Tree of Life Mothering

A few years ago I discovered how to make my own “fruit snacks,” and I thought they were awesome, just because I didn’t know you could make them from scratch. But true confessions time, I haven’t made them since, LOL!. I put fruit snacks in ” ” because I am not talking about giving fruit as snacks, but using fruit juice and gelatin to make healthy alternatives to the manufactured, artificial gummy things that people call “fruit snacks.” My poor deprived kids have hardly ever had “fruit snacks” from brightly colored packages or the homemade, totally healthful alternatives. Maybe because even though the recipe is easy, given that you have gelatin, honey, and fruit juice on hand, it is so much easier to just give them real fruit.

Since moving to Arizona and coming into a bountiful source of grapefruit (over 100 lbs, it was much more, but we sold most of the boxes), I came across an even more “natural” alternative to homemade fruit snacks: dried citrus! There’s only so much fresh fruit my kids will eat in a day, and I need to preserve this gorgeous, yummy fruit before it goes bad. We’ve juiced a lot of it but I am running out of freezer space. Hence the discovery of #2 alternative to “fruit snacks.” I grew up eating dried bananas that my grandma always had in a mason jar in her kitchen, but I didn’t realize other fruits beyond apples, pears, and bananas can be dried. Dried grapefruit sounds weird, but I am telling you, these are sooooo good! I am all for just having real, fresh fruit as a snack, unless you are traveling and don’t want to deal with sticky, juicy fruit, and fingers. When you are hiking, watching a ball game, or riding in the car, these fruit snacks are the best because they are clean, 100% natural, and so delicious. They seriously taste like sweet, juicy, fruity sunshine is bursting in your mouth! They taste just like Starbursts or Skittles but these are 100% good for you!

Just take your oranges or grapefruit and cut them in quarter slices, about 1/4 ” thick, and put in your dehydrator. Dry for about 6 to 8 hours, until the fruit is totally brittle. You could take the skins off but I say why bother, they are 100% biodegradeable and come off more easily when they are dried. If you lack a dehydrator, you can probably find one used for a cheap price if you don’t currently have one. I’ve heard you can dry things in a hot car by putting the slices on a cookie sheet and leaving it on your dashboard on a sunny day but haven’t tried it yet. If anyone tries that please let me know how it works. Now we’ve got to go hiking or to my son’s ball game so we can test our non-messy-non-sticky real fruit snacks, with no quote marks!

Here’s an awesome blueberry muffin recipe because it uses natural yeast. So that makes the grain in them wholly digestible. I got it from Melissa Richardson here. If you have trouble digesting wheat, I suggest you tap into all of Melissa’s resources (her two books about natural yeast and her excellent web site) so you can learn to make wheat digestible with natural yeast. Natural yeast is just a mixture of wheat flour and water that has been allowed to sour or ferment so that all of the anti-nutritive properties of the wheat have been broken down. 

The only thing I would do more for these muffins is maybe double the natural sweetener (the recipe calls for maple syrup or molasses, I used honey and that worked). If you don’t do that and eat these as is, you might be disappointed. Especially if are used to sweet
er things, you will probably want to double the sweetener, and even then, eat these fresh from the oven slathered with honey butter. Mmmm, mmm, good!

Sometimes life gets too busy! I know it’s too busy when I drop reading aloud to my older kids. I read aloud every night with my emerging reader, because he won’t let me forget that it’s our nighttime ritual. But the older ones don’t ask for it. They want to go read on their own at night. I heard the above speech by Andrew Pudewa years ago and I just stumbled on it again. Having listened to it, I am much more determined to make sure I keep reading aloud to my older kids. After years of being a homeschooling mom, I finally figured out that I can squeeze reading aloud to my kids by doing it while they do dishes and fold clean laundry. This morning we returned to our Five Little Peppers Midway. It felt so good to be back to reading aloud. I like to have one book I read for the morning dishes, and a different book for dinner dishes. For the latter we are reading Little Britches. 

I love Andrew’s presentation! His message in a nutshell is that the best way to get children to be competent communicators is to read aloud massive amounts of books to them. Having them read on their own is not the same as reading aloud to them. They need to hear the spoken words to form a database in their mind of spoken language. Now that I have grown children, I can testify that it works. I never did a full-blown language arts curriculum with those kids, or the ones left at home, for that matter. We never had spelling workbooks or grammar books. Two of them did take a writing course in their homeschool group. That’s it. They got scholarships to college and read and write well. 

If all you can do for homeschooling is read aloud a great book to your child, consistently, day in and day out, that is enough! Education will grow within them with the fertile soil of beautiful language spoken to them. Andrew tells the story of a single dad who homeschooled his kids in Alaska simply by reading aloud to them every day. They went on to go to Ivy League schools. I’m not saying that if you read aloud to your kids, they will do the same thing, but they will definitely flourish and bloom and find the best path for their education with your reading aloud nurturing. 

