The
Homeschool Review Crew does word prompts for Instagram fun, I think
it's great to have these words prompts for doing quick posts. :) I
find them fun as sometimes it surprises me where my brain goes. :) The word for today is Family. Let's follow my brain where it goes eh?
I had a friend tell me once in college that I had too strong a loyalty to my family. At the time I was struggling with living my life as a young adult away from home, and I thought maybe, just maybe she was right. Otherwise why would I be struggling so much?
As I've matured I have to question that.
I am not sure that one can have too strong a loyalty to their family. Family is a central part of living in my eyes. It's where you learn your place in the world. It's where you first learn manners, how to work, how to have a conversation, how to start forming your own world viewpoint. I am not going to say that family is easy for everyone, cause not everyone comes from a stable, faith-believing family. And even with this stable, faith-believing family we have had our issues and struggles over the years as we butt heads over different ways to live out our lives of faith. Within those struggles though is the safety net of the love of family. Do I have loyalty to my family....you bet your bottom dollar...it's fierce and strong. It's as real and tangible to me as my love for my heavenly Father. (if not sometimes more). :) Through them I have learned the cost of love. This has helped me in the raising of my son. Family is ah... a good thing... not only my birth family, but also my made family. Hubby, son, and all our critters. This is family. And...it is good.
St. Patrick's Day was named of St. Patrick. Born as Maewyn Succat, he was born a Roman Briton who was captured by pirates and turned into a slave in Ireland. As a slave he became a Christian. He escaped Ireland only to be captured by the French, which gave him the opportunity to study Monasticism. He claimed he had a dream where he was to convert Ireland to Christianity. He wasn't well received on the main land of Ireland so needed to start in some of the off shore islands. He used the shamrock to teach the idea of the Trinity to the Irish people. He is believed to have died on March 17, 461 AD. The celebration of the day started in the 17th century and continues til this day.
With
me down and out with a cold that is nasty enough to take away my voice and energy,
my sweetheart was kind enough to make supper. Since it was St. Patrick's
Day he chose to honour St. Patty's Day and made an Irish inspired meal for us. (A first for us!) He made
10 whole cloves (or you can use 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves)
Directions: Unwrap the corned beef, and remove the seasoning packet (use it in another recipe, such as roasted cabbage and potatoes) and trim as much of the fat from the meat as you can.
Rinse the corned beef under a bunch of cold water in a colander to wash away a bunch of the sodium.
(If you have time, you can even submerge the meat overnight in the
fridge in a tupperware of cold water to release the excess sodium. In
the morning, dump the water.)
In a small bowl, make a paste of the honey, brown sugar, mustard, and cloves.
Rub this mixture on all sides of the meat. Place the meat into your crockpot, and cover.
Cook on low for 8 to 10 hours, or until meat pulls apart easily with a fork. Let sit for 15-20 minutes before slicing. Irish Champ
Preheat oven to 325
degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease and flour a 10 inch Bundt pan.
Sprinkle chopped nuts evenly over bottom of pan.
In a large bowl,
combine cake mix and pudding mix. Mix in eggs, 1/4 cup water, 1/2 cup
oil and 3/4 cup Irish cream liqueur. Beat for 5 minutes at high speed.
Pour batter over nuts in pan.
Bake in the preheated
oven for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes
out clean. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then invert onto the serving
dish. Prick top and sides of cake. Spoon glaze over top and brush onto
sides of cake. Allow to absorb glaze repeat until all glaze is used up.
To make the glaze: In a
saucepan, combine butter, 1/4 cup water and 1 cup sugar. Bring to a
boil and continue boiling for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove
from heat and stir in 1/4 cup Irish cream.
Ingredients 1 Package Mashed potatoe mix (we use the kind you get at Costco) uses milk and water 1 bunch green onions 1/4 cup milk Directions: Heat water with thinly sliced green onions and butter in it. Add the milk (as called for in potatoe mix recipe) Add the mashed potatoe mix
This week my son has been in cooking class all week.
He's been bringing home cookies and pie and just having a good deal of fun. He's made cookies with brown beans in it (what a delight surprising mom and dad with the knowledge). Chicken dinner with potatoes and veggies. A variety of dips and learning to spiralize veggies. Desserts. Maple bacon and pancakes. He's been simple delighted with everything that they have made and was so pleased they sent him home with a cookbook. Now he has more ideas of things to cook! Friday we started our six week co-op session for HOPE.
Hubby is teaching a gym class. We had the children play Hotdog, Around the World, and Everybody's It. Hard to get pics of fast moving children.
I am teaching a "Making Zentangles class". I will be using this book as a base of reference. You can find my review of it here.
