Eyres on the Road - Season 10

The Eyres reflect on the year 2020, and share thoughts about how travel can strengthen relationships.

Richard and Linda Eyre give encouragement on how to teach children the importance of giving.

The Eyres share family Christmas stories in hopes of helping you recall some of your treasured holiday memories.

The Eyres share stories from travels in Japan, Peru, Brazil, and other countries.

The Eyres tell stories from their expeditions to Kenya, to the Yucatan, to Bolivia, to India, and to Romania.

Richard and Linda Eyre share stories from their extensive travels.

This week's stories include Richard's work with President Reagan and his own run for Governor.

The Eyre's interest in politics goes back to before they were married, and is interlaced with their professional lives over the decades.

On today's show, the Eyres return to their "stories" theme and talk about prayer stories, and how parents often pray in a very special and powerful way, acknowledging the true Heavenly Parent and asking that parent to help in their own "beginning parenthood." Richard and Linda tell their own stories of intense prayers in times of family crisis, and challenge all of us to make this pandemic-time an improved prayer-time.

How will we all get together for the Holidays? What would a virtual Thanksgiving Dinner be like, or a Zoom Christmas. The Eyres, just back from London and the birth of their twin grandchildren, talk on today's show about families in Covid Time, and the joys and trials of staying close mentally and spiritually when you can't be close physically.

Continuing with the "stories" theme of the last few weeks, the Eyres tell us the stories of some of the wild and unusual things they have done with their children during summer vacations. They talk about summers in Japan, in Romania, in Mexico, in Wales, and building a log cabin in the Oregon wilderness. Still in London, awaiting the birth of grand-twins, they also talk about earlier family time in England.

Still in England awaiting the birth of their daughter's twins, Richard and Linda reflect on today's show about Joy School and how it became an international phenomenon. The story actually begins in England where the Eyres were as the initial Joy School curriculum was being formed, and there were some other stories in connection with its beginning that all families, and all parents and grandparents can learn from.

Having completed their quarantine, the Eyres have moved from Somerset up to London to be with their youngest daughter who will deliver twins any day now. Richard and Linda go into story-telling mode and share some of the family centric English incidents that are dear to them and instructive to all of us with regard to our families.

Once again casting from England, the Eyres talk today about their English ancestors, and ancestors in general and how knowing their stories can give us both identity and resilience. Richard and Linda are in the Southwest of England, where many of their ancestors lived, and they are using their time there to harvest all they can about those for-bearers and their lives and times.

Joining us today from the little village of Batheaston, in Somerset, England, Richard and Linda are in quarantine for 14 days, hoping that their splendid isolation will end at about the same time as their youngest daughter gives birth to her twins in London. So how could they talk about anything today other than baby stories--birth stories--those glorious moments when children from a pre-mortal existence enter into this world.

Today, Richard and Linda tell some of their "Book Stories" and get into how they became authors in the first place and how luck or fate (but we would like to call it blessings) led them on a path that resulted in books that sold millions, were translated into more than a dozen languages, and led to a secondary career of speaking and lecturing throughout the world. Their stories illustrate how many "happy accidents" went into their writing career.

Parenting is hard, children are complicated, the world is dangerous and confusing, and we can be driven to our knees because we have nowhere else to go. And this can be a GOOD THING, because an earthly parent praying to a Heavenly Parent about a child that they share can create some of the most fervent prayers ever uttered. On today's show, the Eyres talk about parental prayer and how we can all make it a more important part of our lives.

Is there any time when it is more important to count our blessings than in a pandemic? On today's cast, the Eyres give us twelve "Gratitude Challenges" that they guarantee will shift our focus from what's wrong to what's right. And they begin the show with 5 questions: How has the pandemic changed 1. The world? 2. This country? 3. The Church 4. Your family? and 5. YOU?

Any parent or grandparent worth their salt has known the joy of reading to a child. And there are so many great stories to read! But the best stories are the ones that teach a principle. If a child's story teaches them the importance and the blessing of a VALUE, then that value will become a part of them. Today Richard and Linda are sharing some stories--and giving praise to the two-way joy that happens when parents or grandparents read aloud to young children.

Marriaging is an active, grow-and-improve word like parenting, and on today's show, the Eyres expose 8 myths or misconceptions about the world's oldest institution and how false paradigms and unrealistic expectations of these myths can undermine a relationship. Most importantly, Linda and Richard talk about how each myth can be replaced with an "implementable" truth that will strengthen the most important relationship of our lives.

The paradox is that the three things we think will bring us more happiness--more control, more ownership, and more independence--actually rob us of joy and happiness! The Eyres, on today's show, give us a full overview of Richard's Paradigm Shift from CO&I--Control, Ownership, and Independence to SS&S--Serendipity, Stewardship, and Synerticity. Listen in today as Richard and Linda talk about a whole new paredigm for happiness in our families and in our lives.

Despite the fact that most Grandparents say that their grandkids are the best part of their lives, very little has been written on how to be a better, more influential grandparent. And most of what has been written is by Grandmothers to Grandmothers. But that all changed with a new book by Richard Eyre--a man-to-man book, a grandfather to grandfather book that draws us in through its stories, its logic and it's practicality.

Linda Eyre's book on GRANDmothering has warmed the cockles of countless Grandma's hearts, opening up a treasure trove of new and practical ideas to create a love affair with grandkids and to become relevant and involved and influential in their lives even as you work on building your own greatest legacy.

Poetry is a different kind of form for a book by the Eyres but trust that the themes of family, faith, and love will still be there. Today Richard and Linda read aloud selections from Poems: About Family and Favorites: Exploring Who and What We Love. There is a music to hearing a poem read aloud, so join with us as we listen to these personal stories and lessons in rhyme.

Sports can often act as metaphors for life, but maybe none more than tennis. Like how it's the only game where the score starts over every few minutes, the game where you have to get to "advantage" before you can win, and the game that keeps score with words like "love" and "deuce" and "serve" and "receive." On today's show, Richard and Linda apply some of these metaphors to marriage and family and raising our children, drawing from Richard's book "Tennis and LIfe."

Controlling our appetites is an indispensable part of good parenting and good example-setting for our children. If we can learn to control our appetite for food, it will lead to control of ALL of our other appetites.

What will the "Autumn" of your life be like? Will the golden years really be golden? With more than 80 million baby boomers all now in their 50's or 60's or early 70's, and with most of them able to expect to live close to or into their 90's, the questions of how to live these Autumn years is more relevant than it has ever been before.

Despite the success of the Eyre's "how-to" parenting books, they felt that it was time for something different--for a "why-to" book on what is happening to families around the world and why family decline is a problem that affects everyone in the world. In two parts they take a hard look at the state of the family, then present ways to save this basic unit of society.

For more than forty years, Richard and Linda have sent out a Thanksgiving Card at the holiday season rather than a Christmas Card. The original cards that go out every November contain the latest family picture and a poem to express their gratitude for the year past. Taken together, these 40 poems and some additional poetry to introduce and lead into them, give a wonderfully in depth picture of what awareness, appreciation, gratitude, and thanks-giving can be.

We used to call this problem "spoiled kids" or "selfish little brats" but today there is a better term to describe what is happening to kids who think they deserve to have everything they want without any work or effort on their part. The word is "Entitlement" and it is becoming a Trap in our society that catches kids in its clutches and squeezes the motivation and incentive right out of them. Today Richard and Linda give advice for parents to sidestep this trap in society.