When God Created My Toes

When God Created My Toes
Written by Dandi Daley Mackall
Illustrated by David Hohn

This book helps children to use their imagination while instilling Psalm 139:13-16 into their hearts and minds and I love that they included this verse in the beginning of the book. After reading this book to my children I would defiantly say that it is aimed at younger children (ages 2-4). My three year olds loved it, while my 6 and 8 year olds weren’t too interested. For my 6 year old who loves books and enjoys even the simplest board book, for him to not enjoy a book says a lot to me. I think it was because it asked imaginative questions that were pretty silly. Personally, I think the silly questions are great conversation starters. This book could be a great teaching tool.

HOWEVER, I will probably not be recommending this book to anyone based on the pictures. It seems that the girl pictured in the book gets in trouble quite frequently. While that might be portraying real life, my boys kept saying “That’s not good,” “Why is she being so bad,” “That wasn’t nice” and so on and so forth. It really took the focus off of the valuable lesson that they could have taken away from this book. I will add that I love how David Hohn used notebook pages for the words. That was such a neat touch!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the WaterBrook Press book review bloggers program (Blogging for Books). I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Breakdown:

Worldview: Christian

Target Audience: Small children (ages 2-4)

Positive Elements: Reinforcing that we were made wonderfully by God.

Inappropriate Language: None.

Unbiblical Content: None.

Other Negative Elements: While I usually love illustrations by David Hohn, and the pictures in this book were beautifully drawn, I think that what was in the pictures kind of ruined the book for us.

Mr. Monday

It's Mr. Monday, I hope you were able to enjoy some quality time with your Mr. today! My Mr. now has Monday's off, and it is such a blessing! Today we went and got our wedding rings cleaned. :) They're all shiny now :) I love how my ring sparkles for the first few days after it has been cleaned! I have tried countless times to take a quality photo of my wedding ring, but I have failed to get anything worth posting. The pictures always come out blurry :( However, I can tell you that Mr. Amazing picked it out and did a fantastic job! He knew me so well, even if he wasn't exactly the master of all secrecy...

One day when I got off from work, I had to run by his apartment to get something that I had left there. He was at work, but I had the spare key, and he knew that I would be by. While I was there I had to use the restroom, and there on the counter was a card for Shane Co. I tried to wipe the silly grin off my face and convince myself that he must be buying his mom a mothers ring for their 50th anniversary that was in just a few weeks. However, my best friend was with me and also saw the card. We had to run by his work afterwards and she of course told him. He wasn't exactly happy with himself, but he decided since I knew that he could take me with him to see the ring to make sure he was buying something that I would like. However, he wouldn't tell me what he had picked out, he wanted me to choose for myself to see if I would pick the same one. I looked at rings for what seemed like forever. He pointed out two or three that he thought I might like, and then leaned on one of the counters while I looked through the countless cases (for those of you who are as naive as I was, the counter that he was leaning against had the ring he had chosen in it). He finally had to tell me which ring it was, and of course I loved it! I'm just horrible at making decisions. I just knew that I didn't want anything big or with a thousand diamonds, and I didn't want something that stuck out so far that it would snag on things. (I'm practical, what can I say).

What about you? Did your Mr. pick out your ring or did you do it together? Can you tell us about the first time you saw it?

Thankful for my Savior

On this Thankful Thursday, I am overwhelmed with thankfulness for my Savior. It's just so amazing to me that He would willingly leave heaven and come to this Earth! Most of us hate life in this world, He chose it willingly! Not only did He choose to live in the world, He made that choice with the knowledge that He would be put to death for our sins. He didn't choose an easy life, but probably the hardest life at all, living the entire time knowing that a painful, unjust death lie ahead of Him. Yet He endured it all, all the scoffing and all the pain, not for anything that He deserved, but because we couldn't handle our problems without His help. He knew that without everything He endured, we would spend eternity in hell, without Him. He didn't want that. He gave His life for us. He lived for us, and died for us. He did it all so that we could be forgiven, and spend eternity with Him.

I am also thankful that He didn't stay dead. On the third day He was raised! Today He is alive and well. Preparing a place for us in Heaven, and someday soon He will come to call us home. I am so thankful for His love!

