Links, Books, and Other Things I Love – June 2016
My baby girl Jenna is engaged!
Trey proposed on Monday, Memorial Day, and she said yes (of course).
Some good omens . . . The setting—the same place where Jeff and I got married (his parents’ home). The swing in the background—a 50th anniversary gift for Jeff’s parents. May Jenna and Trey have 50+ years of life together too! They’re off to a great start.
1 Second Everyday
[If you can’t see the 1 Second Everyday video, click here]
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Around the Web
• Do you know who Marie Kondo is?
If you’ve read (or heard about) her books, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and Spark Joy, you know she’s a cleaning guru. But what about men? Who’s cleaning house anyway?
• Happiness is serving
In case you are the one cleaning house, this should make you feel better.
• Want to eat more apples?
A clever tweak to how apples are sold is making everyone eat more of them. (Spoiler alert: We’re more likely to eat sliced fruit than whole fruit—it’s true for me!)
• How to treat a sprained ankle
We’ve been doing it wrong.
• Go to church, live longer?
“The effect of religious attendance, they found, was stronger than that of any other form of participation in a social group like a book club or a volunteer organization.”
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On Reading and Writing and Blogging
• Capitalize My Title
When you don’t know which words to capitalize, just copy/paste your title in here. (I had to correct a few from this post.)
• The Backside Blessings of Blogging
Some of the hidden blessings of blogging that often are overlooked (but you probably already know if you blog!).
• What Is the Internet’s Favorite Book?
Um, it’s not what I expected.
• Write Shorter Sentences
Our attention span continues to shrink, yes? 6 exercises to writer better short sentences.
• Currently reading
- The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde - Bossypants
by Tina Fey - The Day the Angels Fell
by Shawn Smucker - The Words of Gandhi
compiled by Richard Attenborough - Entering the Castle
by Caroline Myss
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Things I Love
• Time with Morgan
Jeff and I drove to Morgan and Fuller’s house for a delicious fish fry and a fun time together right before Mother’s Day.
• Strawberries, Strawberries, Strawberries
We’ve been eating fresh strawberries all month—straight to mouth, strawberry jam, strawberry shortcake, strawberry pie.
• Kindergarten Graduation
Jenna graduated her first class of kindergarten students. I miss them already!
• More Babies on the Way
My niece Chelsea is due with her first in July. We’re all excited! This will be our 6th great niece/nephew.
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On the Blog
• Don’t Save Amen Until the End of Your Prayer
What if we also started our prayers with “Amen”—so be it?
• Do You Tell Everything? 3 Questions to Ask First
What do you share publicly? Three questions to ask yourself before you hit publish.
• “My mama didn’t come” and What That Means to a Kindergartener
Dear God, please send no one alone.
• Do You Want to Be Poor?
Poverty is what we run away from, not toward. Right?
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What are you looking forward to in June? Please share in the comments.
Linking at Leigh Kramer’s
My previous posts
Congratulations on your baby’s engagement! Loved your list of links. I’ll definitely be using the title capitalizer. I never know what to capitalize!
Thanks, Jenn. We’re excited about the marriage! Isn’t that capitalizer neat? I’ll be using it too. The little words always mess me up. 🙂
So many goodies here, Lisa. My heart breaks for the little boy in “My Mama Didn’t Come.” Congratulations on the engagement of your daughter. 🙂 Blessings and hugs to you!
My heart breaks for that sweet child, too. 🙁 I wonder what he’ll do over the summer. Lord, have mercy! Thanks for the congrats on the engagement!
love the 1 second every day. that is an awesome idea.
The 1 Second Everyday is such a cool app! I’ve loved using it because it’s so easy to do.
Great links! So good to find out that I have been doing RICE wrong! Have a great week!
I know—who knew that RICE wasn’t right? At least for this year. ha. Thanks for stopping by, Sarah.
Great post – thanks for sharing! (I just wrote down the post links to capitalizing titles and shorter sentences – man, do I need those!). Interested to see what you think of Myss’ new book, sounds intriguing. And ‘Amen’! to Amening our prayers – lovely wisdom. Happy Summer!
I’m guessing that capitalization link gets used a lot. And probably should get used more. ha. So far Myss’s book has required a lot of thinking on my part! But I guess that’s a good thing. 🙂
Thanks for the pictures Lisa. Can see you are very proud of your family. Can also see where they get their good looks. 🙂 My oldest graduated her K class last week and put together a little goodie bag of sunglasses and other things. One of her students, whom she has had trouble with about all second semester, destroyed them “because he felt like it.” She was heart-broken but i can honestly say one thing for sure: she loves her kids and is glad for the summer break. Okay…so that is two things.
