Tree of Life Mothering

Hey, did you all know it’s World Breastfeeding Week! I am not breastfeeding any more but have fond memories of my 18, nearly consecutive, breastfeeding years AND my years as a La Leche League Leader. 

To celebrate WBW, you can get a cool breastfeeding app FREE this week, August 1-7, from renowned LLL Leader, author, and IBCLC Lactation Consultant Nancy Morhrbacher. Get all the details from her own words, copied from her web site, below…

This year my World Breastfeeding Week (August 1-7) gift to the world is to make my newly redesigned Breastfeeding Solutions smartphone app (usually $4.99) FREE to everyone. No need for a promo code. For this limited time, my app will simply be FREE from AMAZON’S APPSTORE (for Android phones) and the APP STORE (for iPhones). Due to Google Play’s pricing rules, it will be 99 cents there.

Download it now AT NO CHARGE, and all future updates will be FREE, too.

To see how my app works, check out its 2-minute YouTube video. You are also welcome to share the above image. The badges below are direct links to download the free app.

Will you please help me spread the word? I’d love for my friends around the world and the mothers they help to take advantage of this unique opportunity to take my app for a test drive.

Happy World Breastfeeding Week!

Reviews of the Breastfeeding Solutions App

KellyMom.com: “Need a great breastfeeding app? The Breastfeeding Solutions app by Nancy Mohrbacher, IBCLC, FILCA is it! I installed it as soon as it was available, and have found it to be easy to use, and full of excellent information.”

Best for Babes Foundation: “It appears that Nancy Mohrbacher, IBCLC, FILCA has created the WORLD’S BEST BREASTFEEDING APP. If you don’t want to waste hours googling answers to your breastfeeding issues, or reading through thousands of threads, this app is for you.” 

Elise F. (mother-to-mother breastfeeding counselor): “I find myself using the app all the time when responding to questions from new moms.  It’s easy to navigate and gets me to the answers I need quickly.  I am also able to use it as a sort of ‘checklist’ when sharing info with moms to make sure I’ve not forgotten anything.”

Radiolana: “An app written with the new mother in mind—concise and respectful troubleshooting with links to information for further reading. Have seen no app better than this!”

amaag4: “Just recently I became concerned with my BFing supply. I was very worried and google was giving me mixed answers. An LC in my area posted this, so I decided to buy it. Within the first 10 seconds of looking through the app I found exactly what I was looking for. I can’t wait to read through other concerns!”

Dana Thomson: “Worth every penny! Helped save my breastfeeding relationship! I recommend this to anyone who wants to breastfeed. Regardless of whether or not you have a problem.”

We went to the beach three days in a week for our Newport Coast vacation this past July, and I am still thinking about how much fun we had. as evidenced by my daughter’s face above. I thought I would post more pictures of my kids with their cousins, along with some resources I wish I had discovered before I went.

The kids found a hermit crab that fascinated them. We all look so shark-bait white in these pictures! We all had sunblock on. Fortunately, most of us did not get burned. I did though, more on that and how I healed it, in a future post.

Here is a fun list of books on the ocean. I still want to read them even though our ocean trip is over! Next time we go I will start reading to the kids about the ocean for some months before the trip.

This list has more picture books over chapter books.

My son got to spend his 13th birthday boogie boarding all day at the beach! He’s the daredevil out of all my kids. The rest of them were content to wade and build sandcastles.

A beach lover and mom wrote this fun ebook with 10 Activities to Do at the Beach

Take lots of water bottles and some sandwiches in a cooler. My sister hates eating the inevitable sandy sandwiches at the beach. If you are like her and want some portable snack ideas, check out these recipes from Mommypotamus over here or Katie from Kitchen Stewardship over here.

Do you want to make sure you don’t get caught in high tide, like us inexperienced landlubbers? We were relaxing, catching some rays on the beach when the tide washed up on my son and woke him up in a panic! We quickly retreated with all of our towels and gear. Get a free app for determining low and high tides here.

Finally, Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift From the Sea is the perfect beach read! I read it a long time ago when Virtue was a baby and wish I had thought to bring it with me to remind me of the goodness of the sea. God definitely shows his Hand in our life by creating His beautiful gifts of the ocean and the beach. Why did He create the tides? Why did He create waves? (“Because they look awesome,” says my 8 year old daughter.) Why do we have so many ocean creatures? Why is so much of the world covered by ocean water? I have had a lot ponder the past few weeks about these gifts. I feel so much of God’s love when I am at the beach. I hope to return often.

