#I just really like Baptiste finally getting some attention and I like their contrast

[nitewrighter]

when lifeweaver pulls mei he’ll say “my favourite climatologist” and now i think the pairing is cute. iceweaver? meiflower?

Iceweaver or Meiran could be cute...He also has the voiceline, "Such a tragedy what happened here... poor Doctor Zhou..." on the Antarctic Peninsula map

Also I like the combo of cute and disheveled Mei with "Definitely spent over an hour on his eyebrows" Niran.

[more-quiverfull-sims]

MORE courtships on the horizon...we are thoroughly overjoyed!

Author’s Note: Ingrid’s last hurrah!

I’ve decided to make Patience Grace my heir for this legacy. This was a tough choice because she was #10, pretty late in the lineup, but the Gormans didn’t have that many girls to choose from compared to boys (before Miracle, the final Gorman child, arrived, there were only 6 girls). Hope (daughter #1), and Evangeline (daughter #3), were way too free-spirited to be good heirs, Katlynn (daughter #2) became the Jana of the family early on, and Helen (daughter #4), while a great Quiverfull daughter, just didn’t strike me as the heir for some reason. It also helped that Evangeline, Helen, and Patience (daughter #5) came close together and right in a row, which made them easy to compare.

Patience reminds me of Ingrid, both because they look alike and because they share characteristics. Patience is a good, obedient Quiverfull daughter, but she also has a romantic streak and can be kind of self-centered. She’s not as rigid as Ingrid, but she’s close. She also lacks some of Ingrid’s cunning...kind of like a Kendra to Ingrid’s Michelle. 

Anyway, being the heir, Patience is courting young and aiming high--she’s dating none other than the eldest son of Pastor Fleming, who runs the Gorman’s Church, Newcrest First Baptist. Helen Praise is courting too--the relationships started around the same time--but she gets a lot less attention. Helen doesn’t really mind that, though--she’s never loved the spotlight, and she’s privately a little embarrassed by her mother’s antics.

Anyway, Patience Grace will soon be married off at 18, while Helen is going to wait until a more reasonable 20. I’m excited to see how their relationships unfold. After her wedding happens, I’m going to start telling this story from Patience’s perspective! I’ll still include the occasional update from Evy, though, since she’s my favorite.

Also, Jon Edward Fleming is named after fire and brimstone preacher Jonathan Edwards, who is famed for delivering the “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” speech during the First Great Awakening. I thought he was a fitting namesake!

Greetings, readers!

As many of you know, my sweet Evy May has been married for over a year now. Many worldly people did not understand her choice to marry so young. The devil is constantly prowling to devour sweet Christian families, and he certainly made an attempt to destroy us with the gossip that surrounded Evy’s marriage! While that time was painful for us, we are SO happy to report that Evy and Auggie are still very much in love and happy doing life together. 

Evy and Auggie recently celebrated Auggie’s 20th birthday at Auggie’s parents’ house. How sweet!

We haven’t had any baby news from Evy and Auggie yet. We pray that the Lord will open Evy May’s womb soon, but until then these two are enjoying the fruits of a happy, Christian marriage!

Happy birthday, Auggie!

Our greatest gift, Miracle Joy, also aged up recently. Stetson and I are SO proud of her! She is such a virtuous young lady and a blessing to us all...every sibling dotes on her!

Sweet Katlynn made a cake for her sister! She is truly a gift. Now if we could just get her married...she’s 23 and still single!

I cannot believe our youngest is now a big kid! The sight of her aging up truly brought a tear to my eye! Though I miss being a young mother greatly, being able to shepherd my children through these more mature seasons of life is such a gift as well, especially as our grandchildren multiply.

One of Stetson’s most important jobs is assessing the MANY young men who show interest in our daughters. Most of them do NOT make the cut!

But after years of careful discernment and praying, an event we always dreamed of has taken place. Yes, it’s true--Pastor Fleming’s oldest son, Jon Edward, has asked to get to know our Patience Grace. Their relationship has moved quickly because they are clearly such a perfect match! Jon Edward has even said that he knew from the first time he met Patience that he wanted her for a wife. He saw her humble spirit and her feminine modesty and was blown away! He agrees with us that women today are so worldly and self-absorbed. Patience stands in contrast to them like a shining light! We are SO grateful for her and the wonderful example that she provides!

Jon invites Patience to court.

Pastor Fleming spent a day at our home supervising Patience and Jon. Jon’s older sister, Laura, was also there!

