Changed By Love

Fun and Educational Thanksgiving Books Plus Bonus Printables, Videos and Other Activities

Nov.20,2014

I found this neat Thanksgiving printable that I really love.

https://web.archive.org/web/20171121231616/http://d72.9f1.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Placecards.pdf

I printed it out and can’t wait to use it this Thursday for our Thanksgiving table. It would be good to laminate it, but my laminator is still in a box.

The place cards have a conversation starting question or task for them to do, such as “What is your favorite Thanksgiving memory?” or “What are you thankful for?”.

We are getting pretty excited about Thanksgiving around here.

We have read “‘Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving”.

‘Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving

It was really funny. We all enjoyed it.

We also read “Thanksgiving at the Tappletons”.

Thanksgiving at the Tappletons

It was also really funny.

Some other good books to read in the days leading up to Thanksgiving:

Thanksgiving Day at Our House Kelsey’s favorite! She reads this to the younger kids every Thanksgiving.

Thelonius Turkey Lives Kelsey likes this story and the recipe at the end for Sweet Potato Casserole. There’s another recipe in it, too, for Thelonius’ Feather Cookies.

The Thanksgiving Story by Alice Dalgliesh – enough information to be interesting, story about the Hopkins family, but easy enough for younger readers to read. This is a chapter book and covers the main topics of the Pilgrims, Indians and the First Thanksgiving.

Pete the Cat and the First Thanksgiving This is a lift-the-flap book. I haven’t actually read it yet, but I like Pete the Cat’s other books, so I assume I will like this one, too.

The Story of the Pilgrims Introduction to the story for younger children.

If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 Informative, makes kids think about what it must have been like to be a Pilgrim.

Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks Helps younger children understand why celebrate Thanksgiving – so we can give thanks! To God, for those of us who believe in Him. And to have a thankful attitude, in general.

The Pilgrims’ First Thanksgiving Good for ages 4-8, tells what it was like for Pilgrims in terms children can relate to, but describes hardships in a way they can handle.

Squanto’s Journey – lots of information about the details of Squanto’s life.

Sarah Morton’s Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Girl – uses actual photographs of a 10 year old girl in period dress who reenacts Pilgrim life at reconstructed Plimoth Plantation.

Samuel Eaton’s Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Boy Same format as Sarah Morton’s Day, but for boys!

Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving by Eric Metaxas – well-researched, historically accurate.

Another fun book to read is A Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin. The price for this at Amazon is ridiculous. I would get it at the library if it’s available. There are no copies available in our library system here. It is a very popular book. Here’s a summary of the story:

“Every year Grandmother invited a guest for Thanksgiving dinner and allowed Maggie to do the same. “Ask someone poor or lonely,” she always said. Thanksgiving was Grandmother’s favorite day of the year. The cooking was done and her famous cranberry bread was cooling on a wooden board. But she wasn’t happy to find out Maggie had invited the unsavory Mr. Whiskers to dinner. Would her secret cranberry bread recipe be safe with him in the house? After a long absence this delightful 1971 classic is back. So is Grandmother’s secret recipe!” The recipe is included at the end of the book.

Here is a fun way to learn more about Thanksgiving. A project pack from Hands of a Child for only $7.99. I recommend the lapbook ebook download or the Note Pack, which is like a lapbook but made to just put in a notebook instead of cutting little booklets. Students write information which is provided in the research guide.

Thanksgiving Curriculum from Hands of a Child

And no Thanksgiving celebration would be complete without A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bgIh-juSwE&list=PLZn_xw1XiMNYtb6stLaLHG2Hzd4fMB0Q1

This cupcake idea would be fun to do to go along with the movie. This idea is on my Pinterest page and comes from here.

And here’s the story of the First Thanksgiving told by the Peanuts gang. Click on the YouTube button so it will go automatically from one clip to the next.

http://youtu.be/8xlY4B0y_Pg?list=PLbmsjgfVXtPQRB8kgTkQeMUV3c8BXfiqS

Review and Giveaway of “Keep Your Love On” by Danny Silk

Nov.17,2014

Keep Your Love On: Connection Communication And Boundaries

Relationships take a lot of work. More work than many people think. More work than many are willing to invest.

Whether it be the relationship between a husband and wife, mother and daughter, father and son, or any other combination you can permutate, there are dynamics, personalities, human foibles, differing viewpoints and mindsets that can make it difficult or impossible for some people to relate well to each other.

Misunderstandings are all too prevalent.

In his book, “Keep Your Love On”, Danny Silk identifies many of the dynamics that cause relationship problems.

With chapters like:

Powerful People, Powerful Relationships

Turn Your Love On

The Battle Between Fear and Love

Building Healthy Relationships

Communication: Exchanging the Truth Inside

Communicating in Conflict

and

Did You Learn to Love?

plus many more

You will learn about connection, communication and boundaries.

One thing we have to realize is that the goal of a relationship is either connection or disconnection.

We get to decide a lot of things. You’ve probably heard it said that love is a decision. We must practice unconditional acceptance and unconditional love. We learn not to control the other person while at the same time, we don’t accept their negative behavior.