Here’s an interview that Andrew did with Sarah McKenzie, a blogger and podcaster, that is just as inspiring as to the power of reading aloud.

This is what I did today! We are down to only 4 boxes of grapefruit after selling at the farmers’ market 30 minutes away. Did you know you can dehydrate it? 

Drumroll please…

The winners for the free registrations for the May 2016 Eternal Warriors Healthy Eating Class are…

KeeNan Engstrom for the new student    and 

Melanie Hartzell for the returning student!

I will be emailing you more details on Monday, ladies! Congratulations!

There’s still time for those of you who are interested to sign up for the class with the early bird discount, which ends Wednesday May 11. Go here to get all the details!

I have been wondering for a long time if it’s possible to make cookies with natural yeast. Why would I want to do that? Because natural yeast makes wheat flour, or any grain, much more digestible. Natural yeast is simply a mixture of flour and water that has been allowed to sit and go sour because of the yeast that is naturally in many things, like grain and fruit, lying dormant, until conditions are ripe. I’ve heard the claim that a person with celiac disease could actually eat bread made with natural yeast because it changed the wheat into a from that the person could tolerate. Since my weight loss, I have to be careful about my grain intake. Cultured grain, that is, grain that has natural yeast, satisfies me a lot more in smaller amounts, than uncultured grain, and has a less inflammatory/weight gain affect on me. After that day in Bisbee with all the big kids here, when we had restaurant pizza, I gained 3 lbs! I only had 3 pieces and did not overeat. I am thinking the weight gain was from the white flour pizza crust. But other days when I have just had small amounts of sourdough/natural yeast bread, I haven’t gained. I have mastered making this bread here at home, using my breadmachine, It allows me to save money and provide bread for my family that isn’t going to cause problems down the road with eating grain that hasn’t been sprouted, soaked, or soured. Problems like tooth decay and carb addiction.

I was delighted to go visit the blog of the Bread Geek, aka Melissa Richardson a few weeks ago and find her recipe for cookies using natural yeast. You can get it here. I’ve used the recipe several times and have tweaked it a little. Tweaks will be forthcoming. For now, I will say that I’ve noticed you can leave the flax seeds out and they still turn out. Which is great since I’m not a huge fan of the taste of ground flax meal. I’ve also cut down the oats from 1 1/5 c to 1 cup, as even with just 1 cup, the oats do not absorb all of the natural yeast’s moisture. I also substitute butter for the coconut oil because I have a son who is allergic to coconut oil. The recipe is vegan, but that’s not really a selling point for me since I discovered the Weston A. Price Foundation diet recommendations. Animal fats help us absorb minerals better. Coconut oil does too, but sometimes it is easier to have butter than coconut oil on hand. But if you are conserving your butter, and don’t have coconut oil, you can substitute squash or pumpkin puree. I will post that variation another day. 

These cookies make a great breakfast because they aren’t too sweet. They only use 1/4 c of honey. I made them for breakfast a few days ago and the kids gobbled them up. If I make them for dessert then I add more sweetener. So on another day I will post my sweeter variation.

I hope you enjoy these! I plan on making them for breakfast at least once a week. They are nutrient dense and very satisfying!

This is what I looked like a year ago, spring 2015. My “before diet” pictures. The weight had crept up after the birth of my 7th baby, so that I weighed as much as I did when I was pregnant with him. So discouraging!

Below is what I looked like when the diet was pretty much done, fall of 2015. My “after diet” pictures.

 I lost over 70 lbs in 9 months without exercise! Woo-hoo! I look and feel better, and am no longer at risk for diabetes and heart disease as my waist circumference has shrunk!

I am excited to share how I accomplished this, and accompany you on your journey getting into better shape!

So I am thrilled to announce…

The Eternal Warriors* Healthy Eating Class for May 2016!

If you would like accountability, and consistency in sticking to your diet/health goals, this class is for you! 

“I am just doomed to be fat the rest of my life!”

Have you ever heard that lie in your head?

As someone who weighed more that I wanted to, I often had that thought. I often wondered if I was cursed with bad genetics. My sister and I seemed to have inherited the genes from the fat grandparents, whereas our siblings got the genes from the skinny side of the family tree. Our siblings could eat whatever they wanted and stay as lean as string beans whereas we always felt like baked stuffed potatoes, no matter how little we ate. Also, as a mom who has borne 7 babies, after I had each baby it was harder to lose the pregnancy weight. One summer I exercised and avoided sugar and junk food, yet at the end of the three months someone asked me if I was pregnant! After all that hard work and sacrifice, I wanted to punch him in the eye!

The great news is that I finally was able to lose the weight! I lost 70 lbs, without exercise, in 9 months, and you can too! I am here to help you do that!

