Nineteen. That’s how many days stood between me and my ability to claim I was mom to four teenager daughters at once. You see, my eldest crossed the threshold into 20 nineteen days before my baby turned 13. I was disappointed when I realized that never would all my daughters officially be “teenagers” at once.

I truly loved parenting in the teen years. The hard work of continual discipline and morality lessons had been done in the toddler and middle school years. My teens were so much fun to be around. They were independent teens who filled my days with deep belly laughs and my evenings with long, thought-provoking discussions. (Disclaimer: not unlike toddlers, teens still zap your sleep. The best talks aren’t even initiated until after midnight.)

But others don’t seem to agree with me; some feel it’s torture to have any teenagers under their roof. When did raising teenagers get such a bad rap?

The word “teenager” didn’t exist before the 1940s

Believe it or not, the answer is in this book. Or actually the answer is in what’s NOT in this book:

I became the new owner of this amazing old treasure at our library book sale. It’s dusty. It’s huge. It’s a tome of words… a dictionary printed in 1920.

A daughter sauntered over to me as I perused the historical fiction table and announced I had to see THIS. She knew I’d love it.

In excitement she pulled me–literally pulled me–three tables down and a row over. “Look!” was her one-word invitation to glance at the richly marbled end papers and water stained, worn, embossed cover as she gingerly turned some of its thousands of pages of vernacular expressions, idioms, and agricultural and botanic terms from 1920.

I knew one particular entry I wanted to look for immediately. I’d heard this word didn’t exist prior to WWII. I’d heard this word was simply never a thought in a parent’s mind. It’s a word I use sparingly. It’s a word I dislike because of what it stands for.

Before telling you the word I was looking up and why, I have a family photo to share with you.

This photo of my granddad and grandmother was taken around the same time that this amazing dictionary was coming off the printing press. It’s of my Dad’s parents and his oldest sibling.

My grandparents are 17 and 19 in the picture, with their first of 10 children sitting on grandmom’s lap. They knew how to raise food and make meals from scratch, or “off the land,” as my dad always said. They knew true adult joys and hardships and responsibilities.

What does this have to do with my daughter’s wonderful dictionary find? Well the word I immediately went looking for was one that didn’t exist when it was printed or when this sweet photo was taken of Jim and Rosa and my Aunt Pauline. (Read this post if you’d like to know more about Pauline, that captivating little girl in the photograph.)

You see, the dictionary printed in 1920 has no entry for “teenager.” The term wasn’t coined for quite a few more decades.

Why I don’t use the term “teenager”

To be honest, I don’t use the term “teenager” often. I despise what it stands for.

You see, the word “teenager” evolved in our society after WWII, in an attempt to let children stay children a little longer, after witnessing too many youth go off to war and never return.

So young people who used to long to be mature and work side-by-side with adults, learning adult skills, were encouraged to hold onto their childhoods and not worry about responsibilities or independence.

But soon adults started lamenting the irresponsible “teenagers” that resulted. In truth, young adults don’t want to be indulged and given more time to be kids. Young adults enjoy working elbow-to-elbow with skilled adults who can teach them life skills.

Young adults crave life skills. Young adults crave independence. Young adults long to gracefully slip into adulthood. But they can’t do that if they’re ill prepared to do so. They can’t do that if they’re overprotected as “teenagers.” 

Why I do work hard at relationships with my young adult children

I recently interviewed Chris Coursey, author of 4 Habits of a Joy-Filled Life, on the Simple Doesn’t Mean Easy podcast and learned something fascinating about the young adult brain.

We all–at every age–need moments of high-energy joy and low-energy rest throughout our days. They are two sides of the same coin and both are necessary. But young adults, in the 13-16 year range specifically, have a lot of trouble with resting. The hormones keep the brain very active, and without the much-needed counterbalance of rest, young adults often need reliable, caring relationships with parents more than ever.

Listen in to the episode here: How joy fuels our brains & improves our health, with Chris Coursey, Season 5 Episode 14 of the Simple Doesn’t Mean Easy Podcast

Or here:

Or watch the full episode here:

Why teens shouldn’t “embrace their childhood”

So, no, my heirloom picture boasts of no “teenagers.” Jim and Rosa would have would have surely scoffed at the idea of “embracing their childhood a little longer.” There were farm fields to tend, food to can, clothes to mend, and a fulfilling life to live.

And my home didn’t really ever boast of “teenagers” either.

I choose to not use the word if I didn’t have to.

When each daughter turned 13 we actually sat down (usually over a mom-daughter lunch at her favorite sandwich shop) and talked about this little history lesson and I assured her I was there to help her gracefully slip into adulthood in the wonderful 5 years ahead.

I assured her I had no intention of coddling her or asking her to stay my baby (not that we couldn’t reminisce and pull out that adorable baby book any old time she wanted to, mind you), but instead I was eager to help her develop all those amazing talents and skills she was discovering that she had.

Mind you, I didn’t tell her to follow Rosa’s example with a husband beside her and a babe on her lap at 17, but I did encourage her to know that she had great abilities already and we would hone those skills in the years ahead and she would be taking the world by storm before we knew it.

More about parenting (and “teenagers”)

Encourage your child to be an entrepreneur

Help your children be philanthropic

Your child’s “small” interests can make a big impact

Free resources to Help you Homeschool Children Who Change the World

Tips and Life Hacks from 11 Encouraging Moms, including Michelle

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.” Col. 3:23

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top Homesteading Blogs.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

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Our Church Building

While you know we live in an old farmhouse that was built in 1800, I haven’t shared much about our church building. It was built not too long after our old house, and it’s melodious bells have been chiming out the hour and half hour throughout our small, one-street town for well over a century.

I share a little insight about our church here, where I explain my multiple sources of income (on of which is a brick-and-mortar job, working as the pastor’s assistant) that help keep our homestead and sugarbush running.

Our church has long outgrown the sweet little historic building we meet in.

One thing I didn’t know when moving here 6 years ago? New England is a mission field. There are so few churches that preach true joy and hope from the infallible Word of God like folks hear coming out of our pulpit every Sunday. Yet New Englanders are ripe for hearing this joy known as the gospel.

Many families drive from over an hour away every Sunday.

So we’re working hard to bring as many folks in as will come, and we are also working hard at raising money to purchase a new-to-us building that will allow us to deepen our impact and welcome more in our pews every week.

Go here if you feel God leading you to help us reach more with the Good News here in New England.

Since this will, hopefully, be the last Christmas we celebrate in this small historic building we are now renting, my daughters knew they wanted to memorialize it in gingerbread and candy.

I share my complete recipe and the tricks of the trade we’ve learned along the years on the best ways to make a gingerbread replica of your home, or other important building, below.

My Gingerbread Recipe

Icing Glue Recipe

This post contains affiliate links. Go here to read the full (ultra fun) legal disclosure about that.

10 Tips for Construction of a Gingerbread Replica of Your Home (or church)

1. If your design is rather intricate, start days ahead by cutting out cardboard and gluing or taping it together to make sure your plans and measurements are correct.
2. Use paper to trace your cardboard pieces you designed with and use that to actually cut out your gingerbread. Your cardboard pieces can be a rough idea but then use neatly cut paper for the real deal. It’s much easier to work with paper than cardboard to make your actual pattern; save the rest of your cardboard for your base to build your gingerbread building on, if it’s sturdy enough.
3. Be sure you’re not creating any pieces that are too big to fit on your biggest cookie sheet. Not that I’ve almost done that or anything.
4. Try out this free online help with sketching your building plans.
5. Your dough will seem really hard when you take it out of the fridge. It will most likely crack when you initially try to flatten it. Patience and muscle power will allow you to roll it out, and you’ll be amazed at how smooth the dough becomes after a little diligent rolling.
6. Try cutting the gingerbread dough with a pizza wheel for ultra smooth edges, plus it’s easier to use than a knife to trace your paper patterns.
7. After the dough is baked, you can still gently use a serrated knife, or even kitchen scissors, to cut baked pieces down to the shape or size you want, or to smooth out edges (if you don’t use a pizza wheel to cut them).
8. While you can use cutting boards, large platters, and more for a base to build on, nothing beats a sturdy piece of cardboard covered in aluminum foil.
9. You definitely want a way to pipe on your icing. This is my favorite cake decorating tool, but bags and tips like these work well too.
10. Create braces for your main walls with heavy cardboard that you cut to fit. This helps the walls stay in place until the icing has hardened.

Why I Love Seeing Kids Building with Gingerbread

I have always had two hurdles when trying to create something, I struggle with noticing details and I’ve always had difficulty understanding how to translate a 2-dimensional image into something 3-dimensional. For instance, sewing. I was never good at holding a pattern in my hand and figuring out how on earth I could turn that pattern into a real-life shirt or skirt or cute halloween costume.

Since studies have shown that in general it is more challenging for a female to see in 3D than a male, and given that I’m a homeschool mom of 4 girls, I was always looking for fun ways to foster this skill.

When the girls were young I tried hard to do any activity like nature journaling, and building with legos and mini robots, that would help them bridge that gap in their learning style.

Creating a gingerbread creation of something they cared about in real life was a fantastic way to do this. And tastier than sewing.

Plus, kids who grow up making a grand ole edible buildings time and again will still want to spend an afternoon doing it with mom, a decade later. Bonus.

Inspiration When Making a Gingerbread Replica of Your Home

SNOW: use confectioners sugar as snow on top of icing

TABLE CLOTH: for “sheets” of color, melt gummy bears and squish them flat (Warning, this does get very sticky!)

TILES: for any panes of color (we did this for our church’s stain glass panes) roll out jujufruits and/or tootsie rolls

STEPPING STONE PATH: slice tootsie rolls into individual stones to create a path

PEOPLE: I like these cookie cutters that allow you to choose the height for a person that is best proportionate to your house’s dimensions.

ANIMALS: This is our moose cookie cutter, in a set that includes another favorite animal around here. But these may be more up your alley.

ROOF SHINGLES: My absolute favorite shingles are made from overlapping rows of Necco wafers or giant circle sprinkles like the ones we used on our church

WREATHS:  I love these circular cookie cutters for cookies and biscuits and they work great for gingerbread wreaths, with so many sizes to choose from. We used the fluted sides of 3rd from the smallest (for the outer ridge of the wreaths) and the next smallest to cut out the center of the wreaths.