Yes, I am proud of my sweet family, Bill. Thanks. Oh, I know those kinds of kids exactly who break the sunglasses just because they feel like it; I often wonder what’s really going through their heads. Praying that all our teachers get refreshed over the summer to head back into another year of loving all their students, the easy and the hard ones.
I love Persuasion (and all Jane Austen books). Congratulations to Jenna on her engagement and graduating her first class of kindergartners :).
I was surprised at how much I loved Persuasion! Not sure why I waited so long to read it. ha. Thanks for the congrats—it’s been a year of firsts for Jenna for sure. 🙂
Congratulations to Jenna! How exciting! It must be so hard to say good-bye to a class at the end of the year. Interesting about the sprained ankle. I never did like applying ice – glad I don’t have to any more. 🙂
I’m glad I don’t have to apply ice anymore either. ha. It can be as painful as the injury sometimes. Jenna really had such mixed feelings about saying good-bye to her class. She’ll definitely miss these kids, but she was ready for a break too. 😉 I guess teachers have to learn how to balance it all.
I absolutely love this post! Such a happy place. I think I just found a new blog to follow. Would love to have you link this to my link up party today-through Tuesday morning at http://grammietime2.blogspot.com/2016/06/party-at-my-place-18.html
I found you the 100 Days Happy link up with Valerie and friends. Will be following more of you!
Thanks, Michelle! These kinds of posts are fun to me to do (although a little more time-consuming! ha). Glad to have a new friend. 🙂
Congratulations!!
Thanks, Mary! We’re excited for Jenna and Trey (and for us too!). 🙂
Sweet, sweet joy!
Congratulations to your family, Lisa. You’re gonna be a super mother-in-love! I’m so happy for you all …
You’re sweet, Linda. Thanks. We have one son-in-law already, so this will complete our adult family! Next phase: grandkids. But that will still be awhile yet so I’m enjoying our little sweet spot for now. 🙂
So many reasons to say “Congratulations!”
It was fun reading Luci’s Life Path with you and the group. Are you planning to read Malala’s book for July?
Thanks, Michele! We’re excited about the wedding and marriage. Yes, I am planning on reading Malala’s book for July! I assume you are too? I recorded a documentary on it a few weeks ago, but haven’t watched it yet. I hope to get to that soon. Not sure if I should read the book first though….I guess there’s no real spoilers. ha.
Congrats to your baby girl! And to your niece and her new little one. This is such a wonderful time of the year.
Love all your links! I always find so much here. Hope to make it back and check more of it.
It’s strawberry time here, too. Yum!
Thanks, Jerralea! Lots of fun things happen in our families when our kids get out of those teen years. 🙂 Aren’t the fresh strawberries so delicious? I’ve about made myself sick from eating so many. ha. Enjoy yours!
Congrats on all this wonderful news, Lisa!
Thank you, Pam! It’s been great fun already. Today we went with Jenna to try on wedding dressings. 🙂
Congratulations on your daughter’s engagement! This was such a fun post!
Thanks, Joanne. I have fun putting these posts together (although I always think I can just do it quickly but it takes more time than I plan for, ha). We’re very excited to get a new son-in-law in the fall!
Weddings and babies! Happy for you. Joy 🙂
Yes, a new marriage and a new life—wonderful things to celebrate! Thanks, Lyli.
Yay! Congratulations to your kiddos and the celebration of wonderful memories!
Thanks, Deb! We’re excited to have Trey join our family!
Oh, wow! So exciting, Congratulations! I’m looking forward to checking out some of these links this weekend 🙂
Thanks, June! We’ve been waiting on the engagement for a little while so it’s such a blessing that now it has come to fruition.
Congratulations on your baby’s engagement! They never stop being our babies! 🙂
Yes, once our baby, always our baby. 🙂 That’s exactly how I feel too.
Congratulations on Jenna’s engagement! I know you are looking forward to all the planning. I have to agree about the short attention span and I can’t help but wonder if some of it is because of technology. I never could get used to using an E-reader and I have a hard time reading extremely long articles on the internet, just give me a real book, magazine or newspaper for goodness sake. The bowl of strawberries – oh my! Thanks for sharing all of these neat links, I can’t wait to go back and read more of them. Thanks for linking up with Thankful Thursdays.
Thanks, Lori!
I do think my attention span is shrinking too. I can’t read long articles online either. ha. I’ll start one and then start wondering, Is this ever going to end? And just click away. But a book? I love a long book. 🙂
So precious!! Congratulations Jenna! And congratulations, Mama!! 🙂 ♥
Thank you, Lori! Yes, I’ll take the congratulations for myself, too. 🙂 I consider it a win for me and the whole family that the Lord God connected with Jenna with a godly man.