Mr. Monday

Mr. Amazing just left for work. Today was his day off, so we have been enjoying it. This morning while the boys finished up their school work, Mr. Amazing was outside working on his 4Runner. He installed fog lights and replaced one of the head lights that burnt out over the weekend. He also assigned me the task of making him a new cloth top for the summer. His hard top comes off and he loves driving without it. He has been asking me to do this for weeks, but I have been putting it off. Today I finally gave in and got to work. I obviously don't have pictures of the new one (it's still in the making), but I thought I would share a photo of last years (almost?) cloth top:

The girls LOVE riding with daddy! Well, to be fair, all the kids do, but it's so cute to see the girls in their car seats with smiles from ear to ear! Anyway, back to the subject at hand... Last year I broke my sewing machine trying to sew the top for his 4Runner. It wasn't the tops fault, more of an operator error... but that's not important. We ended up stapling a blue tarp to some tarp straps. Personally, I thought it was awesome. I loved how it let the sunlight through, but kept out all of the rain. However, the wind took it's toll on the tarp and it wouldn't have made it another year. So this year instead of using a tarp, we are using ... okay, I'm not going to tell you yet! But it's turning out pretty good. It's about half way done, and my new sewing machine is holding together great! (It came with an instruction manual, and I actually read it... no repeat mistakes!)

What kind of fun or helpful things have you done for your Mr. recently?

Max on Life

Max Lucado’s latest book, “Max on Life”, is a book about just that. Lucado takes the time to answer some of life’s most asked questions from a biblical point of view. Have you ever wondered why you worry so much? How you can know what God’s will for your life is? Or even who God is? Max addresses these questions and many, many more in this book. In fact, the entire book is just common questions and followed by biblically sound answers.

Max Lucado has done it again! This was such a wonderful book and will be a great reference tool to have. Anyone who has ever wondered what God would say about something in their life would benefit from this book, both Christians and non-Christians alike. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has questions about life and is truly seeking the answers. I love the way the material is presented, the only thing that I would change is at the beginning of each section listing the questions that are contained. It would make it easier to go back and find one if need be.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”


Breakdown:

Worldview: Biblical

Target Audience: People with questions about life.

Positive Elements: Everything… can I just leave it at that?

Inappropriate Language: None

Unbiblical Content: None

Other Negative Elements: None having a list of questions contained.

The Reason Why

The Reason Why by Mark Mittelberg is a re-written version of the book The Reason Why that was originally written by Robert A. Laidlaw. It is a book that defines the Christian faith. It takes the core beliefs of the Christians and relates them in ways that almost anyone living today in our culture could understand.

When I first started reading this book I had to keep checking to make certain that it wasn’t written by Ray Comfort. Not that I have a problem with Ray Comfort, it was just so similar to what I have heard him say dozens of times. It did get into more detail, and I think it did a great job portraying the Christian beliefs. It was a pretty quick read. I would love to get some feedback from a non-Christian who reads this book and see what their opinion of it is. But overall I think it was pretty good.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the Tyndale Media's book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Breakdown:
Worldview: Biblical
Target Audience: Non-Christians, or Christians who are not convinced fully of their faith
Positive Elements: Clear, concise and to the point
Inappropriate Language: None
Unbiblical Content: None
Other Negative Elements: It does use and highly recommend the New Living Translation of the Bible, which is a thought for thought translation and possibly not as accurate as the NIV, NASB, or other word for word translations… but that’s debatable.

For Women Only

For Women Only is a book that every adult woman should read. Shaunti Feldhahn spent the time and effort needed to interview and survey over a thousand men, to get insight into their thought life. What she found was astounding. Only a woman could have written this book, as a lot of her research came back with men saying “but of course women know that!” To which of course she responded, “Well I didn’t!”

I would put this book in the MUST READ category. While some of the topics are harder than others (and for each woman different sections will be harder to read), I really think she did a fabulous job presenting the information she found. Shaunti is an amazing writer, and kept me captivated from beginning to end.

There are tons of great resources that I recommend along with this book:

The website forwomenonlybook.com

And I can't not mention the program on Revive Our Hearts. They had a series earlier this year about this book, and I requested this book because of that program. You can access the first program in that series by clicking here.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the WaterBrook Multnomah book review bloggers program, Blogging for Books. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Breakdown:

Worldview: Biblical

Target Audience: Adult Christian women

Positive Elements: My favorite part of this book was… well the entire book.

Inappropriate Language: None, however there was lots of talk about sex, so I would put it in the adult only category.

Unbiblical Content: None

Other Negative Elements: None