Hey, did you know that this past week marks 100 years since World War I started? I discovered that thanks to the Tom Woods show this past week. He spent the whole week focusing on WWI. This war continues to fascinate me. I learned a bunch about WWI from teaching the Hero Project last year for some homeschooled youth. We read and discussed Richard Maybury’s WWI book. This book enlightened me to know much more beyond the Hollywood version of WWI. It’s not really a book for kids younger than 14 though. Well, I found the best book for under 14 kids about WWI! Pictured above, it’s a graphic novel, which is a fancy phrase for “comic book.”

What I love about this book is that the author and illustrator, Nathan Hale, has such a knack for visual storytelling. He is so creative! He uses a different animal to represent each nation involved in the war. So, Britons are bulldogs, Serbians are wolves, Russians are bears, Austrian-Hungarians are griffins, Germans are eagles, and Americans are…bunnies! (That’s right, not bald eagles!) That innovative feature, combined with the cool maps that Nathan includes in the book has allowed me to remember how the war got started and who was on which side. Even though I’ve taught a class about it, I would get confused by all the nations involved and who was on which side. Since I am a visual learner I will remember from now on that the Serbs were against the Germans and Austria-Hungarians, because of the animals and the maps in the book.

I’ve been reading the book to my little kids over the summer for bedtime and they have loved it. I’ve I highly recommend this book, along with the other books Nathan has written and illustrated, featured below. They are all part of a series called “Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales.” If you care about going in order when reading a book series, you will want to read the book below first. It sets the stage of the three main characters who appear in each book: Nathan Hale (the real person who was caught spying in the Revolutionary War, who coincidentally has the same name as the author), the Hangman, and the Provost. I have had so much fun coming up with different voices for these characters as I read the books aloud to the kids. Trying out British, German, and Russian accents for the WWI book has also been delightful.

This one is about the Revolutionary War. Again, the maps have helped me better understand the history I’ve heard over and over through the years since my public school lessons.

This one is about the War Between the States. I was disappointed it only covers navy battles. It’s still great though! I guess I will have to wait for Nathan to do one about the land battles.

We haven’t read this one yet, but I have confidence that somehow Nathan will pull off his balance of mixing tragedy with comedy without being offensive. We are talking about cannibals here, after all.

You can listen to a fascinating interview Nathan Hale did here. It will give you background into how he came up with the three main characters, a peek into his life as an author/illustrator, and more.

Enjoy these books! They are especially great for reluctant readers, like my 9 year old boy. I started reading Big Bad Ironclad for bedtime. He snuck off with it the next day to read it in secret and finished the book! That’s probably the fourth chapter book he’s been motivated to read on his own. Hooray! Show your kids that history is not boring with the Hazardous Tales. Get your kids reading these books and they will get hooked on history and want to know more!

I don’t know what it is, but every spring/summer when picnic season comes upon us I get a craving for brownies. I think it comes from a happy memory of my family having a picnic during Easter vacation at Lake Mead back in the mid 1980s. We topped off the lunch with the most delicious brownies that my aunt brought. Of course, they were chock-full of white sugar and probably hydrogenated oil, so I haven’t hunted down the recipe. Ever since I started a grain-free diet last October, I have been on a search for an alternate grain-free brownie recipe that tastes just as good. It’s not enough for it be gluten-free, the recipe must be grain-free. And since my 13 year-old son is allergic to almonds and coconut, it has to be free of those as well. A pretty tall order, I must admit. Many naturally healthy recipes use almond flour or coconut flour as substitutions. In addition, the problem with many brownie recipes is that they are cake-y, not fudge-y. A non-fudge-y brownie is disappointing, to say the least. If I want chocolate cake, then yes, give me a cake recipe. But if I want brownies, they better be fudge-y because that’s what makes a brownie a brownie, and no CAROB puh-lease!

My wait is over. Thanks to Sarah Pope, over at The Healthy Home Economist, I have a winner!

