I know I’m a bit late with this, I had internet connectivity problems over the weekend and couldn’t get the word out about this until today. I just got the email for it Saturday. It’s a summit about growing your own food and medicine. Every day it features new presentations you can watch for that 24 hour window. You can buy the presentations and then watch them whenever you want. I’ve been watching it today and have learned about raising chickens and having a victory garden. Go here to register so you can watch it too!
Here’s the promo I copied from the email about it:
Get started growing, or take your skills to the next level; this Summit has something for everyone. From how to grow great garlic, to picking pigs, a property purchase checklist, increasing the potency of backyard herbs, to urban chickens and forecasting the weather.
Reserve your spot now, and get 2 bonus e-books, just for signing up:
“How To Make a Simple And Effective Watering System For Small Livestock”
“Top 10 Survival Plants: How To Grow Them and Collect Their Seeds”
In this free summit, you’ll learn about:
How to spend $0 feeding your chickens.
Raising your own superior eggs, milk, and meat…in your backyard.
24 herbals you can use to treat colds, flus, allergies, infections, and more.
Protect yourself as a small-scale farmer from the 5 MOST COMMON law suits.
Understand the Cottage Food Laws (CFLs) that regulate food production on your property.
Our role in breaking the monopoly of big chemical and seed companies.
Save $100s making your own fish emulsion fertilizer.
And much more!
Click here to learn more and sign up for this free summit–it only happens once a year!
I got an email promoting the annual education conference at the American Heritage School in American Fork Utah on Sat. March 12, 2016. It’s called the Latter-day Learning Retreat. This year’s speaker line up is so enticing: John Bytheway, Merrilee Boyack, Linda and Richard Eyre, and LaDawn Jacob, among others. I was feeling bummed that I couldn’t attend since I have moved hundreds of miles away to Arizona. I was so happy to receive an email a few weeks later saying that the organizers are offering the conference online! Hooray! Now I can attend!
Wherever you are, I hope you will join us for this great conference. I’ve embedded some videos from past year’s conference on this page. You don’t have to be a homeschooler to benefit, it’s for anyone wanting to help a child get a Latter-day Saint perspective in his or her education. I noticed that most of the presenters this year are not homeschoolers.
Here’s the schedule below, and here’s where you can register for the in-person event, and the online event.The online event is only $10, a bargain! You can listen live and you will get a recording so you can catch it whenever you are ready to watch.
I found another movie for date night with your husband about married love! It’s called “Come What May.” My husband and I watched it last Saturday for our date night, and I recommend it, with 3 out of 5 stars. I give it only 3 stars because the acting could be better, it’s a little stiff and unnatural. But hey, it’s pretty good for being made by non-professional moviemakers, most if not all who are homeschoolers. It has three different themes running through it. The first theme is the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling, with the idea of when does life begin. In the movie, some college students participate in a moot court using that case. Then you have the theme of dating vs. courtship. The main girl, Rachel, refuses to date a young man when he asks her out, because she only wants to court not date. The third theme is married love. What do you do when your wife doesn’t agree with you? What do you do if she refuses to “obey” you? Wait, there’s a fourth theme. The idea of doing the right thing, even if it means losing a competition or losing money for your future. The movie was educational. romantic, Biblically-based, as well as entertaining and gave me some food for thought, which is what I want in a movie. You can order it on Amazon. If you want to watch it online, you can find it here at christiancinema.com. This website appears to be a great source of all sorts of movies you can’t find at Netflix or vidangel.com. The video below shows the main character, Caleb, asking Rachel, the main girl, out on a date and her response. Then the next video shows his discussion with his dad about Rachel’s refusal to date. The final video shows the Christian moviemakers behind the scenes. I look forward to seeing other movies by these people.
If you want another great movie about married love, check out A Vow to Cherish. It’s a beautiful tearjerker. I am on a personal mission to find as many Biblical worldview-based movies about married love as I can, so stay tuned for more reviews and recommend any you know of in the comments section below.
