(soft music) - Welcome friends to this episode of the Everyday Educator podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Bailey, and I am excited to spend some time with you today as we encourage one another, learn together, and ponder the delights and challenges that make homeschooling the adventure of a lifetime. Whether you're just considering this homeschooling possibility or deep into the daily delight of family learning, I believe you'll enjoy thinking along with us.

But don't forget, although this online community is awesome, you'll find even closer support in a local CC community. So go to classicalconversations.com and find a community near you today. Well, welcome friends to this Advent season. I'm so excited that you have joined us for this podcast. I've got a suggestion for your family, actually for all of our families this Christmas.

What if we intentionally spent time together doing the simplest things? What if we practiced some simple habits designed to draw us to one another, designed to start meaningful conversations, designed to provoke us to deeper thinking, maybe designed to encourage us to true worship? What if in this season of busy, busy, busy, we celebrated Christmas by praying together, playing together, reading together, exploring together, and serving together?

So this Advent season, the everyday educator wants to practice these simple habits along with you. We're gonna be talking to others who want to try this plan too. You can listen in every Tuesday to ponder the next habit. And friends, I'm here to tell you, this is our last habit.

We have finally come to simplify, Advent, serve together. And I have a dear friend, Jamie Hayes, with me to help us explore this simple way to practice Advent together this year. Jamie is a dear friend who's a long-time homeschool mom. She has served as a director with Classical Conversations and as an SR, and she serves right now on the curriculum development team alongside me.

And so Jamie, welcome to the podcast. - Thank you, I'm excited to be here. - I'm excited to have you and to pick your brain a little bit, but I wanna start out with some easy peasy questions. First of all, what do you and your family love about Christmas?

And I want to know, are you guys exuberant celebrators or quiet celebrators, or somewhere in between? - So I guess it all depends on how you define those terms, but I would put us between, towards leaning, towards the exuberant ones. - I can see that. - Yeah, we love just being with people and through this season especially.

And so when our families can get together and we tend to play loads of cards and board games and watch movies that make my dad roll in the floor with laughter, and so we watch the movies just to watch that. - Yes, yes, yes. - And so just making memories, whether it be with family or friends, is something that we really enjoy about this season.

- I love that. You know, people always say Christmas is a time for family. But I look around and I don't always see it. I see families going in a hundred different directions. Everybody going to their own Christmas party or their own Christmas whatever. So I love it that your family loves to spend time together doing things together.

'Cause it's possible to all be home at the same time and still not be together. So I like it that you say, and you've given us some good ideas, playing games, card games, and board games. My sons-in-law are game people. And so we play games together. We always have, even when they were just dating my girls, they introduced us to a lot of games that I'm sure I would never have played otherwise.

And our family likes to watch movies together too. I sort of like it that we watch the same movies and so we all have our pet lines and we can all quote whole sections of the movie. I had a niece one time who was watching a movie with us and apparently her family doesn't watch movies the same way we do.

And so after about the fourth chorus where we had quoted a section of the dialogue, she said, "Wow, do y'all memorize all the movies "that you watch?" It's like, well, maybe, I don't know, not intentionally. Maybe that just happens to classical educators. I don't know. - Yeah, yeah, we definitely just recently watched "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers." - That's one of our big favorites.

- And yeah, just all of us belting out the songs throughout. - Oh my gosh. - My dad's favorite lines, which are probably somewhat PG-13 rated now. - Yes, that's so funny. Every time I watch that movie for like weeks after that, I wake up thinking, bless your beautiful eyes.

And it's just, I cannot get out of my mind. It's like a worm in my mind. So let me ask you this, Jamie, because you guys love to do family things together, I suspect that you have a good many family traditions. So what are some of your, yours and Mark's or yours and your kids, what are some of your favorite family traditions?

How did they begin and were they intentional or unintentional? - So one of the favorites is guessing which gifts are whose. - Ooh, so they don't have tags on them? - They do not. All they say is one, they have four different words I will put on them. Want, need, book, cloth.

- Gotcha. - And then they find out which wrapping paper is theirs. Once they've opened their stocking, there is a little piece of their wrapping paper at the bottom of the stocking. And so my kids just love sitting, our tree is really close to our dining room table and while we're sitting there at meals, they're like, yeah, I'm now convinced that the striped one's mine.