I have to admit though, her recipe was not sweet enough for me, so I added more sweetener. She calls for cocoa or carob, so I for sure used cocoa. Carob just does not cut it for me. I also added peppermint oil.

So, here is the recipe with my changes. I call them…

Maple Minty Grain-free Brownies

Mix the following:

2 cups maple syrup (Sarah’s recipe calls for 1 cup. I have learned to taste the dough/batter of “sugar-free” recipes before I bake them to make sure it satisfies my sweet tooth. Maybe after I have been off sugar more my sweet tooth will die down. I recommend you taste after you have added 1 cup of syrup to see if it’s sweet enough and then add more, in 1/3 c increments to taste test to desired sweetness.)

6 eggs

1 c nut or seed butter. If the nut butter is sprouted or roasted, the more digestible and nutritious the brownies will be. So far we have used sunflower seed butter and cashew butter from the natural health foods store and both recipes turned out yummy!

a drop or two of peppermint essential oil, or orange oil would by delicious too

or 1 T vanilla

Then add the dry ingredients:

1 c cocoa

1/2 t sea salt (finely ground if you can)

1 t baking soda

bag of chocolate chips, get from health food store if you want them free of white sugar

Sarah says to put in a greased 9×13 pan but that was way too small. It overflowed! I had brownie batter on the heating element and a smoking oven! The next time I used a bigger pan and it worked great. I think it’s 11×17.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let them cool if you can. They won’t be quite so gooey. The good news is as Sarah says that since these brownies are so nutrient-dense, they are much more filling than junk food brownies and you usually can’t eat more than 2 or 3 at a time. That’s if you are having them for dessert, if you have them for dinner, like we did last Sunday night, you might eat more! 🙂 (We usually have a big Sunday dinner in the middle of the day, so we do a light supper.)

We also had them for our family picnic on Pioneer Day last week, with homemade ice cream. The combination was the perfect ending to a delightful evening of good food and family pioneer stories.

Here’s another great reason to practice NFP: it encourages your husband to treat you chivalrously!

I love this article written by Sarah Hammond. She says that her husband treated her like a gentleman before they got married. Now that they are married and practicing NFP, he is even more chivalrous! NFP has done the following for her husband and her marriage:

Now that we’re married, there’s an even more meaningful way that Daniel
has been able to be a gentleman for me. In our experience with Natural Family
Planning, I can tell you that I feel so respected and well cared-for by my husband
in a very big way. He would never treat my healthy body, working perfectly as
God designed it, as though it was diseased and in need of being “fixed” just to be
sexually more available to him at all times.

Join the revolution! Increase the love and communication in your marriage and the health of your body with NFP! Go to NFP and More to learn the general principles. Then go to Creighton Model of Fertility to learn the simplest way of tracking fertility using one signal.

This may be what heaven looks like for some people. I certainly enjoyed our vacation at the beach last week. But here’s the real reason why our vacation felt like heaven:

That’s right, our family vacation was a family reunion with cousins galore! Thanks to my generous parents, every year my siblings and I get to head to a Marriott Vacation resort with our spouses and kids in tow. Mom and Dad pay for the lodging, and we all pay for the gas to get there and back and our food. This year’s destination was Newport Beach! My kids were in heaven with 23 of the grandchildren there. There is somebody to play with for every age. Here is more of what heaven looks like:

This was the first year that all the time-share units (each unit sleeps 8, with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a fully stocked kitchen, and laundry machines) were right in a row. It is heaven for a week! Each of us can just walk next door and have a cousin to play with or a sister, brother, or parent to yak it up. Each of the aunts/moms take a night cooking dinner too for the whole family. With a natural playground (the beach) and a temple close by what more could you ask for? I highly recommend this kind of family reunion! We’ve been doing it for 16 years now and the kids talk about it all year and can’t wait for the next time.

We usually go to the temple with the youth wherever we go. The Newport Beach temple is so lovely!

Thanks Mom and Dad! I hope I can do the same thing for my grandchildren!

