Our Bookshelf

We've gone over and over our bookshelf. What are the best books for our family? In the past we had an abundance of good, better, and best books. Now we don't. I've only kept the books I would absolutely want if I was suddenly not able to ever go to the library again. I've read a great many 'classics' it seems and while they are good, I don't think they are great and need to be on my bookshelf. We can check out all the Magic Tree House books we want at the library. I don't need to keep them in our home though. I don't want to dust them. I don't want to rearrange them. I don't want to move them. Frankly I don't want to look at them. So observe the picture below to see what is left. The bottom binders are their genealogy books. To left of the binders are the picture books that are left. They are mostly fairy tales. We have some blocks on there that I'm getting rid of. Waste. They don't play with them. Why do I have them? The bookshelf is messy. But they look at it and pick up the books.


Some of the books that we choose to keep as the best are Lord of the Rings, Work and the Glory, Narnia, Johnny Tremaine, Little House on the Prairie series, A Wrinkle in Time series, and Little Britches.

Now to my classic shelf. It's pretty small huh? (We have a small assortment of our 'best' theology books on another bookshelf). Our daughter as about 20 books in her room that are all adult classics. Pretty slim pickings. Guess what though? We aren't overwhelmed with our books any more and we actually want to sit down and read them. Isn't that something? Who would have thought? All in all we ended up giving up 75% of our books. It's a beautiful thing.


NOTE: If you are looking into getting the McGuffy Readers do not bother getting anything but the primer book. Once your child learns to read they will no longer want to read a McGuffy Reader. Just a thought. I know you were wondering.

Plastic Plants

About two months ago we had a major dejunking party. We got rid of so many things. Why do we have so much stuff? It is really embarrassing. I realized quickly that as a society (and the Sutter family) we live WAY WAY WAY beyond our needs and wants. I mean come on, how many spatulas does a women really need?

So we got rid of our stuff. My husband says we got rid of 50 lawn and leaf garbage bags of stuff. I think it was closer to 35, but I stopped counting at 25. That's a lot of stuff. That's too much stuff. Again I ask, why do we have so much stuff?

Not only did I come to see that we had way to much stuff, but we were emotionally attached to so very many items in our home. It was almost as if they were on own little idols. Not good.

Another thing I noticed about all our stuff was that I had to clean it and organize it and look at it and ...... I don't need more things to do. Really I don't.

I've implemented a new cleaning schedule for family work this past month and the first day we did the living room we quickly realized how much we needed to dust. This was after 35+ bags of extra treasures went out. Since I wanted to focus on teaching my kids how to deep clean we were cleaning all of our plastic plants. How did I end up with so many plastic plants? Half way through a really big plant dusting job Jared said, "Mom, are we going to have to dust these every week?" I looked at him and he looked at me and I got it. No we were not going to spend our lives dusting plastic plants. I started laughing and said, "Let's get rid of them!" So they picked one plant to keep (surprisingly it was the very smallest and they put it on top of the piano). Why do we have so many plastic plants I ask again?

Then came the picture frames. Why do I have so many picture frames cluttering up the wall? I don't want to dust them all either. So we took almost all of them down and we are going to put them in a book and put them on our 'prayer table' (also commonly known as a coffee table). We still have pictures up so don't freak, but we surly didn't need that many!!!

So I ask you what plastic plants to you have that are cluttering up your life? Let's not waste our lives dusting.

The Best Daughter

Have I mentioned lately that we have a wonderful daughter? Well we do. Olivia is 11. She's smart, she's funny, she likes to work hard, she loves little kids, she wants to grow and be a mom and she's happy. She's been solidly in scholar phase for 9 months. Really. We haven't pushed her, we haven't expected, she just is.
She has amazing control of her emotions for an eleven year old. She is on her journey to being a wonderful young women. She likes to sew, crochet, knit, and loom. She likes practical things and she likes to make things beautiful. She LOVES to cook. I can't keep her out of the kitchen. She can make anything. She makes bread, salad dressing, doughnuts, casseroles, cakes, salads, meat, potatoes, green smoothies, etc. She can really make anything.