Or the one with the snowman, hmm, that looks sort of like something that I'd like to have. - Oh, that is awesome. - So I enjoy just getting them involved in talking about the excitement of receiving gifts because we received a great gift many years ago, right? Of our savior being born.

And so just building excitement around gifts is something that I've really enjoyed doing. And that one was intentional. I had a dear friend who was doing that when I visited her out West and I just loved the idea. And we've probably been doing it for 10 to 12 years now.

And so my kids expect it. And now my grandkids are experiencing it, whether they'll expect it for the years to come. I don't know. They're a little young, but, and then the other thing that we actually just decided this year, because we have a couple of older children who no longer live with us and they have their own schedules and, or at least the schedule that I don't see, right?

And so this year we decided the first weekend of December would be our weekend to get together to put up the Christmas tree and put up all the ornaments and talk about why we have this ornament or that ornament. And those ornaments are very intentional. We pick them because they either remind us of places we've been together, or there's one for every anniversary that my husband and I have had.

We have them labeled on the back. It was which anniversary they belong to. And some of them deal with trips that we went on for that special anniversary or whatever. And then some are childhood ornaments, especially for Mark. He has a clay baked Christmas tree that's trying to swivel, shrivel into the, everything around the edges is just curling in.

And so, but that one's special. He remembers the teacher at school that helped him make that one. And so, yeah, we enjoyed doing that. And then the last thing that I thought of was just that we do and have done since they were babies. So my oldest is 24.

Since she, yeah, since she was a baby, we've done a Jesse tree that we actually made ourselves out of felt and made all the ornaments together out of felt. She was old enough to, well, I guess probably not since she was a baby, since the next ones were babies because she helped me.

So she would have been about six. And so she helped me make all the ornaments. And every year we've gotten it out and we walk through the lineage of Christ and what has come before to prepare us for this day that we celebrate of Christ's birth. And this year and even years, the last couple of years, we've swapped it around to where we no longer tell the stories, but we just ask what the kids say.

You tell the story, just from what you remember, tell us the story of what this one represents. - Oh, I love that, I love that. How do your kids feel about your traditions? Do they love them? Do they tolerate them? Do they advocate for new ones? - So there are some that don't fit everybody's bill of, yeah, let's do this yearly.

But I do remember, I'm reminded the last two years, in fact, they've asked me already this year, you're gonna get that candy, right? That certain kind of candy. And I don't even know what they're called. It's some foreign thing that they like that I can get at a local store, thankfully, but I got it one year and every year since then, don't forget to buy those, those are so good.

- Isn't that funny how you do it one time and it simply becomes a tradition to your children. - Yes, and I also do another tradition that this year I'm backing off of and I'm just really seeing if they're going to notice. So they tend to get socks in their stockings 'cause I'm like, what is a stocking without some socks?

And also for years past, I used it just to be able to say, now we're throwing those away. They have holes, we're done with those, you have new ones. But now my kids are older and they throw their socks away as they get holes now and I'm like, okay, I'm not hearing the need for socks.

But I was telling Mark the other day, I was like, maybe they just assume I'm gonna give them socks so they're not gonna tell me there is a need right now. - Right, right. - So I might be in trouble in 10 days or so. - That is so funny.

I remember when I was little, did you get those like lifesaver storybooks? - Yes. - Every year when I was little, I got one of those. And so when I started having kids, I thought, well, everybody, they were just magical to me. I mean, we didn't have a lot of candy when I was growing up.

And so to have all of those roles that were just mine was sort of magical. So I did that for my kids. And it was probably three years ago. My adult girls finally said, like, if you want to stop doing that, we would be okay with it. And I thought, oh my gosh, I did not have any idea that it did not strike them as magical as it struck me.

But their life is full of more candy than my life was. - Right, yes. - That's it, it's so funny. Our kids love some traditions and some they don't love. But you know what I have discovered? It's the traditions of our family, the beloved ones and the tolerated ones alike that draw us together, that give us common memories and something to rally around and something to groan against.

And so there's a lot to be said for all of those traditions. - I know, Jamie, that your family is very active in serving your community. I love hearing what y'all are doing, what benefit you're involved in and what project you have going on now. Are there some things that y'all do every year to serve?

Is there a tradition that you do every year as a family? - So yes, we try to do as much as we can be a part of our community here. And one of the ways that we've found to do that is just that there are local businesses or nonprofits actually that we want to support.