We tell them, “No matter what you do, I am going to pursue the goal of connection with you.”

Danny observes that people who feel powerless will try to gain power by manipulating or controlling those around them.

All through the book, he presents scenarios that happen as people attempt to get their needs met by others instead of keeping the attitude that they should be powerful people who are here to help others. “A powerful person’s choice to love will stand no matter what the other person says or does.”

Another principle we all need to internalize is that the purpose of communication is to understand the other, not convince the other to agree with you.

These principles help us to realize that we are not at odds with each other, but we are on the same team.

1. The goal of a relationship is connection.

2. The purpose of communication is to understand each other, not convince the other to agree with us.

Danny has this to say about setting Boundaries:

“If you don’t prioritize your relationship with God, then your God Spot will end up with a human being in it.”

“Keeping God in your God Spot keeps you connected to the Holy Spirit’s incredible resources of wisdom and understanding to define your relational priorities and boundaries. He’s going to show you who you’re supposed to be, with whom you are supposed to be connecting, and how to build and protect those connections. He’s also the Spirit of power, love and self-control who enables you to follow through on your “yes” to these relationships.”

I have been putting many of these principles into practice since reading this book. I am reading it again to get it down deeper into my heart.

I feel that it has really helped me to improve my relationship and communication skills.

I feel so strongly about it that I have bought three more copies of this book, and I want to give these away to three of my readers. This giveaway will end November 28, 2014, the day after Thanksgiving.

How to win the giveaway:

Just leave a comment answering this question:

1. How do you keep your love light burning when your spouse is acting unloving?

Or this question:

2. Do you think a wife should confront her husband when his behavior is hurting his relationships?

I will read the comments, but I will just number the comments and choose a random number to give the books to. Please leave your email address so I can get a hold of the winners.

I wrote a similar post about marriage here based on things I gleaned from this book, KYLO.

Please read this post to get some more insights into ways to improve your marriage relationship.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Giveaway is now closed. The winners are Nikki Landis and Kathleen Carroll! Congratulations to the winners. I pray that their lives and relationships will be extremely blessed by the principles in this book. I know that I have been changed by reading it.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I linked this post with the Wise Woman Builds Her Home link-up

Celebrating Freedom Days in Lots of Ways

Nov.13,2014

Freedom is a good thing. We Douglases really value freedom. We are very independent and are glad to live in a country that allows more freedoms than so many other countries do.

We celebrate Freedom on more occasions than just the 4th of July. We have a day we call Freedom Day, which happens to fall on or near Halloween. We have chosen to celebrate Freedom on that day instead of the traditional things that are celebrated on that day. We celebrate Freedom instead of Halloween.

The one thing our celebration has in common with the traditional celebration is — CANDY!!!

On or near October 31st, I buy lots of candy, and I make up lists of questions for each child, based on what they’ve been learning in homeschool.

Then I ask each one a question, and when they get the right answer they get to choose 2 pieces of candy.

Sometimes it moves kind of slowly, but they entertain each other between their questions, so they all really like it. They know the pay-off for their patience is going to be very sweet, so it helps them to wait their turn.

In this way, we can review what we have been learning and do some narration and earn candy all at the same time. Works for me! The kids look forward to this every year. When they hear others start talking about Halloween, they start asking me when Freedom Day is.

We went to Blessington Farms that same day, and Garrett tied into our theme of Freedom by doing the Statue of Liberty pose in one of our pictures.

On Freedom Day we celebrate Freedom of Religion, Freedom to homeschool, Freedom of Speech, and Freedom in Christ.

Which leads me to the second part of this post…

Did you know this was going to be a two-part post?

I’m throwing in this second part for free. dom. 🙂

Have you ever thought about what Freedom in Christ is?

What are we free from when we are in Christ?

Well, one thing we are free from is sin. When we make Jesus Lord of our lives, we are no longer slaves to sin.

We may still sin, but it is really our choice. We have power over sin if we ask the Lord to help us not to sin anymore, and we access the power of the Holy Spirit to help us.

Another thing we are free from is satan’s dominion over us. He cannot make us do anything.

But –

If we don’t enforce our freedom, the devil knows ways to keep us in bondage.

He uses things like generational curses, generational sins, things that our ancestors participated in and pronounced on their descendants to cause problems in our lives just because they have never been specifically broken over us. These things are some of the demonic strongholds spoken of in II Corinthians 10:4 –

“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds,”

When Gary and I went away for our anniversary last weekend, I knew that I was supposed to help him get freedom from some things that the enemy was still using to keep him in bondage. There were some things he was doing, things he was thinking, mindsets, and attitudes that I knew were not really the way Gary was supposed to be.

These things were damaging his relationships with members of our family.

I knew that he couldn’t see them himself.

So I prayed about our anniversary trip the whole week before we went. I found a Bed and Breakfast not far from home. It was in a peaceful, country setting. The room I chose had a living room portion, too, with a nice couch, chair, recliner and coffee table. So we were able to sit and relax and talk about what was going on.

