Tree of Life Mothering

This is a message from my wonderful friend Katie:

Dear Friends,

Exciting NEWS!!!  Enzio Busche is coming to share his story at the upcoming family Celebration!   He is sharing THE Universal Story and coupling that with Storytelling, other stories, Singing, Contra-dancing (easy to join circles instead of square patterns) and other family fun resources will make this a truly INSPIRING event!

 

On March 28th 2015, you won’t want to miss Our Story shared in a way we have not seen before!  

 

Celebrating our Creator and Creation in an entirely renewing way!

To read more about my story of discovering these Celebrations, click HERE.   

Great Price!  Great People!  Great Purpose!

Restoring America’s Contra dancing,  

Storytelling our Common Stories, 

Singing inspiring Folk Songs,  

Sharing fun Hula Hooping,

Providing exploration with the Materials of Creation,

Music, Amazing Family-friendly Vendors, Holistic Resources, Fiddling, etc.

 

Location: Promontory Hall at the Salt Lake Fairgrounds

We are already at 25% capacity.  Let’s fill the House!!  Please share with those you know may be interested!

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Come Join Us!

 

Here is a fun, easy gift you can make for Valentine’s Day or any day! It’s set of fridge magnets. I’m sorry this photo is a little blurry, I don’t want to take the time to take and upload a new one. You get the basic idea.

Steps

1. Find small pictures, art, and graphics, basically any eye candy you like, in LDS Church magazines, Deseret Book mailers, or online. I got most of the above pictures from recent issues of the Friend and New Era and a Deseret Book mailer.

2. Cut out the pictures. Use circle or ovals stencils if you can. If you want to be super fancy you can use glass filler beads that you find in the wedding section at craft stores. They look like glass blobs. The picture shows from the bottom.

3. Glue onto cardstock or recycled file folders, using a glue stick. Liquid glue will make the paper go wavy and warbly.

4. Hot glue a button magnet onto the back. Let it dry and then use your magnets!

This is the best lasagna recipe ever! It’s from the Pioneer Woman’s Holiday Cookbook. Mmmm…all the meat and cheese make it a total winner. I have made so many bad lasagnas over the years where my family has had to suffer through more lasagna “soups” than casseroles. You know the kind I am talking about? You can hardly cut it because the layers squish out all over the place and you need a bowl and spoon to properly eat it. But this one turned out perfect! I put in a bowl and it doesn’t even need it, ha-ha! More meat than sauce, and lots of flavor bursting in your mouth. Go here for the recipe and enjoy it! It is so satisfying that my little kids could only eat one piece and the rest of us just ate two when I made it for dinner a few weeks ago. We had tons of leftovers for lunch for the next two days! I am going back on a grain free diet next week. I am going to make it one last time for Valentine’s Day and then after that when I make it I am going to try using cooked spinach as the noodle layer.

In past years I haven’t done much for Valentine’s Day. I just felt burned out with kids and responsibilities, I didn’t want one more thing to plan. Now that I have older kids and more help doing chores and the youngest is 5, I feel like I can plan more than just watching a romantic video with dh. I have felt inspired by the video shown of the Bates Family to make Valentine’s Day more of an “I Love You Day,” and by this post by April Perry of the powerofmoms.com.

My two college kids are coming home for the weekend so we are all going to be here. I haven’t planned for a full out party with gifts, like the Bates do. I’m not ready for something that’s almost as elaborate as Christmas, but I am going to make the day special by watching/listening to RootsTech while I clean house with the kids. Then I think I will make some Valentine Day cookies with the little kids in the afternoon, and then some lasagna. We had this lasagna by The Pioneer Woman and oh my, it was divine. One taste and I felt like heaven was exploding in my mouth! It’s all of the cheese, and beef, and sausage and pepperoni! In her recipe directions she says to drain off some of the fat from the ground beef, but I subscribe to the fat is your friend philosophy so I say, why bother? Don’t give in to fat-phobia, fat makes you happy so eat it and enjoy! We are going to have it for Valentine’s Day for sure. Last time my 9 yo daughter helped me make it and this time I am going to involve her and my 10 yob.

