2018 - Book 46

Pages 90

I love a book with questions at the end of the chapter.  I will probably read through this again soon and try to write more thorough responses to the questions.  This is would be great for a discussion group or just to study as a couple and think about your parenting methods.

You are about to see a whole mess of books about raising children come through.  I am on a parenting kick.

2018 - book 45

Pages 375

I used this for devotionals in the morning.  Piper takes all the words of Jesus and categorizes them into 50 groups. Then he writes a short devotional based off of each topic.  Future Grace is slightly better, but this one is also worth the read! If you want to borrow my copy, let me know.

2018 - Book 44

This books was excellent and I think that every pastor and Session member should be required to read it so that they would be better equipped to minister to hurting people.  I relied heavily on this book for my lesson on Grieving with those that Grieve for Sunday School this year. 

I cannot recommend this book more highly.  It is a must read. It is hard to say that a book on grief is the best book I read this year, but it is probably the most helpful (in ministering to other people).  But then the Gospel Comes With A House Key was also really good.  Read them both. 

Hi!

Guys, I have been slacking at blogging.  It isn't that I don't have anything to say. It has just been so busy recently.

I spent the later half of the summer creating a website and Facebook page for our ESL ministry.  Then there were forms to update and flyers to create and handout and interview processes to approve. I am blessed with some great staff members that take a lot of work off me.  But the emails each week are quite enough to keep me busy.  This year we are having classes on two nights and in two different locations.

In September we were supposed to go to OBX with my family for a week, but hurricane Florence came through and closed a bunch of roads and cancelled the trip.  So we just hung out at the house instead and had a quick trip to a closer beach for a couple nights.

September was also the National Folk Festival.  It rained almost the entire time, but we loved it. I was a naysayer up until the night before when I looked up the schedule and saw they had acrobats and a puppeteer. We went in the rain on Saturday and the boys begged to go back on Sunday. So we did.

We started officially doing school this year. So there are books to read and lessons to plan and field trips to go on and science experiments to do.  Science and math are our favorite subjects around here.  They are so easy to build into life.  Right now we are growing a sourdough starter and we have a pet tree frog. A few weeks ago we had a caterpillar.  We had been studying airplanes through the century and were looking forward to visiting Kitty Hawk on our way to OBX, but plans changed and we just made paper airplanes instead. :) That is the great thing about home schooling; we are flexible.

Jared is back in school too. He takes two classes a semester for his MBA.  Three down, seven to go. I wish I was back in school. I am slightly jealous of all his Excel Spreadsheet homework. He has also had jury duty this month. He has always wanted it and the first day he went in he was picked for a 7-10 day trial. I think he has had his fill of jury duty for a while.

I am teaching a Sunday School class at my church this year with two other people. It is on friendship. the topic didn't appeal to me, but I am having fun pulling in a ton of extra resources and expanding the scope of the class. We are five weeks in and we have already read some Gutherie, Piper, Welch, Beeke, Bonhoeffer, Powilson, Rendall-Risner, Butterfield, and a few more. It has been good.

The boys have been active. They love to play outside and we try to get out at least once a day.  Usually they require a bath afterwards. Oh well. Germs are good, right?  Warbie stuck two sunflower seeds up his nose this week and took us to the ER.

That's about all.

This feels like a Christmas letter. ha.

P.S. I updated my books for the year. I back-dated a few and schedule the ones through the first week of December.  I am up to 51 for the year. It is pretty exciting to be so close to reaching my goal for the year. Woohoo.

Mending Pajamas

The majority of sewing I do these days is like this.

The feet had holes in both of the toes and that bothered Meems. I chopped off the feet and quickly sewed some bias tape around the legs. Good as new!

2018 - Book 43

Pages: 71

Excellent little book! I am leaning heavily on it for the Sunday School.class I am teaching. The chapters are short, the questions great starting points, and the information is useful.

And if you live close to me and want a copy, I have one more left.  Let me know and I will give it to you.  I get these great deals from Westminster Theological Seminary's Bookstore and I can't pass them up.  This one was much cheaper if I bought a set of 5 (why would I need 5 copies?).  I don't know, but they were books and they were a good price and a great author and I bought them.  I buy a lot of books from them. So many books. I think 5 more arrived this last week.

2018 - Book 42

Finally Alive
John Piper

On Kindle

I liked the first five chapters.  It felt more like a bunch of essays that were put together than a book. There was good information in it.  But it was not one of my favorite Piper books.

2018 - Book 41

Pages: 179

This has a bunch of great questions at the end of each chapter that I look forward to using with my kids later in life.

2018 - Book 40

Pages: 222

2018 - book 39

Best Christmas Pageant ever

Audio book.
Length : 3 hours

2018 - book 38

Pages: 337

2018 - book 37

Pages: 322

Excellent book! He references Brother Andrew from the Bible Smuggler book I read earlier this year. I like when books overlap. 

Lots of reviews have been written about it online. 

Here is a good one:

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/the_insanity_of_god/

2018 - Books 35 and 36

I challenged myself to read the Bible in 9 months this year.  I finished in 8 months! I count the Old and New Testaments each as a book because there are a lot of pages.  I use the Reader's Bible in ESV most of the time.

I am doing a Bible study in John in the Fall and so I have been focusing on some deep reading of that.  I'll start reading through the Bible again towards the end of the year.

Pages: 1800

2018 - Book 34

Back in June we went to DC for three days.  It took 4 and a half hours to get home (that isn't normal). We listened to all of Paddington (read by Jeeves).  It is a cute story and I look forward to reading it again to my boys when they are a bit older and reading more in the series.

