Tree of Life Mothering

This is me in the black and white with my mom and sister and sister in law. One sister and another sister-in-law couldn’t make it. We are very happy because we have been spiritually and physically fed and didn’t have to fix any dinner.

Last Saturday was the General Relief Society meeting of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Translation: girls’ night out! It was the annual meeting churchwide for all women ages 18 and older. You can go watch it  here, by scrolling to the bottom of the page. I was so happy that I remembered to think ahead and call my  mom and sisters the week before to remind them of it and ask if we could go together and then visit afterwards. This is a rare year when none of us have a nursing baby that we don’t want to leave. I picked my sister Emily’s place to meet because she sort of lives halfway between us all. My mom offered to take us all to a buffet restaurant close to my sister’s. It was a lot of fun to leave so early on a Saturday afternoon to go out to eat before the 6:00 PM meeting, then go to my sister’s meetinghouse to watch the satellite broadcast, and then visit at her home afterwards. This is my sister who is writing the novel that will make Jane Austen jealous.

Last spring she got to go to a writing workshop with Shannon Hale and get her writing critiqued by Miss Shannon. So now that she got that feedback, I am expecting the novel to appear any day now. Ha ha. She would be laughing out loud at that. She is a mom of five children ages 9 and under, and they are the cutest bunch of kids ages 9 and under I have ever seen. They are also very active, so that novel will probably appear in 20 years when the youngest is 21.

This is Shannon Hale in the center, who is the best-selling author of The Princess Academy. My sister is on the right and my sister’s sister-in-law is on the left.

I was sad that one of my sisters couldn’t make it. She is moving to New Mexico. Her boys had a band concert that she couldn’t miss before she moves.

My sister the writer is also an artist. She got a degree from BYU in illustration. Her talent and skill flower in her home. She lives in a house that is on the national register of historic homes. When she got married, her husband already had enough money saved so that they could buy a home. So they got to go househunting when they were engaged. I was eager to see what kind of house she would pick. I thought she would pick a new, big home out in the suburbs. Instead, her desire for all-things historic and old-fashioned in an artistic and quaint way ruled. She picked a small two bedroom home built in the early 1900s, in the oldest section of her city. I have enjoyed seeing her paint and decorate and get the basement remodeled to turn it into her family’s home with her touch.

So because she is an artist whenever I go there everywhere I look I see eye candy to delight my eyes: books, toys, decorations, pictures, knick-knacks, and clothing. Even the mess of toys looks artistic! She always has such festive decorations, like the lanterns below that she gets out for birthdays. It happened to be her birthday a few days before.

I love to look at all the books on her shelves. She even has an autographed copy of a Thyre Ferre Bjorn book. If you don’t know who that is, you are missing out. She was an author from the 1940s-50s who wrote about her happy family life growing up in Sweden and then moving to America. She wrote, Papa’s Wife, Mama’s Way, and a bunch more treasures. I love how she mentions God so much in her books and miracles that God wrought in her life.

Here are gems from the meeting:

From Sister Linda Burton:

Three principles of the atonement:

1. All that is unfair about life can be made right through the atonement of Jesus Christ.

2. There is power in the atonement to enable us to overcome the natural man.

• she quoted Elder Bednar, and this is a paraphrase, “It is one thing to know that Jesus lived and died for us, but please know that Jesus wants to live in us.”

3. The atonement is the greatest evidence we have of our loving Father in Heaven.

From Sister Carole M. Stevens:

She told the story of going on a handcart trek simulation last summer with youth in her stake. She said that for one part of it, the men stepped aside to let the women do the “women’s pull,” where the women get to pull the handcarts up a hill. She said that when she got to the top, she wanted to turn around and help those following her, but she realized that wouldn’t be wise. She was too exhausted. She said that she never wants to be in a place where she can’t turn around and help those who are following her spiritually.

From Sister Linda Reeves:

• “Cast your burdens, your pains and afflictions on the Savior.
• She testified that God has not forgotten you or anyone else.
• She told the story of fearing her husband was dying years ago. She finally submitted to the possible reality and told God she was willing to let him die if that was God’s will. She felt a great peace after she said that in a prayers. God let her husband live. Years later, her teenage daughter was ill. They pleaded with God to let her live, but submitted, saying they would accept it if God wanted her to die. The daughter did die, and Sister Reeves felt the same peace.

