I would post a snapshot of my kitchen table if it weren’t so pathetic. It does not look like the organized, tidy office space of an efficient home educator. There are receipts from the first week of January in a stack next to the laptop. We have yet to close out December’s budget - there are too many loose ends floating around to be sure of our exact number and both Tim and are dreading the work of figuring it all out. I’m sure we didn’t overspend after all our hard work and determination to stick to the budget.

Wow, I almost said that with a straight face.

Can you say “DENIAL!”

.

A picture of our street, three days before Christmas.

There’s a Vikings hat in the center of the table next to a birthday card. My birthday is in July so I’m not sure how that card found its way among all the Christmas letters. Just another sterling example of the pat rack motto we live by. A deck of cards is shoved to one side, the last remnant of our New Year’s parties. My new Nutrimill is at the head of the table, waiting patiently for me to mill some wheat.

Did I mention I was blessed with a new grain mill for Christmas??? Oh, yes!! Doing the happy dance here. I’m still in shock over the HUGE gift.

Can I ignore the start of school and just grind wheat and make bread all day? My friends and neighbors, hoping for a loaf of bread, would all shout a resounding ‘yes!’

At the other end of the table is my new, fantastic cookbook from my aunt. It’s the all-new edition of The New Best Recipe by Cooks Illustrated.

I am completely in love with this cookbook. Can I say that about a cookbook? Is that getting too personal? I’ve spent hours pouring over the pages, reading, planning and making notations. I’ve already tried the hearty beef stew and mashed potatoes. Tomorrow I hope to make the pot roast dinner. All the BEST recipes with detail and precision that can’t be beat. You can imagine Tim’s delight as I cart this 1000 page book off to read before bed. It takes up practically half the bed.

We had enough snow for Christmas to satisfy all our snow bunnies.

The kitchen is mostly clean with a dirty dish here or there, a box of crackers and some party plates.

Where is the schedule for tomorrow’s school day?
The ingredients for our big breakfast, celebrating the first day back at school?
Fresh assignments for all the children?

Nope, no, nada.

All that you would see, beyond the mild chaos of a lived in house, is a squinting, tired mother who has stayed up too late the last three days ringing in the New Year.

Between the parties and the general fun, I’m exhausted.

The slide served as a little sledding hill, right in our own backyard.

I need a mini vacation to rest up from the holidays. Sadly, even the snow that fell this evening doesn’t bring any respite. Homeschoolers don’t really get snow days.

I had better get to bed. That alarm is going to ring VERY early for this night owl crowd.

Happy New Year - shall we jump into 2009 with poised pencils and cheerful attitudes?

It’s gonna be a stretch but I’m always up for an adventure.

Kathy

Rachel (age 12 and 1/2) is flying through the Elizabeth Gail books by Hilda Stahl. And by flying, I mean reading two books a day. I stumbled across this Christian juvenile collection at a homeschool used curriculum sale in May. The books looked interesting so I bought the entire lot - 19 books in all. How could I resist? A big fat stack of books for Rachel - just my type of present.

At first Rachel was reluctant to begin the series. Frankly, they seemed a little too thin, not meaty enough for her. Thankfully there’s nothing like the combination of a prodding mother and a long summer afternoon to encourage one to dive into a waiting book.

I’ll do my best to snag Rachel for a real review of the books this week. She can give us her opinion and recommendations.

What are you pre-teen daughters reading this summer? Are you participating in the summer reading programs at your local library? Rachel told me she recently passed the 10 hour reading mark and is ready to collect her first prize.

Ah, the joy of raising a family of readers!

Kathy
Project 366 - Day 188

Let’s chat about some great devotional books our family has enjoyed. I LOVE character study books. I have seen my children grow in their faith and understanding of how the scriptures apply to their lives on a real and meaningful basis through the books and stories we have read over the years.

This is one of my favorite topics and I am passionate about intentionally providing excellent devotional books for the children. I wrote about some of our choices for the younger ages in an earlier WFMW post. This evening I went through my shelves and realized I have several books that are especially appealing to boys. That said, I must note that with five children (two of whom are girls) it is imperative that our reading is accessible to both the male and female listeners. These books have been enjoyed by the girls and boys alike in our family.

Now I share them with you.

Devotional Books for Boys

The Power of One by Ron Luce. The edition I have is a gift book. Amazon links to a new one that is being published in July.

