Florida Pictures

Fortunately we were able to drive down to Florida to be with Reed during his business trip. It was a long trip but worth it- we had a such a great time.
Here are some highlights:

Reed's conference was at a hotel at the beach and we had so much fun building sandcastles, hunting for shells, and swimming. And we were even able to pull Reed away from work a couple times to play with us!



We were able to go to the zoo one day in Tampa. Apparently, the Tampa Zoo is rated America's #1 family zoo. I have to admit it was a nice zoo and the kids had a fun time. They really like playing in the sprinklers at the end.

I loved these pictures when I saw them. I rarely get serious pictures of my boys as they are normally all smiley and silly. Although they are true boys and bring such life to our family, they each also have a thoughtful side which I deeply admire as well. These shots caught a glimpse of that side.

We didn't eat until late almost every night so that we could eat with Daddy. This night I guess got the best of them. We thought it was so funny that Reed ran back up to our room to grab the camera.

On our last day there, we took the Jolly Trolley to Pier 61 and took a boat ride to see some dolphins. And, indeed we saw some dolphins. The crew also had some bread to feed the birds. The crew was tricky. As we were feeding the birds they came behind us and sprayed us with water guns. We didn't realize what it was at first and thought that the birds were leaving some 'presents' on us - thankfully they fessed up to their plot before we all got too grossed out!

On the way back we stopped at Jamestown and had a wonderful time walking through the Indian Village, Fort, and Boats. They also had a chance to make rope, and help dig out burnt wood to make a canoe. We hope to come back here next spring again and have more time to browse around and maybe see Yorktown and Williamsburg - this will fit perfectly for starting our early American history unit this year.

Out of the Best Books

We had a great Sunday School lesson today. It was about learning by study and by faith. I love this topic. It is something that I am passionate about. I believe strongly that we each have a mission that we are here to fulfill and as we read and learn from the scriptures and the best books we will be prepared for those missions that God has for us and will be an influence for good whether our circle of influence is big or small.

I especially like D&C 88:78 that says

"Teach ye diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more perfectly in theory, in principle, in doctrine, in the law of the gospel, in all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand."

I have felt the grace of God attend me as I teach my children. It is easy to feel discouraged and lonely when such a big task has been placed before me that is so different from the world. It can be daunting at times but I know this was a call from God and He has poured out His blessings on my efforts and amist my occasional discouragement, I see the fruits of my work and I praise God that He has taken me on this path.

There was an article in the Ensign this month about refinement in our home. Here is the section about literature:

Is Friday evening a frenetic flight to see where the entertainment and action will be? Could our society today produce an Isaac Newton or a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? Can 85 channels and uncountable DVDs ever fill our insatiable appetite to be entertained? Do any unwisely become addicted to computer games or Internet surfing, thereby missing the richer experiences of great reading, conversations, and enjoyment of music?

I don’t know whether our heavenly home has a television set or a DVD player, but in my mind’s imagery it surely has a grand piano and a magnificent library. There was a fine library in the home of President Gordon B. Hinckley’s (1910–2008) youth. It was not an ostentatious home, but the library contained about 1,000 volumes of the rich literature of the world, and President Hinckley spent his early years immersed in these books. To be well-read, however, it is not necessary to possess expensive collections of literature, for they are available to rich and poor alike in the libraries of the world.

President David O. McKay (1873–1970) was inclined to awaken daily at 4:00 a.m., skim read up to two books, and then commence his labors at 6:00 a.m. He could quote 1,000 poems from memory. He referred to the grand masters of literature as the “minor prophets.” He was a living embodiment of the scriptural admonition to “seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom” (D&C 88:118).

My wife and I recently spent four years on Church assignment in Eastern Europe. We often traveled on the Moscow underground subway, called the Metro. We noticed the bowed heads of the Russian passengers, for they were reading Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, or Pushkin—and, sometimes, Mark Twain. The people were poor, but they were not obsessed with their poverty. They possessed the rich tradition of Russian literature, art, and music.

President McKay noted: “As with companions so with books. We may choose those which will make us better, more intelligent, more appreciative of the good and the beautiful in the world, or we may choose the trashy, the vulgar, the obscene, which will make us feel as though we’ve been ‘wallowing in the mire.’”5

Of course, the scriptures stand paramount among good literature, for they are not founded on the opinions of men.

I believe good literature is a gift to us - a gift that develops our moral imagination, defines and refines our character, and brings beauty. As quoted in "A Family Program for Reading Aloud"

How well is your "house" - your mind- furnished? Do you, like Louisa May Alcott, "enjoy your mind?" Literature helps to furnish our mental homes with permanent fixtures, with "all things wise and wonderful, " with Scriptural objects of beauty- the result of reflection.

