Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas to you!!!

What a great thing to have a day set aside to remember the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Of all the many things I read and have read and have learned from, the scriptures and especially the words of Christ from his own mouth are the most uplifting and enlightening. I am always amazed when I get to 3 Nephi in the Book of Mormon and read the words of the Savior which he spoke to those people. Some of it is almost word for word what he told the people in Israel in the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the book of Matthew. Every sentence is a jewel, each line is so full of wisdom. Here are a couple of them:

" And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn thou not away." 3 Nephi 12:41-42

"But behold I say unto you. love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you;"
3 Nephi 12:44

"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." 3 Nephi 13:21

"No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon."
3 Nephi 13:24

"Judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." 3 Nephi 13:1-2

"Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened." 3 Nephi 14:7-8

"Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them." 3 Nephi 14:20

I could go on and on. Look at how succint and brilliant and to the point these sayings are. How true they are, how many ways we can apply them to our own lives. Wow!! If I could only have one book it would be this one!!

Merry Christmas!!

The Economy -- Ron Paul was right!!!

Learning Greek is Great!!!

My oldest child was upset today because her Greek work was so hard and she was so tired and couldn't do any other "school" work today!!! I am so pleased!! We have been using a program written by Cristine Gatchell called Elementary Greek. My oldest finished her first year workbook a few months ago and has started on the second year, and I have too for that matter since I'm learning along with her. It was pretty frustrating at times that first year, because we had to take about 18 mos. instead of just 30 weeks as the book is set up. But we were thorough and we didn't move on until we understood everything in the first year book ( although we could use some continued vocabulary review), but other than that, we got it. We understand nouns, verbs, nominative case, genetive case, adjectives, prepositions and number. In Greek the ending of the noun will change according to it's part of speech in the sentence, so you really have to understand exactly what it is you are saying in order to get the right endings on all the nouns and the adjectives for that matter. So we spent a lot of time memoriziing and reciting noun endings for masculine nouns, neuter nouns and feminine nouns. Also, the articles and adjectives match whichever ending is being used. So there really is a lot to it and there is a ton to learn. And my little girl gets it!! It is hard brain work, but her brain is being wired and trained to think and to understand grammar and speech and meaning. It is also neat how many of our English words come from Greek!!

So anyway, after being excited that she is tired, but successful, I thought about all the things we've learned and learned well from just this first year of Greek and I grabbed the 3rd year book to look at where we'll be in approximwtely 2 years and we'll know all about the verbs and all the tenses. I'm so excited!! It's really hard to learn a lot of these from English because the endings just don't change. We express the same tenses like I was looking in the store would be something like imperfect past or something ( I haven't learned it yet) but in Greek the endings would change according to the tense and use so it is a little more clear and necessary to understand grammar than it is for us English speakers even if we did learn to diagram sentences.

Now that is an education!!! I wish I had learned Greek, Latin and Hebrew as a teenager or kid. Wouldn't it be awesome to be able to read the Bible in its original language?, as well as all the other great books like the Iliad. I bet it sounds so much better in Greek!!

Anyway, today was a nice acknowledgment day. All this hard work is starting to pay off, even if we never did mop the floor last week!! Maybe tomorrow, but probably not, we've got to get our Christmas presents mailed!!!!

Talk about Tuesday

I was just trying to post a comment on my good friend's blog and ended up joining her Talk about Tuesday project by accident so in case anyone links over from that, I thought I'd better at least acknowledge it.

Let's see.... a new project or habit?

My goal for this week is to teach the kids how to mop the floor on their hands and knees and then dry it with their feet. They'll each get their own section with their own rag, spray bottle and drying towel. The dishes are done and the counters are clean and wiped and the family room is vacuumed and clutter mostly put away, so the prospect of this happening tomorrow look good!!

Work is good and I am very grateful for friends like Lazy and websites and books like www.flylady.net who have taught me how to clean and how to teach my children to clean in formal settings. I'm also grateful for the good examples I've had from many of my friends in informal settings. Having grown up with a maid and a very clean, love to clean mother, cleaning up after myself and teaching my children how to clean up after themselves has been a huge struggle for me!! But I think we're getting it, one baby step at a time!!