Sweet fellowship!

Stetson and I had MANY serious conversation with Patience and Jon about the joys and responsibilities of young marriage. Patience is 18 and Jon is 22, so while they are young, they are old enough to marry in the sight of God, so long as they understand the gravity of making eternal vows!

After extended conversations with Patience, Jon, and Pastor Fleming, Stetson decided to allow them to become engaged!

Patience turned 18 just a few days before Jon decided to propose to her, but she is so strong and mature in her judgment! She is ready to be a wife and mother. We never allow our children to delay marriage for too long because it can lead to temptation, so we will allow these two to be married in two months’ time. They’ve already courted for four months and got to know each other for four months before that. Patience was younger than any of our daughters when this process started for her--she was on the early side of 17--but we were confident that the timing was right. We prayed on this match over and over again as a family, and over and over again felt confident that the Lord was drawing these two together!

In other news, our sweet Helen Praise is also courting! Helen is 19 going on 20 and has such a sweet servant’s heart. Young Tyson Bheeda is crazy about her! They both enjoy art and spend many of their chaperoned dates at local museums.

We are so grateful for these two and for their commitment to purity! Here’s to praying we will have another engagement on our hands soon!

[robbiercyes]

now let's talk about james madison!!!

ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT JAMES “JEMMY” MADISON JR. AKA A 5 FOOT 4, 120 POUND CAN OF WHOOP ASS

So here’s the deal about James Freaking Madison. The dude has a ton of titles: Father of the Constitution, Author of the Bill of Rights, 4th President of the United States, etc. etc…..there’s a lot more, but I’m not gonna list them all out right here. He’s quite deserving of those titles too, because I can’t think of any other Founding Father who did quite as much as he did in crafting the American political and legal landscape. But despite all of his accomplishments, he doesn’t get nearly enough credit. Jefferson gets a huge ass monument in DC and his face is plastered on a mountain, Washington gets a shit ton of stuff including a city and state named after him, Hamilton gets the ten dollar bill and a musical…what does poor Madison get? Nothing. Madison Square Garden might be the closest thing to a Madison monument, and then of course there’s his home Montpelier, but Montpelier doesn’t get nearly as much attention as Jefferson’s Monticello or Washington’s Mount Vernon.

Needless to say James Madison deserves a helluva lot more attention than he gets. And I’m not talking from a place of bias when I say this (even though he is, in fact, my favorite founding father) because he did A LOT for this country. If this 5 foot 4, 120 pound can of whoop ass didn’t come into the American political arena, I really don’t think the American Republic would have lasted very long.

So let me start talking about James Madison.

James “Jemmy” Madison Jr. was the eldest of 12 children and was born and raised in what was considered the “frontier” of Virginia. He also suffered from partial epilepsy. Or, at least, that’s what modern historians call it. He only directly referenced it once and he described it as “attacks resembling epilepsy, and suspending the intellectual functions.” What does this mean? Well, it’s hard to detail exact symptoms 200 years later, but the best guess historians have is that he probably didn’t suffer from full seizures (where you would black-out, collapse, foam at the mouth, etc.) but that it might have compromised his “intellectual functions.” Maybe he couldn’t move or speak, maybe he couldn’t understand things, but whatever happened to him during these attacks he usually ended up bed-ridden for a few days to a few weeks. His attacks only seemed to happen, though, when he overexerted himself. For example, when the revolution started, he joined the Virginia Militia to fight for the cause only to drop out after a few weeks after suffering from an attack. He also suffered from an attack at the end of the Continental Congress.

These attacks, though, never deterred him from getting the job done. He was tireless and determined in his work. Between a relentless work ethic and a brilliant political and tactical mind, he got a lot of shit done. He wasn’t the warmest guy though, at least not at first. Many people considered him cold, aloof, reserved, etc. He was, like his friend Jefferson, the shy and introverted type. You know how many times people on tumblr say they’ll hide up in their room if there’s a stranger in the house? That’s exactly what Madison did. Seriously - when someone came to visit Montpelier he briefly introduced himself and then just stayed in his room practically the entire time the guest was there. Then, of course, there’s the time when he was attending HIS OWN INAUGURATION PARTY and complained that all he wanted to do was go to bed. #relatable

Like I said before, he was a bit of an aloof figure when someone first met him, but once he warmed up to them they found a man who was very modest, mild-mannered, and intellectually curious. He was a cold-eyed realist, a great story-teller, and a man known by his friends for having a self-deprecating (and sometimes inappropriate) wit. A few examples of his wit include: when he was on his death-bed he joked that he “always talked better lying down”; when he had to cover the costs of a Tunisian diplomat who brought with him a bunch of concubines he joked to Jefferson that the costs were “appropriations for foreign intercourse”; when he always told the story of that time someone stole his only hat (HIS ONLY HAT - talk about shitty luck); etc. So while he was quite cold to people he didn’t know, and he was never one to have many friends, to those who he did consider his friends, he was quite warm and jovial.