She spends most of her day reading and studying. She is currently passionate about The Revolutionary War time period and has spent her whole scholar phase so far studying anything she can about it. She is working hard on her writing. She understands the principles of freedom and democracy. She is working on articulating them because she wants to defend them. She pours over the classics.

Here's a quick list of some of the books that Olivia as read in the last year:
The Scarlet Letter
Plutarch
Midshipmen Hornblower
The Screwtape Letters
Leaves of Grass
Walden
The Secret Garden
The Real George Washington
Common Sense
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Proper Role of Government
Johnny Tremaine
Silas Marner
The Little Britches series
The Work and the Glory series
The Book of Mormon
The New Testament
The Doctrine and Covenants
The Pearl of Great Price



She also loves the outside. She loves working with our horses. She loves going on walks. She loves working hard.

Olivia is amazing and we are honored she's our daughter. Whenever I look at her I hope that somewhere out there that there is an amazing your man to match her. I believe that there is. I believe there are moms out there training their sons to be great also in hopeful expectation that there is a spouse worthy of their child.

So here's to all you great parents that are doing the hard things (and making 'best' choices) to raise your children to greatness. You are not alone.

Family History

I love doing family history. I remember as a young girl helping my mom transfer all her hand or typed pedigree and family records to the new PAF program on the computer. I remember thinking about the families that I typed. Some had a lot of children, some had a lot of children that had died and some lost multiple spouses.

I remember my mom telling me stories about them. I remember her teaching me how to research and how to look for clues. I learned to love those who came before me and to honor them. I felt a sacred charge to carry on in that great work of redeeming the dead.


When I married Alex I learned that his family history work on some sides of his family had not been done. I enjoyed the challenge of discovering his family history so he could know and our children could know what their roots were. Fast forward ten years and I'm still working and still learning about them.


Teaching our children about those who came before them as been as important. Unfortunately we don't have many stories and few pictures to discover Alex's family, but we know their names and dates and we share with our children what we do know. Each time we go back to Pennsylvania we go up to New York and spend half a day walking the cemeteries of his ancestors.
On my side of the family we have pages and pages of journal entries, life sketches, pictures and treasures. Our children's favorite tales are of their great grandfather serving as a Flying Tiger in China during World War 2. They loves reading his stories of his bombing raids and the pictures of all the planes.

To teach our children about their family history my mother created a binder for each of our children. It contains pedigrees, group sheets, pictures and some biographies. The kids regularly read this and study the information. We have them down with their story books. For it is their story.We have regularly read them the biographies and stories multiples times exposing them to the courage of their forefathers. We look at their pictures and we talk about them. We have also studied maps of their immigration and the history occurring through the world while they lived.

One particular treasure we have is Heber C Kimball's "Address to His Children." Shortly before his death he outlined key points he wanted his posterity to know and do. He also states that he would stand with Father Adam and judge us at the last days in regards to how well we kept his charge. We refer to this often as we strive to come unto Christ.
Connecting with our roots is a powerful part of leadership education. It helps each one of us see perspective and understand we each have a part to play in the grand scheme of mortality. What do you do to connect with your roots as a family?

The Wind is Blowing

....surprised? I'm not, I live in Idaho, land of the eternal wind storm. Since I don't like to go outside and I prefer to stay inside and read, sew, make green smoothies and eat green eggs it really doesn't bother me. Well, maybe it does. I'm really trying to be all gung ho and "lets go work on our land so we can built a house," so this weather doesn't help.

So we tried to do productive things today. We have cleaned this house up one side and down another. There is no more places to clean. The boys said, "So mom what are we going to clean now?" Me, "Well, I guess we can dust... again." So we dusted again. Then we read for a really, really long time. It's what you do when the wind blows.