After dinner dh and I will go on a date to the temple and then come home and watch a romantic movie. I have gotten fairly picky or jaded about movies as I’ve gotten old. The trouble with most Hollywood movies is that they usually only focus on lust, not love that ends in marriage, childbearing, and family growth. They tell the story of the boy and girl falling in love, but then you hardly see the family that is born from that love or the hard times that the family goes through. When we were first married I liked watching all of those typical romantic classics like Singing in the Rain, Casablanca or the newer classic of You’ve Got Mail, but now that I’m a tired old mom, I want something meatier that shows “the rest of the story.” I want to see romantic love that fosters the growth of children and family togetherness through hard times. What happens when the honeymoon is over, you are fat and your husband is bald, and you are behind on bills and you have kids who whine and disobey and the toilet is clogged? How do you keep the romance going? So far what I have found that somewhat fits the bill for what I want are:

• The HBO John Adams made for TV miniseries
• The Duggars and Bates TV episodes
• The movie about Emma Smith
• The love story of Robert and Clara Schummann, called Song of Life.

I would love to hear your suggestions!

I love these two ideas for a cute little girl’s hairstyle for Valentine’s Day. To make the pins or the headband more grown up looking, you could use more elegant looking embellishments, like Becky from babesinhairland.com did here.

By now I’m sure you’ve all heard about the measles outbreak linked to someone who visited Disneyland and wasn’t vaccinated. The whole web of rumors and half-truths surrounding the event prompted my teenage son to tell me, “I heard that Disneyland is requiring the measles vaccination now. I don’t know if it’s true though.” So I Googled it and can’t confirm that, so it is probably not true. According to the above video, Disneyland is just asking people who aren’t vaccinated not to visit the par.

I don’t have much time to blog a lot about this incident, I will just refer to the best blog post I’ve seen about this whole media web of half-truths and downright lies.

It’s by The Food Renegade, Kristen, and it’s called “Vaccines, PR Myths, and the News Cycle.” She explains two techniques that people use to spread lies through the media. I highly urge everyone to read this. It is eyeopening. You will learn about astroturfing and seeding. The main takeaway of the whole blog post is this: much of the “news” we hear is manufactured, a euphenism for lies. Much of the news we hear is lies, and often, we even pay for these lies!

This is nothing new, people. It totally reminds me of the Doctrine and Covenants, Section 123 where the fun-to-say word “concatenation” is used. What is that? A concatenation is “a series of interconnected things or events.” In that amazing section, we see that the same thing, the spread of lies in the media as part of a “concatenation,” was going on back in the days of Joseph Smith. The Lord warned the early latter-day saints, through the prophet Joseph Smith, that there are “libelous publications that are afloat” which are in “the magazines, and in the encyclopedias, and all the libelous histories that are published, and are writing, and by whom, and present the whole concatenation of diabolical rascality and nefarious and murderous impositions that have been practiced upon this people..” Wow!

Back in those days, lies were being spread about the Church and Joseph Smith, as they are today. If the media was being used to spread lies and propaganda back then, in the slow days of snail mail, printed newspapers, and a few magazines, how much more can it be used to spread lies today, with the exponential amount of social media where everyone has the ability to publish unsubstantiated claims at the click of a mouse? Bottom line: be careful of what sources you trust. Follow the trail of money, and check what sources your sources use. Is their ultimate source God, love, truth, and trust, or the dark side with the accompanying energies of lies, fear and hate?

Here’s a great video by Sharyl Atkisson, that Kristen featured as part of her blog post. It shows how the media is manipulated by people with evil intentions whose desire is to increase their money at the compromise of integrity. Watch this video, it fascinates me. She talks of how wikipedia, the supposed encyclopedia that anyone can edit, has editors who frequently will take out things other people add, even if the person adding the truth is the subject of the wikipedia article and is the best authority about himself. Learn how to watch out for the “hallmarks of astroturfing.” I like Sharyl’s website and her fight against “obstruction, intimidation, and harassment in Obama’s Washington.”