I brought some things to his attention. When I mentioned specific things he said or did, he told me he didn’t remember them. As we kept talking and praying about these things, I realized that there was demonic interference that was causing him to do and say things. He said that a shroud came down over his head sometimes and he would puzzle about something, he was kept preoccupied with trying to figure something out and it would last a while, and then when he came back to attention everybody would be acting strange, like something bad had just happened, and he didn’t know what it was.

Here’s how he described it:

“Like a shroud – a panicked feeling to resolve what was before me or else – not just one thing but several, and it created an unreal amount of pressure, feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and just impending doom and condemnation. I got used to it – just figured it was just me trying to solve the world’s problems.”

I would later tell him he did this or that, but he didn’t remember those things. When he described it that way, I realized that I had been talking to and dealing with a demon at times, thinking it was Gary, and I was getting really mad at Gary when I should have been mad at the devil.

After we realized who the enemy was and what he had been doing, we prayed about how he got in and what right he had to stay in Gary’s life and control him like that. We knew that it had to do with a familiar spirit passed down through his family line. We believe it was from a great uncle that was a shaman of the Cherokee.

Gary wrote down the list of behaviors, mindsets and attitudes and repented of them, came out of agreement with them, and commanded spirits associated with them to leave. Then he told the familiar spirit to leave, all of this in Jesus’ name.

After a while, he started laughing. He felt a change. He felt lighter. He felt free.

He started treating me different after that. I haven’t felt so loved and cherished in a long time!

Yes, indeed, Freedom is a good thing.

Farm Days

Nov.11,2014

Kelsey wanted to go to a Pumpkin Patch. What Kelsey wants, Kelsey gets. Nah, not really. I really wanted to take the kids somewhere fun, too, so I did a search and found a couple of farms in the area that had pumpkin patches. One of them looked like it had lots of fun stuff without being too terribly expensive or too crowded, especially during the weekend after Halloween. So we went to Blessington Farms to check out the pumpkins and the rest of the attractions.

We were pleasantly surprised at the amount of fun things there were to do there.

We had to pay $10/person to get in, but we didn’t have to pay for any of the rides or anything once we were in.

The big slide was a lot of fun.

Garrett came down laying down.

Abby came down slightly sideways.

Garrett on his back again. I think it slowed him down a little bit and made him feel a little safer.

Safer, that is, until Kelsey came down and almost ran into him!

Here Garrett tried it sitting up.

He tried it on his belly and almost crashed into the side. Abby was standing right there, but she was too busy looking up at the top to be of any help to him.

Sitting again.

Kelsey on her belly.

Kelsey at the bottom after a fun slide down on her belly. Abby went down lots of times, too, but I couldn’t really see what I was taking pictures of. I just had to point and shoot because the sun made it impossible to see what was on my camera screen. So the pictures I tried to take of Abby didn’t turn out too well.

Emma was with Gary on the other side of the hill, going down the slide there, so I didn’t get any pictures of her.

The little girls really liked the big sandpile, but we had lots of other things to explore, so they didn’t get much time to play in the sand.

We went through the petting farm.

The camels were 6 months old. I thought it was very nice of them to smile for the camera!

There were goats that were tiny.

They were so cute!

Nobody was afraid to pet them. One guy picked one of them up and carried it over to his son so he could pet it.

There were chicks.

My kids can’t wait until we can have our own baby chicks.

Garrett and Abby and Scooby rode on the pedal bikes.

Kelsey got in on the pedal bike action.

We finally found the pumpkin patch! But it had already been pretty well picked.

We were able to get some nice pictures with the few pumpkins that were left.

Garrett tried his hand at lassoing a steer.

Then we rode the barrel train.

The little girls rode in cows. And so did I. I rode in a cow behind them. It was so much fun! Riding on that barrel train was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I threw my hands up in the air and yelled, “Wooh” just like on a roller coaster.

Kelsey and the twins brought up the rear.

The twins were the caboose.

The little girls were having a lot of fun. Almost as much fun as their mama.

And the sun goes down on the barrel train.

The next weekend, Gary and I wanted to celebrate our 26th anniversary. So I looked for a Bed and Breakfast in the area. To my great surprise, I found a FARM that was also a Bed and Breakfast that was only about 12 minutes from our house. It’s called Honey Farm.

And on that farm there was a cat. E – I – E – I – O!

There were also 2 llamas, a pony and a donkey named Rufus. They told me that the pony is the boss.

This is the back porch of the main house. There is a screened-in porch where you can sit away from the mosquitoes if everybody remembers to keep the screen door closed.

Side view of the main house.

Front view of the main house. Great front porch!

This is the door to our cozy love nest. 🙂

We had a bathroom inside. We did not have to use the outhouse in the picture.

And this is where I spent the majority of my time. I slept most of the time! I think I was fighting something off.

But it was very beautiful and comfortable and quiet and peaceful.

And the breakfasts were terrific. We had wonderful hosts who met our every need.

Gary and I had a wonderful time. It was the perfect place for our getaway. God really blessed us during our time together, and we both came away refreshed and rejuvenated. A lot happened for us spiritually, but I will write about that in another post in the future.