Our Six-Year-Old Sam

Six years.

Six years ago we welcomed our fifth child to our fold. It was a hard day after two babies that went into labor on there own with ease needing to be induced, but he was stubborn, large and needed a push.

And still to this day, our Sam is stubborn and needs a push, but he adds so much life and laughter to our home, our lives would be dull without him. He loves to laugh and joke and say the most off the wall things. He's so full of life and is not stopped by anything. Sam knows no bounds because everything seems possible to him. It is so fun to watch his adventurous spirit and we pray, by God's grace, this adventurous spirit will be molded to God's will for his life and will be used in furthering God's Kingdom!

Sam loves to learn. Math is his favorite as he loves using the blocks to figure out his problems and make fun designs. He is so creative and such a fun story teller. He enjoys drawing as well. It's a blessing to hear the many ideas he comes up with and talk with him about them. Puzzles are also fun for him and he loves to put them together. He is currently learning to read and he's getting there step by step.

With his adventurous spirit, Sam enjoys playing outside, running around being Aragorn or Bilbo or Gandalf, fighting the bad guys and winning for the good. He also loves to explore the bamboo forest in our back yard. Sword fighting with his brothers is also a cherished past time and he enjoys riding our swing car down the drive way. Sam just loves to move and be on the go. His mind is always onto the next thing and wants to see what's next. With this is a good level of fear of missing out, but he is learning to enjoy what is right in front of him little by little.

Sam's absolute favorite thing to do, though is watch movies, and his favorite movie is whatever he wants to watch at that moment. He loves the adventures of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Star Wars and Moana. He loves the humor of The Lorax and The Croods. He enjoys the lessons he learns from Fireproof and War Room. He loves it all! He just loves to watch the adventure and when he can't watch it recite it and play it out. Sam is so fun to watch as he shows his imagination and it grows in the midst of watching a myriad of movies.

Sam is an extrovert through and through. He always wants to be with someone. It's a good thing he has so many siblings so he can bounce around! The last thing he wants to be is alone. He always has something to share, something to talk about. Right now he's learning the art of listening so he can be the friend he wants others to be to him.

Sam also loves his daddy! If he could, he would be with Daddy all of the time! Sam loves to curl up in his lap and talk to him or just sit while they watch something together. It is precious to see this bond between them and how much it has developed since Sam was born.

We are still amazed at how much God uses this boy to teach us about Himself. We are so thankful for Sam and blessed to be his parents.

Father, thank You so much for the precious life of Sam! Thank You that we get to be his parents and teach him in Your ways! We ask You to turn his heart to You and save him by Your amazing unmerited grace. Take Sam's adventurous heart and give him a vision for Your great adventure. Take his love of story telling and make him a great proclaimer of Your Story, Your Word and the works that You continue to do. Thank You for these six amazing years with Sam and we pray for many many more! In Jesus's Powerful Name we pray, Amen!

North! Or Be Eaten

This second installment of the Wingfeather Saga is absolutely amazing! We read it through this time as a family and it had our older kids entranced from the beginning.

We follow the Igiby family as they flee north to the Ice Prairies away from the fangs of dang and watch them fight for their lives continuously. It is challenging to write about this book without giving away points from the first book if you have not read it, so I will not go into story line as I usually would in a book review of a story this engaging.

How would I describe it then? You see wrestling of the main characters to be who the Maker created them to be. You see team work and the detriment of trying to go it alone. You see culture clash. You see the family learning how to survive in the wild with only what they can carry with them. You see a mother's love unchanged in the face of great turmoil and heartache. You see how the sins of your past can come back to hurt not only you, but all around you, including the ones you love. You learn that you cannot hide, but you can be forgiven and still loved.

There are so many other fantastic lessons in this fantasy novel that you need to go discover for yourself. The Wingfeather Saga is not allegory, but how it delves into the depths of faith and growing in your faith as you watch these characters struggle. You learn what it means to trust the LORD even when it's hard and you don't understand what's going on around you. (A poignant lesson for what is going on in our world right now!)

I cannot recommend this book enough, but make sure to read On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness before you read this one!