Hey, it’s RootsTech time! RootsTech is an annual conference sponsored by FamilySearch, a division of the the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s the biggest family history conference in the world, and it combines the wonders of family history research with the latest technology. Circumstances this year make it hard for me to attend live, and even the Studio C meet and greet, doesn’t tempt my kids to go tomorrow, so I am so happy they are streaming some of the events.

Just go here to get the links for the live stream!

Here is a copy and paste from the email I got about what is available tomorrow, for the free Family Discover Day. I love that it’s being held on Valentine’s Day. How appropriate! 

Two Saturdays ago I attended and spoke at the Winter Homeschool Conference in Ogden UT. Despite the long time I spent hunting for a parking spot (over 1000 people attended), it was lovely to see so many friends and meet new ones as well. I even got to meet two of my Mothers Who Know “alumnae” students from Oregon. Yes, they flew all the way out to hear the DeMilles speak. I wish I could say it was me they came to hear, haha, that would be cool. My friend Katie Hansen used the event as motivation to get a product ready to sell at her Liber Labs vendor table. When she gave me my own finished copy and I started looking through it, I felt like crying tears of joy for her at the amazing thing of beauty she has created!

The picture at the top of this post shows Katie’s two brainchildren. First, her brand new binder, on the right, The   Hebrew Project, which she has been putting her whole heart and soul into the past three years. It’s a mentor’s guide to teach students the symbolism of the Hebrew alphabet class. I used the “beta” version to teach the class recently. Then on the left of the picture, you you can see the curriculum she finished last summer, The House of the Book Family Guide Year 1. 

If you were into Thomas Jefferson Education and wanted an easier to understand name for these two publications I would call them:  A Foundation for Doing Core Phase and Love of Learning in Your Home if You are Into Thomas Jefferson Education.

If you don’t know what Thomas Jefferson Education is then I would call these two binders (which are essentially books, just in 3-ring binder format)  a Hebraic-Christian Foundation for a Family Homeschool.  These binders give you the material to use in in your homeschooling for inspirational devotionals and “time to learn what mom knows” time. This can be a brief period, 5 to 10 minutes, where you share what you are excited about every morning in your homeschool time.

The books go together, like sisters, and both are the culmination of many dreams, blood, sweat and tears! The amount of scholarly work she has put into these books are worthy of a PhD!  Here’s the story, at least from my point of view, and an invitation to you come to two webinars to learn more

When I first started homeschooling “officially” back in 1998, I heard Oliver DeMille speak at a homeschool conference about giving kids a “leadership education.” I have to say, I was very skeptical. I didn’t embrace that idea right away. I wasn’t sure what to think of it. The main idea seemed to be to take away the distractions from your kids life, make them work, and then let them study whatever they wanted. I wasn’t sure about letting kids avoid steadily progressing in math skills (daily math worksheets) so they could build forts all day. The idea seemed dangerous to me at the time. I know some people say “Hey building forts involves math!” To which I say, “Yes, some measuring and addition, that’s it. I want my kids to progress beyond that before they are 13.”

So I homeschooled my own way for about six years (including requiring math worksheets every day, which I still do), and then I moved to a new city where a lot more people were doing this “leadership education” thing. I actually found not one, but two groups, who were doing it, in my new county! The two stories behind those two groups could go on for pages, including a Providential finding of my friend Kelli at a random concert at our local high school that I almost didn’t attend, but I will leave those parts out for now. The interesting thing about the group that Kelli led was that the meetings that were held were not for the kids to have school together, like I did in my previous residence, but for the moms to get together and learn together about leadership education while the kids played. I really liked that!

Through that group which met over 8 years ago, I met a wonderful woman named Katie Hansen. Little did I know how much our lives would intertwine after that first meeting at our mutual friend Kim’s home! I didn’t know that she, like I, was into natural healing, home birth, and crunchy living. I didn’t know that someday our sons would be best friends, mock trial buddies who would win second place at the state level, and peer partners in their scholar experiences. I didn’t know that someday our little girls would bond together over cooking as the lone daughter among a sea of boys.