Time: 3 hours

2018 - book 33

Pages: 191

Look, another book written just for women.  How do I keep finding myself reading these? 
(I read this book as part of a group study. )

You all know I don't like books written just for women... but this was the best book written just for women that I have read this year.  The best benefit I can see of this book is the discussions that could be have after reading this book as a group.  There are lots of ideas for weeping with those that weep and rejoicing with those that rejoice.  I would like to put some meat on the bones and discuss it with people that have been through situations that they needed someone to rejoice with them or weep with them. 

Overall I liked the book for what it is.  However, I couldn't help but think about all the books she quoted from and wishing that I was reading those instead. It is an overview of friendship books.

These are two of my favorites off the list (and they could be read by men or women):
Life Together - Bonheoffer
Relationships a Mess Worth Making - Tripp

I thought those two books were both excellent resources on friendship and working together in the body of Christ. She quotes from those two more than any other.  I highly recommend them both!

She also quotes from (I have read some of these and some I want to read or have in my to-read basket of books):
Jerry Bridges (True Community)
Phillip Graham Ryken (The Communion of Saints)
Tim Keller (The Reason For God)
Francis Schaeffer (The Mark of A Christian)
C.S. Lewis (Letters)
J.I. Paker (Knowing God)
Ed Welch (Side by Side)
Jonathan Edwards
John Calvin
Charles Spurgeon (Sermons)
Susan Hunt
The Westminster Confession
Joel Beeke (How Should We Develop Christian Friendship)

Lots of good information. It was well put together. It isn't a bad little book.  I read it in two days.  It is an easy read.

Note: The study I read it for is a Sunday School class.  Big surprise here: I don't like books for women and I also don't like Sunday School classes only for women. The men are doing their own class and a different book.  I think it would have been more beneficial if we had both read the same book on friendship (either the Bonheoffer or the Tripp book would have been my votes). That way we would be able to discuss it with one another on the way home or as we saw each other during the week.  Reading different books takes away the camaraderie. It makes us on different pages (literally). 

2018 - book 32

Pages: 358

This book! Add this to the pile of books that will be required reading for my children when they get older.

It will join these others:
King Leopold's Ghost
The Shallows - What the Internet is Doing to Your Brain
The Color of Law
Alone Together
I'm probably forgetting some...

I knew nothing about how the American Indians were treated in our nation. It was never mentioned in any of my history.  I picked up a couple books about the Trail of Tears from the library and browsed through them before settling on this one.  It was a bit dry in parts, but overall did an excellent job of covering the history of the Cherokees and the US government.

The way the US government treated the American Indians is disgraceful.  They double-crossed them and lied to them over and over and over again.  It is interesting reading history because you start to see people in a different light.  We tend to group all the early presidents in a group and think of them as "good".   But we are all sinners in need of a Saviour and without Him we are hopelessly lost.

I fell like I need to read a biography of each of our American presidents to get a better picture of their lives. There are so many things I want to read about.  A book gives such a better picture then a wikipdia page article. 

2018 - book 31

Pages 244

I liked this book.  There are no perfect parenting books (other than the Bible).  I find it helpful to read a bunch of different ones and pick things that apply to my children and me.  A friend lent this one to me and I learned a few things.  I passed it on to another friend when I finished. 

2018 - Book 30

Pages: too many

I don't have a problem with much of the content.  I found the authors writing style annoying.  The most obnoxious thing about the book is the formatting.  My eyes hurt from looking at the various fonts and sizes.  The bold and the italics and the underlining...

It bothers me when authors underline, highlight, italic, and bold parts of Bible verses that back up their ideas. The visual clutter really gets in the way and makes my brain distracted from the text. 
 

So, the book was okay... not my favorite...not the absolute worst.  There is good material mixed in with a bunch of extra words.  It isn't one that I will be buying lots of copies to give out to friends. 

I can't think of anything that I learned from the book.  I give it a mheh review and add it to the donate pile. 

End-of-the-semester

I pick a book for my staff each year. This is one of my favorites.

In previous years I have given out:
* When Helping Hurts
* Dispatches From the Front - Tim Keesee

I haven't decided what I will give out next year.  It will depend on what Westminster Theological Seminary's bookstore has one sale. Do you get their emails? I want to buy all the books they recommend.

2018 book 29

Charlotte’s Web
E. B. White
Pages 180

I bawled my eyes out reading ahead in the book while the boys played when Charlotte is left at the fair to die alone. This (and the Hobbit) are enjoyable children’s books to read. They are so well written that I would gladly read them again. I love all the characters in the book, Wilbur, Fern, the sheep, the geese, Templeton, and of course Charlotte. How can you feel so much for a spider? The boys seemed to like this one too. They had lots of questions.

As a comment... I think growing up on a farm has advantages. There is so much to learn about life from observing the seasons and crops and life and death of animals. Our children are so far removed from the food cycle and mating cycle. I don’t know what I am trying to say. Something about how computers and technology don’t always make the quality of life better. Things are more sterile and compartmentalized. I want to expose my kids to real life as much as possible (hiking in the woods, exploring creatures at the beach, catching snack, collecting eggs from chickens, hatching tadpole eggs, etc.). I don’t want them to just read about thing. I want them to see them and touch them and smell them. We lose something when it is all flashing lights in a screen. In some ways we lose closeness from God in technology. Sure, there are tons of resources on the web. But there is something awe inspiring about nature and the stillness of sitting on a porch watching a sunrise or watching a frog swim or observing a plant growing. It helps me focus my mind on who created it.