In our family, we have a couple of requirements that make a book a "best book" -
* It must be something we would read with Christ sitting right next to us - for after all, our goal is to have His Spirit with us always.
* It must inspire us to be better - to aquire a truth, to bring us to a greater love of God and our Savior, to inspire a greater love of family, and/or to develop a love of country and patriotism.
* It should be well written using a command of the English language and make us think - not something that is just superficially entertaining.

So what have the Hendershots been reading lately?
Well, I just finished reading "Ben Hur- A Tale of The Christ" a couple of weeks ago - I loved this book - it is a classic and the movie just doesn't do it justice- like most movies, it is completely different from the book.

Reed just finished reading "What He Must Be, If He Wants to Marry my Daughter". He really enjoyed this book and marked many passages for me to read as well. I am so glad how seriously Reed takes his role as the patriarch of this family. I definately feel protected and provided for by this great man.

As a family we are reading Little Men - This really may be one of the best parenting books I have ever gotten my hands on (besides the scriptures of course). The story is great and the kids beg for more and more.

We have also been doing many road trips lately and have listened to many inspiring books on tape. Some that we have listened to this last month(some of them were radio drama):
*The Secret Garden
*Little Women
*The Hiding Place
*Ben Hur - the boys saw how much I loved the book and wanted to listen to it
*The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
*The Lives of the Renaissance Painters
*Thomas Jefferson's World - stories of the Founding Fathers
*Old Glory - the story of our flag

Catch Up

Wow we've been up to a lot lately. It made me tired to think through it all - I will post pictures in a bit I hope

Since the beginning of May we have. . .
*had a root canal - a painful process. . . still going on
*Dentist/Doctor's Appointments for the kiddos
*Put together a field trip for our HS group and went on couple that others planned
*Major work done on both our cars
*Our guest bathroom totally gutted- we have the tub in and yesterday we put together the vanity. . . it's sitting in our living room ;)
*A broken arm- that was Jacob playing goalie
*Finished up school, got my evaluation done, turned in Jacob's portfolio to the school district as well as my affadavit and curriculum objectives for next year
*Cub Scout Raingutter Rigatta
*Put together Cub Day Camp for Jacob's Den and chaperoned one day- so fun- I love little boys- they have so much life in them! We had a great time!
*Two more birthdays- Jacob's and mine- we're done for the year
*Homeschool Convention- I loved it! I got so many ideas for next year and I am so excited to be planning it.
*Gave a presentation to our ward about meal planning
*Reed's business trips- a week in London, a week in Florida (we went with him), a week in California (he normally doesn't travel this much - this was very unusual especailly since Air Products is on a travel ban)
*Finished up soccer season for the boys
*Jacob's Try Outs for the U10 Travel Soccer team
*Picked over 20 lbs of strawberries froze some, ate some, and made five batches of freezer jam

Why don't we get this?

The message of this allegory brought me to tears. It beautifully explained just one of the many reasons why. . .

Animal School Movie

A Reason to Celebrate

"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee. . ." - Jeremiah 1:5

We love to celebrate birthdays! We use this time to teach/remind our children that we are celebrating their choice to come to earth and to get a body. Certainly this is a reason to celebrate! I feel so blessed to have each of my children here with me. They make my life full.

Today we celebrated Jacob's 9th birthday. . . can I really have a nine year old? He wanted a space ship cake this year. I got so frustrated making this. I got a cake mix for convenience - I know better! I HATE cake mixes! It was such a mess. . . but it turned out OK, although a bit lopsided. Fortunately, Jacob is a very gracious little boy.

He begged to light his cake this year. He thought it was so cool that it was the fire from the rocket. And, yes that is a cast he has on - a family first. He got a buckle fracture in his radius playing goalie at soccer. No worries though, he can still play soccer (well, not goalie for now) but he can't practice the violin, piano and he definitely can't do much handwriting. . . he is so sad about that. . . LOL!

I also put some pictures from Joey's Birthday that was in April. Poor, poor Joey, no baby book, no blog. . . such is the life of the third boy. . . His birthday theme was football. I thought this was funny as we aren't really the "football" type family. But he loves sports - all sports. Although I still think he favors soccer. He wears his soccer clothes whenever possible- down to the shin guards and cleats!- to bed, to the store - I mean everywhere! And boy does he have moves! I will have to do a soccer post later.

This boy cracks me up - he is so full of life! You can't help but smile when you are around him. This is very convenient for him as he gets out of a lot of trouble this way!

Happy Spring!

Here are some of our Easter pictures now that it is May :)! What can I say - life gets busy!

I have found that the more kids you have the harder it is to get a picture with everyone looking just right - it definately adds personality to it though which I like.