The list could go on and on, so please continue this list with YOUR ideas, in the comments.

Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain. Psalm 127:1

Other Posts About Creating with Kids:

My Favorite Cookies EVER (and how my girls created a gift for me out of them)

The Easiest (Perfect) Graduation Party Ever

Teaching a Child to Make Pie (and my grandma’s pie crust recipe)

Making a Gingerbread Farm

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

The post Making a Gingerbread Replica of Your Home first appeared on Souly Rested.

Y’all know I don’t have Harvard Law degree, and you can probably make a safe assumption that I have no experience in family law, but I do have the credentials to explain the workings of a homeschool mindset. And you can bet your bottom dollar, as my daddy would’ve said, that I can give you an earful about how an average homeschool mindset lies in complete antithesis to the Harvard article’s premises. You see, this May will mark the end of a 20-year career for me (albeit one without any monetary compensation), one that I devoted to the elementary, middle school, and high school education of all four of my daughters. At home.

So if you will pardon my escape this week from my typical topics, next week we’ll return to our regularly scheduled program of good food and simple living. Today I have a soap box to climb up on and a wonderful privilege of parents everywhere to defend.

Pardon me while I grab my super-hero-homeschool-mom cape (aka my tattered blanket I’m cuddled up with on this cold gray day) and we’ll jump in.

If you’re more of an audio-kind-of person, I also just recorded a podcast episode on this very same topic. See episode 8 of the Simple Doesn’t Mean Easy podcast on your favorite podcast player, or find it right here, or just listen in below:

Why did I choose to homeschool?

I longed to give my daughters an education that went well beyond just learning facts, but that often left them hungry for more. In my own 16 years worth of education, I can’t recall one moment that left me hungry for more. Sure there were a few interesting teachers and a few decent classes (although truly not enough of either in my academic career that spanned public and private learning), but I never dug in deeper than I had to to earn the “A” I was seeking.

Even so, instilling a love for learning in my own daughters (that I never had until I started teaching them) wasn’t all I was striving for.

I longed for my daughters’ education to accomplish even more. I longed for it to uncover their unique talents and interests and then cater to those very areas, which I knew would be different in each girl.

The prospect left me exhausted. For two decades. But utterly blessed.

I’m never going to sugar coat it.

If you asked me my opinion of homeschooling, anywhere along my journey or even today? I’d respond without hesitation, and without any sugar coating, that homeschooling has been the most difficult, roller-coaster-ride of rewards I’ve ever experienced.

It has left me with black circles and bald spots, from what seemed like seasons full of incessant crying and pulling-out of hair. (I guess I should clarify I’m talking about my own hair, not my daughters, since, after all, a big focus of the Harvard Magazine article is on homeschool child abuse.)

But it sure has led to some great things.

While it has never been easy, homeschooling has created a family unit stronger than we would have known if I had not chosen this path. As I watch my daughters, as adults, living and planning fulfilling lives, I realize how short and yet how deep and rewarding the last twenty years have been. Professor Bartholet argues that attending a brick and mortar school “for six or seven hours a day… does not unduly limit parents’ influence.” I’ll overlook the fact that attending traditional schools takes up much more time than 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, when you add in the long bus rides and morning rituals required (instead of leisurely enjoying a warm breakfast together in pjs while studying your first subject or two all before the traditional school bell rings).

When I think of all the experiences I’ve enjoyed elbow-to-elbow with my daughters over the years that Ms. Bartholet’s “six or seven hours a day” would have made impossible I am deeply thankful that I had the choice to not only teach learn beside my children but to help them build profitable businesses in middle school, watch them build 125-pound robots for competition, encourage them to develop culinary skills beyond my own, work with them to raise and train animals, and help them take a fun interest and turn it into a philanthropic endeavor that blessed thousands of children in hospitals and refugee camps around the world. Sorry Harvard, but those skills are more valuable to them today–and make them more valuable members of our democracy–than 2 hours a day on a school-bus commute and seven hours a day in a brick and mortar building with peers would have been.

And homeschooling has developed each daughter into a stronger, wiser, more productive, and more compassionate woman than she would have been otherwise, each in distinctly different ways, because of course every child is distinctly different.

Why does a Harvard professor want to ban homeschooling?

In the latest edition of Harvard Magazine, Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard professor, is quoted as saying that she “sees risks for children—and society—in homeschooling, and recommends a presumptive ban on the practice.”

Erin O’Donnell’s article, based on Professor Bartholet’s recent paper she published in the Arizona Law Review, ironically, shows complete intolerance for a minority group arguing that one of the biggest flaws of this minority group is that it promotes bigotry. (Homeschoolers, the article itself explains, account for roughly 3 percent to 4 percent of school-age children in the United States.)

In the interest of being transparent, I will note that I was feeling intolerant toward Professor Bartholet when I finished reading the article. But if I’m really going for transparency, I’ll admit I was intolerant of her views right out of the batter’s box. The minute I read her words that homeschooling violates children’s right to a “meaningful education” I was ready to call “foul.”

And I might have called her a few foul adjectives. Maybe.

Even so, I decided to spend a few minutes getting to know her better, so I could maybe gain insight into the motive behind this article. After opening a few new tabs on my laptop and reading about Professor Bartholet’s legal career and her focus on defending children who truly deserve to be defended from horrible neglect and abuse, and after reading how she was personally deeply moved by the awful story of “Tara Westover, the daughter of Idaho survivalists who never sent their children to school. [“Homeschooled”] Westover…endured abuse by an older brother.” I wondered if maybe, just maybe, Ms. Bartholet truly thought her suggested ban on homeschooling was indeed in the best interest of a small, select group of children whom she genuinely thought could be saved from abuse by stricter regulations on homeschooling.

I saw more irony.

But as I read a little more, I couldn’t help but see more irony. Bartholet knows first-hand about our broken governmental childcare system. She herself has written about how a surprisingly high percentage of children with substantiated claims of abuse and neglect are victims of repeat maltreatment. She is well aware that the broken system knows about abuse and yet returns kids to these homes anyway. So I was at a loss as to why she would feel the public school system could be a legitimate check and balance system to somehow prevent an abusive parent from destroying a child’s life.

Bartholet also is in favor of international and domestic adoption, even though she is of course well aware that “religious people” make up the vast majority of those who are adoptive parents. So I couldn’t figure out why she would be so in favor of conservative adoptive parents but so suspicious of conservative homeschooling parents.

And, side note, religious beliefs are no longer even close to the #1 reason folks take their kids out of traditional education and begin homeschooling, but Ms. Bartholet seemed to think it was. More on why parents are choosing to homeschool below.

I saw no logic.

When I saw no true logic in Ms. O’Donnell’s article, I started wondering if it was possible that the liberal education establishment—of which ivy league schools are the pinnacle—is concerned what attitude parents will have when they come out the other see of the corona virus shutdown?

Is it possible that elite, expensive collegiate establishments are worried that parents may see the joy in educating their children themselves and suddenly decide to make their children’s education their own personal priority?

Are expensive colleges worried that parents may suddenly be willing to rearrange their priorities and, instead of always striving for more material gains to improve their child’s life, long to cut out all extraneous things… such as new clothes (and go thrifting instead), a new car (we run ours into the ground), and dinners out (the kids love homemade pizza and movie at home even more—and it costs just a few dollars)… to cut out the need for one parent’s income?

Are a few people at Harvard wondering if parents, after realizing the oh-so-hard but surprising joy of learning alongside their children during the corona-virus shutdown, will now make sacrifices so one parent can stay home with their children and take their education into their own hands?

If so, then, after being educational, homeschool “rebels,” those same families may—years from now—realize that striving for their child to attain ivy league status after high school graduation is not an ideal that is important to them.

Could Harvard be concerned that after years worth of financial sacrifices for family gain, a high-price-tag college degree may no longer look so impressive to families across the country?

It left me fuming. With a pen.

Of course, I can only wonder. I can try to guess, but cannot understand the basic premise behind Ms. Bartholet’s paper or Ms. O’Donnell’s article. The blatantly vicious, prejudiced attack on an extreme minority in our nation left me fuming.

Then I stumbled across some insight into the thoughts of admissions officers at three institutions, where they stated that they privately believe that homeschoolers are, overall, close-minded religious bigots. And I decided I wasn’t going to sit silent over here in my chilly old farmhouse kitchen on this cold April morning. So here I am, jumping into this debate, armed only with my two decade’s of insight into hundreds of homeschool families in the Mid-Atlantic and New England areas. And with my pen.

The main “risks for children—and society—in homeschooling”… the main arguments in favor of a “ban on the practice,” according to the Harvard Magazine article? Homeschooled children are deprived of a meaningful education, not encouraged to be productive members of our democracy, and not protected from potential abuse.

What defines a meaningful education? 

The Harvard professor argues that homeschooling deprives children of a “meaningful education.”

While the list of problems with this first argument is longer than I care to tackle here, I will point out a few.

First of all, Ms. Bartholet  has seemed to have forgotten that roughly two-thirds of American students are scoring below grade level in both reading and math by the time they enter high school. 

Also, I fail to understand how a one-on-one education, administered by a person who is truly invested in a child’s life, would not lead to, at a minimum, a somewhat meaningful education?

I assume Ms. Bartholet is picturing an abusive parent when she pictures homeschooling as meaningless effort, void of learning, but in reality the one that an average homeschooling mom truly “beats up on” is herself, always realizing there is some area of her child’s education that could be improved… always arguing (as her own worst critic) that at least one part of their child’s daily activities could be more meaningful. And often losing much sleep over trying to make it so. For every child in her care.

In the end, I would recommend that professionals such as the Harvard professor spend less time worrying about the children whose parents have taken on the responsibility for their educational well being, since, for the most part, those parents are doing enough worrying of their own, and instead, invest resources into improving the system, from the ground up, for those children whose parents simply don’t have any other option.

Who is adequate for the job? 

The professor goes on to point out that there are homeschooling parents who are not adequate for the job of educating a well-rounded child.

