Tree of Life Mothering

One of the reasons I love homeschooling so much is that it gives us an excuse to read so many classics. Here are the ones for August and September. As much as I loathe starting school in August, it does feel great to look back and say, hey, look at all these cool books we’ve read so far!

The two older children at home read Little Men for their Georgics scholar class. I read this book a while ago, actually, I don’t remember if I ever finished it, but I don’t remember what the “georgics” aspect of it is. Maybe the fact that Jo and her husband are entrepreneurs in owning a boarding school?

Strawberry Girl is truly one of the best books ever! You can read my review here. My two practice scholars read it for their Georgics Scholar Project.

Because we liked Strawberry Girl so much I found a set of books by the same author on scribd. You can access them by going to the bottom of my Strawberry Girl post and clicking the scribd link.

The books above and below were for the Pyramid Scholar Project. 

These three books, the one above and two below, were for my ten-year-old’s Mastering Knighthood class. I’m getting him to the point where he reads the monthly books on his own without me reading aloud every single word. Although I do plan on keeping the reading aloud tradition going more than I did for the out of nest kids. I read aloud parts of Wheel on the School in the car on the way home from northern AZ to the whole family. It made that long trip a lot more bearable.

For when we drive to our homeschool group every Thursday, 90 minutes each way. We listen to the charming Audible version with Rachel McAdams. Don’t tell, but I’ve even caught the 15 year old boy smiling while listening.

This is for Georgics too, because the 15 year old boy needs more to read. He’s reading ahead and then we play it on scribd.com during dishes clean up when I need a break from reading aloud. I’m so excited to see that it’s the first in a trilogy. I didn’t know that until just recently! I remember one of my grade school teachers reading it aloud to us. Despite the implausibility of the plot, I like it.

We listen to Saints on the way home from seminary every weekday. I finished it earlier this year after starting it last fall. Usually, we get at least one chapter in, sometimes two. I’ve decided I’m going to listen to it, or one of the subsequent volumes, every fall and then discuss with it my adult children and close friends on All Saints Day every year.

After hearing my friends Olivia and Gayle rave about this one, we are listening to it on scribd.com every weekday on the drive to football practice in the afternoon.

We are on the home stretch for the one above. I’ve been reading it aloud since last spring, after finishing the World War I volume. It was for my two practice scholar’s Hero Project class. Can I get an amen and hallelujah that we are almost done? I am grateful that the author took the time to write these books, as this perspective is never found in a textbook.

I read a story of one of the prophets every weekday to the kids from this book.

I just love Linus and Spoon! You can read my reviews here and here.

Now, on to what I’ve been reading just for me, not for the kids:

The one above and below are for the Sword LEMI Scholar Project class about the War for Southern Independence. I made a quiz game for the above book to play in our class. It was so much fun! The book gets rather glorifying of war in the end chapters. I didn’t like that.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s depiction of the Quaker mother Rachel Halliday makes me want to be a mom all over again.

Multipliers was for the parents of our homeschool group to discuss in September. I never finished it, but have good intentions to. It’s on scribd.com as well in audio.  Gift from the Sea is just as relevant as ever, even though it was written over 50 years ago. That one was for the homeschool moms’ retreat I attended in September. I listened to it on scribd.com. The narrator is Claudette Colbert. Wasn’t she a Hollywood actress in days gone by? Her voice soothes me to sleep, I can’t listen to it when driving long distances.

And because I love to dive deep, the one below is for me to further my knowledge of the War for Southern Independence.

Are you ready to read the “greatest adventure in the history of fruit”? Then dig in to this book. I love it because it shows a man pursuing a quest. It’s based on the true story of Henderson Luelling, who left Iowa in 1847 to settle in Oregon. He took 600 trees with him, one wife, and 8 children so he could have fruit orchards in his new paradise. He was fruitful in the ways of children and plants, as his ninth child was born after they moved to Oregon. His brainchild, the Luelling-Meek Nursery got its start in Oregon as well. His first box of apples grown in Oregon sold for $75.  Stories like these show the amazing pioneer heritage of our nation as people weren’t afraid to head to the unknown, facing risks, in order to build a dream. I’m reading this aloud to my two children doing the Georgics Scholar Project this year to encourage them in their dream-building. I hope you enjoy this picture book as much as I do!