My husband and I started Financial Peace University last month and are in the middle of it. So how’s it going? Well, we have paid off some debt and cut up all our credit cards! We did it as part of a Family Home Evening lesson on avoiding debt with our four kids still at home. That physical act, what Dave Ramsey calls a “plastectomy” evoked a little bit of fear, I have to admit. It’s part of the homework for one of the lessons. We were both thinking “What if we need this?” Nevertheless, we went through with it and cut up every card in the house. We do have our emergency fund in place, Baby Step 1, so we will just have to rely on that. I have been using the envelope system since my first grocery shopping trip of 2016, on Monday January 3. Dave says to use cash instead of a debit card when you buy groceries, because you “feel” the money being used to buy the groceries, and you are less likely to overspend. I can vouch for that! It’s definitely been a little painful to use cash instead of swiping a card, but it has helped me to stay in budget. I had money left over in non-grocery envelope categories in January that I was able to move over to the grocery category for February. Now it’s the end of February, and I still have some of that money left over. Month by month, we are getting closer to doing our debt-free scream!
If you’ve ever thought about doing FPU, now is the time to do it! You can save 20% off with the coupon code “save20” over at Dave’s store, from now to through Leap Day, Monday Feb. 29th. It’s regularly $149.00, but with the coupon code discount you get it for $119.20.
FPU contains lessons about why debt is so bad, how to make a budget, what the Baby Steps are to financial peace, aka getting out of debt and preparing for the future, what insurance is needed and what insurance is a scam, and more. The FPU Home Study course kit comes with a workbook, the lessons on CD and DVD so you can watch on TV or listen, like if you are driving, Dave’s book, The Complete Guide to Money, an envelope system, a chart to track your progress, and access to the lessons online, which is great if you lose the CDs or the workbook. You can always watch the lessons online and print out the lesson PDFs. The Home Study Course also allows you to take the class at a place outside the home if you want the structure and support of outsiders, at no additional cost. I love that Dave includes a lot of Bible scriptures to teach his principles.
I highly recommend the Home Study Course. If you haven’t taken FPU, get it today! Dave says that the average family pays off around $5K of debt within 90 days of starting the course, and that’s about what we’ve paid off so far. Come join the debt-free bandwagon and envision your debt-free scream!
For our date night last week, dh and I watched the movie above. It was great! It’s called “Seven Days in Utopia.” It’s about mentoring. If you don’t like “preachy” movies, you won’t like it. If you are ok with that, then give it a chance. It’s about a golfer who stumbles upon this little town after he has a bad game of golf, and finds a mentor to help him improve his game. I like the love story that runs as an undercurrent, because it moves slowly and the girl knows it’s too early for kissing and doesn’t let the guy kiss her when he tries. Fun fact: the guy who plays the mentor, Robert Duvall, played Boo Radley in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” So if you want to know what Boo Radley has to say on self-improvement, watch the movie. It’s totally clean and rated G.
Have you heard? The Duggars are coming back with a weekly TV show! TLC has decided to move forward with the “test” series they filmed last fall after cancelling 19 Kids and Counting last year. The network made three episodes for the test series, called it “Jill and Jessa: Counting On,” and aired it in December. The new series will continue with the focus on Jim Bob and Michelle’s adult children, minus Josh, who, I am so sad to say, admitted to cheating on his wife and having a porn addiction last August. (Hearing that news is kind of like one of those “Where were you when 9/11 happened?” moments for me. I distinctly remember being in the living room of my former home talking with my daughter who was home from college on a break, We were both so sad and mad at the same time about it happening!) The cancellation actually happened earlier when news broke in the spring of 2015 from Josh about other unsavory details.
Anyway, the above video shows the last episode of the test series, which shows Jessa’s birth to baby Spurgeon. My favorite part is where Jordyn-Grace, age 7, gets the phone call from Jessa that the baby was born, and she is the first to hear what the gender is. She gets to announce the news to the rest of the clan. Michelle, Jana, and Jinger got to be at the birth, with Jill being there virtually through the phone. (Facetime maybe?) It never showed any other people there so I was left wondering if there was a midwife? Or was this a “professionally unassisted birth”? It looked like Michelle caught the baby, which I thought was cool. I could be wrong though. Maybe a professional was there, and just didn’t appear in the filming. (My heart went out to Jessa as she was transferred to the hospital via ambulance right after the birth, because of too much bleeding. That would have happened to me if I hadn’t have chosen to have my last baby in the hospital after having four home births. I bled all night after my last baby’s birth and was put on two drugs to stop the bleeding. that’s why I was led by the Spirit to switch to the hospital at 37 weeks pregnant.)