This actually should not be surprising since, according to a study done in 2018, more than one in five adults, products of our public educational system, are functionally illiterate, while another 28 percent read at a “very basic” level. That equates to roughly half the adult population of the United States. So indeed there are some homeschool parents—who are products of the public educational system—who are not academically gifted themselves. But if we encouraged these parents to not homeschool their children then the argument is, “You’re not qualified, so send your child into the system that created you, unqualified to teach your own child, so they too may one day be unqualified to teach their own.”

Even so, I’m going to backtrack here and say I actually agree with Ms. Bartholet. In fact, I’ll go one step further and argue that NO homeschool parent is adequate for the job of educating a well-rounded child. But, ironically, this very fact leads to the next rebuttal of yet another erroneous point of the Harvard Magazine article.

How do we raise up the future generation? 

The Harvard Magazine article argues that homeschoolers are not active, productive members of our democracy.

The assumption behind this argument is, of course, that a traditional educational system churns out students who are active, productive members of our democracy. But when a government has total control over what the youth are learning, and how they are learning it, isn’t it obvious that that can, potentially, lead to a totalitarian regime that recruits its supporters from youth and churns out cookie cutter citizens?

While, no, I am not adequate for the job of educating a well-rounded child, what naturally follows is indeed the makings of a wonderful democracy. You see, it’s too lofty and wonderful of a task to educate a child. It’s not a job that one person is able to do so single-handedly. In a dozen or so brief years, how can one instill great knowledge, as well as a passion for learning itself, and the abilities to do so freely, all life long, in a child?…. Not to mention the impossibility of the other tell-tale sign of a superior education–to help a pupil uncover his or her own passions and innate abilities and nurture them in ways totally unique to them…. no, there is no one up to the challenge, and everyone will fail at this roller-coaster, impossible ride known as educating a well-rounded child, Ms. Bartholet. You and I can agree on this.

But the story doesn’t end with a parent’s failures.

But the professor’s analysis would end there.

My personal experience confirms that the story—thank goodness!—does not end with my failures.

The story mushrooms and spills over, to draw in numerous mentors and experts into each child’s life, to fill those voids where I could never measure up. I sought out robotics teams, travel softball coaches, professional potters, experienced entrepreneurs, even website designers who wanted “in” for a brief season on this small window, through one child’s life, to leave a footprint and make a difference for everyone’s future.

Because we all know that is the way to change this country for the better. To raise up a future generation who is passionate about important things, and always eagerly learning and improving themselves and things around them. Since that is the ultimate goal of almost every homeschool parent I’ve ever worked with over the past two decades, I fail to see how on earth any standard, public education system could create more active, productive members who are contributing positively to our amazing democratic society. Yet Professor Bartholet argues that homeschoolers fail in these categories.

Sadly, on a different note, this interesting study points out that our public education system is failing our democracy in the area of civics studies. It turns out only 50% of Americans know how long the terms of representatives and senators are, not alone who has the power to declare war or what rights are guaranteed by the First Amendment of our Constitution.

Then there’s the argument about potential child abuse?

In the article, the argument is made that homeschooling “violates children’s right to … be protected from potential child abuse.”

After reading about Professor Bartholet’s legal background, I have to believe this argument against homeschooling was the one most concerning to her. I believe she has spent her adult life truly working to benefit children who are in need, and, if so, I respect that about her. Even so, I fail to see the logic behind her argument that banning homeschooling will in some way lessen child abuse.

Where is the real danger?

While I think the best way I can respond to this is with the study results I will explain below, my gut reaction the first time I read this argument was the fact that one of the leading reasons parents have decided to homeschool in recent years is they want to remove their child from danger they’ve been exposed to in the traditional education system: abuse in the form of bullying, as well as abuse at the hands of authority figures, rampant drug use, and violence.

In fact, a 2016 study by the National Center for Education Statistics shows that the #1 reason that parents choose homeschooling is their concerns about the dangers in the public education environment. 

How many parents would homeschool? If only…

So my gut reaction when Ms. Bartholet argued that banning homeschooling will decrease child abuse was to wonder how many beautiful children have parents who would gratefully and willingly sacrifice of themselves and do whatever necessary to give their child a different option—bring them home and teach them themselves—if they knew that their child was being verbally, or maybe even physically, abused by an authority figure at their school to the point that their child can no longer find any joy in their classes.

If they knew that their child was being bullied by their peers to the point of considering suicide….

If they knew that their child was considering starting down a horrible path of drug abuse because they were exhausted at trying desperately to feel excepted by their peers and figure just dabbling in drugs a few times and hanging with the cool kids could help them finally feel that they fit in…

And if they knew that homeschooling is a viable, legitimate option and that, as explained here, the home-educated typically score 15 to 30 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests….

Instead, articles like Erin O’Donnell’s convince parents to turn a blind eye to odd actions they notice in their child because, let’s be real, they logic, it’s not like homeschooling will ever give their child a profitable life. They’ve read articles about the fact that homeschooling just turns a child into a self-centered person with no true exposure to a wide variety of people and beliefs who isn’t a valuable member of society. And they don’t want that for their child.

If only there were more straightforward, unbiased articles like this one in USA Today explaining how, on average, home-schooled students routinely participate in eight social activities outside of the home, consume considerably less television than do traditionally-educated students, have higher self-esteem, and are less susceptible to peer pressure.

A ban would lead to more victims.

But thankfully there have been thousands of families who DID realize the abuse their child was facing in school, families who chose to homeschool because it was safer for their child. Imagine how a ban on homeschooling would literally force thousands of children back into an environment their parents had pulled them out of because of the very fact that they were being victimized there.

Increased regulations do not decrease abuse.

Now that I’ve told you my gut reaction to this argument, I’ll share with you the results of a study that Erin O’Donnell should have glanced at before she wrote her article for Harvard Magazine. In a detailed study on this very topic—examining children ages 6 through 17 over an 18-year period— the researchers found no statistical evidence that there is any relationship between the number of abused homeschool students and the degree of state control over homeschooling.

So states that have had no regulations over homeschools for the past two decades did not experience any higher occurrence of abuse among homeschoolers.

This leads to the natural conclusion that instead of reducing abuse, a ban on homeschooling would increase abuse.

But what do other college professors think about homeschoolers?

I have a writer friend who, after graduating her own children from homeschooling, decided to find some college professors willing to answer a few simple questions about homeschoolers. My friend was curious to know how college professors viewed an average homeschooler.

While Michelle’s efforts were far from scientific (she went to facebook and did some searches) and she only questioned 7 random professors who actually replied to her request, via Messenger, the responses were eye-opening for anyone wondering what kind of adults are the products of this 40-year “experiment” known as modern homeschooling. Here’s Michelle’s full article, and here are a few of those professors’ insights:

“I have been so impressed by my homeschool students that I pulled my son from public school. He started homeschooling in 7th grade.”

“My homeschool students are some of my ‘favorite’ students…I find them to be ready to learn in a way that I don’t see with public school students.”

“Generally speaking, I can tell if a student is a homeschool graduate by the middle of the semester, because he or she is serious about class, interactive in class, and does very well, especially on those things not explicitly covered in class. I wish I could fill my classes with homeschool graduates.”

But maybe the most telling of all the questions Michelle asked was when she asked these 7 randomly-chosen college professors what they saw as the biggest weakness of homeschooled children in college.

One explained that her biggest complaint about homeschooled students was the fact they they were always forgetting to put their names on their work. (Honestly. I couldn’t make this up.)

Another one’s biggest gripe was that homeschoolers don’t know how to properly format a bibliography in MLA or APA style. (Not a skill I have found I needed once in my adult life, although maybe it would have come in handy with this article.)

But the best answer rang loud and true in my heart. In fact, just hours after I read this professor’s comment that I’ll share in a minute, I got a text from my eldest. She sent a photo of her new knitting project. I asked if if she was having trouble matching up her rows because it kinda looked like the knitting was a little crooked, and I knew this was her first-ever attempt at knitting a sweater, not alone one so intricately cabled.

“Oh, no, trust me mom, it’s perfect! It just wasn’t laid out perfectly straight on the couch when I took that picture.”

The perfection syndrome

The problem this professor explained that he saw so often in homeschoolers? “A perfection syndrome. Homeschool graduates are less likely to understand that there is an appropriate trade-off between efficiency and 100% accuracy. They tend to work on assignments too long in order to make them perfect.”

Yep. I can absolutely relate to what this professor had experienced as well.

Learning without a teacher?

So I can only speculate what the Harvard professor’s motives are when she calls for a ban on homeschooling and tell you, with all sincerity, that her logic is flawed when I compare it to my own two decades of experience with homeschooling children and parents from the Mid-Atlantic area through New England.

I can’t help but wonder if it could be that the biggest fault the traditional educational system finds in homeschooling is what the professor who described the perfection syndrome stated as his last comment on Michelle’s questionnaire:

“The greatest strength of homeschool graduates is their ability to learn without a teacher.”

More homeschool-related posts:

Help your child be an entrepreneur

Nine perfect things for a family to do together

Study nature with a child & create a family Backyard Book

How a homeschooler does a graduation party

Why I only have 2 goals for my daughters’ education

And here are some other links that might interest you:

Four questions successful parents ask themselves often

Twelve reasons to take your daughter to the fair

How my children succeed, even though I’m a failure

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. 3 John 1:4

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

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The post Why Does a Harvard Professor Want to Ban Homeschooling? first appeared on Souly Rested.

It’s indisputable & undeniable; games are inherent to who we are. Today we’re describing the most popular family games around this house… all linked to below.

This post contains affiliate links. Go here to read the full (ultra fun) legal disclosure about that.

I love playing games together as a family, because it’s a great excuse to all huddle around a table and enjoy hanging out together.

Phones get left to the side. And we all have each other’s full attention.

Games leads to laughter and conversation that often would never happen any other way.

If you’d rather, listen in to a recent podcast all about this topic right here:

Our family must own well over 50 games, and don’t even get me started about decks of cards. We have drawers full of various ones. We don’t include standard card games in this article, like Rummey, and Hearts, and Presidents (all favorites over here as well) but this book gives directions for those and 98 other games to get your decks of cards into full-force use.