This is a powerful book full of personal stories of teens who face real instances of peer pressure. Very inspiring. I am definitely going to look for additional books by Ron Luce. Luce is the President and Founder of Teen Mania Ministries, a Christian youth organization that reaches millions of young people worldwide.

Tiger and Tom (and other stories for boys) by J. E. White. I found this little treasure at a curriculum sale one year. The stories were originally gathered from church papers in the 1870’s and many of them powerfully illustrate the consequences of sinful life choices.

What do I do now, Lord by Chris Jones. This book was in a big box of library cast offs. Always looking to connect with my active boys, I immediately grabbed this when I saw the sub title: Devotions for Boys. Each of the individual stories feature a young boy facing real-life problems — fears, friends, bullies, getting along with parents - and end with a scripture and prayer. I read this to Joshua (age 14) years ago and recently picked it up to read to Daniel (age 11). It’s perfect for the pre-teen (or younger) boy.

Her Mother’s Bible & Hedge Fence The Golden Text Series by Isabella Alden. This is another collection that was written in the 1800’s. In each story a young boy reads a portion of scripture that has been highlighted by his grandmother. God teaches him what the verse means and how it should be applied to his life. It was moving to see how his understanding of scripture grew through out the book. A classic.

Building of the Rock five book devotional series. Joel Beeke and Diana Kleyn have taken a selection of real life incidents and fictional narratives and developed them into a series of devotional books for children aged 7-12. We devoured all five of these books and were eager for more. The stories include a mixture of historical adventure, childhood experiences, remarkable instances of conversion and dramatic, rescues from danger. There is a question and scripture reference at the end of each story.

How God Used a Thunderstorm
How God Stopped the Pirates
How God Used a Snowdrift
How God Used a Drought and an Umbrella
How God Sent a Dog to Save a Family

There you have it, just a few of our favorites. If you have a devotional book that your family loves, please leave a comment. Amazon is just a few clicks away and I am always eager to build our faith/life lessons library.

Stop by Rocks in My Dryer for other Works for Me Wednesday posts.

Kathy
Project 366 - Day 141

This evening, while I was ignoring the dirty dishes and waiting for the seventh load of laundry to finish, I stumbled across a list of books that are being made into movies. Now, I know that I spend more time reading blogs and homeschooling books than actual novels, but this is a LONG list and I don’t recognize even half of them. Surely I’m not THAT out of touch with the literary pulse of our society.

As a comparative literature major, that is a wee bit embarrassing. Well, it would be if I wasn’t so busy with the aforementioned laundry and dirty dishes. And if I were a little more confident in the caliber of books being published these days.

Mom, I’m not sure about these books.

Look it over and tell me if these are books you have read and loved (or hated). I should also mention, I am in no way recommending these books (or the potential movies). If they are wildly inappropriate, I apologize! As I said earlier, I have not read (or even heard) of most of these titles.

Uglies
A Great and Terrible Beauty
Inkheart
The A-List
I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You
Teen Idol
Maximum Ride
Airborn
The Clique
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 — August 2008
City of Ember
A Yellow Raft In Blue Water
Wolf Brother
Lovely Bones
On the Road
Where the Wild Things Are
The Looking Glass Wars
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Valiant
The Historian
City of Beasts
Avatar
My Sister’s Keeper
The Ruins
Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging
Marley and Me
The Tale of Despereaux - December 2008
The Other Boleyn Girl — already out in the theaters
The Kite Runner — already completed
Love in the Time of Cholera — out in theaters
The Lightning Thief
Emily the Strange (comic)
The Giver
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Flipped
Stargirl
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
Maestro
Narnia: Prince Caspian — May 2008
The Hobbit
Memory Keeper’s Daughter - on Lifetime TV
The Life Before Her Eyes - September 2008
Then She Found Me - May 2008
Nim’s Island - out in theaters

I am still surprised at the length of this collection. The real question, however, is not:

Have you read these books? But…

What book would YOU see made into a movie?

I love the Jane Austen flicks - wonderful! Joshua is crazy about the Lord of the Ring trilogy. We have several movie literary adaptations in our DVD library. After looking at this extensive list, I’ve started thinking about what other books just cry out to be made into movies. Three that came to mind while blogging late at night:

Prince of Foxes - this historical romance would be an amazing period piece with the right (dashing) cast
Ender’s Game - sci-fi author, Orson Scott Card, has been working for years on the movie version
Nearly anything by juvenile author Gordon Korman - love his kids books as they are clever, hysterical but clean and not filled with over the top obnoxious children.