5 Stars for this fantasy book that goes deep!

Reading Challenges:
This book is being counted for Tim Challies's 2020 Reading Challenge in the category of A Christian Novel in the Light section of the challenge.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

I am very much enjoying reading the Harry Potter series again. The third book in this series was so much better than I even remembered.

Since I've read it before I really enjoyed seeing all the breadcrumbs left to point to things to come in the future of the story. This book had me laughing out loud regularly and made me wonder where they got the movie from!

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban tells us more information about Harry, his parents and their tragic death. We learn more of the crazy world of wizards as well and how they use the powers of their world to help those in trouble.

On the whole I really enjoyed this book. I do think this book needs to be reserved for middle school and up because of the increasing darkness and the tragic circumstances that we learn about Harry's family and death. With these things come excellent talking points to learn how to deal with tragedy, how to investigate and not taking for granted that you know the truth about people or circumstances.

There is a little bit of language and the clear attitude of Harry feeling invincible. There is disrespect to authority that they do not like. There is a clear story line of revenge that needs to be discussed from a Biblical standpoint. None of this takes away from the heart of the story and how much you can learn from it.

I give this book 4.5 stars!

Reading Challenges:
This is my third book in Three Books by the Same Author in The Modern Mrs. Darcy 2020 Reading Challenge.
In the Tim Challies 2020 Reading Challenge I'm using it as a book of my choice in the Avid section of the challenge.

Just Open the Door

Just Open the Door is a study on Biblical Hospitality that uses the Bible as our study guide for why we should open our door to the others. I did this study with some of our women from Smyrna First and it was a blessing to learn more about hospitality from Jen Schmidt and encourage each other in this Biblical command.

While I thoroughly enjoyed this book, there was nothing surprising in it. For me, it was a timely reminder of what it means to be hospitable and why it's important to open our door to anyone and everyone who is in need. It was also a great reminder to look to Jesus who, though He did not have a home, was the perfect example of hospitality and He should be our example as we seek to show hospitality to those around us. I was reminded of what it means to show hospitality to those in my home as well so that I can teach them to be hospitable.

Jen also challenges us to say yes when it's uncomfortable. This is the epitome of what it means to be like Jesus. We're to invite in the lost, lonely, poor, widowed, orphan, homeless. I really want our family to grow in this.

Though this study is meant to be a video study, this book can stand on it's own.

I highly recommend this book for all who call themselves Christian!

4.5 Stars

Reading Challenges:
For the Tim Challies 2020 Reading Challenge I'm counting this book as a book about Christian Living
For the 2020 Christian Reading Challenge for Women with Jami Balmet I'm using this as a Christian Living book.

1984

Sad. Depressing. Hopeless.

These are the only words I can think of as I finished reading 1984 today. This classic is my Abandoned Classic for this year's Back to the Classics Challenge.

I have a vague recollection of reading some of this in high school, but only read enough to write whatever paper was needed at the time. Because of that, I gave it another try now so that I could finish it and evaluate it 20 years later. I do remember liking it for the most part and while I cannot say I dislike it now, my perspective of it is completely different.

The story begins with Winston Smith and how the world is for him. At the beginning there is an air that while life is strange and controlled by governmental forces, there is still hope out there. Everything is watched and monitored by Big Brother. Those who are in the Party live completely tied to it and this is where we find Winston.

Life is mundane, the same day in and day out. But Winston finds little ways to show a little adventure: daring to start a diary, frequenting a little trinket shop and day dreaming of bringing Big Brother down.

Part Two we see his hope kindled by another who also wants to bring down the establishment by having a love affair and stealing from the higher officials, yet is excellent at toeing the party line. As we watch this relationship blossom there is a level of hope that maybe, just maybe they can find others to help them bring it down with simple civil disobedience.

And then the inevitable.

While I cannot say I was completely shocked by the ending, I cannot shake the sense of hopelessness that this book left me with. Big Brother is portrayed as the God figure with one of the servants as the "Christ" figure, yet it is completely opposite of the True God and the True Christ. The terminology used left me speechless and I simply wanted to cry at the complete backwardness of it all.

Then I remember the book of Revelation in the Bible and it all sounds very familiar. While this book is written by, I believe, an atheist and is written as a warning to those who bow to communism, I can see many things in the book coming to pass on some level. What's depressing is there is no hope at all in the way it is written or presented because the book is devoid of God!