We've been all feeling blazee (Is that how you spell that word? Is that even a word? It must be French. I don't know French-obviously) soooooo, we decided to break some rules and we watched two movies. Yes TWO movies. Who ever heard of such laziness, such wanton disregard for the pursuit of truth? So bad. But a pursuit we chose to pursue none the less.

We certainly aren't any more motivated than we were before we started watching them. Yes, it was a waste of time. No I don't feel bad about it. Yes, we'll do something productive tomorrow. But it was kind of fun all curled up on my bed in heating blankets giggling together. They all happily helped Olivia and I cook dinner when we decided to awaken from our brain numbing slumber.

One of our movies was BBC's "Silas Marner" so I don't feel totally heathenish. Oh, well. We'll still get there, I'm sure of it though. Why? Because we love each other and we are immensely happy, even if the wind is blowing.

Called on the Carpet

We own 80 acres and we are working on building a house and going Georgic. We want to have chickens, kitties, pigs, ducks, cows, horses, bunnies, orchards... you get the point. We've already started with some of those things.

Since we are going to do this Alex thought it would be great to get a head start. So he brought me home some farm eggs. Some friends have too many layers and they want to share with us. Gee honey, thanks! You see I have a problem. As much as I say I'm going Georgic (that's in the future so I can say I will) I have a gag reflex problem with farm eggs. Really bad.

I can eat almost anything. I love food and I'm not picky. (I question some kinds of meat though). Farm eggs though? Not good. Every time I crack a farm egg the gag reflex starts. Alex thinks it's hysterical. He's rolling on the floor as I struggle through my gagging and my eyes are watering as I cook breakfast. Why is that so funny? There is just something about having a chance of bloody eggs filled with beaks and feathers that trips me out. I've cracked into plenty of those. So in the past after I manage to cook the eggs I absolutely refuse to eat it. (Even in french toast and pancakes).

The solution. Apparently these eggs are not around a rooster so they don't have a chance of being fertilized unlike all the other eggs he's brought home in the past. So no blood, feathers, beaks, etc.

So now we have eggs again and I must deal with it. I'm fleeing to Zion and so I must eat the green eggs.

Day one-pancakes. That's safe. Luke made the pancakes while I was getting ready. It wasn't until after I ate them that I realized that I'd eaten them! I didn't even notice.

Day two-Luke decided to make scrambled eggs for breakfast. I had to face it then. They are much yellower/oranger (because those are words) than the store eggs. But I held my breath and dumped a bunch of salsa on them and ate them! So proud of myself. I haven't done day three yet. One day at a time. To Zion!

Silas Marner

Silas Marner by George Eliot


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
What a great read! I decided that I was going to read harder books to my 10 and 9 year old. I didn't know if we could do it but we did!

This beautiful book is about a man who was wronged in many ways and flees town. He settles into a new town vastly different than the one he was from. Since he is new he is viewed as different and questionable. He spends the first 15 or so years there in isolation as a weaver. As he spends every moment spinning his gold his money piles up. It becomes his obsession.

One dark day someone comes and steals his beloved gold. Silas, our weaver, is devastated. A short time later a little girl shows up that is unknown and orphaned. Silas takes in this young child and raises her. His heart melts and he changes himself. He becomes a part of the community.

But who is this girl and where did she come from? Will he ever find his gold again?

This book is a tough read. The first several chapters I had to explain a lot of things to my boys. Sometimes we wouldn't make it past a couple of sentences with out having to talk about it. We pushed through. They were riveted. The classic went through them.

Several times when we would be doing family work Jared, (my 10 year old), would ask me ask me questions. "Why did that man take Silas' money?" "Why did the town people think Silas was bad just because he was different?" "Why did Silas only care about his gold?" Jared asked many thought provoking questions.

The main principle played out in this book is that even if you repent a price still must be paid. It really gave the boys (and me) a lot to think about. Other values portrayed include love, forgiveness, work, friendship, family bonds and marital relationships.

This was a beautiful book with beautiful words.

We must not underestimate what are children can take in.

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