And, no, you don’t need to own 37 different decks. Cause who would do that? cough. cough.

The Most Popular Family Games in our House

It’s hard to choose which ones are our favorites. Obviously, we go through seasons that our choices would change, and of course new games are always entering the scene around here. But after great thought and heated debates we compiled this list for you of our favorite games.

Azul–This game is not only my current absolute favorite, but it’s also drop dead gorgeous. If aesthetics matter to you in a game this will be your lifetime favorite. While Azul is a little more quiet/contemplative than i like in a family game, there is definitely still room for a nice conversation while you play this game. I should mention that I did a lot of research on this one before purchasing it for my daughter and new son-in-law on their first Christmas. (Yes, in this family games are very important. It was a given that the newlyweds needed a closet full of popular family games to start off their new life together.) I learned that there are other versions of this game that are far less appealing, so definitely stick with this version right here. Oh, and bonus for a newlywed couple, it’s a great game for just 2 players. Negative for a family of 6, who often has extra friends over on game nights, it only allows for 4 players. So we’ve decided we’ll soon be getting a second copy so we can double our playing capacity. We love it that much.

Tetris–From the fun asthetics of this game to the multiple levels of play, there’s so much to love about this game. While there is thinking and strategy involved, it’s also a game that allows for plenty of connection time and talking while you play.

Cover Your Assets–Don’t let the simplistic nature of this card game that fits in a little box fool you. It’s fast paced and addicting. And it’s perfect for this competitive family. (We also own a cute limited edition of this featuring Crumbl cookies, but I don’t think you can find it anymore, which is fine, Cover Your Assets is more to-the-point and more competitive.)

Brain Games–Don’t let this name fool you either. I was worried it’d be only for brainiacs or only all about optical illusions. I was totally wrong, on both counts. And we’ve never played this without loving every minute of it.

Skyjo–Don’t let the weird name fool you. This is one of my favorite games these days. In fact, it’s the favorite of everyone in our family. I love it because you can totally talk with each other and enjoy your conversation while you play. There is enough “chance’ involved that you just laugh and keep talking (and the game keeps moving) if you choose wrong. Yet there is a decent amount of strategy, so it’s a perfect balance really.

Cabo–This simple card game, played with an average deck of cards– is one we come back to often. Find the rules here.

Qwirkle–I think one reason I love this game is that it’s truly great for all ages. Well, they recommend 6+ but I’m certain younger could thrive at this game and yet it’s one of Bill’s absolute favorites. I also love that it makes me examine the playing area closely and think outside of my usual “box,” yet we seem to be able to hold great conversations while playing this family favorite. But a few members of our family are extremely tactile kind of people and I’m sure this game would be a favorite of theirs even if it wasn’t so fun to play.

Phase 10–A great game for all ages, this has been played in our house as long as I can remember, and we still truly love it. Phase Ten is a great game for a long, gray, rainy day. Or it’s a great option if you’re in the mood to challenge each other to a long-standing competition… it’s easy to just play a round or two and pick the game back up right where you left off night after night.

Code Names–I love this game because it really makes you think outside of the box but I never suggest this as a game option if it’s a night I want to just soak up each other’s company or if we’re with new friends we really want to get to know. With Code Names, you’re thinking hard all the time and there is no extra talking at all. But it is a really fun game of thinking.

WhooNu–THIS is the game I always pull out when we’re playing with new friends because it’s a fun way to get to know each other. Yet it’s also a tried-and-true favorite, popular family game in our house. It always will be. Your friend likes chewing bubble gum more than making snowmen? Who knew!

Taboo–Taboo came out when I was a teen, and I’m super glad it’s still around, because it will always be one of my favorites. But if you can find a version from the 1980s you will love the battery-powered buzzer more than today’s little squeaky thing. Or you’ll hate it. If your husband is in charge of it and won’t. stop. beeping. it. non-stop. It could go either way.

Fact or Crap–Full disclosure… this one wouldn’t have made my list, but my teen daughters stood over my shoulder and insisted I add this one. If your friends and family would enjoy making random guesses on stupid things you could never be expected to know you too would love this one. But the real joy sets in once in a while when you indeed know a random fact and you feel “pretty freakin smart,” to quote Kayla, like when the “dendrochronoly” card came up for her and she knew the definition by heart from 8th grade science while everyone else thought she was a brilliant scholar of all things tree-rings.

Wits & Wagers–this is a game of randomly betting on useless information that you really have no idea about, yet somehow it’s one everyone loves around here.

Imaginiff–I wouldn’t say this one is top on our list of popular family games, but suprizingly we always enjoy it when we bring it out. I do feel like there aren’t really enough cards after you’ve played it a lot. You’ll start recognizing the cards and maybe even remember how someone chose on that same card in the past. I really like the way the game works though, that you get more points the more that others guess your guess. So there’s a bit of strategy involved in choosing the right answer.

Dutch Blitz–this game has been around way longer than I have yet it’s super fun. It’s a nice fast-paced game with never a need to wait a turn. It is total chaos as everyone works at the same time to build sets in order to get rid of all the cards in their hand first, but it’s fun chaos. We own this option, which includes an awesome expansion pack so 8 people can join in on the crazy chaos all at once.

Five Crowns–This card game works well with a small or larger group and it’s good for a wide age range to all enjoy playing together. It’s strategic but not too hard, so the family can enjoy talking while playing. Bonus: it’s a sneaky way for kids to practice addition skills.

Sequence–my father-in-law gave us a homemade version of this back before I even knew you could buy this game and it’s been a staple in our game closet ever since.

Then, last but definitely not least…

Cranium Turbo Edition–we just recently discovered this game. Apparently it was first made 20 years ago, but we seriously had never heard of it. (I have no idea how this happened.) We have played a slew of varieties of Cranium games, and while we’ve liked them for different reasons, in their own right, you may have noticed that none made the list. They seem to grow kind of wearisome and tiring after playing them a handful of times. And if you’ve played one Cranium game you’ve played them all, in some fashion… or so we thought… Then we tried this one. There are so many things to love about this game! I’ll name just a few:

• There seems to be an unlimited number of players. Super fun if you have a big crowd and want some pretty mindless, super fun entertainment.
• There is such a great variety of activities! 16 to be exact, and 6 of these you won’t find in any other Cranium game. I think the ones that makes us crack up the most are the Puppeteer cards, kind of a charades on people-as-a-puppet steroids.
• The electronic timer with music and lights is unlike any timer we’ve seen in any game and it seriously makes us break out in goofy dance sometimes it’s so fun.
• With 1,000 game cards I can’t imagine we will ever get sick of this or see repeat cards.
• It comes with many fun options of cards we can design ourselves for our own personalized game.
• We’ve never played this without laughing uncontrollably time and again.

Honorable mentions

The Bible is Funny is kind of like a PG-rated Cards Against Humanity and we crack up every time we play it.

Inklings (an oldie, I can’t find it online anymore), Scattergories, Balderdash, and the silliest game my daughters love to still drag out and play, like they’re 8 again? Mall Madness.

Then there’s Carrom–kind of a table-top version of pool, using your fingers and circular playing pieces instead of pool sticks and balls. This one doesn’t come out often (probably because it is stored in the barn attic, just because of the size of the game, so it’s just not as convenient to grab when game mood hits. But when it does come out, it’s played for days on end.

Our favorite games when the kids were younger…

Blink

Hi Ho Cherry O

Hungry Hippo

Trouble

Sorry

Connect Four

Uno Attack

Battleship

Rummy Roots

And the girls loved these favorite single-person “games,” for lack of a better word:

Tangrams

Rush Hour

Then there are these adorable games that my girls would have LOVED when they were younger, if only they existed then!

The Uno Moo Game (Look at that cuteness! Complete with a BARN!)

Zingo (Bingo with a Zing? Yes, please!)

Here are some other links that might interest you:

9 Perfect Things to do on a Long Winter Evening, many of which are good to do as a family in every season.

The secret to making the perfect (giant!) cookie that makes every game night just about perfect.

Four Questions Successful Parents Ask Themselves

When Parents Feel Like Failures (and why it’s okay to fail)

Now it’s YOUR turn! Please help me find our family’s NEW favorite game by recommending YOUR favorite game(s) in the comments! I can’t wait to hear!

Listen in to my thoughts on these family games in this podcast episode:

Aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands. I Thessalonians 4:11

The post Popular Family Games first appeared on Souly Rested.

If you’d rather listen than read about this topic, you’ll love this podcast episode:

When a child makes your heart thankful.

Facebook memories. I often ignore them. One less reason that I give social media to zap my time. But I couldn’t ignore the picture above, from almost a decade ago, in my memories today.

Those cuties who popped up in my facebook memories today? They’re 8 years older and are over 2,100 miles away, one about to earn her associates degree when she graduates high school and the other about to earn her bachelor’s degree one year after graduating high school. (Yeah, I know… Kayla has never done anything the easy or conventional way.) And these two now-all-grown-up young ladies are doing it all independently and remotely, cause well who wouldn’t want to spend winter on the Gulf with their big sister who happens to be living her dream and working with marine animals for 3 months?

Kayla & Hayley are both more mature in their life choices, as well as their walk with the Lord, than their age would lead someone to believe who had never met them. They make a momma much more than proud. They sit down deep in my heart and make it oh-so thankful.

Life is exhausting & complicated when they’re young.

Moms with elementary and middle schoolers, life was pretty exhausting and complicated for me 8 years ago.

I invested every minute of most days into the hearts of these young ones. I lost so much sleep over the right way to discipline and correct their misguided plans or rude behaviors. I poured hours a day into teaching them mundane things and training their hearts to evaluate situations wisely, in God-honoring ways. Only to realize I had to re-do it all again the next day.

I failed miserably, often told them so and apologized, and started again. My days were exhausting and my efforts went almost totally unappreciated. My prayers were clingy, insecure, full of tears, and self-centeredly often focused on my family.

But God is good. He did more than merely “provide.” He gave us the ability to thrive. Not necessarily by worldly standards. But in more important ways. When we do our best to know Him and make Him known to our children, He honors that.