Did you know it’s NFP Awareness Week? I am so excited to share the news! If you don’t know what NFP is, go here. July marks 13 years since one of my babies was born, and 13 years since I have been practicing NFP. I had been leaning towards NFP even before I got married because of what one of my BYU college professors said, but it was after baby #4 born in July 2001 that my dear husband consented to trust the process of NFP. NFP has strengthened our marriage, increased our joy, saved us money, allowed us to tune into the wondrous workings of my body, and preserved my health. We’ve been blessed with 3 more children for a total of seven, and none of them have been surprises. NFP works! I love understanding the workings of my body, and I don’t have to worry about an increase in the risk of blood clots, heart attack, or a stroke, among other things. You can read more of my thoughts about NFP here or a a whole chapter in my book here.

While I am not Catholic, I appreciate the teachings of my Catholic friends about the importance of NFP. NFP is a true, just, and right principle. It does not kill life but honors it. See The Pill Kills for more on that. As it says on that web site:

The pill is packaged and sold as a panacea for the world’s problems and as a ticket to freedom for women. In reality, the birth control pill and other contraceptives are making women sick, disabling them, and even killing them.

According to this website “The dates of Natural Family Planning Awareness Week highlight the anniversary of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae (July 25) which articulates Catholic beliefs about human sexuality, conjugal love and responsible parenthood.” It’s been 40 years since this announcement from the Pope came out, which occurred during the early years of the release of the Pill. Just as Catholic leaders spoke out against artificial contraception, so did leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You can quotes from these LDS Church leaders in the chapter of my book here, towards the end of it.

Here is what hindsight tells us about the effects of the Pill versus the fruits of NFP. I quote from Fletcher Doyle, the author of the book shown above, Natural Family Planning Blessed Our Marriage. 

I am a journalist and a convert. That sounds like an oxymoron.
Two years after joining the Catholic Church, my wife and I began practicing
Natural Family Planning (NFP). I found that the chastity required to get through the
periods of abstinence caused profound changes in me. I stopped daydreaming of
swimsuit models, wealth and fame. I became grateful for all God had given me, most of
all for my wife. My appreciation for her and all that she gives me grew, improving an
already good 20-year marriage.

I was curious to find out if other people had been so affected. This is where the
journalist and the convert converged. I interviewed NFP couples and read thousands of
words on conjugal union and the effects of contraception on the relationship between
men and women. So for five years I thought about nothing but sex, except during the
hockey playoffs. This was a challenge to chastity, but the result was a book, Natural
Family Planning Blessed Our Marriage: 19 True Stories (Servant Books).
Here is what I learned. When women took control of fertility with the pill and the
IUD in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, men said “cool.” Men’s behavior changed, as
they no longer felt responsible for their sexual partners. (This can be seen in the
disappearance of shotgun marriages.)
There was an accompanying drop in commitment between men and women. Trust
between the sexes fell because men no longer acted in expected patterns.
When you add in the increase in women’s wages and the decrease in men’s
wages, you created couples who are neither financially nor sexually interdependent. This
is why, social scientists say, the divorce rate doubled in that time frame.2
NFP can repair the damage. Men acknowledge responsibility to their wives.
Commitment increases because the couples know when pregnancy is likely before they
make love. Their trust increases: she trusts he will fulfill his obligations when he assents
to sex; he trusts she is making accurate observations of her fertility and is keeping him
informed.
He develops a sense of awe in the way God made her, and she develops a sense of
gratitude that he is willing to sacrifice his own pleasure for her sake. And both grow in
their love and trust in God when they see the plan for sex and marriage that He built into
their bodies. I have seen and experienced how using Natural Family Planning can make a
difference in marriage. That should come as no surprise because it’s God’s way to
practice responsible parenthood – it’s His design for life and love!

I will be blogging for a little bit each day for a week or so about the wonders and importance of NFP. Let’s honor this beautiful practice that is marriage insurance, honors women bodies, protects the fountain of life, and strengthens society because it contributes to fewer divorces! Here’s the story of a cute couple who discovered NFP.

We went to heaven and came back! Last week was our annual family vacation with my side of the family (parents, siblings, and nieces and nephews) on the beach in Southern California. I got a bad sunburn but have a lot of happy memories! I will be posting more pictures soon, with a recipe for no-bake gluten-free birthday cake, grain-free, sugar-free brownies (at last I have found an amazing recipe!), and a sunburn cure, as I finish my reentry into normal life. Stay tuned!

