Amish Values for Your Family: What We Can Learn from the Simple Life by Suzanne Woods Fisher Blog Tour Review and Contest Posting

About the book:

It offers loving ways to bring your fractured home back to life-Amish style. Read it and apply generously! It's a beautiful book-funny, charming, soulful, and beautiful."

-Mary-Ann Kirkby, author of I Am Hutterite

For readers who long for strong families that know how to truly enjoy life together, there is much to learn from the Amish. Values like community, forgiveness, simple living, obedience, and more can be your family legacy--without selling your car, changing your wardrobe, or moving out to farm country.

In Amish Values for Your Family, bestselling author Suzanne Woods Fisher shows how you can adopt the wisdom of the Amish when it comes to family matters. In this inspiring and practical book readers will find charming true stories interlaced with solid, biblical advice about parenting, marriage, and all aspects of family life. As readers get an intimate glimpse into the everyday lives of real Amish families, they will learn to prioritize what's truly important, simplify decision-making, slow down as a family, safeguard time together, and let go when the time comes.

My thoughts:

I am participating in this blog tour as part of Litfuse Blog tours.  At the end of this post is a link to the other bloggers who are also posting this month about this special book.  I really enjoyed Suzanne Woods Fishers fiction book, The Choice,  that came out this spring and I was excited to be selected to take part in this tour as well.

Whiel I cannot imagine myself or my family actually becoming Amish, I do at times feel a bit of jealousy over how teh so called simple life that Amish families live seems so much more peaceful and family oriented than a lot of us "English" folks are experiencing.  I know no one has a magic answer for making life work, but I recall one of the things I took away from the fiction book written by Woods was to value whatever it is you are putting your time and effort into right now and stop rushing for the future.  I couldn't wait to see soem of the ideas shared in this book about.  The book is broken down into four section and each one contains at least nine or ten chapters each giving one idea.  There is a lot here and, while it seems simple, each one resonates with its own idea.

I focused on the section with ideas for children as I feel that is the area I would like to find ways to improve for my whole family.  Our daily life with four children seems to involve a lot of disagreements between children, as well as whining and an unwillingness to pitch in and do each persons share.  When you read or hear about Amish families, which are often much larger than my own, they seem to have a lot less of these problems and I wondered why.  So in reading through the section on children I took some notes for some ideas to implemetn in my own home.

One idea is to teach children how to do somethign from beginning to end.  In the book a father teaches his son to make a rabbit hutch even though it would be easier to just buy one.  He teaches him how to use the tools, plan the progect and value his own work.  A lot of times it seems easier to just do things myself and I am missing out on oppertunities when my children want to help but I just want to get on to the next thing, I need to take the time to teach them now while they still want to learn and help rather than rushing, so that they can take pride in being able to contribute to our family in their own way. 

Another suggestion that came up partially in two of the chapters was the joy of simple vacations wtih family as a time to bond and spend time together and nto always a way to do soemting big and splashy.  Think about what you want your childrne to reemember in the future about those trips.  My family always went to the beach for at least a few days and I cherish those memories of playing in the sand and surf and walking on the boardwalk.  Going on some simple rides and browsing in shops.  My husband and I now take our children to the same beach for a week each summer to do the same things and we look forward to it all summer.  Our trip is almost here and we are all itching to go.  Yes I would love to take them to Disney World sometime or a lot of other destinations, but at the beach we get to spend a lot of time together without having to rush around seeing things or getting to places.  We wake, go to the beach, coem back for lunch and rest and go to the boardwalk.  Simple, yet fun and enjoyable.

I am going to have to take some time with this book and see what ideas resonate with me and might help me to make our lives more simple, but more rewarding at the same time.

About Suzanne:

Her interest in the Amish began with her grandfather, W.D. Benedict, who was raised Plain. She has many, many Plain relatives living in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and travels back to Pennsylvania, as well as to Ohio, a couple of times each year for research.

Suzanne has a great admiration for the Plain people and believes they provide wonderful examples to the world. In both her fiction and non-fiction books, she has an underlying theme: You don't have to "go Amish" to incorporate many of their principles--simplicity, living with less, appreciating nature, forgiving others more readily-- into your life.

When Suzanne isn't writing or bragging to her friends about her first new grandbaby (!), she is raising puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind. To Suzanne's way of thinking, you just can't take life too seriously when a puppy is tearing through your house with someone's underwear in its mouth.

Suzanne can be found on-line at: http://www.suzannewoodsfisher.com/.

Link to buy the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Amish-Values-Your-Family-Simple/dp/0800719964/ref=sprightly-20

Contest:

Suzanne Woods Fisher is thrilled to announce the release of Amish Values for Your Family, her latest non-fiction release. "It offers loving ways to bring your fractured home back to life-Amish style. Read it and apply generously! It’s a beautiful book-funny, charming, soulful, and beautiful." -Mary Ann Kirkby

To celebrate the release of Amish Values for Your Family, Suzanne has teamed up her publisher Revell Books to giveaway a Kindle, and with Bill Coleman (the amazing photographer used on Suzanne’s book covers) to give away a signed Bill Coleman original.

One Grand Prize winner will receive an Amish Values Prize Package (valued at over $200) and includes:
* A brand new KINDLE

* A Signed Bill Coleman original

* Amish Values for Your Family (for KINDLE)

Click on one of the icons to enter. Winner will be announced on 9/2 at Suzanne’s blog. Be sure to stop by the blogs on Suzanne’s blog tour – many have copies of Amish Values for Your Family to give away.

Enter 8/15 - 8/31!

<> <>

Click on one of the icons to enter. Winner will be announced on 9/2 at Suzanne’s blog. Be sure to stop by the blogs on Suzanne’s blog tour – many have copies of Amish Values for Your Family to give away.

But, wait there's more! Suzanne is running a Bill Coleman caption contest during the month of August on her blog. Title one of Bill’s gorgeous photos for a chance to win a print from Bill’s Amish Photo site and/or a copy of Amish Values for Your Family.

Blog Tour Schedule:  http://litfusegroup.com/blogtours/text/13421895