After 2 decades of investing more than I had to give, to meagerly try to raise my daughters in the ways I felt the Lord was leading me to do, today my house is quiet, but my heart is full.

Trust me, young mom, it’s okay that you’re tired and unsure, as long as you’re daily working at knowing Him and making Him known to your children, He will honor that.

Then one day you’ll be in a quiet house, knowing your sweet children are 2,100 miles away, carrying your lessons in their hearts, and making your heart oh-so thankful. “For in due season we will reap a harvest, if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6:9)

Sometimes the seasons of motherhood are very long, but they do culminate in a harvest.

Here are those cuties today… you know, the ones I spent years training how to be gracious to each other, memorize multiplication problems, clean the dirty dishes in the sink, and not pick their nose, at least in public?

They turned out all right.

Okay, better than all right.

All the blood, sweat, tears, and prayers of raising them were well invested. My daughters are my favorite people to hang out with. And I guess the feeling is mutual cause we’ve done two Mother/Daughter road trips over the course of the last year. Yes, my teen daughters had this fantastic idea to make fun road trips out of some cross-country book signings I did for my new book, Sweet Maple.

Even after being cramped in a car for weeks on end? We still like each other.

And we have mutual respect for each other, which says so much more.

4 Questions Successful Parents Need to Ask Themselves

I’m not even gonna pretend I have the corner on successful parenting. Cause I’ve always made it clear… to my daughters, and to you all, here on the pages of SoulyRested… I’m a failure who, by God’s grace, has soaked in a lot of instruction from His living & active Word, prayer, and good godly counsel of others who have trod the hard road of parenting before me.

But I’ve thought about this a lot recently. Here are 4 questions I think all parents should answer carefully if they want to train their children in the way they should go.

1. Do you nurture a relationship with your child?

I’m not sure I should put this in print. But I’m gonna. One daughter didn’t do math for an entire year of high school. It was the same daughter who didn’t want to learn to read at the age I wanted her to start learning to read. So we set reading lessons aside and tried again many months later. Three times. (She’s now a Deans List student in her final year of college. So reads quite well, and understands math just fine, in case you’re wondering.)

Neither early reading lessons nor high school math was more important to me than loosing a relationship with my child.

I battled her throughout many life lessons, and some I would never have backed down on… the ones that kept her safe and helped her value life and purity. But math and reading? As important as they were, I knew they would happen. I chose to not battle her over exactly when they would happen during two small windows in her life when I knew those battles would make me ferociously angry and possibly mean this headstrong girl would build a relational wall between us. Because the wall she would have built, in her frustration, would have been very hard for me to scale when it was time to fight the more important battles on her behalf.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t a lax homeschool mom. (Unschooling wasn’t my cup of tea.) She knew her entire life that I set academic standards and I would do all I could to help her reach those standards. So I knew a few mini hiatuses would be just fine. Meet Jordyn, aka “the stubborn one” in this post I wrote a while ago.

2. Do you admit your mistakes to your child?

Throughout two decades of being the one in charge of my 4 daughter’s education, I’ve realized that they learn best when the teacher is learning (and enjoying the learning process) right along with them.

I think it’s the same with learning life lessons. When we mess up (particularly in a parenting decision) we should be transparent and explain that to our child, on whatever level they are ready for, depending on their age.

I’ve always felt it’s not only me who should learn the tough lessons from my mistakes, but why not help my children learn too? They have learned so much over the years, through the eyes of a very imperfect parent who is leaning on an all-powerful God. They have seen my humble gratefulness when I see anew each day the blessing of parenting my sweet children, warts, bad-attitude, wind-blown hair, and all.

Our windblown hair, btw, below, was after accomplishing one of the hardest physical feats of my life. With my two daughters beside me, we climbed to the top ridge of the first sand dune in the Great Sand Dunes National Park on our road trip through Colorado. 

See those tiny specks in the sand behind us? Those are other crazy, amazing, folks who were going to climb the dunes that day. That gives you an idea of the height of the top ridge that we scaled to, where the sand meets the sky.

3. Do you help your child uncover their interests and talents?

I struggled with this for the first decade or so of parenting my 4 daughters. When they’re young, there are so many possibilities ahead of them and they haven’t yet truly developed great talents. So what did I do?

I helped them journal what they were grateful for, using a journal like this one. I did this to not only encourage gratitude (because thankfulness is not a natural reaction of my own), but also point out to me what their focus and interests were.

Then I followed along on every genuine interest they had. Not every rabbit trail. But I learned to discern the genuine interests. And I invested time in them, working on those interests.

When a daughter spent hours upon hours, for weeks on end, twisting paper clips and adding beads to make jewelry, I helped her check out every book on the topic in every library in our county. I helped her clip coupons and earn money to buy supplies. I made jewelry with her. And when a store owner complimented my Logan-made jewelry, I helped Logan start a business of making and selling jewelry in local shops. Logan went on to use those fine motor and design skills to become a successful engineer.

I shared a little more about Logan’s story here.

I also wrote a little about another daughter’s passions and how I helped her pursue a being a successful entrepreneur. This year Kayla is finishing her final year of earning a degree in business, with the plan of being a successful business woman owning a ranch one day soon.

4. Does your child see you the way you want them to?

To your child, are you their “person”… the one they would go to when they need to talk? The one they want to end the day with? The one they receive unconditional love from? (Mind you, love often does involve discipline. And children know that. They do.)

Or are you the one they see directing, controlling their life? Are you rigid and one to be feared more than loved and trusted?

Again, just to be clear, as their parent you should be controlling the important details of their young lives. But do they see you as doing that out of love or just sheer desire for control? If you feel it may be more of the later and not enough of the first, it may be time to change your attitude toward your child.

Other articles you may enjoy about parenting:

When you feel like a total failure as a parent.

A fun photography challenge to complete with a child who seems interested in photography.

A fun project to take on with a child who is interested in nature.

A look at what you teach children when you foster a love for gardening.

Why I only have two goals for my daughters’ education (& what they are).

How I helped my children be entrepreneurs.

Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it. Proverbs 22:6 (NIV)

Pin this for later!

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018

and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

 

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

And please follow along!

And have you tried my a-MAAHZ-ing Maple Sugar Cookie recipe that’s in my Resource Library?

The post 4 Questions Successful Parents Ask Themselves Often first appeared on Souly Rested.

It’s just hard for me not to long for warm garden dirt under my nails; tall grass rippling in the sun; sweet new life chirping and mooing around me on the farm; a beautiful morning swim in the lake; and a juicy, fresh tomato sandwich for lunch. You know the kind. Perfectly toasted homemade bread. Generous amounts of butter. A deep red slice of tomato that is so wonderfully large it overflows the edges of the bread.

But it’s February. In New England. So I need to have a 4:8 Attitude and enjoy another few months of winter.

9 Great Things To Do on a Long Winter’s Evening

I decided this evening I will enjoy the toasty fire and make a list of all the wonderful things I need to try to make sure I do with the little bits of winter that remain. So here’s my list, in no particular order. Well, except #1 is my favorite endeavor ever. Any season.

1. write.

So yeah, writing is of course the first thing a writer thinks about. But I’m not talking about necessarily writing a novel. Take the long hours of winter evenings to write a letter to someone who would appreciate your handwritten thoughts, maybe an elderly relative or a friend of a friend who is serving in the military. Or consider journaling.

Carve out your own spot, with a good wintery view, or a warm fire nearby, and start documenting details about:

. . .  milestones you, a child, or your spouse encountered recently,

. . . dreams of what you’d like to accomplish in the seasons ahead,

. . . favorite recipes, finally getting them organized in a binder that you can keep in reach in the kitchen.

. . . memories of your last year or memories of your childhood–either way, someday your children will love to know.

2. craft.

Knit, sew, braid a rug? It so happens that I have 4 daughters who love to do one or all of these things, but I’m, well, let’s say a little “challenged” in those areas. But I love sitting down and dwindling away a few hours with a few daughters in front of a table full of art supplies.

Even if you’re craft-challenged, like I am, you too may love making mini art with a child–check out these mini Artist Trading Cards my daughters and I enjoy making together.

What better time than the long chilly nights of winter to cuddle up with a child or spouse and learn a new skill?

What better way to get inspired for spring than to start planning Easter crafts? Read here about our family’s favorite Easter traditions. Or check out these amazing all-natural egg dyes. Or just hop on over (see what I did there?) to my Easter board on pinterest.

Or just use the long evenings to make something beautiful, like the all-recycled-denim blanket my daughters pieced together from scraps of denim in my fabric box I keep tucked away in the barn attic for just such a time as a long, cold, dull week of winter..

Consider taking on a long-term project that you can put away when springtime arrives, bringing more busyness with it. Then revisit your craft project and pull it out when chilly autumn evenings find you with more time on your hands once again.

3. read.

Whittle away an hour on a dark winter evening tucked under cozy blankets with your child and a great book between you. Or commit with your spouse that one or two nights a week will be reading night and you’ll sit close, each with your favorite current read in hand. If another family member is in on the plan, you’re more likely to make sure you make time for reading just for fun, you know instead of washing the dishes or cleaning out the fridge, or any of those silly things that we sometimes decide to do instead of just sitting and relaxing.

I would never require a child who was still getting good at reading to do any of the winter-evening-family-time reading. No, it was all sheer enjoyment of being lost in a great classic, with mom doing all the “work.” I was also shocked at how well a small toddler could follow along on a rather complicated story. And an amazing bonus I learned early on was that after I finished reading a classic to them, that would have been totally impossible for them to “get into” on their own, they almost always wound up revisiting it and reading it totally independently. What a fabulous way to teach your child to appreciate well-written, somewhat difficult books at an early age and foster a life-long joy of reading great literature.

DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links. 

I asked my daughters what were their favorites that I read to them over the years. They all agreed on these:

The Hobbit, Anne of Green Gables, The Chronicles of Narnia (especially The Magicians Nephew), The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Johnny Tremain, Witch of Blackbird Pond (I know, if you don’t know of this classic, you may think it doesn’t sound appropriate for little ones, but trust me, it’s not at all what the title leads you to believe and all ages will love this story), and Little Women. Ironically the last one of the list was always my daughters’ favorite, even before they realized that we are the real-life Marsh family, even down to my second daughter named “Jo” and our attic with a dress up trunk. (Truth, I have a sweet friend who every once in a while calls me “Marmee.”)

