he has to solve the case himself in order to bring his mother back.  This story covers some of the darkest, sickest, parts of human nature.  It is a painful coming of age novel and parts are extremely difficult to take but it is well written and Joe so compelling I stomached through the hard topics.  Be warned there is a pervy grandma in here so if that makes you uncomfortable, probably better to avoid.  

Legend- Marie Lu

Teenage love.  Day and June.  A new world.  June is a fighter from an elite family.  Day is a wanted fugitive whose family thinks he is dead.  I feel like there are a million young adult books out there like this.  Everyone wants to be the next Hunger Games, Matched, or Divergent.  This one is ok.  Not great but ok.

Mary Coin-Marisa Silver

This story follow three characters.  You have Vera Dare, a photographer with a philandering husband who is employed by the US government to record the the great depression on film.  You have Mary Coin a migrant mother travelling from farm to farm trying to care for her large family after her husband dies.  You have Walker Dodge, a modern day professor who studies photography.  All of them are joined by an image Vera took of Mary that becomes the image of the depression.  I loved this book.  There were definitely adult topics but it was the type of book that after I spent just as much time reading up on the real characters that inspired the book as I did reading the actual novel.  Vera Dare is a real photographer named Dorothea Lange.  She had a philandering husband who was an artist. She had two young boys who she had to put with a stranger as she traveled the US photographing the depression in order to make a living and support them.  Mary Coin is based on Florence Owens Thompson.  Florence was pregnant with her sixth child when her husband died in 1931 from tuberculosis.  She ended up having four more children and worked like you wouldn't believe to support them.  I think most of us have read a few depression era based books, but this one really focused in on what it meant to be a mother alone with children trying to survive during the depression times before we had any real government safety net to catch people.  

City of Orphans-Avi

Maks 13 is a newsie living with his immigrant family. The whole family has to work hard just to keep food on the table.  One day when being chased for the 80 cents he needs to buy his papers the next day a homeless girl Willa saves him.  Maks takes Willa home to meet his family and she is adopted in by his parents.   At this same time Maks' older sister is arrested for stealing from a swanky hotel she works at.  Maks and Willa join together in order to solve the crime and free Emma.  This is a children's chapter book that deals with some darker topics but I thought it was fun and it definitely had me looking up topics like Pinkertons.  Once again I found myself reflecting on immigration into this country.  On public education that is now required and paid for by the state.  On child working laws.  On what it means to be a citizen.  Like I said, definitely deals with some deeper topics even though it's target audience is probably 10-12 year olds.  

Between Shades of Gray-Ruta Sepetys

This was my favorite book in this grouping.  Written by Ruta Sepetys ,who also wrote The Book Thief, the story follows 15 year old Lina whose family is shipped to Siberia when the Soviet Union annexes Lithuania .  Lina's father has been arrested earlier so it only her mother, her brother, and her who get sent on the month long train ride.  Conditions are horrific.  There are many times when you think, certainly things will not got worse, and then they do.  Heartbreaking, while fiction the novel is based on real stories relayed to Ruta by her Lithuanian family.  Interestingly their history has been largely forgotten.  After years in labor camps Lithuanians were allowed to return home but because their country was now part of the communist block were completely shut off from being able to share their history.  I was slightly embarrassed by the title because more then one person thought I was reading a "Shades of Grey" book, but I was so pleased with this story I forced my book group to read it.  

Anya's Ghost-Vera Brosgol

I got this book because I have a friend who was always trying to convince me to try more comic books.  This one was scary, had drugs, slutty teens, murder, and girlfriend abuse.  It was definitely not for kids, and also not for me.  I think I'm fine with just avoiding graphic novels forever...with the exception of Calvin and Hobbs because my kids love those.  

While we are talking about books look at this picture of Captain E.  I find him sleeping like this at least once a week.  This is one of his favorite series right now, the Oragami Yoda series by Tom Angleberger.  He has three of these and he loves them.  I can't vouch for the writing because I haven't read any of the books but Captain E enjoys them and he loves the projects in them.

 Here is Gigi getting off the bus.  She loves these Magic Tree House books.  Personally I started to hate them when Captain E was reading them but watching Gigi get so excited about reading chapter books, I guess I can love them again.

Are you happy now?

For reasons I'm not quite ready to share, today was a rough day for me.   At one point I was sitting on the couch crying.  Peach came up to me.  "Mom, don't be sad," she said.  Then she proceeded to bring me all the stuffed "snowballs" we have in the house.  "Mom, throw them at me."  I threw them, but very few hit her.  "Oh mom, you're such a bad thrower. Watch me and learn."  She threw them all at me.  "Throw them again."  This time she ran a few feet away, did a partial split, bent over, and looked at me from between her legs.  "Bet you can't hit my bum," she laughed.  Every time I tossed them she tossed them back, pealing laughter as they bounced off her head, mine, and cheetahs.  Finally I couldn't help but laugh myself.  "Are you happy now?" She  finally asked.  "Yes dear, I am."  And while I'm still full of much sadness the truth is I was also full of so much joy to have such a lively daughter who recognized my sorrow and went out of her way to ease my burden.  