How?

By taking and applying what you learn in the Mothers Who Know/ Eternal Warriors Healthy Eating Class!

What you will get by enrolling in the class…

-10 weeks of once a week coaching on how to achieve your health goals. These classes are held online, over Zoom (a video chatroom and phone conference room, you can use either one), so you can meet from wherever you are as long as you have an Internet or long distance phone connection. Classes are 2 hours and 15 minutes.

-Knowledge that you are not defective, cursed, or broken

-Skills on how the enemy plays tricks with your mind and how to beat him

-Accountability so that you are motivated to achieve your goals

-Specific principles that you can use the rest of your life on all areas: financial, spiritual, relationships, and physical

-Knowledge of questions you can use daily in your journal writing to increase your success

-Access to my web page “How to Lose 70 Lbs Without Exercise and Keep it Off”, which will be ready to view sometime in May 2016

-Knowledge on how to stop emotional eating

-4 steps to cure your sugar addiction for life

-the 6 new lessons added to the Eternal Warriors program in 2015

-Knowledge of how to master the hormone that controls fat burning

Come join me!

We will meet every Wednesday starting Wednesday May 18^th

1 to 3 PM MDT

(we will skip Wed. July 13)

Cost:

Regular Price is $179 for tuition

Then you pay lifechangingservices.org $50 to order the materials kit 

(kit includes a journal, Like Dragons Did they fight book, DVD, and a link to downloads of talks by Maurice Harker, a therapist)

Early Bird Discount, $129, ends Friday May 13 midnight MDT

for returning Mothers Who Know/Eternal Warriors students the cost is $67 before early bird deadline, $97 after

Please register by going to paypal.com and paying whatever applicable price, according to the date, to the paypal account <info@treeoflifemothering.com> In the notes section, please include your name and the best email for you to be reached so I can send you the link for the class.

I am giving away two registrations to the class! One for newcomers, and one for people who have already taken an Eternal Warriors or Mothers Who Know class. The winner will be chosen by a random drawing. Please comment below if you would like to enter the drawing. Mention if you are a new or returning student. The drawing will be held Friday May 6, 2016 at 8 PM.

I hope to see you there!

*This is called Eternal Warriors instead of the usual Mothers Who Know class because I am inviting men/fathers to join the class as well.

In my quest to expand my vision of what Godly-based courtship involves, especially as I guide my two eligible children through it, I was delighted to discover the latest Bates family adventure regarding it. The Gill and Kelly Bates family lives in Tennessee. Gill and Kelly have 19 children, four of whom have flown the nest and gotten married: Zach, Michaella, Erin, and Alyssa. Now Nathan has started courting. I love how he decided to announce to his whole family his desire to start courting Ashley, and asked for anybody’s objection before he proposed courtship to her.

It just warms my heart that a huge family of 19 kids can be so close that one of the kids decides to do that. I admire Gill and Kelly for creating such a close-knit family with their Bible-believing and homeschooling ways. I hope to create such a family where the children would actually listen to their parents or siblings if one of us had an objection to a potential courting partner or spouse.

Do you want more of the Bates? Here is a page that shows links to the full episodes of “Bringing Up Bates” on uptv.com.

Oh my! It is so sad how I can get so swamped with other responsibilities that I let days turn into weeks without blogging. Blogging makes me happy, so I must do some now. Here are random musings from the past few weeks:

• My 20 year old daughter is home from college for spring break! I love having her here! I wish she wasn’t leaving in 9 days! I so much want her to staaaaay here. She is a Photoshop wizard. Not really Photoshop, we are too cheap for that, but GIMP, the free Photoshop alternative. See the above photo? I took the picture, without me in it, and then my husband took a picture of me and the kids in the same spot, as shown below. That picture isn’t as good with some of the kids’ eyes closed. Then wiz daughter combined the two so we are all in it! We took the pictures after we got home from the General Conference Sunday AM session. After 24 years of marriage, we decided to go watch General Conference at the local church building instead of at home on the TV or Internet. We all stayed much more focused, and some of us who normally sleep during it, ahem, didn’t even fall asleep! I really enjoyed General Conference. Elder Renlund’s talk touched me with lots of meaning. As well as Elder Nelson’s General Priesthood meeting talk.

• Did you know that if you get bitten by a dog who has not had a rabies shot, you don’t have to automatically get the rabies shot? We recently had the opportunity to learn that. Princessa, pictured above in the plaid shirt with her dad and brothers got bit by the neighbors’ dog. She is one tough cookie! She didn’t even cry and waited a few hours before she told me. If that had happened to me at age 10 I would have been scarred for life about dogs. We took her in to the doctor and he reported the incident to animal control. I was surprised that they were more concerned about her getting a tetanus shot than a rabies shot. So we got the tetanus shot and she had a mild reaction the next day. We are no-vaxers generally so this was a big deal. The next morning she spiked a fever, had a runny nose, headache, and sore throat. Since I had been told the day before that those symptoms are all signs of rabies I was scared that she had gotten rabies! I took her back to the doctor and had her checked out. He said it was not from rabies and she was just coming down with a cold or flu. I said I believed it was a reaction from the tetanus shot. So we respectfully disagreed. This was the first time she has ever been vaxed so I think it was a shock to her system.