But then one daughter chimed in that I really should tell you their favorites when they were learning to read to me as well:

Or maybe you’d like to sit down with a good back-to-basics-living blog to scour on a cold, dark evening? I like reading The Prairie Homestead, The Elliot Homestead, Reformation Acres, Oakhill Homestead, Melissa K Norris, and, for insight to an urban homestead, you’d like Weed Em and Reap.

And, of course there’s always Pinterest for making handy boards of all your homesteading topics you want to read more about later. (Here’s a link to my boards if you wanna snoop.)

I’ve never lied, our family’s efforts to live a more “simple life” are never simple. I’ve said time and again that simple joys require hard work. It turns out some of the harsh realities and hard work of winter are part of the hardships I share honestly in my posts about  the two reasons you may decide to never own a homestead.

4. tap.

Mind you, it still gets dark very early in February in these parts, so you have to have taps in by 5 p.m. or carry a good floodlight with you.

But you may be surprised to know that you do NOT have to live in Canada or New England to successfully make delicious maple syrup. You don’t even have to have a sugar maple in your backyard. In fact, you can tap any one of these 30 different varieties of trees! And as long as you have a few days that the temperature is above 40 in the day and freezing at night, or if you learn to watch for any drastic change in weather fronts, you CAN make syrup.

Go here for more information about knowing the right time to tap your trees.

If you’d rather just make some amazing maple sugar in your kitchen (absolutely NO tapping required) check out this course, Making Maple Sugar, to learn all you need to know to become an expert this winter.

5. build.

While you’re waiting on the sap to run, a long winter evening is the perfect time to build a Reverse Osmosis (RO) filter and save hundreds of dollars on your backyard syrup production this winter. You can read all about our experience in this post: One Tip that Will Save You Hundreds on Your DIY Maple Syrup. 

Everything you need to know to build this awesome money-saving devise is right here. To make it easy for you to save hundreds of dollars on making maple syrup this year, I’ve compiled a complete list of all the items we purchased to make our RO filter and included my artistic husband’s set of directions (yeah, I’m joking about the artist thing). Just click right here if you’d like the full scoop.–>

Or, if you have no desire to tap a tree (yeah, I do forget sometimes that not everyone is a maple fanatic), why not build a robot with a child? I’m serious. Amazing Mindstorms kits (see below) make it possible for even a young child to assemble and program a robot, made of legos, to move, turn, pick up things, and even say something. Our family has seriously had life-changing experiences thanks to building robots. Seriously. I explain in this post. 

6. ferment.

Yep. What better time to enjoy a glorious bottle of fruity fermented kombucha than on a dark winter’s night when summer seems oh-so-far-away… If you’re new to brewing kombucha, check out this post about how to get started making kombucha.

Dive into my FREE detailed e-course about making kombucha right here.

I love cleaning our wool rugs this time of year. Read my post on the topic and check out my youtube video for the full scoop.

7. plan.

Put your dreams of next summer’s garden on paper, diagraming where you want to plant each item.

Make records of what you canned last fall and even jots down details about how to can. (I know I sure would have treasured them if my mom ever documented that kind of information for my daughters and I to use some day.)

Gather some great seedling containers and get your seeds started. Play in dirt Yay! Finally! Even if it is bags of dirt I bought at Agway and plopped on my barn floor–since there’s a foot of snow everywhere outside–this feels good.

Try some one of these 6 Ingenious Seedling Planters I shared last year.

8. watch.

Winter is the perfect time to sit back and binge watch some great shows. Did you know Amazon Prime members have access to tons of videos, movies, and shows? Check it out for free for a whole month and find some great things to binge watch! (affiliate link)

9. listen.

Catching up on podcasts is a great way to spend a long winter’s evening. I’d love to have you join me over on my podcast: SImple Doesn’t Mean Easy.

Of course you could also enjoy a great book, on audio too.

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You can even try a great audio book on Amazon for free! Read about how you can enjoy a 30-day free trial here with this link; plus Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks)

But most importantly. . . enjoy.

However you choose to spend a long winter evening, have a 4:8 Attitude. Enjoy a warm fire. Enjoy the still, quiet beauty of winter, because soon enough Spring will dance in through open windows and beckon you to join her under a blue-sky canopy of promising days. I promise. But for now, while Spring is quietly gaining strength you can do the same. Strength in waiting, relaxing, crafting, reading, and planning for that sweet day, one day soon, when you join in the jubilation that Spring will bring.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart. Ecclesiastes 3:11a

Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2021 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

The post 9 perfect things to do on a long winter evening first appeared on Souly Rested.

DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links. 

What is a spring peeper? To me, it’s a beautiful, much-longed-for, sign of spring.

What is a spring peeper?

A spring peeper is a small frog with a voluminous voice. Northern spring peepers live in the eastern United States up into Canada, while southern spring peepers range from Texas, to Florida, to Georgia. Somehow my whole mid-Atlantic life, before my family relocated to New England a few years ago, I never befriended these little guys or heard their beautiful melodies.

Maybe I didn’t live close enough to a marsh. (They do need access to a pond or swampy area for their tadpoles to prosper.) Maybe the sounds of traffic and suburban life drowned out their chorus. Or maybe I was just too busy to notice.

I was curious to know if indeed spring peepers live in my native state of Delaware, and in my research I stumbled across this resource of double-sided, printable ID cards about Delaware reptiles and amphibians that is too good not to share. Of course many of these creatures may live in your state too.

When we moved to our New England homestead in the spring, I kept thinking how loud and early the crickets were here. Early in the season, as well as early in the daytime, not waiting until evening to get boisterous. Then when my daughter spied an adorable little frog, and we excitedly learned about him, we discovered the true source of our serenade.

What can you do when your child discovers a new critter?

If you too find a few creatures in your yard–or at the park, or even in a parking lot at the grocery store–that you and your children would like to know more about, I have some painless suggestions to help you learn more about the creatures, use the experience to get your children almost effortlessly excited about science, and even create an amazing family heirloom in the process!

There are 3 simple steps to get kids excited about nature study.

1. Learn about your backyard creatures.
2. Use your discoveries to get kids excited about science.
3. Create an amazing family heirloom in the process.

Don’t wait.

One thing I’ve learned the hard way over the years? Truth be told, there must be one million and twenty things I’ve learned the hard way over the years. But when it comes to my child’s education, I’d have to say that one of the most important things I’ve discovered is actually pretty simple. To encourage a love of learning, parents need to help their child investigate the topics the child is naturally curious about. WHEN they’re curious about it.

For our family, this often meant we would research a particular water bird we’d spotted at the local pond, as soon as we got home after after our walk; or use our bird ID books to figure out what bird it was that one daughter just got a picture of in the tree outside her window; or scour spider ID web sites after witnessing the coolest web builder ever on a fence near our house.

Did that mean some days math lessons never got done? Absolutely. Did it mean we often never finished a full year’s worth of mom’s plans? No doubt. But today I have four daughters who not only love learning, but also know how to learn. A few missed math lessons or a little less penmanship work was worth the sacrifice.

Learn about your backyard creatures.

For our unidentified tiny frog that spring morning many years ago, we went to this great amphibian and reptile ID site called Froglife. Once we figured out my daughter was holding a spring peeper, we researched more online and in some of our favorite ID books we keep on a handy shelf at all times. (Scroll to the bottom if you’d like to see a list of our all-time favorites.)

Then one daughter pulled up a blank Backyard Book page, inserted a picture of the spring peeper (if we don’t take our own, we copy and paste one we like from google images), and printed it out. A few others started filling in the cool info we were learning, while it was fresh in our minds, and we all had some fun frog facts to fill Dad’s head with over dinner that night. Not to mention one more page to add to our book that is hands-down one of the most treasured in our home: Our Backyard Book.

So after we completed a Backyard Book page about our cute little peeper, I finally understood that the sleigh-bell-like “cricket” crescendo I was enjoying every day was, indeed, not crickets at all.

Use their discoveries to get kids excited about science.

We also learned that the scientific name for the froggie Casanovas of our marsh is Pseudacris crucifer. As a Language-Arts-kinda-girl, I never miss a chance at word root study, so the scientific name is always the first thing listed on our Backyard Book page.

For lots of ideas about getting kids (and yourself) excited about natural science when you’re a Languare-Arts-Kinda-Girl, hop over to my article on ProverbialHomemaker.

When you break down the peeper’s Greek-and-Latin-mix of a name–Pseudacris crucifer–it makes perfect sense. If you know that pseudo means “false” and crucis means “cross,” you have a pretty good idea of what’s on the back of every spring peeper. When my daughter discovered this itty baby peeper, sure enough, we were able to identify it by its markings.

Create an amazing family heirloom in the process.

The best way, ultimately, to get kids excited about science is to show them it’s practical, fascinating, and important. Creating our Backyard Book has certainly had all those effects on our family, and more.

. . . When they go back to it months, or even years, later to remind themselves about a creepy crawly they rediscover, they realize how practical it was to document what they learned in the past.

. . . When they flip through it for fun once in a while they are fascinated anew at the amazing facts they’ve learned over the years, right in a small square footage around their home.

. . . And when they pull it out to show a friend, who ooohhhs and aaahhhs and flips through every page, they realize how esteemed and truly important their hard work is.

Of course your family doesn’t have to limit this idea to a small area around your home. You can call your nature keepsake book “our nature discoveries,” and add to it whenever you discover a critter in a playground or parking lot, take a natural science field trip, or visit their great aunt in the country.

We have sections in our Backyard Book about insects, trees, flowers, garden plants, birds, mammals, and of course amphibians.

Our family’s Backyard Book has been an heirloom in the making for almost two decades now. It’s helped improve my daughters’ penmanship, interest in Latin roots, knowledge of botany, love for science, skills for organizing, willingness to touch all things slimy, abilities in art and photography, and, most importantly, desire and love for learning.

What else did we learn about spring peepers?