I watched this week’s “Don’t’ Miss This” episode with Sister Emily and Brother Dave, below, and heard them mention this General Conference packet. You can get it for free here. If you don’t know what General Conference is, it is a semi-annual gathering for all the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It involves hearing revelation from our prophet and counsel from other leaders. It’s been going on ever since the church was founded. Gathering is an important principle of the Church of Jesus Christ. It’s cool that one of the scriptures I read in my Bible study for this week’s Come, Follow Me reading includes the principle of gathering.

Ephesians 1:10 says:

That in the ^adispensation of the fulness of times he might ^bgather together in one ^call things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him…

So General Conference is a foreshadowing of this even greater gathering in Christ, during the Millennium.

It’s so amazing that all over the world, we can gather together through technology and hear the same things. Over 18 years ago, when I was pregnant with child #4, my husband and I were traveling over Conference weekend for his business. We paid a lot of money to get Internet access at the hotel to watch Conference. What a blessing that Internet access is much cheaper these days, wherever you go, and that we can easily watch General Conference using it.

Conference time is a wonderful time to hear new stories from the prophet, apostles, and other leaders. During this time, I’ve used my share of coloring sheets and packets over the years to keep the kids quiet. I love that this packet above is for the whole family, not just for the little children to color. My kids have never really taken to coloring. The boys usually just want to wrestle during reading aloud or Conference when I’ve attempted to get them to color. My hope springs eternal though, and I will be printing this out and presenting this packet to each family member to help them stay focused. I also love that the packet has recipes (albeit not very real foodsy- I will be adapting) and a Family Home Evening lesson.

At the beginning of the video, Emily and Dave share some of their General Conference traditions, like special books to write in and pajamas. I’m sooo not there yet. I have been striving for years now to have some General Conference traditions for our family.  Here are some of the ideas I’ve gathered so far. It’s been hit and miss, but I am not giving up. I love the idea of making it as much fun as Christmas with special decorations, food, and gifts. So far I’ve got the special food, still working on the decorations and gifts.  New pajamas and books seem light years away, but the vision is lovely. Every six months, Conference seems to sneak up on me and I find myself lacking time to prepare all these wonderful things.

At least this time, we are singing about Conference. Every day this week for our homeschool devotional, the younger children and I are singing this song to get ready. It’s by Brad Wilcox and Steven Kapp Perry. Hey, you can even have special music for Conference, just like Christmas!

Here’s one of my favorite General Conference talks of all time by Elder Marcos Aidukaitis. It’s just delightful to hear stories like his during Conference time. What stories will we be basking in this weekend?

Having fortuitously stumbled upon it, my husband and I watched this sweet movie a few weeks ago for date night.  It’s free, it’s clean, it’s romantic, it’s God-promoting, and it’s original. Sounds great right? But the bad news: the end is sad.

Warning: don’t watch it unless you are ready to cry at the end. I was totally bummed that it had a sorrowful ending. I saw it ending a completely different way. In a way, though, it was positive. If you are wanting a bouncy, happy love story, this is not the one for you. Go find a Hallmark Channel movie. If you want a Christian romance that affirms your faith in God, stay with this. I give it 4 1/2 out of 5 stars, just because the acting is a little stilted and the cinematography isn’t the best. Sometimes it is a bit jerky and unpolished, but since it’s a low-budget indie movie made by twentysomethings, that’s understandable.

If you don’t want to commit to watch it just yet, watch the teaser trailer below.

Then here’s  a short video of the making of the movie.

I read this book two years ago this fall and fell in love with it. Now, just recently, two of my children read it for their LEMI Georgics Scholar Project Class, for our homeschool group. It is an amazing book! Here’s why:

• the young female protagonist, Birdie Boyer, has tons of pluck and grit
• it shows this young girl standing up to bullies
• the troublesome neighbors show kids how uncool it is to be a squatter or someone with rage issues
• the reader gets a slice of life of early white settlers of the Florida lake country
• it is wonderful to see farm life, to see how people worked hard to make their farm prosper
• it is encouraging to see how farmers deal with drought, heat, and cold spells
• we see the Christian way the characters treated the mean neighbors I mentioned above who don’t honor property rights
• the illustrations are charming
• the conversion of the father of the mean family to Christianity was heartwarming (but perhaps a bit implausible as it happened so fast, but hey, it happened to Saul…)

So go get it, it’s just delightful! My homeschool mama friend listened to it with her kids on Audible as they drove to and from our homeschool group. She said her kids all loved it. My young teens liked it too, even my hard-to-please warrior boy. He normally wouldn’t pick up a pastel book with a girl and strawberries on the cover, but he read it for his homeschool class and enjoyed it.

