This is a random home I drive by whenever I take Venture to Knights of Freedom. I just think the flower bed is so lovely!

 

For my finishing school two weeks ago we learned why Mary Poppins was so right. Children need cod liver oil daily. It makes healthy children who have round heads, broad chests, and glowing skin. Imagine what life would be like if there were no cavities or tooth decay, no wisdom teeth to be pulled, no degenerative diseases, no birth defects, no ADD, no autism. This is what life was like for the 14 primitive groups of people that Dr. Weston Price studied, because they got 10 times the nutrients, namely vitamins A and D, that are in cod liver oil, than the standard American does. I have a whole other blog post about this coming up. Why are the children of deseret so sickly? Even though we have the Word of Wisdom, LDSaints still have health problems.  I once got to see a list of youth going on a Pioneer Trek for their summer youth conference. The majority had major health problems that required taking daily medication! Is that what a multitude of children bright and strong is? Our bodies are like temples, but do we truly treat them that way? No! We put in junk like MSG, and food dyes made from petroleum. I thought it was quite ironic/hypocritical that in Primary last month my kids were being taught to treat their bodies like temples and then at the end of sharing time they were told to go to the bishop’s office after Primary was over, tell him what they learned, and then they would get a piece of candy laden with petroleum based food dyes.

 

Two Fridays ago I got my hair done. I love it! Whenever I go to get it done I get a peek into the real world out there. My hairdresser has a salon in her basement, which I love, but I always feel a bit guilty when I go and see her kids watching the boob tube upstairs and then fighting. I feel I am pulling away a mom from her children. She and this other client were talking about their kids’ classes and homework in second grade and preschool. It made feel so relieved that I don’t have to deal with homework for my seven year old.

 

 

Two Saturdays ago we did the Knights of Freedom Summit. That was so much fun! We experienced a miracle. Around 3 Pm or so the beautiful day of blue skies disappeared and nature released her fury with a downpour. Fortunately we had a pavilion’s roof in the park to shelter us. The 149 boys prayed mighty hard for the rain to stop so they could have their final battle and the family feast. God granted a reprieve from the storm.

 

When I first started going to these summits I thought there was nothing for the moms and sisters of the boys to do. Boy, was I wrong. The sisters like to dress up as pretty maids and cheer the brothers on. I love to see the pretty hairstyles they sport. The moms can volunteer as matrons for the camps.

 

 

I ran into my friend who I met at LEMI Training, Rebecca, and she give me some laughs. At the end of the feast at the dessert table she and my other friend Shauna came by to get treats. “is this dessert you made healthy?” she asked me. “No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s got brown sugar.” (I didn’t want to take time to go get sucanat or rapadura and I was out of both, so I used brown sugar.) “Good,” Rebecca said, “I want some!” LOL! It’s true, lots of times healthful cookies taste like cardboard. One time my dear mother-in-law whipped up a batch and nobody would eat more than one. She had no fat in them and hardly any sweetener, hence they were as dry as toast and just as sweet.

 

 

I have figured out a way to make chewy, yummy cookies that are healthful if you use sucanat and don’t take a lot of time, since they are bar cookies and not drop cookies. That’s the one thing that I don’t like about making cookies, is the back and forth thing of taking them off the trays and putting them on racks. I just want to mix

em up, put em in pan and bake them. I sent a bunch to my son for his birthday since he is gone away to college. It is so strange to be this old to have a son in college!

 

 

For our first day of school, the day after Labor Day, I slept in! It’s my inner rebel coming out, from a buried memory I have of having to leave for public school choir practice in grade school at 7 AM. Actually, I couldn’t sleep the night before and was catching up. It is really luscious to enjoy the freedom of homeschooling and not let public school dictate my daily schedule.

 

Princessa felt inspired to  make a Santa Claus with her new markers, not sure why, when it’s only September, but that’s the fun of giving your kids freedom to create what they want.

 

For our first day, the kids enjoyed their brand new crayons and actually colored for about 15 minutes, a record! For some reason they have never been big on coloring. I am so proud of myself for getting our school corner more organized.

 

Venture begs to do his Rosetta Stone Spanish every day. The morning of the Knights Summit he got up at 6 AM to do it before he left! He’s truly in love of learning season.

 

Some of my books to inspire a love of learning.

 

For the first day of school I let Cowboy play with his Duplos while I started reading a new book for the kids that I picked up at a yard sale, Miss Hickory. It’s the perfect book for fall. I was excited to see it recommended in the Friend November 2010 issue. Every November the Friend has a two page spread of good reads for kids.

 

 

I have always wanted an official school room with non carpeted floor to be happy about spilled paint and play-doh, walls of shelves and drawers that are all matched like in Pottery Barn, and a lot more space. When I was pregnant with #7 I nearly cried wondering how I was going to get around that homeschooling table that is squeezed between the dressers and the closet and bookcase that we use for homeschool materials. I visited a friend after baby #7 and actually did cry when the visit was over, because she has the beautiful school room I want, and doesn’t even homeschool! Then I have to remember to count my blessings. At least I have a homeschool table, and don’t have to use the dining room table. At least I have a closet and dressers and a bookcase for our homeschool materials and a corner of a room to do it.

 

I cleared off my desk, dejunked the home school filing system I started when I started homeschooling my college-going son 13 years ago, organized one bookcase, and put posters up on our homeschool closet. I like this one from the Friend that states, “Let Learning Lift You.” It has a quote from President Hinckley, at the bottom, “Education  is the key that unlocks the doors to opportunity.” The Friend has so many colorful posters to inspire a love of learning and a desire to be fluent with the Holy Ghost.

 

 

Most of school for the rest of the week was harvesting tomatoes. I love knowing that for my little children it’s OK to delay academics and have school be helping mom do gardening, harvesting, and housework.  TJED calls it core phase. We clean walls, the bathtub, the floor, thier bedrooms, and that week we dried tomatoes.

 

 

I learned at Relief Society all about dehydrating. Thank you Relief Society for bringing that answer to me! For years I have felt stymied, knowing that I want to plant a big garden, but not having a freezer to preserve all the harvest. And I hate to can. I already had a dehydrator but thought it was just for fruit and tomatoes. But I didn’t realize I could dry the tomatoes and then grind them into a powder.

 

 

 

Now with drying food and grinding in a blender I can store the harvest in a much smaller space! We dried 4 trays of tomatoes and the grand result was a 1/4 full Mason jar. I can store my whole tomato harvest this year in very little space! I learned about this cool web site, http://dehydrate2store.com and feel I have stumbled upon a treasure trove of info!