He had a lot in common with his BFF from Monticello, Thomas Jefferson, including their reserved, introverted natures and intellectual curiosities, but they were also different people. Madison was strategic, always thinking ten steps ahead, and he was a realist. Jefferson, by contrast, was extremely idealistic and didn’t always think things through. There are many times where he would come up with these ideas that seemed great in theory but weren’t grounded in reality. Madison would be the voice of reason, reigning in his friend when he became too involved in his own fantasy land. Jefferson was also an optimist who believed the best in people - Madison never had these instincts. Madison always seemed quite cynical when it came to people (though not to the extent as Hamilton). While Jefferson believed the people could do no wrong, Madison believed the people were susceptible to their own passions and it was why he never believed in populist politics.

He also wasn’t adverse to public speaking, but it didn’t come to him naturally. He wasn’t the most charismatic orator in the world (nor the loudest - in a lot of his speeches/arguments there are blanks because note takers honestly couldn’t hear him lmao woops), but he worked at it. He was extremely convincing when making his arguments. He knew how to make a good and sound argument. So whatever he lacked in charisma he gained in logic.

But, of course, we also have to talk about how he was a slave owner. Madison’s relationship with slavery is pretty interesting. When he was younger he seemed to be desperate to break away from his financial ties to slavery. He even tried to buy some land in New York so he didn’t have to rely on slave-labor. He was never successful in this endeavor. Madison was very aware of the hypocrisy of the revolution when it came to slavery, but like many Southerners his career and financial stability relied on that very institution. By the end of his life he seemed to believe slavery a necessary, but temporary, evil. He hoped that slavery would be abolished in the next generation, but he seemed to believe that it was something that could only be abolished in the future and not in his own time. Like many “anti-slavery slave owners” (I really don’t know what else to call them), he seemed to believe in this fantasy that slavery would die out in the next generation (when, in fact, the opposite happened). It was probably their way of absolving themselves of responsibility while also easing their own consciences.

But let’s get on to why I consider him a 5 foot 4, 120 pound can of whoop ass.

He. got. shit. done. He planned, prepared, persuaded, set agendas… he was fucking relentless in his work and he became a political giant because of it. There’s a reason why Dolley Madison referred to him as “the great little Madison.” I mean this dude was so relentless he even debated James Monroe in a FUCKING BLIZZARD and got frostbite on his nose because of it (he would he get a scar on the tip of his nose which he would make fun of later on).

He wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty in politics, but he did what he did to accomplish real goals. Here are a few:

Religious liberty. Do you like our lovely separation of church and state? You can thank Madison (at least in part) for that. Madison was the most aggressive supporter of having a separation of church and state than any other founding father. It started when a group of Baptists were arrested in Virginia for practicing their religion and he was like “that’s fucked up, man” so he successfully got a portion of the Virginia Constitution to allow for the “free exercise” of religion. A few years later he helped then-Governor Jefferson pass the Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom which finally disestablished the Anglican Church from Virginia (wait to go, Jemmy).

Then, of course, there’s his work on the Constitution. Madison basically locked himself away for a few months and poured over a series of books Jefferson had sent him from France on past republics. He wanted to figure out how and why these republics failed and collapsed. His notes were essential in crafting the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. I doubt Madison would approve of his title as the Father of the Constitution since he always argued that the Constitution was a kind of group effort (again, this dude was pretty modest - did I mention he never even made plans for a gravestone for himself? he just didn’t give a shit about that apparently), which is true, it was a group effort, but he really was a leading force at the Constitutional Convention. He advocated for a system of checks and balances and came up with the Virginia Plan which detailed the three branches of government we have now. He’s also the reason we know so much about what happened at the Convention. He created his own form of short-hand and wrote down literally EVERYTHING that was said at the Convention before going home and writing everything out long-hand (now that’s dedication).