Have you read Strawberry Girl already and want more of that type of book? You are in luck! The author, Lois Lenski, wrote over a dozen books of that type featuring characters from different regions of the US who lived on farms or ranches, dealing with the natural elements of the area. She actually visited the regions and talked to the local people to get a handle on the language, stories, and culture. I am currently reading aloud one of them,  Texas Tomboy, to my children. My goal is to read aloud the whole series to my young scholars to accompany their Georgics studies.

If you sign up here for a free trial of  scribd.com, the reading app, you can get access to all these lovely books as ebooks. They compose the two collections called American Journeys: Lois Lenski’s Novels of Childhood, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.

Vol. 1 involves these titles:

 Indian Captive, Judy’s Journey, Flood Friday, Texas Tomboy, Boom Town Boy, Coal Camp Girl, and Mama Hattie’s Girl.

Then Vol. 2 has these ones:

Strawberry Girl, Prairie School, Bayou Suzette, Blue Ridge Billy, Corn-Farm Boy, San Francisco Boy, and To Be a Logger.

These ebooks are in Kindle format on amazon for over $25. Get them as part of your free trial on scribd.com!

Enjoy!

Sometimes at night I have a hard time falling asleep. I have so much going on, so many balls I am juggling. It takes a while for me to relax so I can sleep. So to turn my mind off from the mundane thoughts racing through my mind, I read stories in the Gospel Library App. I always feel peace when I read these stories. I find patterns of righteous gospel living. I also always find little treasures of Church history and amazing stories of Saints who live on the covenant path. These stories inspire me so much. Recently,  I found this gem of an article in the Ensign by Elder H. Burke Peterson. It’s all about prayer: why we should pray, how to feel God speaking to you, and that God does indeed live, hear, and answer our prayers. It’s from a BYU Speech he gave on March 2 1980. You can read or listen to it here.

He tells this cute story of a time when he bought some sore throat spray while out of town traveling because he felt the flu coming on (the spray he bought was probably Chloraspetic, I imagine. I remember using that in my childhood). He went to his hotel room to use it, and then accidentally swallowed the three-inch tube that attached to the spray nozzle. He was alone and didn’t know what to do. So he prayed, asking God to help him get the plastic tube out of his body. His prayer was answered by him getting the tube out. I love this! We need never feel alone when we know we can pray and we do pray.

He also tells some other cute stories such as the following:

-how when he was a little boy his cowlicked hair that he had plastered down with Vaseline came sticking back up at church. He was so embarrassed and looked around thinking people were looking at him. He saw the bishop sitting peacefully on the stand and thought of how the bishop never had any problems to worry about, like a cowlick. When he got old he realized that the bishop wasn’t sitting as comfortably as he had thought. 🙂

-when he was a young father, his wife felt inspired that their family wasn’t done and that they should pray for another baby to come to their family. The family prayed for eight years and then the baby finally came!

I just love these stories! Go read it to get more stories.

I love these tips he has to feel connected to God every time you pray:

1. Go where you can be alone if possible. If you can’t be alone, pray anyway, and hopefully your spouse or roommate will be touched by your example. (My note: you can be alone if you go to the bathroom, so pray in there. I’ve done this many times. If I’m traveling especially and have roommates, I will do it. I fold a towel or jacket and put it under me to cushion my poor old knees.)
2. Kneel down.
3. Picture the Savior so you can have a feeling of reverence as you kneel before your Heavenly Father.
4. Speak out loud or whisper if you have to.
5. Say what you really feel without saying any trite phrases. (This is where I suggest you give your gratitude for your blessings.)
6. Confide him in your troubles and ask for help, plead with Him.
7. Enjoy Him.
8. After you have talked to Him, listen to Him. This may take many minutes.

As he wrote of this last step:

Maybe something different would happen if you continued to kneel at your chair or your bed after you prayed for a minute, or two, or five, or fifteen until you get that good feeling, that warm feeling, that tells you that you have received an answer. Then you know the Lord has heard your prayer, you know He’s there, and you know that you have finally figured out a way to allow Him to get His messages through to you. A great experience comes to those who feel the Spirit.