And financially is not always an aspect that my children at least can give you. And so we have found ways for, oh, we need extra people to help carry this banner in the parade. And so there's, in our little town, there's at least three parades every year. And so we are always at the top of the list for those nonprofits saying, hey, call us if you need people.

And my kids enjoy walking or riding in those parades. And in fact, a couple of them are very disappointed when our schedule doesn't allow us to be in town for some reason or another. And so, yeah, doing the parade and then quite a few of them also do fundraising banquets and they need servers and they actually want children or teenagers to be the servers to get them more involved in community events as well.

And so once again, we're just on that list of, hey, if you need servers and it works with our schedule, we will jump in. And so usually I'm in the background just instructing and but the teenagers are actually the ones that are serving the food or cleaning up or whatever.

And so those are things that we do. And then this time of year, during our advent season, we try to instigate walking around and caroling once one night in December. And so we put it out on our local Facebook group just saying, hey, we're meeting in this grocery store parking lot and we have the song books and we have people who are organized and ready to take groups of like eight to 10 down this street and this street.

You meet at this time and you'll be put with a group and enjoy getting to know your neighbors that you're singing with, as well as the neighbors that you're singing to. So those are just some things that we enjoy doing together as a family. And it does help that for the most part, we are a musical family.

- Certainly y'all really are. And that's something that, although I had a podcast guest just earlier this month who said, "Yeah, we always go Christmas caroling "as a family and I'm not sure it's a real blessing "'cause we're not really musical." But I think the warmth of somebody sharing a Christmas carol with you in an unexpected way is a blessing even if it's like a joyful noise instead of a heavenly choir.

So that's a really, I love all of those ideas. I knew that you would have some really good ideas for families because really and truly one of the best ways for us to celebrate the season is to give the gift of ourselves. I love what you said earlier, Jamie, that it reminds us of the gift, the greatest gift of all that God gave to us in the gift of his son.

And so giving of ourselves, giving of our time is really cool. So I love that. You went in a couple of different ways. I don't know if I had ever thought about calling a local nonprofit and volunteering to be their face in the parade, although our little town has a local parade and I do know that people along the parade route love to see kids and teenagers.

And so that is an awesome way. And there are, you're right, there's so many banquets going on. Church banquets and nonprofit banquets and what a blessing to say, "Hey, I'll be your waiter or waitress." And that's such a great way for the kids to be involved and maybe to be drawn in to the mission of that group.

It kind of is a soft introduction for them. - Yeah, whether it ends up being that group or just being aware, do you seek out how you can be a servant wherever they land, whether they stay nearby or in another town, yeah. - I think that's great. Let me ask you this.

Did your family, the family you were born into, did y'all do missions when you were growing up? I mean, is serving as a family just kind of part of your DNA? - I wouldn't have said that while I was growing up, but looking back, yes. Did we go on mission trips?

No. Not one. - Right, right, right. - But there was one year, and I come from parents who actually didn't give gifts to us growing up. And so, but they would every so often, and one I remember specifically when I was nine, they announced at the breakfast table to us siblings saying, "We are going to give you each a certain amount of money, but you only get to choose on who it is spent on or whom it is spent on." So I remember that one just very vividly at the time we were praying for a relative who had an issue that was abusive to their bodies.

And so giving money to them was probably not wise, but as a nine-year-old, I just remember going, "They don't have much." But I didn't realize they didn't have much because they spent it on the wrong things. But my parents were wise and crafty enough to say, "Okay, we will give your gift to this person, but you need to know that we're not handing them money.

We're actually going to go buy food for their household. We're going to buy clothing that we know that he needs." And that was just a fun day, the day that we showed up unannounced to their house. And I had probably seen this person at his worst. I was not secluded from the repercussions of his life.

But I just remember him sitting on the front porch steps, just bawling and weeping when we showed up with just bags and bags and bags of things for the whole family. And then later on, I was not homeschooled, but private schooled. And my parents, especially my dad, would say, "You know what?

You're going to only go to school four days a week. I'm going to tell your principal that, and I'm going to choose what you're going to do on the fifth day." And for years, I either went to two different homes. I went to my aunt's home who had, at the time, just her 10th and 11th child, they were twins.

She was homeschooling from number four down to the last ones. And I would go and just minister to her. And that required my mom driving me there. It was a family thing, even though maybe I was the only one dropped off. And then the other household was a family that just found out their dad had terminal cancer.