Anyway, in the 8+ years I have known Katie, I have seen her blossom in her knowledge of what we both call organic education. We have been to many book discussions, moms and dads as mentors meetings, Commonwealth trainings, a drive through Zion National Park, and other classes together. She has taken a beautiful set of ideas, represented by the Hebrew alphabet, and used it to answer the long ago question I had of

“Just how does a mom do leadership education in the home?” Our mutual friend Kelli ignited a fire in Katie about symbolism and how that fits in with the Hebrew alphabet. Katie read The Chosen, like I did, in our TJEd journey, and it got her thinking more about Hebrew and gematria. Then Katie’s husband, who has always loved the Jewish people, took a class on Hebrew from Oliver at GWU and made some discoveries which he wrote about in a paper he shared with Katie.

As you learn more about her story and her books, you too can learn answers to the puzzling questions that come up when doing “Leadership Education,” such as:

• “Every day when I wake up, I have no idea what we going to do for homeschool. I’ve been told to let the kids study whatever they want. Actually not knowing what they want to study until the moment we are into the homeschooling part of the day can be frustrating. Is it OK to have more structure for our homeschooling and where can I get the knowledge to do it? I would like more of a framework to guide us in our studies, without being scripted for each step of what to study.”

• “Is there some kind of “curriculum” I can use for core and love of learning phases that isn’t too scripted or artificial or conveyor beltish?”

• “How could I do a Thomas Jefferson Education-based ‘preschool’ or classes for love of learning kids on a weekly basis?” or

• “What can we use as a program for the younger siblings of the kids at our Commonwealth School?”

• “Is there some kind of curriculum I can follow in doing TJED that incorporates literature, history, art, science, math, that won’t burn me out as a homeschool mom?“

• “Is there some kind of TJED compatible curriculum that teaches kids respect and self-government?”

• “What ‘curriculum’ can I use to increase and strengthen belief in God and God’s laws, in myself and my children?”

Yes, Katie has the answers to all of these questions! Come to her webinar and find out!

I would also like to share my Homeschooling Hacks that I presented at the last Winter Homeschool Conference in Ogden. So…I am announcing two webinars that will be taking place this month.

Coming to  a Place of Healing and Wholeness While

Discovering the Hebrew Way in Order to Homeschool Organically

by Katie Hansen

Friday Feb. 13

3:30 PM MT

4:30 PM CT

5:30 PM ET

2:30 PM PT

or

Tuesday Feb. 17

2 PM MT

3 PM CT

4 PM ET

1 PM PT

(same presentation both dates, pick which one works best for you)

Please join us at this link 

https://join.me/Hebrewway 

Homeschooling Hacks

How to Get a Most Excellent Education in a Faster, Cheaper, Fun and Organic Way

by Celestia Shumway

Wednesday Feb. 18

Wednesday Feb. 25

2 PM MT

3 PM CT

4 PM ET

1 PM PT

Please use the following link to join the webinar:

https://join.me/Hebrewway 

We can’t wait to meet you there!

I am so happy about this! A homeschooling mom in Idaho, Rebecca Bohman, has started a podcast just for homeschoolers! She is releasing podcasts three times a week. It’s called The Luminous Mind, and it’s based on agency-based education/freedom of education. She interviewed me today and we had a terrific time. That episode won’t be edited and released for a few months. For now you can enjoy the podcasts that are already done. Watch the first two episodes here in this blog post with Rebecca so you can get to know her, and then go to the Luminous Mind to get the rest! Rebecca is a total kindred spirit and I can’t wait to hear more of these. We both love the Tom Woods Show, She was inspired to do this by one of the guests Tom had on his show, The Entrepreneur on Fire. I heard that very episode, and I remember thinking, “Some homeschooler should do a ‘homeschooler on fire’ podcast.” I guess Rebecca picked up on my vibes across Utah into Idaho, and here is the result! I can tell we are going to be forever friends! As Tom says, “Have a listen!” and as Rebecca says, “Help light minds on fire, and change the paradigm of education.”