David appreciates movies with sword fighting.

Leave a comment and tell me what titles I’ve overlooked. Oh, and did I mention we’re on a Budget (with a capital B) and don’t get to the movies much these days? Probably cheaper to just read the books from the library.

Kathy

A couple of weekends ago I took my oldest son away, so that he and I could complete the Passport 2 Purity curriculum. Almost two years ago, Kathy purchased the CDs and workbooks, but they gathered dust on a shelf in our mud room, waiting on my convenience.

I wish I hadn’t waited so long. At 14, my son is mature and knowledgeable, but the Passport 2 Purity materials were designed for a younger, less mature audience. Even worse, in the past year Joshua has really begun to exercise a greater level of sovereignty in his life, and is becoming more and more reluctant to talk about certain subjects. I understand it is a natural (and possibly unavoidable) process, but it still makes me sad to see it happen, and it made for some awkward silences during the time that we had.

Still, we did have some good discussions.

We had a great weekend. As recommended by authors Dennis and Barbara Rainey, we organized the time around a recreational event, which I wrote about in an earlier post, Travels with Faramir. We completed all five of the sessions, with time to spare for questions and general discussion.

… and Faramir didn’t even push me in the lake!

The choice of theme verse seemed a bit unrelated to the study. On reflection, though, it provides a common thread that permeates the discussion in a very satisfying way. Christ should be the head of every aspect of your life - relationships, purity, studies, and so on.

And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.
Colossians 1:18

I’m not going to say a lot about the content of the Passport 2 Purity sessions, since there is some element of surprise to it, and I don’t want to ruin the event for any of my younger readers and their parents. Suffice it to say, that the material is an excellent way for a parent to begin to discuss the topics of sexuality, purity and dating relationships with a child on the brink of their transition to adulthood.

Naturally, we had technical difficulties, and had to scramble for a backup CD player.

One of the things I really liked about the weekend course is that it covers the basics without being too heavy-handed. The tone is light and informative, and Rainey repeatedly circles back around to emphasizing the importance of the child-parent relationship.

Perhaps the most surprising part of the material was the fourth session, in which the Raineys talk about purity. He quickly gets your attention: “I’m not going to tell you that the standard for Christians before marriage, is virginity.” Instead, he teaches that the Biblical notion of purity extends well beyond that ‘line in the sand’ which so many well-intentioned folks have drawn. Using the metaphor of a cliff-edge, Rainey walks both parent and child through an exercise of arranging various levels of physical contact in order, from ‘least dangerous’ to ‘most dangerous’. He talks about the tendency to progress through levels of physical intimacy, as a relationship extends in duration. “Where will you draw the line?” he challenges. “How much of your purity will you give away before your wedding day?”

These are sobering questions. Many parents of my generation are in the unenviable position of having to tell their children: “Don’t do what I did.”

Were we ever that young?

Parents today cannot assume that their children will remain pure by default. Our culture bombards children with sexual innuendo and explicit images, through TV, movies, magazines and the internet. As one of my friends recently joked, a parent dare not assume that his children are innocents in this area:

Dad: Well, son, now that you’re a freshman in high school; it’s time that we had a talk about sex.
Son: Sure, Dad. What do you want to know?

Rainey works hard to bring the listener (both adult and child) to the understanding that a decision about purity must be made in advance, in order to hold to any kind of a moral standard. He warns that if you wait to decide what you will do when you are already in a relationship, you are practically guaranteeing that you will bow the knee to temptation.

I wish my parents had walked me through a curriculum of this nature, while I was still in their home. Although Kathy and I stood at the altar as virgins on our wedding day, there are lines of intimacy that we crossed, before we were married, which I regret.

Ultimately, an unmarried young man may find it helpful to think of himself as guarding his own purity and that of anyone he dates, in trust for their future spouses. I think this is a teaching that would have resonated with me, as a man who highly values honor and integrity. I think young Christian men are entirely capable of restraining their lusts, especially if they see themselves as honor-bound to guard and preserve the purity of the young lady they accompany. For some reason, this concept never took root in my mind, though it seems blindingly obvious, in hindsight.

The course included lots of interesting secret projects

Parents with eleven- or twelve-year-old children should rush out and purchase the Passport 2 Purity package, and start making plans to get away with your son our daughter for a weekend as soon as you are able. I strongly recommend this curriculum to your immediate attention. Kathy and Rachel are already scheming about their weekend away together.

Tim