The boys were having fun pinching each other so that led to some great faces. Anna is just as sweet as can be and the boys really liked helping her out with the pictures. There are some where all the boys are "helping" Anna look at the camera and Anna is crying for everyone to leave her alone - it was pretty funny.

There are also some pics of an Easter egg hunt we went to. Two of our friends had fun egg hunts. They did such a cute job organizing them and having prizes and games and such.

There is also a couple of pics of the paper mache eggs we made for an art project - thanks Melissa for the great idea!

Rome!

So, it has taken a while to get this post up - the day after we got back I woke up sick (and was for two weeks), and since then I have been playing catch up.

Today I finally decided I would sit down and do this. It was hard to pick what to put in- we took hundreds of pictures! - Obviosly nobody wants to suffer through that so. . . I made a slide show of some highlights and then if you want more details you can keep reading below. (It got lengthy-sorry! It's nice to have recorded though. Oh and sorry about typos and run ons- it's late and I'm going to bed!)

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

S.P.Q.R. (days 1 & 2-Ancient Rome and other Roman sites): After our plane trip there we decided to drop our luggage off at the hotel and hit some sites (no time to waste on our "relaxing" vacation! LOL!- although I did tell Reed that at least one day, I was going to wake up on my own-without an alarm. :))

Mentionables that we saw/did/learned:
* The Colosseum - it's huge! as soon as you walk out of the station it's right there in front of you.
* Took an English tour of the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. We are so glad we did this because we learned so much! And it helped us notice many things around the city that we wouldn't have even seen without learning a little Roman history.
* Although I was glad to see this site, it really was disturbing how gruesome Rome had become. It seemed they thrilled in finding new ways to kill people - they estimate around 700,000 died here and some made this their occupation - they would have a manager and everything- it really was a form of entertainment for them. It was set up by the Emperor to buy favor from his people - free entertainment, free food, and big prizes were handed out.
* If a gladiator survived for 7 years he earned his freedom - that rarely happened.
* Original Roman Numerals used IIII for four and not IV - Early Christians changed this to save space. We saw many examples of this around town.
* The meaning of SPQR- it stands for Senatus Popolusque Romanus which means the Senate and the People - the 'que' means 'and' but in particularly means 2 parts of a whole such as "husband and wife". To the Romans this signified that you could not have the one without the other. After we learned this, we realized that they had SPQR on everything- gutters, lamp posts, statues, hats of police men, etc. . . We made it a game to find different ones around town the second day.

 

After this we went to the Roman Forum and saw the Circus Maximus where they used to have chariot races. This place fit up to 300,000 people!

*By now we were starving but in Rome most restaurants don't open until 7:30 or 8 so we had a couple of hours to walk around- at one time we were so exhausted we sat down at a park and about fell asleep -we were ready to crash by the time we made it back to the hotel!

The next day we saw many of the major sites that you always hear of and some churches that my brother and his wife had suggested.
* The Crypts of the Capuchin Munks- I honestly found this one a little disturbing - It is the resting place of almost 4,000 Capuchin friars and their bones are nailed in different designs around the walls. You couldn't take pictures inside but if you are interested there are pics here.
* St. Peter in Chains Cathedral. This church homes what is thought to be the chains that bound Peter. You can also see Michelangelo's Moses here. In general the cathedrals were all very pretty and very big. We enjoyed going to see many of them. I am grateful to my brother for his recommendations!
* We walked through the Piazza del Campidoglio and the Capitoline Museum- this is considered to be the "center of Rome" and was designed by Michelangelo.
* Church of St. Clementi- this was a very interesting church. It was built in the
12th century. . . on top of a church that was built in the 4th century. . . which was built on top of Roman ruins that were built in the 1st century. It was neat to go down each level and see the excavations.
* Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps were fun to see too - we went there at night and it was just beautiful.

Mama Mia! (day 3- Florence and Pisa) Today was probably one of the highlights of our trip- but it was one LONG, crazy day! When we got on the subway, we thought we were pushing it to squeeze into what space was left but we had a train to catch! Then for the next few stops more and more people got in. We just kept getting cozier and cozier. . . At one stop, someone got in and the door wouldn't shut so the conductor had to come in and shut the door for us- once we all sucked in! Then at the next stop a man with luggage started to get on and we all sucked in again and the man behind me exclaimed, "mama mia!". Little did I know how accurately that phrase would describe that day!

