Picking Away at Happiness

heart-668592_1280Such is the nature of kids: if there is a little hole in something, they pick away at it and the hole grows bigger by the day.

I had a tiny hole in the fabric on my living room sofa. It was on the arm of the couch where someone had snagged their jewelry perhaps, and made an eensy tear in the fabric. It was when my house was busy with my 7 kids, and although I reminded them not to put their finger in it until I could repair it, it got bigger day by day. Soon a little wisp of stuffing was coming out and day-by-day that hole increased unbeknownst to me until I suddenly noticed that the couch arm looked deflated. The little ones had found it just right for their finger to poke in and pull out a bit of stuffing. Day-by-day, it had eroded.

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Self-Sufficient Little Ones

rebekahpuzzle

My granddaughter Rebekah (4)

“I want to do it myself!”

Sound familiar?

Starting at about one-and-a-half years old, children yearn to be capable and strongly resist any attempts to do things for them. You can launch your little child into feelings of healthy self-sufficiency and capability by making life a little easier to manage for them. [Read more…]

Happy Girl

louisahike

What does it take to make a happy girl?

Here’s the recipe:

* Knowing she is a daughter of God
* Chances to work hard and serve others
* One-on-one time with Mom
* Challenging enough academic studies
* Time to read uplifting classic books
* A hobby to keep her hands busy
* Friends who share values
* Assurance that she is pretty and pleasing in personality
(. . . to name just a few)

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What Will You Trade Your Time For?

coinsWe all get a finite amount of time to live on this earth; our days are numbered. Imagine that the time given to you is a bag of gold coins. Just what will you trade your coins for? It will run out no matter how you spend it. When you’ve spent the last coin, just what will you have?

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Doldrum Buster!

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Winter can bring some dark days that give us cabin fever. What better way to break the doldrums than to celebrate! Just the words, “let’s have a party!” gets everybody happy at my house. An ordinary supper can turn in to a “dinner party” in just 10 minutes! Your kids will be excited to do the decorating!

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Knowing Who You Came From

My-Ancestorsfilled
I’m glad for Memorial Day! It gives us that wonderful opportunity to help our children remember who we came from. Children can grow up thinking that they live in the here and now, and that’s all that matters. Of course, those who came before us are vitally important to our own lives, not only because we look like them—we have their physical inheritance—but because without them, we would not be here. We owe them a debt of gratitude and remembering: remembering their lives, remembering what they valued, remembering their sacrifices.

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Project: Souvenir Rocks

souvenirrocks

We love to travel!

From an educational standpoint, travel really intensifies learning! And family memories are made that form a wonderful store of inside jokes, and shared experiences. (We arecamping_oregon_10still laughing about too-hungry Emily’s comment when locating a road sign that announced that the state police were on the right. She read it, “The steak police are on the rice.”) Hee hee. What a bond travel creates within a family!

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Double Vision

         Double Vision

My Grandma’s spectacles are queer
It’s almost like a game,
She says she has two pair of them,
Although they look the same.

One pair makes tiny thngs seem big,
“Enlarged,” she says it’s called;
The other makes big things seem small­—
I s’pose they are “ensmalled”.

[Read more…]

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