I hope you will follow these steps and pray until you feel that Spirit. It is feeling the love of God, which Nephi tells us is the fruit of the Tree of Life, the sweetest, most delicious feeling you can ever feel. (1 Nephi 8:12 and 1 Nephi 11:7-9)

Here’s one of my favorite quotes from the article. I know it’s true!

A few years ago, after one such frustrating experience in prayer, I was reflecting on my experiences with my earthly father who has been dead for some time. I remembered that when he was alive, I could always go to him and talk to him about anything, and he would listen to me. He was not a perfect man, but he would listen. I want you to know that I know that whenever one of Heavenly Father’s children kneels and talks to him, he listens. I know this as well as I know anything in this world—that Heavenly Father listens to every prayer from his children. I know our prayers ascend to heaven. No matter what we may have done wrong, he listens to us.

See this cactus? It has its own kind of beauty, I admit. I love looking at the red berry things. I think they are prickly pears. They just look so exotic. On a recent family outing to play Frisbee golf, I stopped to admire this plant.  Yes, the Frisbee golf course is in the middle of a cactus field. That’s how it is here in AZ. As I stood staring at the cactus..something strange happened. I felt like I was being sucked into a cartoon where the cactus didn’t like me staring at it.

All of a sudden, it felt like the cactus reached out with one of its barbs and poked me!

While gazing at it, maybe even while I took the above photo, I felt this pain stabbing into my right foot. I was wearing sandals so my bare foot was mostly exposed. It must have been a red ant biting me, but when I examined my foot after getting to the car, I could not find any bite or red bump. I couldn’t find any barb either, or any hole where the bite or barb pierced me. All I know is, my foot hurt! If cacti can poke wirelessly via Bluetooth, this is what happened! Strange!

The pain was near excruciating. It felt like a vise was gripping the top and bottom of my foot near the toes, squeezing my foot in between its jaws for all its worth. I’ve never been bitten by a snake, but maybe this is what it feels like. It literally felt like venom had been injected into my foot, was gripping it, and then spreading up my leg.

Fortunately, I was blessed with two things in the moment:

1. I had my smartphone with me to search for a homeopathy remedy that homeopathy guru Joette Calabrese recommends. I do this all the time. Whenever we have a health problem around here to solve,  I search using “joette calabrese (symptom)” I didn’t use “cactus bite,” I used “bug bite,” LOL!
2. We were just minutes away from the health food store where I frequently buy my homeopathy remedies. (One of these days I am going to buy a kit so I don’t have to go there for every remedy I need, one at a time.)

This is one of my many recent  Dr. Mom homeopathy adventures, only this time, I was being Dr. Mom to myself! After consulting Joette virtually via her blog, this is what I bought:

I bought the Ledum for what supposedly was a bite, and the Apis for the swelling. It felt like my foot was swelling a lot more than what showed on the outside. My foot felt extremely tight with the skin stretched.

Immediately after taking 5 of each kind of the pellets, I felt the edge taken off the pain. Within 30 minutes, even though the edge was gone, the pain was still rather intense, so I took two more pellets of each kind. I took 2 of each kind every 30 minutes. This is not what the packaging said to do, it was my gut instinct. After 3 doses or so, within an hour and a half, the pain was nearly gone. I just felt a slight ache in my foot if I lifted my toes up. I was so grateful that the pain was pretty much gone. This was our 28th wedding anniversary, hence our outing for Frisbee golf. I had even bigger plans for the rest of the day, and I didn’t want the pain to interfere with the date night I had planned with just my husband to celebrate.

Because of the relief that the homeopathy gave me, I was able to go enjoy the homemade peach ice cream I had made for our family birthday party/wedding anniversary picnic. Then as the pain continued to be at abeyance, I went out with dear husband for dinner and movie, not distracted by the pain. The next day I found that taking both types of pellets in the morning as a preventive measure to supposedly stave off the pain actually made the pain come back. After consulting with a friend, I decided to just do the Apis. I took the regular recommended dosage and within a day there was no more swelling or pain at all.

So chalk up another Dr. Mom homeopathy victory to the books!

(In case you wanted to know, the movie we saw was The Art of Racing in the Rain.  It fit the bill perfectly for a romantic anniversary date night, as it is about marriage. I don’t agree with the worldview presented at the end but it was a great story about love in marriage and fatherhood, not to mention the love dog owners have for dogs. If you are weary of dog movies, you may want to skip it. )

The Tree of Life picture book of this week is Spoon! I had to follow up last week’s darling book, Linus; the Little Yellow Pencil, with this one. That’s because the author and illustrator of Linus, Scott Magoon, illustrated Spoon, written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. At the end of Linus, Mr. Magoon credits Ms. Rosenthal as his mentor. It’s easy to see that Spoon’s journey inspired Mr. Magoon to write Linus.