First of all we missed our train! We got there about 2 minutes too late. -No problem, we will just get on the next train to Florence. We waited and waited for the boards to list "Firenze" on the departure list- it never came so we started to get nervous by the time we were able to figure out what train we were supposed to be on we had to run to catch it and just barely made it! The problem was it was labeled "Naples" not "Florence" - why didn't we think of that? (isn't Naples south of Rome?- oh well!)
We didn't have a lot of time to spend in Florence so we just hit some of the big sites:
*Brunelleschi's Dome - This was a huge, beautiful church. It was really just gorgeous!
*Climbed to the top of Giotto's Bell Tower- 412 steps- my legs were shaking by the time we were done! The view was worth it though. It was simply breathtaking!
*Went to the Academia to see Michelangelo's David- pictures simply do not do it justice - it is huge! Michelangelo was brilliant- you can see the ripples in his shoulder blades and the veins in his forearms and the tendons in his knees.
*Ran, again, to the train stop to catch a train to Pisa. (I saw some Italians running to catch their train too so I didn't feel like such a tourist!)
*Climbed up the Leaning Tower of Pisa (another 300+ steps) - so fun! By the time you get half way up you already start to feel off balance. When you get to the top sections, there isn't much of a railing and as I have a little phobia of heights, I got a little nervous going up much farther. Reed kept saying I didn't have to go if I didn't want to- I replied, "Reed, I'm in Pisa, I'm going to the top!" There were a few of us up there that took a while to actually stand up straight. It really felt weird to have it lean so much and the railing was short and had big gaps - this so wouldn't fly in the US- too many lawsuits! Eventually I got used to it and walked all the way around the top- that was an accomplishment!
*Caught the train back to Florence and went to see the original "Gates of Paradise" in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo - very beautiful.
*Walked to the Ponte Vecchio - just a pretty bridge with many jewelry stores on it
*Got a sandwich and crepe and ran (actually we just walked this time :)) back to the train station to go back to Rome - I only mention this seemingly mundane part of the day because when we were planning this trip I wasn't sure if we would be able to do so much in a day and Reed was determined to make it work (he knew how much I really wanted to go to Pisa). When he presented the game plan to me he said, "well, it looks like we will be able to make it all fit in. . . but there was no room to schedule meals"- lol! We had some snacks that we brought but we were really excited to eat and the chocolate crepe was sooo yummy!

Villa Borghese and the Vatican Museums (day 4)
*Walked through the Borghese Museum- many pieces by Raphael and Bernini here. So many of the statues are amazing! They look real almost! I really liked Bernini's David- it showed him more like the young determined shepherd that he was while Michelangelo's is more like the king he became - don't get me wrong the latter is amazing as well!
*Walked (and walked, and walked) through the Vatican Museums. This reminds me of a humanities class I took in college and our teacher talked about a friend who realized on the train ride out of Rome that she had forgotten to "look up"! - I thought how silly- who goes to the Sistine Chapel and forgets to look up?! Then one of my friends who is a pilot and goes to Rome explained that by the time you get through the museums you are so tired that you might actually forget- really??! Well, I appreciate that a whole lot more now!- Our legs ached so much that by the time we got to the Sistine Chapel all we wanted to do was sit! So we took a break before going through all the frescoes on the wall and all the panels on the ceiling. This was another highlight of the trip! It was really amazing!- almost surreal to see something I had only seen in books before!

Big Lemons and The Best Pizza in the World (Day 5- Pompeii)
*Saturday we went to Pompeii- it was interesting. Not much more to say then that. We were warned to skip the brothel so we did. We took the audio tour and were glad we did- we learned a lot from that. As we came out we saw the biggest lemons we have ever seen- and of course had some lemonade. :)
*That night we ate dinner at Buffeto's. Apparently it is the best pizza in Rome and as put by a child if it is the best pizza in Rome, and Rome is the capital of Italy and pizza was invented in Italy then that makes Buffeto's the best pizza in the world- that sounds reasonable. :) (we read that on a picture a child had made that was given to them and hanging on their door) It was pretty good pizza - we waited in line for a long time- long enough to get a gelato and have dessert first!

A Day of Rest- Finally! (day 6)
*We took it easy on Sunday. We went to church in the morning- it was about a 2.5 mile walk (in the rain) - that was interesting. We enjoyed ourselves though. Since Reed is pretty fluent in both Spanish and Portuguese he was able to understand about 80% of it. My eyes got a little dazed. . . until a nice American missionary came up and translated for me!- Then I enjoyed it a bit more!
*Went to the Pantheon
*Walked through St. Peter's Basilica - it was very beautiful! I really liked seeing Michelangelo's Pieta. There were also some nice mosaics outside that we really enjoyed - they were of scenes from the New Testament.

Ciao Bella Roma (day 7)
*Took a bus to the Appian Way- an old Roman road (obviously repaved) There we went to the Catacombs of St. Sebastian. Here we saw one of our favorite statues of Christ. We learned a lot too.

*Went to Buffeto's again

*Made sure I got one more crepe and gelato - I know! - I felt justified since we probably walked about 5-10 miles a day!

*Took a stroll along the Tiber at dusk and by St. Peter's at sunset- the perfect end to a wonderful trip!