It almost seems too good to be true, but Mormon mommy Shannon Hale is living her dream of being a bestselling, captivating writer! She brings joy to a lot of people and makes money at the same time doing what she loves. She was once a freckled, bespectacled, nerdy little fourth-grader with unruly hair, but now she is a charmingly beautiful, delightful woman, a wife, and Utah mother of four with this amazing ability to make people laugh, cry, and sigh in the same chapter. When I read her books I feel utterly compelled to turn page after page to digest all the richness of her imagery and follow the witty prose and entrancing plotline. She is the only Utahn to win a Newbery Honor Award. That’s the highest award for children’s literature. She has written many books that have hit the New York Times bestseller list, and one of her books, Austenland, has been made into a major motion picture. To top it all off, she got to dress up in full Regency attire and meet Jane Seymour, one of the stars of the Austenland movie. Truly, who could ask for more? (Maybe Colin Firth?)

She shows more talent by writing a sentence than most people show in a lifetime. I first encountered her amazing literary abilities in the book called The Goose Girl, and ever since then I have been an admirer. True confessions, I haven’t read every book of hers, so I guess I’m not a raving fan, but I will just use the excuse of homeschooling motherhood on overdrive as the reason I haven’t read all of them. I read Austenland and decided it was brain candy, but I loved, loved Princess Academy as a new classic. I finished reading PA  9 years ago next month, in the parking lot of the Bountiful library while I waited for my daughter to finish her homeschooling opera class downstairs in the meeting room.

I was on the edge of the bucket seat of my Mormon Momma Assault Vehicle (Toyota minivan) while I finished the breathtaking ending of that fabulous book, while my two babies peacefully slept in their car seats, blissfully unaware of the danger of plundering bandits and narrow escapes happening in my mind. My body may have been in a plausible setting for a chauffeuring, homeschooling mom of 6 (driving my two kids 18 months apart to sleep was a frequent occurrence), but my mind was far away in the land of Mt. Eskel, quarry speech, competitive adolescent girls, and carving linder. Little did I know that 9 years later, my mind and body would be present at the same library, where I would get to see Shannon in person, the author of that same book! 

Here is a recap of what she said last night at the Bountiful library. I arrived 45 minutes before starting time to get a decent seat, and my efforts were not in vain. They didn’t open the doors to the seating area until 30 minutes before the event started, so I got to stand in line. That was OK, since I was standing in line inside the library and got to peruse the books. I found a great one about a woman, mom, and writer who lives in Alaska. One page and I was hooked! Anyway, back to Shannon… I got a third row seat so I was very happy! That was close enough to snap some pictures! These aren’t the greatest pix because I don’t have the greatest camera, not to mention photography knowledge, like my dad does (now there’s a camera!) but they are better than nothing.

First she showed a photograph in her powerpoint of when she was an adorable toddler. She said she was telling stories as soon as she could talk, even though it was incomprehensible baby babble. Life seemed perfect when she was that cute, but then she grew to be an awkward fourth grader with glasses and thick bushy hair.  She started to feel rejection and life became cruel. She is currently working on a memoir about her life in fourth and fifth grades. I am pretty sure she said that it would be a graphic novel. (What is it about 4th grade? That sounds so familiar. I got glasses and had a bush in 4th grade. That’s also the grade where I first felt peer criticism and snubs.)

Seventh grade was even worse. I had to laugh during this part, as I felt such a kinship with her. We are both children of the 80s (translation: perms and bangs to heaven were in). “The higher your bangs, the more beautiful you were.” She showed a picture of her 7th grade picture in her attempts to achieve both, but she said that her “claw” of bangs fell flat and her permed hair, in an attempt to have gorgeous corkscrew curls like Khrystyne Haje of the Head of the Class TV sitcom, turned out like a “fried haystack.” (LOL here! My sisters and I begged my mom to perm our hair when I was in 7th grade. I don’t know why, since puberty turned my hair naturally wavy and it really didn’t need any more body or curl. I ended up looking like an electrocuted poodle with overgrown hair, since it to my waist.)

She was so self-conscious that she carried around a small mirror, not so she could primp, but so she could always check to make sure a booger was not hanging out of her nose, because if such a thing should happen in the frightfully judgmental world of the pit of civilization called junior high, you might as well move if such a thing should happen.