I greatly enjoyed Sister Reeves’ remarks. I felt powerful feelings of peace and love as she was talking.

From President Eyring:

• The women of the Church of Jesus Christ are moving closer to the ideal set forth by Lucy Mack Smith, “We must cherish one another, watch over, one another, until we can sit down together.”
• The Lord is building a team. Caring for others helps build a team. If someone needs material help, the bishop will first ask family members to help.
• Those people undergoing trials face a lot of doubt. We can help them by celebrating their goodness.
• He told the story of his daughter being helped by her friend who was her visiting teaching partner and felt a prompting to check on her. His daughter was pregnant and started bleeding. The daughter called her husband who told her to call an ambulance. Just minutes later the friend knocked on the door and took her to the hospital. The doctor decided she needed an emergency C-section and the baby was born premature. The ward and Relief Society rallied around and assured the family all the meals and child care were taken care of.

I would love to hear any favorite quotes from any of you in the comments below.

We’ve had a fun few months of Scouting. Cowboy started Cub Scouts. It is fun to see someone so eager about Scouting, because I certainly am not. He is number 4 son to start Cubs, and I am burned out on Scouting! There is no end in sight!  I’ve got him and then another son to go. With three boys in a row, three years apart I don’t get much of a break! I bet Michelle Duggar doesn’t do Scouts. Ten sons in Cub Scouts would push anyone over the edge. Scouts brings up all my old feelings of jealousy and feelings of unfairness from when I was young that my brothers got to go do Scouts and I couldn’t because my mom thought Girl Scouts was too feminist. Plus I don’t like the feeling that I have this list of requirements to sign off with him, when he can’t do the self-study thing himself, like my older son could do in Boy Scouts.. It brings up conveyor-belt resentment and rebellion in me.

One son graduated from Cubs with his arrow of light, just in time for another one to come in the next month!

Bugsy, my baby, in the picture below, turned 3 a while ago! I am entering a new season of life! My youngest has not been three, without me being pregnant, ever! We moved him out of the crib that was attached as a sidecar to our bed and he’s now in the boys’ room in a bunk bed. We are potty training too, the easy, no-stress way. I will have to blog about that sometime. Maybe I will stop calling him “the baby.”

I am glad I read Mayim Bialik’s book, Beyond the Sling, last month in August because it helped me a lot at our family reunion in Idaho. Bugsy was happy the first day to separate from me while dh and I and two of the older kids went to the temple. But then the next day he was really clingy and would not go to the nursery at the family reunion. Mayim’s book, which I had read on the drive up to Idaho, helped remind me to be patient with children and let them be with you. He stayed with me during a lot of the reunion and only towards the end was he wiling to go back to the nursery.

This is from the folks at LDS Holistic Living:

Free Audio Download Until Sunday!

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Feel free to share.

Enjoy!

How do you have a grocery budget of $150 for 3 or 4 people, or $300 for 6 to 9 people? Get the DVD above! Read on for info about and enter in the comments below for a chance to win a free copy…

I thought I was fairly frugal. In my early years of being a wife, I had heard about the Frugal Zealot, author of the Tightwad Gazette. I checked her books out of the library a long time ago when my oldest two were little and studied her ways. I wasn’t willing to recycle my vacuum cleaner bags, go to yard sales every Saturday morning, or go dumpster diving. The main method that I learned from Amy Dacyzyn, The Frugal Zealot, that I was also willing to do was to buy things used.

As the Duggars say, “Buy used, and save the difference.” I’ve been doing that for years. So here are some of my prized trophies: a used piano for $100 that I am still using today and teaching piano lessons on, bunk beds for free, a treadmill for free, a jogging stroller for free, the Glen Doman Encyclopedic Knowledge on CD-ROMs for babies and preschoolers for $10 each, lots of kids clothing for free, including lots of Gymboree clothes, my favorites, a lovely, looked like new, four piece furniture set for $500 (couch, loveseat, wing-back armchair and ottoman) and my ultimate catch, a used Toyota minivan for only $2000! It ran great, we used it for years, until we outgrew it as a family and traded it with my brother-in-law for his Ford van. As one of my dear girlfriends says, about herself and me,  I seem to have a blinking sign on me that says, “Hand it over, for free or a bargain, and nobody will get hurt!”

