Celebrate My Growing Family

Join our MVP Kids in welcoming new additions to their families. The expectation of growing a family is exciting and can also be unsettling for young children who wonder how their roles may change. Children voice their hopes and fears and parents offer reassurance and joy as babies are born, foster children are received, adoptions are completed, and marriages bring families together. There are many ways to grow a family, and MVP Kids celebrate them all

PARENTING NEVER ENDS. From the founders of the #1 site for parents of teens and young adults comes an essential guide for building strong relationships with your teens and preparing them to successfully launch into adulthood The high school and college years: an extended roller coaster of academics, friends, first loves, first break-ups, driver’s ed, jobs, and everything in between. Kids are constantly changing and how we parent them must change, too. But how do we stay close as a family as our lives move apart? Enter the co-founders of Grown and Flown, Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington. In the midst of guiding their own kids through this transition, they launched what has become the largest website and online community for parents of fifteen to twenty-five year olds. Now they’ve compiled new takeaways and fresh insights from all that they’ve learned into this handy, must-have guide. Grown and Flown is a one-stop resource for parenting teenagers, leading up to—and through—high school and those first years of independence. It covers everything from the monumental (how to let your kids go) to the mundane (how to shop for a dorm room). Organized by topic—such as academics, anxiety and mental health, college life—it features a combination of stories, advice from professionals, and practical sidebars. Consider this your parenting lifeline: an easy-to-use manual that offers support and perspective. Grown and Flown is required reading for anyone looking to raise an adult with whom you have an enduring, profound connection.

"I may have been like other boys, but there was a major difference -- my family included 80 to 100 single young men residing in a Filipino farm-labor camp. It was as a ‘campo’ boy that I first learned of my ancestral roots and the sometimes tortuous path that Filipinos took in sailing halfway around the world to the promise that was America. It was as a campo boy that I first learned the values of family, community, hard work, and education. As a campo boy, I also began to see the two faces of America, a place where Filipinos were at once welcomed and excluded, were considered equal and were discriminated against. It was a place where the values of fairness and freedom often fell short when Filipinos put them to the test.”"-- Peter Jamero Peter Jamero’s story of hardship and success illuminates the experience of what he calls the “bridge generation” -- the American-born children of the Filipinos recruited as farm workers in the 1920s and 30s. Their experiences span the gap between these early immigrants and those Filipinos who owe their U.S. residency to the liberalization of immigration laws in 1965. His book is a sequel of sorts to Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart, with themes of heartbreaking struggle against racism and poverty and eventual triumph. Jamero describes his early life in a farm-labor camp in Livingston, California, and the path that took him, through naval service and graduate school, far beyond Livingston. A longtime community activist and civic leader, Jamero describes decades of toil and progress before the Filipino community entered the sociopolitical mainstream. He shares a wealth of anecdotes and reflections from his career as an executive of health and human service programs in Sacramento, Washington, D.C., Seattle, and San Francisco.

Create meaningful, extraordinary celebrations and events that foster lifelong memories with the ones you love with inspiration from Katie Jacobs through her essential guide to entertaining. Create beautiful memories for your family and friends with help from Katie Jacobs, a stylist for Reese Witherspoon's lifestyle brand Draper James. She reveals her secrets for throwing fantastic parties for any occasion, from a casual backyard movie night to a lavish holiday party. The ultimate party hostess and styling pro, Katie shares her magical gift of making entertaining look effortless, and possible at the same time. Using Katie’s inspiring ideas and make-ahead tips, you will be so organized that you can minimize the fuss, enjoy the time, and celebrate too! In So Much To Celebrate, readers will: Become inspired to make the most out of every season through entertaining loved ones Remind you to craft experiences for family and friends that can be felt (and tasted), not just seen Discover a mix of tasty recipes, creative entertainment tips, and a heavy helping of nostalgia Brimming with creative party themes for every season, inspiring décor ideas, and delicious recipes, So Much to Celebrate is the perfect book for anyone who appreciates good times, good food, and good celebrations.

Should have been the beginning story of my families life if you wanted me to be the one of the Witness. Better life stories

Embrace the beauty and challenges of transracial adoption. Being an adoptive parent is hard enough. But when your family is multiracial, things get even trickier. Parenting transracially doesn’t come naturally, nor does it just happen with time. Love is essential—yet by itself, love isn’t enough. Cross-cultural parenting also takes intentionality, listening, learning, growing, repenting, changing . . . then starting all over and doing it again. It’s hard work! And yet, when an adoptive family honors the ethnic heritages of their children, the whole family—as well as the watching world—gets to see the beauty of a gloriously creative God. In It Takes More Than Love, Brittany Salmon shares her own family’s story of transracial adoption and offers a biblically-based guide for others following the same path. Brittany recognizes that we live in divided times and there are extra challenges whenever race is part of the conversation. But with wise insight and hard-won experience, she provides guidance about topics such as: Maintaining a Gospel perspective throughout the journey Celebrating your child’s history and heritage Confronting racism Responding to comments about your family Avoiding pitfalls in adoption Helping your kids feel represented in your home and community No one is promising transracial adoption will be easy—least of all Brittany! Yet the extra effort is balanced by a beauty that images our eternal destiny. Until the day God makes all things new, the welcoming an inclusive transracial family can help fulfill Jesus’s words, “on earth as it is in heaven.”

Hardcover printing erroneously indicates that it is the "first Howard Books trade paperback edition."

Master Holy Spirit is giving us new details on the lives of seven intriguing Bible women, who impacted greatly man’s redemptive, salvation journey. But, interwoven in their stories are varied experiences of women I have come to know, or heard about, shedding light on common situations that are sure to help us in blessed ways, receive secrets God has gifted us with in this book. These insights will help us grow in God’s love, goodness, kindness, the loving of man, preservation of our families, and in winning gloriously by Who He is. Explore and experience our loving God in endearing ways, as the Master Holy Spirit offer us new perspectives on Holy Mary, Eve, Rahab, Hannah, Ruth, Queen Esther, and the Shunammite woman, showing us mysteriously, how they connect to the Garden of Eden, to our Lord Jesus Christ, and our living today. The Master Holy Spirit, in a loving display of God’s love for us, details how God prepares His loving women for their role assignments, taking us through a mystery-filled glorious journey involving these spirit-filled heroines in their cooperation with God to recover man. But greater surprises await all.