Ringling Sisters

 Sometimes being a family of six I feel like I live in a literal circus.  The noise, the crazy, the laundry.  I feel like all we need is a tent and we could start selling tickets.  It doesn't hurt the fantasy that this kind of behavior is the norm.  "Hmm, a rocking horse, I bet I could stand on it," says every kid in my family on a daily basis, and this includes Cheetah although her single rider attempts were thwarted by mom rather then recorded for future consumption.  I'm thinking that showing them "Wild Heart's Can't Be Broken" would probably be a mistake.  Speaking of that movie who doesn't have it on their favorite list?  Romance, horses, enough said.  Anyway these antics are pretty much the norm.  I can't tell you how many Sunday's I've walked by the primary room and seen Gigi hanging from one item or another.  Seriously people...a circus!

"This Is My Song"

I sung in church today.  For those of you who know me really well you will understand that this was a reluctant act.  I come from a family that loves to sing.  My mother is very musical and most of my life has been in either church or show choirs.  I cannot even tell you the number of times that people have turned around and told her how beautiful her voice is.  She is a alto, she likes the belt, and she is hard to miss.  I love to sing as well but it makes me very anxious.  I prefer to keep my singing to in the car or in large groups where I can sing loud but enjoy the security of a group.  But last week the Relief Society President asked me to sing in our lesson dedicated to hymns, and so for her I did.  I sung "Be Still My Soul" which happens to be one of my favorite hymns.  I also was asked to share a little about the hymn.

It was during this research that I discovered the tune is actually the same used for Finlandia.  Composed by Jean Sibelius, words added in 1941 by Veikko Koskenniemi, the tune is one of the most important national songs in Finland.  It also has been used in many other hymns.  It was while looking through the hymns that I stumbled upon "This is My Song" which apparently is a song sung by the United Methodists.  I loved it from my first time reading the lyrics.  They are as follows:

This is my song, oh God of all the nations,

a song of peace for lands afar and mine.

This is my home, the country where my heart is;

here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;

but other hearts in other lands are beating

with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,

and sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine.

But other lands have sunlight too and clover,

and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

This is my song, thou God of all the nations;

a song of peace for their land and for mine.

This is my prayer, O Lord of all earth's kingdoms:

Thy kingdom come on earth thy will be done.

Let Christ be lifted up till all shall serve him,

And hearts united learn to live as one.

Oh hear my prayer, thou God of all the nations;

Myself I give thee; let thy will be done.

These words were so beautiful to me.  I have parents who come from two different countries.  My mother is American and my father was born and raised in Mexico.  It always gave me an interesting view on National Pride and what that really means.  Does it mean the raising of one's own country or one's own self above others?  American Exceptionalism, does that mean that we are the best far above others? Sometimes I feel like people lose sight that National Pride does not have to be accomplished by degrading other nations and it has always made me exceptionally uncomfortable.  Let me tell you a story about my father that may better illustrate where I'm coming from.  

Most of my life my father has either been in the Military or the Reserves.  When the Second Gulf War came, even though he was almost in his 50's he was called up to serve.  During that time he wrote me in a letter, "In the back windows of my truck I have two huge flags, one is the American, one is the Mexican."  It touched me deeply to think of his love for both his Nations.

It is this sentiment that resonated so clearly with me in "This Is My Song".  "This is my home, the country where my heart is, here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine, but other hearts in other lands are beating, with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine."  Just beautiful.  I hope that we never lose sight that the Church is a global church.  That God is a God of all Nations.  That all people have hopes and dreams and value that is as great as our own.  May we always been looking for the best in others, drawing on their strengths, and working together to strengthen up each others weaknesses.  

Pumpkin Carving

This year daddy had a week off from work in the last week of October and so a job that was normally mine got delegated to daddy.  He took on the annual carving of the pumpkins and I was happy to hand over the job.  Pumpkin guts are gross!  So this year while Dr J was carving I headed to the grocery store to shop alone.  Dr J let the kids pick the design they wanted and then set them to work pulling guts.  The pumpkins took a little longer then my usual fare, but the results were far beyond mine.  The results were definitely appreciated by the trick or treaters who came by.

Trunk or Treat

Can you call this a Mormon tradition?  Well we certain seem to favor it.  This year though rather then meeting at the church we met at a ward member's house who happens to have a lot of property right next to a grave yard.  A huge bonfire was built and rather then a chili cook off we had a weenie roast, marshmallows, and plenty of sides (which in my opinion was the best part of dinner).   Games for the kids were held, pictures taken, and then the kids walked a row of cars parked on the property.  Being outside surrounded by big trees that looked black in the fading light definitely added to the spoke factor.  Seriously it was my favorite trunk or treat ever!   

Raging fire....well certainly hot enough to melt my face while I toasted and roasted everything my family ate.

Um yeah, she's happy with her candy haul!

Mommy

Daddy

This kid loves hotdogs! 

Pirate Gigi!

Our car.  Dr J brought some of his work home with him!

Two more pirates.