He didn’t get everything he wanted out of the Constitution, but he still ardently supported it as the co-author of the Federalist Papers which was essential to getting the Constitution ratified. Madison wrote 29 essays, his Federalist 10 and Federalist 51 being the most famous of all of the 85 essays. In Federalist 10 he wrote about his theories on political factions where he essentially argues that while political factions/parties are destructive to republics, they’re inevitable and they can be used to control one another. He also writes about the dangers of majorities to become tyrannical over minorities and that our form of government specifically tries to prevent that by giving minority factions enough power to force majority factions to make a deal with them (for example, that’s why Democrats have the power to challenge and fight back against an overwhelming Republican majority). Federalist 51 discusses similar topics, but argues how the ambitions and vices of one group can be used to control the ambitions and vices of another. This essay is also where he famously wrote “If men were angels, no government would be necessary; if angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls would be necessary.”

He then goes on to write the Bill of Rights. Ironically enough, Madison never believed a Bill of Rights was necessary. He thought that the rights listed in the Bill of Rights were already implied in the Constitution, but he also worried that listing out specific rights would allow for the rights not specified to be unprotected. And he had a point, but he realized that a Bill of Rights was needed because it would win over Anti-Federalists (people opposed to the Constitution). So, even though the other members of Congress didn’t want to waste their time on a Bill of Rights, Madison still kept pestering them about it. He was a giant (figuratively speaking) in the House of Representatives, and in a time without political parties and an insignificant Speaker of the House, Madison became THE leader of Congress. And, thanks to his political talents, he managed to get the amendments passed.

But whenever you start reading up about James Madison, you run into the “James Madison Problem.” Essentially, it’s the idea that James Madison had a significant shift in political beliefs during the 1790s. Earlier in his political career he believed in a strong central government and he was seriously frightened by “tyrannical” state legislatures. He believed the state legislatures and their populist politics needed to be reigned in by a powerful central government. In this regard he was like Hamilton. Later on in his career he flips, though, arguing for states rights and a smaller federal government. A lot of historians try and figure out why he so drastically changed his political opinions (although Madison himself never believed his beliefs changed). In my opinion I think Madison’s opinions were more consistent than people think.

When he was crafting the Constitution, Madison was coming from a decade of chaos from uncontrollable state legislatures based on populist politics. In that regard, Madison believed that a strong federal government was key to reigning in the states and populist politics. But by the time of the 1790s, Madison realized his ideas of the federal government were much different than Hamilton’s. Hamilton wanted a federal government that emulated those of Europe - Madison wanted no such thing. Madison’s idea of a strong central government was more like a judicial-like umpire than Hamilton’s idea of a European-style bureaucracy with large standing armies and a powerful independent executive. Madison thought the federal government could be the balancing act between the different states, Hamilton thought the federal government would rule the states. Then, of course, Hamilton’s financial plan was the breaking point for Madison who believed that a national bank was unconstitutional and that the rest of Hamilton’s plan screwed over poor farmers (which it kind of did). When Madison broke away from Hamilton, Hamilton really felt betrayed. The two had become friends during the Constitutional Convention and the writing of the Federalist Papers, so naturally Hamilton was stunned to learn that his friend was the leading voice against his financial plan. Needless to say they weren’t friends after that.

But the more the Federalists pushed the boundaries of the Constitution (at least, that’s how Madison saw it) the more Madison became appalled at the growing powers of the federal government. To fight against Hamilton and the other Federalists, Madison joined with Jefferson to create the first political party: the Democratic-Republican Party. Then, in 1800, Jefferson was elected President and Madison became his Secretary of State. He helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase, dealt with increasing tensions with the British, and a whole lot of other shit that I’m not going to list out here. By 1808 Madison was elected the 4th President of the United States. It was under his presidency where we had the War of 1812 and the Burning of Washington. There’s been a lot of criticism for how Madison and his administration handled the war, and they are justified, but he also managed to fight a war and end it without increasing the powers of the executive. Most wars expand the powers of the executive branch which can put a republic in jeopardy, but Madison resisted this. He also showed a lot of bravery and resolve during the Burning of Washington. He and his administration fucked up, but there were some good moments as well.

By the end of his two terms, Madison returned to Montpelier for a well-deserved retirement, and, despite his supposed ill-health, he ended up out-living every other founding father.

Hopefully this little rant convinced you why I think Madison is a 5 foot 4, 120 pound can of whoop ass. I could go on and on about him and I still have more stories I could tell but I’ll end it here.