Family... First friendships are made with family I think. Friendships between siblings and cousins. Later friendship with parents. It is here we learn the give and take between people... when as child first it's sometimes a knock down drag out type of affair, but as we get older turns into discussion, conversation and occasionally heated arguments. But here are the foundations laid for later friendships, those bonds that include faith, similar interests, and mutual action. (nothing like throwing hay bales around with an older sister). :)
Real-life... childhood and adulthood, running around in the community brings other relationships...some of these become bond-making friendships, some just become occasional get-to-know you relationships. I have to admit, I don't have many.. what you'd call.. strong bond-making friendships in life. I've learned to be wary as one too many people have taken what I thought was friendship and turned it into a weapon of singular destruction. The Crew.... this year..oh..the friendships I am making on the crew is wonderful. They aren't the same as in the flesh let's go out for coffee friendships. They are the let's see if we can catch each other on-line and chat for a while. Learning to share hearts without the "catches" the on-line conversation can bring...you know when you type something and someone interprets it differently than you meant? It's great to read each others blogs and bring to the heart encouragement to each other. It's wonderful to have a community where you can say "let's pray for this" or "I'm struggling with this" and offer that support to each other. When we are no longer homeschooling I will miss that part of the crew... I really will.. but we aren't there yet eh? :) Similar Interests... It's been also great this year to be making friendships with similar interest groups. Like working at the foodbank or attending rabbit shows or being part of rabbit groups on-line. Talking and sharing with each other, teaching new ways of doing things. T'is a goodly thing to be useful eh? To laugh and agonize with each other. :)
This is a five minute Friday post. the word prompt is brought to us by Miss Kate. Today the word is Friend.
What is Five Minute Friday? Well it's a party of a group of like
minded folks who gather on Friday to do a five minute free write around a
singular word. AND THEN we take the time to offer up encouragement to
each other on this writing journey. It's fun, though it's not always
easy, but it is always good. Come join us won't you? You are always
welcome.
Found, a board book based on Psalm 23, is filled with the quiet peace and awareness of the care that the Shepherd of our lives watches over us all the time. A Sturdy book to put in the hands of our littlest one, this is a tender story of how a shepherd takes care of his sheep, even the littlest, more way ward lambs. Many of the full-colour pictures show a young lamb cavorting around the shepherds feet, or being carefully carried. Jago does an excellent job of illustrating this faith-based board book. Put together by the same folks who did the Jesus Storybook Bible, it is simply a great book to share with young children.
Isn't the detail on the page just lovely? See the care the shepherd has for his lamb? It's a book of verse, but not mindless trying to rhyme it all verse, it's verse the speaks of the simple truths found in Psalm 23.
With Easter coming up, wouldn't it be great to introduce your young ones to the true Lamb of Easter. Check out the book Found: Psalm 23. Let the gentleness and peace of the Saviour come to you this season.
I just love this scene of the shepherd running to mind that little lamb all lost and alone.
Today we are reading from Ezekiel 39:1-24. Last time we met we learned about Be Mindful Gog of Magog. You can read more in my Ezekiel Studies here and here.
Reading through a chapter every three weeks, this study is from "The Prayer Saturated Family". You can read the rest of the series here. This week we are doing chapter two "The Unstoppable Power of a United Praying Family".
The encouragement in this chapter is to remember that praying together as a family for the neighbourhood that you live in makes a huge difference, it can transform your whole neighbourhood.
The example was given of one family that prayed for their neighbourhood, eventually seeing families coming to faith and an entire neighbourhood changed.
I have to admit that I struggled with the author's understanding of the prayer of Jabez. His prayer reads "Jabez called upon the God of Israel, saying "oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that you hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not bring me pain!" And God granted what he asked." This was not a prayer for increased spiritual influence in the world around him, this was a prayer of a man who wanted to be blessed of God with more land and good health. Nothing more. Mixed into a long line of genealogies, Jabez was a man who prayed, a man who was born in pain (v9) and didn't want more of it. God extended grace to him and gave him what he wanted. I do love this line, "that real disciples create real disciples" (p.29). We can train our children not to be afraid of the world but to pray through the world, through the territory that God gives them. Praying through your neighbourhood as a family does this: It teaches you where you can be a blessing from God to those in your sphere of influence. Praying through your family can give you goals to meet. God answers these prayers and changes the family, and changes the neighbourhood. I have to admit, I struggle with this idea. I have an intellectual understanding of it, and I have seen prayer in surprising action on more than one occasion, but I struggle with the idea that the prayers of one family can have such a drastic result. And what happens if a family takes this approach and sees no change occurring? I suppose I am seeing more of the "what ifs" and less of the "God cans". It stems, I think, from fear. If I make this change, and pray with my family over the neighbourhood we are in now and over the future of where we will be, and God doesn't answer those prayers. What will I do with that? I should not let this stop me. Just as I don't want fear to stop my lad from doing or trying something new...I shouldn't let the fears that I have about "what if God says no" to prayer concerning this family and the areas that God might place us in.
See I have to remember this immutable truth God is the Lord. His decisions, his call, his ways. He knows ALWAYS what is the best for all his people. All he requires from us is the willingness to listen to what he wants and the simple obedience to his will. He works through the prayers of his people, and sometimes despite the lack of prayers of his people.
I have a DELIGHTFUL series of books for you to learn about today. Draw and Discover books by Yasmeen Ismail. Each book has it's own theme from emotions, directions, or even perspective.