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1

Sorry for the lull in blogging. I am taking a summer break and focusing on gardening, yard work, writing, and other projects. One of those projects is family history research and temple work! In the past month of focusing intently on this, I have discovered that I have distant cousin relationships to the following:

-Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

-9 or the current 12 apostles of Jesus Christ

-George Mason, the founding father

-The Allerton Family on the Mayflower

-Roger Sherman, the founding father

-Aaron Burr

-eight other signers of the Declaration of Independence, including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin

-Almanzo Wilder

-Laura Ingalls Wilder

-Walt Disney

I also figured out that I am directly descended from the following:

-William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth Plantation

-Moses Fletcher, one of the Mayflower Pilgrims

and Charlemagne, he’s my 31st great-grandfather!

I love finding these “lost” cousins and ancestors! 

At an Independence Day breakfast with some of my homeschooling friends from my commonwealth school, I found out that one of those friends is my second cousin! I’ve always felt a kinship to her but I didn’t know it was literal! She has been my friend for eight years and I never knew my second cousin was right under my nose! Our grandmothers are sisters, and our moms are first cousins. We share a common great-grandmother, Ethel Winsor. Here is a picture of our great-great–grandmother, Sarah Alydia Terry and her husband, Anson Perry Winsor Jr.,  and children. The little girl is our great-grandmother Ethel. 

Maybe some of you out there are my cousins too! Watch the video above and get excited about “finding our lost cousins!”

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of having a Hero Awards Night for the Hero Project class that I mentored this past winter semester for a class of homeschooled youth ages 13-15. This is a LEMI project for scholar phase. We learned so much together!

These are two pages from a Hero Stories book one of my students made. That was one of the requirements, to compile stories about heroes into a book. I love her artistry. She just took an old board book for kids and covered it up with pictures. Most of the students focused on heroes from the two world wars, but one of my students focused on Patrick Henry as her hero.

I invited Elder Enzio Busche to come and speak, since he lived in Nazi Germany and was part of Hitler’s Youth Army. I knew he lived in my area because my friend Aneladee had invited him to come speak to a Thomas Jefferson Youth Certification class about 7 years ago at our Commonwealth School. He is such an amazing man! If you want to know for yourself, just go read his book pictured below.

Here’s a clip from one of his speeches at BYU. You can just feel the love oozing from this man!

Some of the books we read for the class were the two Uncle Eric books by Richard Maybury about the two world wars, The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, and Flags of Our Fathers. I wanted to give the students a non-statist view of war and heroes, so that’s why we read the Uncle Eric books.

I also invited Connor Boyack to come speak, because I love his non-statist perspective on politics and war. He is one my heroes. He is the president of The Libertas Institute, an organization dedicated to preserving liberty in Utah. Connor was featured in The Huffington Post last fall and on the Tom Woods’ show last January. He and Tom are definitely my favorite sources of news with a liberty perspective. Connor even started a news blog called The Golden Rule News Network.  He did a great job of talking about heroes in the true sense of the word.

He showed us pictures of true heroes and then asked the youth to guess what these heroes all have in common. The heroes included Rosa Parks, Sophie Sholl, the Chinese hero who stood up to the tanks on Tienenamen Square, Alexander Doniphan, Helmut Hubner, and Edward Snowden. He offered his new book as the prize for whoever could answer the question. That generated a ton of excitement among the youth! The shot up all of their hands and started guessing.

One of the students, pictured above, came up with the closest answer, although it wasn’t exactly what Connor was looking for. The answer was that all of the heroes stood up to government authority to do what is right. It’s important to realize that the government is not always doing the right thing and the right choice is to stand up to it.That’s why the Uncle Eric books are so good because they show that needless murders have happened in the name of government and war. They point out that war tends to expand government and encroach on liberty.

Here is Connor’s new book. It’s an explanation of the book, The Law by Bastiat, for kids. What a great idea! Connor plans on writing many more books about the Tuttle twins as they learn about the proper role of government and inalienable rights. You can order the book here.

Here is a quote Connor used from President Spencer W. Kimball in his presentation that night. I agree! Someone even started a website based on the article.

In spite of our delight in defining ourselves as modern, and our tendency to think we possess a sophistication that no people in the past ever had—in spite of these things, we are, on the whole, an idolatrous people—a condition most repugnant to the Lord.

We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become antienemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching:

“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

“That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 5:44–45.)

You can read the whole article right here.