• I had forgotten how much brain space it takes to manage a home with all 9 people here! We had all three young single adult kids home last week for four glorious days before 18 year old son had to get back to Utah for a ballroom dance commitment. So we had a whirlwind of dental and eye exams, a trip to Mexico for authentic food (not huge travel time since we only live 8 miles from the border) and hiking. On top of that, 18 year old son was conferred the Melchizedek priesthood so he can go on a mission in the fall. It was interesting that the same man who was the doctor for my daughter’s visit on Wednesday was the same man, with a different hat on, who helped with the conferral of the priesthood on Sunday. He lives in our church congregation and is a great guy. He kind of reminds me of some soft spoken guy who was in a lot of Disney movies in the 70s, the bald one with a high squeaky voice. Anyway, my brain is almost exploding from having to manage the comings and goings of 7 children, with the eye/dentist exams, online classes for school, math work, tennis practice every day, an outing to explore the river by our home, going over the border, and shopping for and feeding all of us. But it was lots of fun to have them all here and far too short of time. 

• When we went over the border to have real Mexican food, I definitely felt I was in a foreign country. It’s been 15 years since I’ve been to Mexico. I was surprised though by how many Spanish words I actually understood at the restaurant. Dh is the only close to fluent Spanish speaker in the fam, so it took us 45 min to maybe an hour? to order food for all 9 of us. The way there and back was so much fun having all 9 of us in the car. I really forget what a barrel of monkeys those older kids are to be around. The conversation on the ride home, that night, and then in the car on the next night as we took the older kids to the temple, delighted me.

• “You underestimate me!” This was what my 11 year old said to the 18 year old when 11 year old was swinging a toy too close to 18 year old’s head, and 18 year old asked him to move away. That kid comes up with the funniest phrases.

• Bisbee AZ is artsy and hippy and so much more…We finally went to Bisbee, where my husband’s new job is. Of course he goes there every day but the rest of us had not been to his office yet. It is a fun place to visit, but as they say, I wouldn’t want to live there. It’s like a mix between Mayberry (which is actually Mt. Airy, North Carolina, a place where my firstborn served on his mission), Mothering magazine, and hippies. It has rain collection barrels and a “put and take” place where you can dump off your used items and take what you want.

One of the storefronts in Bisbee had this cute little bookcase.

• We are saddened by the death of my friend Cyndi Hampton’s son, David, who was killed in a bike accident while serving his mission for the LDS Church in Taiwan. David was a valiant young man who was friends with my son as they were on a homeschool mock trial team together for two years in a row. One year they took 2nd place in state. Cyndi is a also a homeschool mom friend of mine and a member of this network. She came up with the awesome handouts I use for the Eternal Warriors/Mothers Who Know lessons. We were sitting in a restaurant in Bisbee waiting for our pizza to come when my son got the word on Facebook about David’s death. My heart aches for the Hampton family, I know the Spirit has been there to comfort and testify to them that they will see and be with David again, because of the power of Jesus’ atonement and resurrection. As it says in Job 1:21, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”

• We live close to a river that has a huge dam with trees for the kids to climb and explore. A natural playground. We will be going back. I love finding places like this!

We watched this movie last Sunday night. My 20 year old daughter is home on spring break from college so she was able to watch it with us. Hooray! I am wanting her brothers to watch it now, the 22 year old and 18 year old. They already went back to Idaho and Utah. It would be great for a date night with your husband or a family movie night. I heard about it from my friend Sarah and hunted high and low to find a place to watch it online free, without unsavory thumbnail images. I finally found that you can watch it here.

It is a little cheesy, with bad acting, and the late 80s hairstyles and clothes will make you laugh, but it has a great message. It’s wonderful food for discussion with your kids about having a vision of saving kissing until marriage, like the Duggars do.  See video below.

I have been dying to share all these great videos. Somebody out there created a Youtube channel called “C.S.Lewis Doodle.” These videos involve someone quoting C.S. Lewis from his writings while someone else (I am assuming) illustrates the words. Brilliant! I have always wanted to read everything Mr. Lewis wrote and ponder on it all. Now I can listen and watch while I cook and clean. The video above is “Religion and Science.” 

I hope you enjoy these!

This one below is the “Poison of Subjectivism.”

This one below is “Finding God, Finding Shakespeare.”

This one is “The Laws of Nature.”

Here is the rest of the playlist. Enjoy!