I have got to walk you through these books that are geared for the younger crowd!
One of the aspects of these books that I like is they use simple drawings and text to allow children the freedom to explore the meaning of a word using whatever they want to draw to do so. :) Great paper... a thicker quality that will resist leaking through, ripping, and multiple pencil erasures.
The pages leave plenty of room for drawing and colouring.
There is so much room given for children to express their creative side while learning new words. Why not use art to help teach?
Each book is 56-64 pages long with a two page spread to help explore a single emotion (excited, sad, proud etc), or opposite words (up/down, push/pull etc).
If you have a singleton child it is definitely a use it up as you go book, or if you have multiple children, you could use it as a springboard to developing your own pages.
Each book has a hard fly (front and back)that could be used as a book mark or a "put behind the page" sheet to prevent leaking of paint or markers to the next page. That fly contains all the words used within the book as well, making it a good "let's look ahead page" or a "let's review what we've learnedpage".
All published by Laurence King. Geared for ages 4-7 years old. 56-64 pages long. Everything in these books is designed to get children thinking, doodling, drawing, colouring and learning. An innovative series by a remarkable children's author: Yasmeen Ismail.
This review is part of an Art series is part of an on-going series of Art books reviewed for your pleasure and resource. You can find more books here and here.
Today we are reading from Ezekiel 37:15-28. Last time we met we learned about One People, One Shepherd, One God. You can read more in my Ezekiel Studies here and here.
The Lord has a word against Gog, of the land of Magog today. The Lord is against him. This is why: You
will come up against my people Israel, like a cloud covering the land.
In the latter days I will bring you against my land, that the nations
may know me, when through you, O Gog, I vindicate my holiness before
their eyes.
It always strikes me as odd. How God will use a nation against his people and then punish that nation afterwards.
Gog is living his life, with all his armies. God will then muster Gog and his armies " I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out"
7 “Be ready and keep ready, you and all your hosts that are assembled about you, and be a guard for them. God warns him.
God will muster Gog and his armies and his allies so well that they will be like a storm coming over the land of Israel, expecting to find a land of unwalled villages, in order to seize spoils and plunder the land. In fact the nations surrounding will say: Have you come to seize spoil? Have you assembled your
hosts to carry off plunder, to carry away silver and gold, to take away
livestock and goods, to seize great spoil?’
And so Gog and his people will come with a heart to plunder a nation just gathered together and God will act. He will show his holiness. He will show his protection of his people. 14 “Therefore, son of man, prophesy, and say to Gog, Thus says the Lord God: On that day when my people Israel are dwelling securely, will you not know it?15 You will come from your place out of the uttermost parts of the north, you and many peoples with you, all of them riding on horses, a great host, a mighty army.16 You will come up against my people Israel, like a cloud covering the land. In the latter days I will bring you against my land, that the nations may know me, when through you, O Gog, I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.
God's method of punishment? He will use the land against Gog and his ilk. The very land... an earthquake will shake the land, the mountains will quake around Gog and his armies. Hail and torrential rains will fall about them. Fire and sulfur will cover them. (which makes me think volcano).
18 But on that day, the day that Gog shall come against the land of Israel, declares the Lord God, my wrath will be roused in my anger.19 For in my jealousy and in my blazing wrath I declare, On that day there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel.20 The
fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the
field and all creeping things that creep on the ground, and all the
people who are on the face of the earth, shall quake at my presence. And the mountains shall be thrown down, and the cliffs shall fall, and every wall shall tumble to the ground.21 I will summon a sword against Gog on all my mountains, declares the Lord God. Every man's sword will be against his brother.22 With pestilence and bloodshed I will enter into judgment with him, and I will rain upon him and his hordes and the many peoples who are with him torrential rains and hailstones, fire and sulfur.
23So I will show my greatness and my holiness and make myself known in the eyes of many nations. Then they will know that I am the Lord.
Can you imagine it? Really? I've never been in a major earthquake... I experienced a small one when I went down to CA one time, but a major one where rocks are falling down, with sulfur and what not in the air....
You can't mistake such a thing as anything other than the Lord God at work. You can't. Not when it's directed at an invading army.
The nations surrounding the newly remade land of Israel would have been watching with avid interest... and to see Gog and his people destroyed in such a manner would have set their tongues a wagging.
Can you picture it?
I think about this and how to apply it to my life and I keep being drawn back to how God so often uses another people group to discipline his people, or to show his greatness in regards to his care for his own people (and ergo his holiness) and I wonder... I wonder how God is using people TODAY how show his holiness and care of his people?
I don't see (in my personal life) God using people to help me mind him better. I know that peoples are persecuted throughout the world for loving God (but I don't always see God punishing those persecuted). So sometimes I wonder if God still uses this method today.
And I wonder...what would happen if he did? Would people see it for what it is? God's greatness and holiness on display for the world to see. Would it set tongues-a-wagging about the greatness of God?
What can I do to get people talking about the greatness of God? Nothing compared to this for sure. I can't make earthquakes.
. Let the gentleness and peace of the Saviour come to you this season. 
