Learning from Others

Here's a topic that Brandon and I recently discussed. I wonder if you have any opinions about it. What kind of people are easy to learn from and why? What kind of people are easy to teach? Do you feel that every person that you meet has something that you can learn from? Do you ever feel like others don't really want to listen to your opinion because of your status? What are things that turn you off from wanting to learn something from someone else? What ways do you try to learn from others? Anyway, if you care to comment, go ahead - be anonymous if you want. We'd love to hear what you have to say.

Jesse Bear’s Baby

For Christmas a neighbor gave us this beautiful board book illustrating the song, “Mary did you know?” and the CD by Kenny Rogers & Wynonna Judd. The song is about Mary the mother of Jesus. It asks her if she knew that her baby would walk on water, save, deliver, give sight, calm the storm and rule the nations. J.B. calls the book his “baby.” From the very first time that he heard the song and looked at the pictures, he loved it. We played the song several times on the trip to Arizona to calm him down when he was fussy. Sometimes I sing it to him when I rock him to sleep. Almost immediately on hearing it, he calms down and listens. He loves to look at the pictures. Sometimes I see him turning the pages and softly cooing to himself "baby." It’s the only book he really enjoys to read with me. It’s so interesting (but not surprising) that little children learn so quickly to recognize and learn the name of Jesus and reverence Him.

Enjoying the Wonders of the World

Curious George loves to plant. Today we planted some starts for our garden in little plastic cups. Last week we planted some onions and today I showed him how they were starting to pop up. He loved it. "That's happy!" he said. Then I showed him how my houseplant (Cyclamen) that I've had for about 3 years was blooming. "That was nice of it," he said. I couldn't agree more. It blooms every year around this time and I love it. Beautiful pink flowers. There's nothing like a flower to brighten your winter days.

Turkey Cookin'

We cooked a turkey breast in our crock pot the other day for a dinner with some friends. It was too large to fit in our 7-qt crock pot and the lid kept popping up, which of course lets all the steam escape and makes the turkey not cook. This was my inventive husband's great idea on how to keep the lid on. It was quite a contraption, but it worked great!

Shopping with Kids: Not for the Fainthearted!

I had an interested day...for the complete story see our other blog.

Wonderful Wedgits

Curious George and I were playing with wedgits today. For those of you not familiar with these imaginative, linking toys, they are great. My mom says they are the best toy invented since legos. I think she's pretty close on that. Most of the boxes say they are for children ages 3 to 103. And it's true! I love to play with them. :) These toys utilize your 3-D and geometric skills as well as your imagination. It's fun to discover new ways to link them together and look at the shapes you can make at all different angles.

Well, we were playing with them today and C.G. says, "Mom, look it's pointing to heaven!" He was right. Maybe that's why I like them so much. They are intricate enough for a scientist to love, yet simple enough to point a young child upward.



Here's the website in case you're interested: http://www.wedgits.com/design/

Family History Facebook

I'm going to throw this idea out there. Maybe some of you have already thought of it. We recently got back from a family reunion and a large part of it emphasized family history. So I've been thinking in that mode lately. I was on facebook the other day trying to find some of my cousins and I had this idea for a family history facebook. It could be set up in the same way as facebook with individuals and friends, but you could also submit names of your ancestors and all of their data. Then people could connect with their ancestors in a similar way that you connect with friends on social networking sites like facebook! I haven't come up with a solution for duplicated ancestors...that's always an issue when dealing with things like this. But you could chat with live friends about family history finds and post them on your "wall" and form family groups and pedigrees and family trees and wow! The possibilities are endless. I don't know...maybe something like this already exists! :) I don't know much about some of the family history sites that cost money (maybe one of those has something similar), but I think this would need to be free like facebook to be successful. So...what do you think?