And they decided to go a more natural diet way to see if they could help with treatments. And so for about a year, because he's still living 27 years later- - Wow, that's awesome. - I would go every Wednesday and just scrub vegetables and help make the soup that he had to drink, juice a lot of veggies.

And the Lord has just used that mightily in our family as my mother-in-law has had cancer twice. And I've worked alongside her. She decided to do the same type of thing. And so just the things that my parents decided to push us to, and I know my siblings have their own stories, but we were all pushed to, these things are important, but not as important as you making you aware that you can serve, you should serve, and here's some ways you can serve.

- Man, those are some of the best outside the box. I mean, everybody thinks when you say serve your community, thinks about going to the soup kitchen or going on a local mission trip. But these, these are ways to be the hands and feet of Christ to a local family, to somebody whose face you know, to somebody whose life you could be a part of.

You know, your life, your days could be intertwined with theirs, there could be some real community. You know, it's really funny, I can remember my mom when I was little, I was blessed, my mom stayed at home with us. And I can remember my mom, she called it doing for, she would do for older neighbors in our neighborhood, you know, older ladies who needed help to, back then we didn't have, I mean, people hung their wash out to dry, and so I can remember my mom helping those, we would do for those, and she would send me next door.

Our, right next to us, we lived in a duplex, and the family next to us was an older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Mr. Smith became bedridden, and she would send me over in the late afternoon, and I would stand at the stove and skim the fat off of the broth, 'cause he couldn't have fat, he was only eating soup, and so I learned how to skim broth, I would go over every day, and I would skim the broth off of his dinner, and I got to fix his tray and carry it into him, and it was, like you said, just something that my mom, it was part of what she did, we just did for others, we did for neighbors.

That's really cool, and you know, I look back now, and as a kid growing up, I did not think about that my mom was teaching me something important, it was just something that I did, or my mom showed me how to do it, we did it together, 'cause she was showing me how to do it, but now I understand that she was teaching me how to love one another, how we love one another well, and so, I don't know, Jamie, I guess I would just say, and I'm sure you would agree, that part of celebrating Advent in a simple way for families might very well be teaching your children how to love their neighbor well by serving them.

So how have you and Mark, since y'all have been married, how have you and Mark drawn your kids into serving, and what kind of things, especially what kind of things did you do with them when they were very little? - So one of the things was just starting at home, helping them learn how to do chores, because if they could do it a minuscule amount, then they could go somewhere else and still do that minuscule amount, and I know that one of my teenagers right now has a local fast food restaurant job, and he came home one day, and he's like, "My manager wanted me to pass a note along to you," and I was like, "Okay." He said, "Thank you for teaching him how to sweep." - Oh my gosh.

- He said, "Until I became a manager, I didn't know "that you had to teach people how to sweep." He's like, "But I haven't had to teach your child," and he does amazing, and so yeah, just doing chores, you never know who you're gonna bless. - That is so good.

- And then we also, I remember when we would go to either events or somebody else's house for a meal, on the way there, we would just talk about, okay, where are we going, how can we serve them? They're letting, they've invited us into their house, and what are some ways that we can serve them?

And I just remember one thing that my mom just instilled in us was, you don't leave the kitchen until the person, the hostess or the host, has told you, "No, I don't have anything else for you to do." Then you can go play with your friends, and so that was one thing that my mom just kept instilling.

She's like, "Be at their side and just say, "I'm available if you have anything that I can do for you." And I also watched my mom host many events and have people come in and do the same to her, and she would always have this little list, either in her head or off to the side, that she knew if anybody had asked, it didn't have to be done, but it could be done and just be a little icing on the cake for the event.

And so she would always have something that she could tell somebody else what they could do if they offered. And so, yeah, those things, we also learned to bake together in our kitchen. And when we lived in Virginia for a short time, we, for the first time and only time in our lives, we lived with neighbors right next to us.

We live on a big farm now and nobody's really close. - Nobody's close, yeah. - So when we lived in Virginia, we started baking cookies around Advent season time and would just take them door to door and greet our neighbors, because sometimes we would just see them as we were walking into our house, wave across the way.

But we also purposely tried to make something that the children were involved in making and then also go greet our neighbors just to let them know that we knew they existed and that they were worthwhile of thinking over. And so walking was fun. It was fun to live in that area for those two to three years that we lived there, just 'cause within a half a mile, we had a dozen houses that we could hit and get to know our neighbors and hopefully be a light to them, even in just handing them cookies and greeting them.