She grew up and graduated from college (U of U, which elicited big cheers) and then got a master’s in creative writing at U. of Montana (no cheers, sadly, Montana was not represented last night). She had heard that to be great at something, you have to do it well at least 100 times. So she wrote 100 stories before she even asked for one to published. When she did start sending off the manuscripts, the rejection letters came pouring in. She showed a laminated roll of all the rejection letters that stretched across the room. Potential publishers said that her first pitch, The Goose Girl, was “trite,” “full of cliches” and wouldn’t engage today’s YA crowd. But she persisted. She finally got a yes, and it ended up being voted one of the top 10 books for YA the year it was published. Thirteen years later, it is still in print and is on the Top 100 YA books of all time. So much for those earlier judgments by the publishers who turned her down! Shows how much they knew! We all applauded for her and she teared up a bit!

She commented that that’s how rejection is sometimes. Rejection is a way to scoot you somewhere else, to a better place, although it is painful at the time. So keep persisting!

Then she wrote Princess Academy, and it got a Newbery Honor Award. It has also won over a dozen other awards and nominations. She is the only Utah author to ever win it. She said that schoolteachers use her book in classrooms for literature study. Girls loves hearing that they will be reading it for school, and the boys never fail to boo. Then she asked the boys out in the universe, why are you scared of a book that has “Princess” in the title? What has a princess ever done to you? Stolen your bike? Killed your dog? Read this book to learn the inner workings of the female mind and your life with girls will be much more fun and successful. Then she showed pictures of all these guys who dare to read PA and have even survived, like Jon Sciezka.

Usually she comes up with her own stories, but at one point, her agent called her and said that a company wanted to pitch a story to her that was top secret. It turned out to be Mattel. They flew her to the headquarters and asked her to fill in the details of the skeletal stories they had for the Ever After High series. She accepted, only because she loves the theme of agency that underlies the books. What if the daughters of Snow White and her nemesis, the stepmother queen, were to grow up and choose a different destiny? I haven’t delved into these books but they look like something my 9 year old avid reader will enjoy! More bedtime story read aloud ideas!

She concluded by reading some pages from Princess in Black, which looks utterly delightful. I just put on hold at the library!

Some fun news, besides the announcement of her writing her 4th/5th grade memoirs:

• she is working on 9 books right now

• the third book in the PA trilogy comes out in two weeks

• the PA publisher just released new book covers for the first two PA books. Shannon brought her new author copies and gave them away to the person whose birthday was closest 

• Shannon doesn’t have a system of writing, “I’m a mother of four, it’s guerilla writing, I write when I can” she said laughingly

• Her favorite color is blue, because her children’s eyes are all blue

• She has used one scene from one of the 100 stories she wrote before she even solicited a publisher, but that’s it. She has not resurrected any of those stories in the whole.

• She doesn’t have a favorite book of all that she has written, but she thinks the best one is the Book of a Thousand Days

• Princess in Black #2 comes out in the fall, and then the next one, six months after that, and the next one, six months after that

• #2 and #3 books of the Ever After High series were co-written by her husband in order for her to meet the tight deadlines that the publisher wanted. He doesn’t get credit on the cover, but he did help write them

• She has one boy, and three girls, including twin daughters. The boy and the oldest girl were with her last night

• Her family loves superheroes. She showed a picture of them all dressed up in superhero costumes

• Princess in Black was inspired by her daughter, Magnolia, who was looking at her multi-colored skirt one day and announced that black is not a “girl color.” 

• Her biggest suggestion for aspiring writers is to “Read a lot of books, write a lot, and then revise! Don’t be afraid of revisions!”

• Publishing is a lot easier these days because of the world of self-publishing

She graciously stayed for who knows how many hours (I left before 9, because I sadly didn’t have my, rather, my daughter’s copy of PA, since she took it with her to college, and I don’t own any of the other books) signing books and posing for selfies. Thanks for a wonderful evening Shannon! It was definitely one of the best nights in Bountiful’s history! (Inside joke reference from what she shared in the presentation. She said that she had been to Bountiful before for a book signing and someone said that line. Then when she shared that with her siblings at a dinner right after that they all laughed.)