My second favorite part is where the producer asks Jessa if childbirth was worse or better than she thought it would be and she emphatically says, “Worse!!! I told my mom, I can’t believe you did this 19 times!” Nothing like childbirth to make us appreciate our moms more, right?
I’ve posted the first two episodes below. They show the family coming through with faith in God in the aftermath of Josh’s sad news. I appreciate this family being willing to share their ups and downs with the world. I am sure it’s not easy being in the spotlight, but they are great ambassadors for God about Jesus, hard work, homeschooling, financial independence, and the blessings of children! I am glad we get to see more of their lives in the new series.
My son and his friend Jacob are putting on a great event this Friday night in Highland Utah. If you have youth on the Wasatch front, get them to this event. They will leave feeling inspired to lead a more excellent life!
Have you heard? BYUTV has a new show starting this week, about people racing to find relatives! This sounds so fun! I will definitely be watching this! It’s so refreshing to find reality shows that are about a reality I care about: connecting with relatives. It premeires this Sunday Feb. 28th at 6 PM MT. You can watch it streaming on byutv.org.
Meet the four couple contestants here. They are from Alaska, Seattle, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. I can’t wait to watch!
I had internet connection trouble on Friday. Then I had a whirlwind day yesterday getting ready for the Sabbath Day, so I am finally able to post this today! Friday Feb. 19th was the 18th birthday of my son Dallin! He is such an amazing guy! I distinctly remember so many details about his birth. First, I remember that he was such a cute, chubby baby, 9 lbs. and 4 oz, and so peaceful. Next, I remember the birthing tub, that was actually a horse-feeding trough that my midwife bought from IFA. My husband likes to remember that part. (Of course it was never used for horses and was clean.) I remember the sunny, bright, clear weather of the day, even though it was wintertime, and that I went on a walk with my midwife to speed up labor after my water broke naturally. When I got back, she wrapped my abdomen with a sheet tightly to continue to speed up the labor. I was 9 days overdue and very much wanting to finally give birth!
One of my earliest pictures of me holding Dallin. He could hold his head up almost from day one!
The walk and the sheet-binding worked! Within an hour after that the contractions picked up to be every ten minutes or so. I remember having transition while I was in the birthing pool. I felt such pain and had the thought, “How can I keep this up?” My sister poked her head in the room right at that moment and I felt bad that she caught me in such pain. I wanted her to have a great impression about home birth and that was my worst moment! I didn’t realize that I was so close to birth! Then I got out of the pool to use the bathroom, and a whopping contraction sent me to my bed, just a few footsteps away, so that I could deal with it. I decided to start pushing, and I remember that the midwife accidentally hit my heel with a warm perineal cloth that had been warming up in the crockpot and that hurt! She applied the warm perineal cloths, I pushed for two or three pushes and then out he came! He was so beautiful and wonderful and full of light! His eyes were wide open and he looked and looked around the room.
I remember how my husband was on his way to a flight out of Salt Lake the day that I gave birth. We had thought the baby would be born by then, so my husband had taken over a week off work, but still no baby, and it was finally time for dh to get back to business. My water broke that morning so we postponed the flight. With the inducements we used (the walk, the sheet-binding, and some herbs) Dallin was born around 4:30 that afternoon. So my husband was able to be there for the birth! It was a Thursday and I remember just feeling so amazed that something so gloriously, almost surreal, supernatural, could happen at my ordinary little house. I was amazed that I could go from pain to complete relief, euphoria, and gratitude in such a short amount of time. I also felt wonder that I could make such a beautiful baby! I remember feeling so relieved that he was healthy and chubby. I snuggled with him in our family bed that night, and was so happy that I could do that, instead of having to put him in a hospital crib. I also loved that I didn’t have to have any hospital staff interrupting my sleep at 5 AM to take a blood sample.
This is my sister Emily with baby Dallin, before she was married. Now she is married and his six kids of her own!
Dallin is my third child. (His older siblings are just as wonderful! I will have to write about their births and their wonderfulness another time.) His birth was my second natural birth and my first home birth. I started out the pregnancy thinking that I was going to birth in the hospital, but the further I went along the more I felt called to do a home birth. Not only did I birth an amazing son that day, but I birthed a much more empowered self. That first home birth of mine transformed me tremendously! I felt like I could do anything. That feeling I gained, not only of self-empowerment, but trust in God, and His ability to lead me to what God wants me to do, continues to serve me to this day. Little did I know that 11 years later I would be led to do a hospital birth. That’s another story for another day!