Along with its name-sake “x” on its back, the main identifying characteristic of a spring peeper is its song. Some say a chorus of spring peepers sounds like sleigh bells. But I think it sounds more like crickets. Plus, once our long winter finally thaws I’m elated that the frogs’ serenades are ushering in a much-welcomed spring. Needless to say, I’m not thinking about sleigh bells.

I recorded a little video about our spring peepers (click my link or see below), but you may not hear their chorus very distinctly. So you can also check out the NH state wildlife page where their song is recorded.

Like me, spring peepers probably don’t wanna think about winter any more either, since they were just almost entirely frozen during the long cold months. Turns out spring peepers can withstand a deep freeze during winter.

While most other frog species bury themselves deep under leaf cover for insulation from Jack Frost, spring peepers are one of only 5 species of frogs who face brutal winter temperatures in a different way. You see, they’re built with a natural ‘antifreeze’ in their blood. (Okay, it’s actually glucose, urea, and proteins. At least that’s what scientists think, but no one is sure how it all works… except for the frogs’ creator of course.)

Their distinguishing scientific name, the fact that they are frozen—but alive—all winter, and lots of other fascinating facts about spring peepers made it onto their page in our family’s Backyard Book. If you’d like to download and print amphibian ID pages of your own, just provide your email in the box at the end of this post. I’ve included many themed ID pages, as well as my popular ebooklet–5 Things You Should Know About Nature Study–in my subscriber library, which I am continually adding to as well. I’ll send you your personal password to the library right away, when you sign up below.

If your family decides to take on the exciting learning experience of creating your own Backyard Book, feel free to use the resources in my subscriber library, and by all means make sure to enjoy the journey because, as Thoreau pointed out, “The voice of nature is always encouraging.”

Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

Our favorite Nature Study books that are on a special shelf in our home:

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The post Spring Peepers & 3 simple steps to getting kids excited about nature study first appeared on Souly Rested.

DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links.

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Since yet another blizzard hit our New England homestead this week, we have yet to dig all the way out from the foot of snow it dumped on us. Sadly, the continual drop in temperatures means no sap is flowing–with peak day temps not nearing the necessary 40-degree mark. Without warmer days (alongside freezing nights) no pressure builds up in the trees, the sap is lethargic, and our maple syrup “operation” is on hold. In fact, to date, we have only collected enough sap to make eight small jars of maple syrup.

So this week, while we dig out from the snow, watch the mallards stop in at our homestead along their spring migration route, and eagerly wait for warmer daytime temperatures, I’m putting together a post for you about our reverse osmosis filter–how to build one and why you would want one for DIY maple syrup production.

Take a minute to catch up on my ongoing DIY maple syrup series. And read on for three Easter traditions my family could never do without.

Dying Eggs All-Naturally

Every year, many weeks before Easter, the hankering starts. My daughters start debating about a new way to do a favorite, old tradition–Easter egg dying. But to date, by far, our most favorite options have involved all-natural dyes. Thankfully, the hens provide lots of “canvases” for us to experiment on. Read this post–All-natural Easter eggs–for more details.

And check out how I use onion skins and kombucha to make these gorgeous eggs.

How do naturally-dyed eggs point to Christ?

Christ’s sacrifice is something very unnatural and so undeserved, but through His sacrifice we can have new life. An egg beautifully portrays new life. And in God’s beautifully designed nature we can find so many ways to make our eggs–and our lives–bright and colorful.

There’s also the wonderful idea that parents love hiding eggs for their children to find, the same way Christ loves “hiding” blessings in our days, we just have to look hard sometimes before we see them and recognize that they are blessings indeed.

Making a Coconut Bunny Cake

A day or two before Easter, we then have to make THE cake. It was a tradition my mother always carried on with my daughters, a tradition from my own childhood. A tradition of the bunny-shaped coconut cake. If you haven’t already made one of these for yourself, you’ll be surprisingly shocked at how easy it is. Simply make 2 round cakes. Use one for the bunny’s face, then cut the second to form the bunny’s bowtie and his ears. Icing, cover with coconut, and decorate however your heart desires.

How does a bunny-shaped cake point to Christ?

When my children were little, I never wanted thoughts of the Easter bunny to take their focus off of Christ’s sacrifice that is the very reason we celebrate. Yet the bunny was everywhere. I decided to make thoughts of the Easter bunny always point them back to Christ. So I thought them at a very young age that bunnies were very fertile, explaining this meant they gave birth to new babies many times a year and that each time they had lots of babies. (Now that we live on a homestead where we raise bunnies, this idea is, of course, quite obvious.) So bunnies represent new life. Abundant new life.

I would often go on to explain that when we believe in Jesus, we are reborn and have a new life. An abundant new life.

Sign up for weekly delivery of my e-newsletter, and I’ll send you immediate access to my subscriber Resource Library, which includes a template for making an adorable bunny cake and many other resources, including numerous books you can download today.

Savoring Resurrection Cookies

On Easter Eve, we get out our Resurrection Cookie directions. Read more about Resurrection Cookies in this post.

How do meringue cookies point to Christ?

Every step of the way, with each new ingredient that you add to your cookies, there is a new Bible verse to read and a new lesson to learn that points to Christ.

I also learned, on our first Easter in our new life as rural homesteaders, that life on a farm is, in many ways, an allegory for Easter. I realized that an average day on a farm–not unlike Easter Sunday–can make someone realize God’s provisions and faithfulness in the midst of life’s difficulties and hard work. You can read more about that on this post.

I share my most treasured of all family Easter traditions (how I documented special memories on my daughters’ Easter baskets) in this fb live video this week:

Watch here for my quick and simple tips on organizing a BIG Easter egg hunt on a TINY budget.–>

I’d love to connect! To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) box below:

If you already ARE a subscriber, just hop over to the Resource Library here and enter your personal password. (If you don’t remember your password, no fear, we always include a personalized reminder in every Thursday email, “Hard Work, Simple Joys.”)

The post 3 Easy Easter Traditions (that are fun & educational!) first appeared on Souly Rested.

{ This is the second in a four-part series about grieving the loss of a loved one. In the final post, I’ll be sharing very specific ways others helped me throughout these difficult months as I floundered through the heartbreak of loosing both of my parents in such a short time. My hope is to provide my own personal experiences with grief as an insight into what others in your life might be feeling, as well as a practical list of ways we can help others who are grieving. }

On the Homestead This Week

One daughter braided many new rows on her rug. The chicken have been enjoying increased hours of daylight and are back in the egg-laying business, at least part time. My husband excitedly spent many hours assembling his reverse osmosis system for our maple syrup making set up this year. (Much more about that in upcoming posts… we’re getting excited as syrup season nears.) And we baked. A lot. (I’ll also be sharing my daughter’s amazing Artisan bread recipe in a post soon.) While I enjoy the productivity, the beauty, and the deliciousness then sings my soul.

DISCLOSURE: Do you enjoy tips and encouragement you find here on SoulyRested? Would you like to know how you can support my efforts? I may receive monetary compensation for any link to any products or services from this blog. While using these links won’t cost you anything, it will go a long way toward helping me pay the blogging bills. I sincerely appreciate your support; in fact, it’s a huge blessing to me! Thank you!

Yet the loss of my parents is still a very fresh scar on my heart, and I spent many bittersweet hours again this week going through another box. As I flip through pages and hold well-worn memorabilia and memories from my youth (like Dad’s straight razor and Mom’s hair teasing comb), then sings my soul.

The Last Evening of November

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bear my innermost silent chambers of my heart today, but I realized that doing so will help my soul sing louder. And after rolling the thoughts over in the corners of my mind, I decided it’s just too beautiful not to share. Ultimately, out of respect to my immensely beautiful Mom, knowing she would want me to tell everyone that I can, because it would give honor to her Savior, I decided to share…

One chilly evening, the last one of November, my brother, parents, and I shared precious hours that will always be a part of who I am. Mom was happy to be home, out of the hospital where she had spent 17 days battling the difficult results of chemotherapy treatment.

She smiled as I read to her my aunt’s note that had come in the mail that week, and she spoke to her baby brother on the phone—appropriately discussing farm animal difficulties and details about our cow, chicken, and ducks (one of Mom’s favorite topics to discuss with her brother, who still runs the family farm on the broad, gradually sloping hillside in West Virginia).

She listened as a few of her life-long friends and I stood around her bed and sang one last hymn (one of my daughter’s favorite as a young girl: What a Friend we have in Jesus). I read (for the tenth time probably) a daughter’s note to Mom—about how she treasures Isaiah 41:10. With hands all joined around Mom’s bed, I prayed over her. I prayed for my oldest daughter too, that she would not feel too far away or lonely while she was studying in South Africa.

The Joy of Life

After company left, we dimmed the lights. I sat holding the hands of the two most important people in the world to me—Mom and Dad’s hands were clasped within mine.

My brother held mom’s other hand, and we sat quietly listening to hymns together.

Knowing mom would need medicine around the clock, my brother offered to take the wee hours of the morning shift if I wanted to take the late-night shift. Being the night owl that I am, I was glad to sit with mom, with quiet enveloping us, over the hushed hymns playing on my computer.

I had done this before many times in the prior 17 days, but that night there were no IV lines climbing up her arm, plastic hospital bracelets wrapped around her wrist, or buzzers and commotion intruding upon our time. It was just mom and I sitting together in the home where she had fixed countless meals for my family, baked Easter cakes and dyed eggs with my daughters, played cards and board games, and watched World Series games surrounded by the people who meant the world to her.

In the quiet minutes of the dark morning, with the men of our immediate foursome sound asleep, it was just her and I.

The two of us who had the joy of bringing life into this difficult-but-wonderful world were the two who were privileged to witness her moment of crossing out of this world. She left behind the current painful joys for eternal beautiful realms that I must only imagine for now.

She was sleeping deeply. Soundly.

I had just put in a new CD. With “How Great Thou Art” playing quietly and with me gently holding her head, she took her last breath and met Christ.

Then Sings My Soul

While I will forever miss her, in this life, I know with certainty I will spend a beautiful eternity with her, and she is experiencing a level of bliss right now that is beyond understanding on this side of eternity.