This book, like the Linus one, is absolutely adorable! We see Spoon suffering from utensil envy. He wants to be like all the other utensils in the drawer, including chopsticks. Life is so boring for him. It seems like the lives of knife, fork, or chopsticks are so much more enthralling. In the end, though, we see Spoon acknowledging his wonderful traits, and all the things he would miss out on if he weren’t a spoon. So charming!

This is a fabulous book to spark a discussion with your children about jealousy and how to be content with what we have. In this age of comparing, inflated by social media, that’s a wonderful message: don’t compare, and celebrate who you are! Definitely a picture book to add to your hygge list of turning the ordinary into the extraordinary! 5 out of 5 stars! Now excuse me, while I go put all the books I can find by Ms. Rosenthal and Mr. Magoon on hold at my local public library!

The above video is a clip from an amazing speech given by Elder Larry Lawrence at BYUI two years ago.  You can read and listen to the whole thing here. I remember the exact time and place I was when I first heard it.  I was walking in the searing St. George heat on a summer morning, marveling with joy over how amazing this talk is. Reading about spiritual gifts recently in the New Testament reminded me of it. I absolutely love the talk! I love how he reminds us that Moroni tells us in the Book of Mormon that we are to hold on every good gift. (See Moroni 10:30) Paul tells in Corinthians that we are to “covet earnestly the best gifts.” (See 1 Corinthians 12:31)

So are to ask for gifts from God. I looked up the word “gift” in Hebrew. The word for it is “natan.” In the ancient Hebrew pictograms which correspond to the Hebrew letters, the word is represented by the following picture symbols:

(sprouting seed) (cross) (sprouting seed)

In turn, those pictures symbolize:

(new life/heir/son) (sign, signal or covenant) (new life/heir/son)

So in other words, a gift is a true gift if it involves new life, which ultimately comes from Jesus,  as well as a covenant, and more new life or inheritance. God the Father embodies that word by giving us the covenant of the gospel in the form of His son, Jesus Christ, His greatest gift, so that we can inherit eternal life. Wow!

It makes sense then that the word “give” in Hebrew also involves the same letters . So we can’t truly give unless we are giving some kind of new life which comes from the Son, to someone, so they can receive covenants and inherit as an heir all that God has.

Here is a video from my Veggie Gal friend Becky Edwards sharing what she learned about spiritual gifts from Elder Lawrence’s talk. Enjoy!

I went to the mothers’ retreat for my homeschool group last weekend. Oh the joys of estrogen bonding! I haven’t laughed this much in a long time, or eaten such ah-maz-ing food. We’re talking three different kinds of homemade ice cream, homemade ranch dressing, lots of fresh salad fixings, ribs, and cheesecake. My friend Gayle did this amazing presentation about hygge. You can read about hygge here. I learned a new definition of hygge from Gayle: “the act of taking genuine pleasure in turning simple, ordinary things into extraordinary things.” She told us that homeschool moms were the first to come up with hygge, even before the Danish. I agree!

I realized from her presentation why I love picture books. Picture books are hygge! I love cuddling on the couch at night with my little guy and reading to him. It just adds such a crowning touch to the day, making any stresses I have melt away. I don’t even have to take a warm bubble bath and dry off! Then reading in the morning to him, especially in the winter, makes the day so much more full of promise and delight. That’s why I love this ritual here, but for me, it’s cocoa and books.

So…in the spirit of being hygge, I am hoping to highlight one picture book a week. Today’s book is the one above. It is so utterly charming! At first, Linus, the yellow pencil, and his eraser, Ernie can’t get along. Ernie criticizes everything Linus draws. But then something amazing happens to “draw” them together. Of course I’m not going to tell you, go read the book! It is such a whimsical, funny, synergistic event. I love how the arc of the story relates to the Hero’s Journey. I have never thought of a pencil having a Hero’s Journey, but this author must have had a hygge moment to inspire him.

I read this book this morning to my three youngest, and it put a smile on my tough 15 year old and made the morning magical. Picture books fend off the grouchies on a homeschool morning every time I read them. I love it!