This is an excellent book for making you think and even asking myself as a Christian what it means to give all to God and not myself. It is not, however, excellent for anyone young that has not been taught in the Scriptures and how to see beyond what's on the page. 1984 is definitely for a mature audience.

"Our only true life is in the future." This statement sums up my feelings about the book. Thank God that I am His, or I truly would have no future. This book is a great reminder of this!

I would give this classic 3.5 stars.
Most of the reading was well done and interesting. There were a few passages that were a bit drawn out and boring. I appreciate the story line on the whole and the warning that this book readily gives to anyone about the reliance on government and allowing power to overtake us. I enjoyed the way this book made me think, but the hopelessness is weighing me down.

Reading Challenges:
Back to the Classics: Abandoned Classic
Tim Challies 2020 Reading Challenge: A book with a one word title in the obsessed section
The Modern Mrs. Darcy 2020 Reading Challenge: a re-read

Catching Their Talk In A Box

Catching Their Talk in a Box is one of our history read aloud books from our Core C with Sonlight. My children begged to read it and our oldest wanted to read it out loud to everyone himself! 

This book was excellent and gave me chills throughout. It is the story of Joy Ridderhof who was a missionary to a large portion of the world in the mid 1900s for 45 years. This was like reading George Mueller with stories we hear from a dear friend and Worker in the Field in Africa and it was beautiful. 

At 13 Joy was saved by the grace of God and immediately saw the need to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Early in life she went to Honduras and saw the need to get the Word of God into the language of the native people of the country. As she saw the needs around her, she took all of her requests to the LORD and, like George Mueller, she never told anyone of her need but took it to the LORD in prayer and watched Him provide everything she needed to do the work He gave her to do. 

Joy's work was focused on getting Bible stories on records for people in their native language and providing a player for them to listen to the stories. It is incredible to read story after story as she traveled all over the world, recording stories and giving the Gospel to unreached people groups in their native language. Today our friend is doing the same in Africa and teaching others to tell the stories also!

I cannot recommend this book enough! It is a beautiful picture of God's grace and provision as well as a much needed reminder of the power of prayer! 

Five stars for this missionary biography! It was loved by the whole family!

Reading Challenges:

I'm using this book for the Tim Challies 2020 Reading Challenge as a book by or about a missionary in the Avid reader section. 

For the Modern Mrs Darcy 2020 Reading Challenge this is a book published the decade I was born. 

The Twenty-One Balloons

The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois is a book from our Sonlight Core C curriculum, and I will say I was pleasantly surprised by this classic and my kids loved it!

This book is an adventure classic that is historical fiction. The story is loosely based on a real expedition of Professor William Waterman Sherman and his plan to spend a year traveling in a hot air balloon house.

The beginning of the story is a little slow and leaves you scratching your head a little as Professor Sherman is found floating in the Atlantic by the Captain of the freighter S.S. Cunningham and Professor Sherman refuses to tell his story to anyone but the Western American Explorers' Club. He is fussed over as he recovers his physical strength from his travels and is rushed from New York City to San Francisco as soon as he is able so that the story of his incredible adventure can be heard as the whole country of the United States of America want to know his story. 

Once Professor Sherman is set up at the Western American Explorers' Club, the whole crowd listens with bated breath as he tells his story. He tells about his balloon house and his adventure on the island of Krakatoa.

This story is fun and extremely fascinating! It gives you a view of a different area of the world, but also the battle of human nature that is found when living on an island together. There are so many great talking points with the kids as we discussed including taking risks, greed, being a good neighbor and working together. You also learn many fun and interesting things about technology in the late 1800s as well as world events during that time.

I highly recommend reading this as a family read-aloud. My children enjoyed this book very much as well, especially my oldest who is eleven.

I would give this book four stars because of the slow start that left me wanting for a chapter or two.

Reading Challenges:
For the Back to the Classics Reading Challenge I'm using this book as my 20th Century Classic.

For the Tim Challies 2020 Reading Challenge I'm using this book as a book that is of no particular interest to you in the committed section of the challenge. I'm using it for this category because I honestly had no interest in reading it when I saw it, but I'm so glad it was part of our curriculum!