I am blessed, not only to have been born into the beautiful foursome that sat holding hands together that chilly November night, but also to have known sweet Irene as “Mommie.” I am blessed, not only to have gotten to spend almost every minute of her last weeks with her, but also to have a husband and daughters who joyfully let me lay aside all responsibilities to them and the homestead for an indefinite time so I could be with my mother when I longed to do so.

A Tremendous Blessing of Homeschooling

The last few long months have made me more thankful for homeschooling than any other life season ever has.

1-  I’m thankful my teen daughters could focus on the work they could complete independently, and simply set aside the other work until I returned. For the month I was absent, they focused heavily on certain subjects and since I’ve been home we’ve caught up on the others. If I had younger children when a major family event pulled me away from school work, they would have just traveled with me and we would have finished school later in the year, no biggie.

2- I’m thankful that my teen daughters could be home, in my absence, to keep the homestead running, make sure laundry and cleaning was done, and keep meals on the table, all between their school lessons. And of course they learned how to do all those things early on in their lives because they were home with me during the day to be part of meal planning and house chores. They were part of all of that, intricately, when they were young, when they still found it all fascinating. They were part of it when it was a privilege to be doing the “grown up” things, so when it was time that they were needed to support others, and truly do the “grown up” things, they were willing and prepared to do so.

3-  I’m thankful they could connect with me, in Mom’s hospital room, via FaceTime and messaging, whatever time of the day that I was available and mom was alert and could hear them, not having to coordinate around a typical school day timetable.

4-  But I am mostly thankful that my daughters were an intricate, daily part of a major family event as it played out, day by day. I had the joy of having my daughters there every day when Dad came to live with us for his last month. Dad got to spend long quality hours with them every day, as an integral part of their day. He sat with us as we worked through stoichiometry problems and read about ancient Egypt. He enjoyed leisurely breakfasts and long lunches with them. He joined in on afternoon farm chores with them. He even went sledding with them during their PE time. I appreciate now, more than ever before, that homeschooled children can be an intricate part of major family life events as they happen, right in the midst of their lessons.

5- And, finally, I’m thankful that major family events become a lesson–a writing lesson and a life lesson–as my daughter explains on her blog this week.

How Great Thou Art

But in the midst of so much heartache, I am most blessed by my assurance that I will indeed be with my Mommie and Daddy again. “When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation, and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart. Then I shall bow, in humble adoration, and then proclaim: “My God, how great Thou art!”

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“Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” II Corinthians 4:17

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I want to share with you a few resources that have given me great comfort over the past few weeks.

First, I pulled a Spurgeon devotional off the shelf (Morning and Evening) a few days after Dad died and it spoke volumes to me. It was extra special to me given that it was a copy from 1955, a second printing, from my grandmother’s bookshelf. But no matter when your version was printed or what the cover looks like, you absolutely can’t go wrong with this devotional. There’s one page for each morning… He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed. Isaiah 50:4. And one page for each evening… On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. Psalm 63:7. 

Then, at Dad’s funeral service, a friend handed me a devotional book that I can’t get enough of: The Songs of Jesus, by Timothy and Kathy Keller. I find I revisit most day’s teachings more than once. It’s that kind of book, and it’s been so good for my aching heart. As Keller explains, the Psalms are a “medicine chest for the heart and the best possible guide for practical living.”

Then there’s my daughter’s new journaling Bible that she purchased right after her PapPap passed away.

Time spent meditating over God’s word while she makes it look artfully pretty has been a soothing balm for her, as well as for me when I discover her latest design left open on the kitchen table.

Pin this for later!

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The post 3 Resources That Comfort When Life is Tough first appeared on Souly Rested.

We didn’t make a gingerbread house. We made a gingerbread farm. Our inspiration? Our own 200-year old farmhouse, our own farm animals, and a Christmas without presents.

I’d been out of town for most of November and December. I’d looked over the girls’ school work from my mom’s hospital room 400 miles away, video chatting and texting with them throughout the school day when I could, and trying to keep the bare minimum necessities of life together, albeit by a long-distance shoe string, to the best of my limited ability. (Surviving times such as this–as well as enjoying the freedom to do the fun things, like make a 3-week, 3000-mile road trip across country in May–are a few of the many reasons I am very thankful that I have had the blessing of homeschooling my 4 daughters for almost 2 decades.)

Needless to say, I hadn’t planned for Christmas.

Editor’s Note: Just two short days after I posted this article on that oh-so-difficult holiday season last year, my daddy taught me a lot about Broken Heart Syndrome.

The following Christmas I shared this reason for peace, hope & joy.

Aside from a few stocking stuffers I had picked up earlier that summer, the area under the tree would be bare. I was explaining this to a daughter–the one who lives in the fields all spring, summer, and fall and in the kitchen all winter. The one who always loves creating a new edible excitement. She said there was no need for Christmas morning to be uneventful and suggested we think about a gingerbread house inspiration.

Another daughter–engineer and designer–adopted the idea with enthusiastic precision, and a authentic-replica, edible reproduction of our homestead took shape on Christmas morning. Yes, our own homestead served as the perfect gingerbread house inspiration.

Enjoy more homemade Christmas inspiration from our farmhouse with these Simple, All-natural Christmas Decorations.

See more of my 200-year-old farmhouse & learn 3 Secrets Old Farmhouse Owners Might Never Tell You.

Or just see a really cool thing we did with an old farmhouse door.

We Found a Good Recipe

We came up with a great gingerbread recipe and got to work.

I share the full recipe here. 

Once we got the walls positioned with the icing glue, we mixed up a few batches of regular confectioners sugar icing to attach all the candies because we found the icing glue to be very thick, hard to work with, and almost impossible to pipe out of our icing bag.

Everyone Joined in on the Building Fun

Our creation was complete with a main farm house, a barn, and a carriage house to connect the two. Past the barn, stood our chicken coop, which also houses our ducks. Dad joined in on the fun and after separating the red fruit loops from the rest, “painted” our coop in tasty style. Since he had actually helped us paint our coop a few summers ago, we teased him that he’s a good painter, even with circles of cereal. And he thoroughly enjoyed the fine-motor-skills activity.

My daddy was born and raised on a rural farm; being raised on a farm impacts you forever.

We love our chicken and our labradoodle; read here for how we trained our dog to love our free-ranging chicken.

   This post contains affiliate links to products I love using for making gingerbread houses.  

We Stayed Close to Home for Inspiration

While we have some adorable animal cookie cutters, we didn’t have a tiny chicken cookie cutter, so we were content to imagine the chicken were all foraging in the woods, which they love to do.

But the replica kept growing. As the day progressed, our gingerbread house inspiration just continued to grow. We added our lean-to to the barn and of course piled in some hay bales.

We had to add a garden.

We designed our little fenced-in swimming pool, complete with a Life Saver lifesaver.

And one daughter insisted we needed to add our outdoor shower.

Gingerbread Animals Cropped up Everywhere

We added other farm critters, including bunnies that had escaped the barn (with Dad running behind them).

And of course our farm wouldn’t be complete without Scout, our sweet dairy cow. (She even had an udder made of fruit chews.)

A few final touches of a lamppost and our newest family member, PapPap, walking to the mailbox with our loyal Bixby on his heels, and we were done.

But the memories will be treasured for a lifetime. Memories of the Christmas without presents. The Christmas that was filled not with wrapping paper and bows but with sweet family time.

We Enjoyed Sweet Details

If you’d like to copy any of our ideas for your own gingerbread farm, here’s some of our “design secrets.”

For a garden plot–crush up Oreo cookies.

As a garden gate–stand mini pretzels upright with icing glue.

To create corn stalks–paint toothpicks green and attach yellow Nerd candy pieces with green-dyed icing.

To create family members’ and farm animals’ gingerbread replicas–use tinted icing, sprinkles, colored sugar, and Nerd candies to add personal details.

As a lamppost–layer wintergreen lifesavers with icing glue and top them with a square of mini graham cracker squares and icing. For the light, stick on yellow jelly bean halves.

For a lean-to–prop up a thin cardboard roof with chocolate-covered pretzels. Attach pink Canada mints for roofing material and fill the lean-to with fudge blocks for hay bales.

For an outdoor shower–slice a white jelly bean in half, glue it on the house and stick various lengths of blue-painted toothpicks out of the jelly bean for streams of water.

To create a log cabin “look”–slice chocolate covered pretzels rods into “logs.”

For a big barn door–slice black jelly beans in half to fill the space. (Or any flavor that’s your least favorite–which for our family happens to be the black licorice–that way you save your favorite flavor for eating. Which is, of course, almost as important as the construction.)

If you enjoyed this SWEET post (see what I did there?) you’ll go crazy over this book!

We Offered Each Other the Best Things We Could

I’m so thankful that amidst deep sadness, difficulties, months of separation, and a Christmas without presents, we truly gave each other the best things we could have offered each other: our time and our deep appreciation of each other. As a result, sweetness–and Christ’s love–abounded.

Our Christmas had started with a beautiful Christmas Eve candlelight service that brought joyous leaps to my heart and sweet tiny tears to the edge of my eye.

And our Christmas–the first without a wife, mom, and NaNa whom we all adored–ended up being very sweet after all.

I hope this post finds you well and looking forward to a New Year. Wishing you a very Merry Christmas from our little neck of the woods. . .

I’ll leave it on this note. . .  because the prophet Isaiah summed up my feelings pretty well, thousands of years ago: “He brings good news to the poor and binds up the brokenhearted,… He grants those who mourn a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, [and gingerbread joys instead of gift-less sadness,] the oil of gladness instead of mourning, a garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.” (Isaiah 61) 

If you decide to make your own edible homestead, please share YOUR gingerbread house inspirations with me by commenting or sharing pictures below. I’d love to hear about it!

More Christmas Inspiration You’ll Enjoy:

Here you’ll find lots of inspiration for an all-natural, homemade Christmas.

And I think you’ll love hearing why nativity scenes should all have muddy cows and red dragons.

Gift giving ideas you’ll love, based one my 3 favorite cookbooks of all time.

Surviving the holidays when you’re depressed. (And a printable Advent book.)

“He grants those who mourn. . . a garment of praise instead of a faint spirit.” Isaiah 61:3

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I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

The post How We Made a Gingerbread Farm first appeared on Souly Rested.