Dallin with his big sister, who is 2 years older.
Dallin has taught me so much. He has taught me to reach out to the friendless and lonely. Many a time he would go visit the less-active members of his priest quorum to befriend them and invite them to church and priesthood quorum activities. This was without any adult leader or parent telling him to do so. He has taught me to have more fun. He has a knack for memorizing lines from movies and can do great impersonations. He also has taught me to have more initiative and to tackle hard, messy projects. When I had my youth conference last summer, the kitchen we used for the event was all clean, except it had one gross, disgusting pot on the counter that was soaking. It looked like somebody had burnt lasagna in it! I didn’t touch it but he just walked up to it, noticed it was dirty, and cleaned it out. That’s just one example of the great young man he is! Another time we were at a gas station and this young woman walked up to us and asked for some money, telling a sad story. I was pretty sure she was faking it but before I could say anything Dallin reached into his wallet and gave her his last $10. He has the purest heart of gold!
My three oldest kids.
This is his first birthday with him away from home, and I miss him terribly! When we moved to Arizona, he elected to stay in Utah with friends so he could continue his homeschool activities: mock trial, speech and debate, teaching an acting class, and performing on a ballroom dance team. He is continuing with other stuff as well that he could do here or in Utah: his online classes and his prep for the SAT/ACT. When you raise your kids to think for themselves and be leaders, don’t be surprised when they decide to do exactly that!
Dallin was my first baby on whom I practiced AP (attachment parenting) totally from birth: the family bed, breastfeeding, babywearing, the whole nine yards! I breastfed the others from birth but didn’t do the other stuff right from birth. Attachment parenting has definitely paid off for me. Don’t you love my Dr. Sears NoJo baby sling?
Here’s Dallin for his four-year old birthday! He was such a charismatic, smiley guy! He still is!
Here’s Dallin at one of the Freedom Bowl competitions that he won.
Dallin at Christmas with his older brother, showing off one of his presents.
Happy birthday Dallin and welcome to adulthood! He gets to be the head master knight this year for the Mastering Knighthood Summit. We are so excited! If you want to catch more of his awesomeness, his web site is over here, where he offers mentoring service. He also has a blog over here. Go Dallin!
Here is an interview he did with Luminous Mind, where you can hear what he has been doing as a self-directed scholar.
We got this set of books for Christmas and I’ve been reading them to my kids. They are six picture books written by Dave Ramsey. Each one teaches kids one of the following financial topics:
earning money by doing work, instead of asking parents to just give them money
the danger of debt
spending money
saving money
giving
Anytime I can find a picture book that teaches a concept, I am all for it! Picture books have a way of solidifying a concept for me. Often I will look for picture book biographies of historical people, and now I am branching out to finding picture books of skills and habits I want my kids to have.
In January, I read one storybook a night to my six year old, and then for Family Home Evening, the night we cut up our credit cards as part of our homework for Financial Peace University, we read the two books on earning money and debt to the kids. Those are the books entitled “Battle of the Chores,” and “The Super Red Racer.” I love the simple story lines and cute illustrations. I love that they teach a concept involving a family setting. I love that the illustrations are so bright, cheerful, and colorful.The one about the super red racer teaches kids in a concrete way that the best place to go for money when you need more is “to go to work” instead of asking for a handout. The one about the battle of the chores teaches that debt is horrible because it puts you in bondage to another person. They are highly illustrative of two of Dave’s key principles: “Debt is dumb!” and “Cash is king!”
Right now you can save 20% off this set! It is regularly $34.99 but with the promo code “save20” you can get the beautiful set for only $27.99! I highly recommend them. They go hand in hand with Dave’s Finanical Peace Jr. Kit, which you can use the code for as well. Just go here to order both. Remember to use the code “save20”! It expires on Feb. 29th so do it now before you forget!
!["It was amazing to come to an event where teenagers were defying [negative] expectations and proving that we can be excellent and achieve greatness even while in our youth. It was definitely the highlight of my week."](https://i0.wp.com/lionheartmentoring.com/images/u1868-4.png)
Tree of Life Mothering 