- That's so great. It's a whole attitude. That's what I'm taking from what you're saying, Jamie, is that you and Mark have just really sought to instill in your children an attitude of service, that we can always be thinking about what we could do for other people or how we might minister to them in some way.

And it may be in every day along the way ways and not in some big grand gesture that has lots of zeros attached to it or multiple day trips. It could just be an attitude of, I care about you as a person. How can I lighten your load? And I love that.

I love that. What is the best thing for you about serving as a family? - Well, outside of just getting to be together, that would be just number one. It's seeing the growth in my children. And also just, we all compare whether it's good or bad. We do tend to be that species that does that.

And they would come to us and they would go, oh, I wish this person would help me. And I was like, well, what did you say to them? Or what could you say to them to encourage them to do what you feel the need to do in serving your neighbors or your friends or wherever you are?

And so I loved seeing that they realized that it can be a lacking in people. And so I think that pushed them to make sure that it wasn't a lacking in them. And then it also just creates a great love and concern for others like the scripture tells us to do.

And as far as working together as a family, they actually get to see, hey, mom and dad can't do everything, but they're trying. And they will at least put their hands that can lift things or move things around to bless others. And also just working together, we can accomplish so much more than if just one of us goes or two of us goes.

And my mom always would say to us when we would sort of go, ah, here we go again. She would just, or the chore list would come out. And we expected the chore list every Saturday, it showed up. And she would just right on the bottom of where she had signed us all the numbers of the chores, she'd say, remember, many hands make like work.

You could be doing all of these on your own. And so that's just a really good reminder that I've tried to pass along to my children is that when we all work together, like we run a wood stove at our house during the winter. And so everybody, we just call out, hey, we're getting wood.

And everybody is supposed to come downstairs because if all currently five of us run outside and get armfuls of wood, we probably only have to make two, maybe three trips each. But if it was one person, that's 15 trips possibly. And so it's a huge, huge difference. And so another saying that my mom said, or had actually on our wall to remind us was those who work together get to eat together.

And eating was always a fun thing because we did it together around the table. But we had to work to get to that table. And so she was like, if we all work together, then we're all gonna get to eat together. And that's exciting. - It's that together part is that my mother-in-law had a saying when my husband was little, and she would tell them when we work together, work is just like play.

Now, when my kids were really little, it was easier to convince them of that because we could work together in silly ways. We could walk in silly ways or we could sing silly songs. And when they became teenagers, they would sort of sometimes roll their eyes about that. It's not just like play, mom, it's work.

But it's well taken that when anything that we do together builds our fellowship and builds our love for one another, and builds a sense of community. So I agree with all of that. And serving together, especially when we serve together at Christmas, it does a lot of different things.

It draws our hearts together. Sometimes within our community, we'll call attention to what we're doing, not because we want accolades, but because it then gives us a reason to share the good news of Jesus. We do this because God first gave to us. And so how does serving help your family celebrate the season, Jamie?

- So it's just like you said, it makes us realize all the more that Christ modeled to us how to do this. And that should make us just every more thankful for the Father sending him. And like our Jesse tree, I love watching my children or hearing them retell the stories and then see them make the connections of this had to happen and this person acted like this, which is a Christ-like reaction that I should do as well.

And they just turn and say, "Is that why they're in the genealogy?" And I'm like, "Good possibility." And so it's just, it's a great reminder just of what a model and what a gift we've been given. - Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for talking about this with me.

I hope, listeners, that this series of Simplify Advent has been a blessing to you. I hope that your family has celebrated maybe more simply, but certainly more deeply this year what the Lord has done for us by sending his son to us. If you're looking for something else for your family to do, I know we had a couple of weeks ago, we had Simplify Advent read together.

I've got a suggestion for you. If you're looking for something for your family to read together, our Copper Lodge Library series from Classical Conversations is a series that preserves history's best stories in books that you could pass down from generations. The stories in the Copper Lodge Library range from ancient Greek and Roman myths to modern folklore and even some classical literature.

All those stories are filled with timeless truths that will really help you cultivate a moral imagination in your child, because here's a truth. What we read shapes who we become. So build your family's library with quality stories from Copper Lodge Library. If you wanna learn more about the books in that series, you can search for Copper Lodge Library on our bookstore's website at classicalconversationsbooks.com, all right?

Jamie, thank you again for being with us. Listeners, Merry Christmas. (gentle music) you