I’ve also grown a garden, and avoided buying convenience and fast food. We rarely eat out, maybe once a year, and I regularly shop at the thrift store, even for birthday presents. But I haven’t been quite as frugal as some of my girlfriends. One of them, who shall remain nameless, has been known to go to the cemetery after Memorial Day and snag leftover potted flowers before they were thrown away by the cemetery keepers, which she then planted in her flower beds. It’s funny, as she and I were talking about frugal ways during one of the last times we were together, at an event, people were cleaning up after a dinner. They came over and asked us if we wanted leftovers. Free food! Speaking of being frugal! I scored several bags of prewashed salad, and it was even dark green romaine, not just the gross limp iceberg lettuce kind, and 3 huge ziploc bags full of precut watermelon chunks. My little boy acted like he’d won the Olympic gold when he held up a bag of chocolate chip cookies and brownies in each hand, proudly noting that we could have them for Family Home Evening treats.

I heard another frugal story from one of my girlfriends in the car on the way home from an outing that totally inspired me. I found out that her frugal years of her early marriage put my frugality to shame. She said that she went for two years with her husband of only spending $7000 for all of their bills. They lived on $7000 a year! He was going to graduate school so money was really tight. They had a garden, got their meat from home because the husband grew up on a farm, and just spent very little.

In my quest to be more frugal I have learned about this great web site called Fabulessly Frugal. This site is soooo wonderful! It is taking me to higher levels of frugality.

It is all about how to save money by learning how to coupon, how to stockpile, how to find great deals online, and how to save money by making things from scratch, such as meals, of course, and homemade cleaners. I tried out the homemade stain remover on a white T-shirt and it got the stains right out. Love it!

You probably think you don’t have time to coupon. That’s why you need Fabulessly Frugal. They do all the research for you! And it’s free! You will want to check out their web site and sign up for their daily email! You will be alerted every day of any great deals going on at chain stores, like Target and Walmart, as well as Amazon. By signing up, you will get their “Price Point Guide.” This is a critical item of frugal living that I was never willing to do, but after 21 years of marriage I am finally willing to have one, since the gals at Fabulessly Frugal have made it so easy by doing all the work! This is another thing the Frugal Zealot wrote about that I resisted. Then Janine Bolon came along and told me to do the same thing, in her book, and I resisted her.  Basically, you keep a notebook with a list of everything you buy, anytime you buy it, so you can keep track of what the lowest price is. That just seemed way too hard for me.  But now, with Fabulessly Frugal’s Price Guide, I don’t have to do research. Easy peasy! So now, whenever I peruse the weekly ads for grocery stores, and I see avocados for 50 cents each, or butter for 1.99 a pound, I can check the Price Guide to see if those prices are simply “good buys,” or even better “stock up prices.” Those are prices low enough to buy in bulk to put in my food storage and then rotate into my menus.

I got the Fabulessly Frugal Coupon Class on DVD and I am so glad I did. I highly recommend you get it. With my whole foods mindset, I have always resisted using coupons, thinking, coupons are for processed things I don’t usually get, like mac and cheese, cold cereal, or commercially-made salad dressing. I have never seen a coupon for broccoli or whole wheat flour. But then I realized I could use coupons for nonfood consumables I always use, like hand soap and toilet paper. So I got this DVD. This DVD teaches you “Seven Secrets of Successful Couponing.” You will learn how to shop and get the lowest price, using store ads, coupons, and the Price Point Guide. Then you build up a stockpile of food items. Then you plan your meals based on what you have on in your stockpile. The Frugal Zealot would approve! You can even join the Fabulessly Frugal Grocery Budget Challenge over at the web site and use their budget tracking tool and get lots of encouragement to meet whatever your grocery budget goal is.

I am giving away a copy of the DVD for free. Comment below to enter for a chance to win. Drawing will take place on Thursday November 1 around 8 PM.

About a week ago I decided to alternate my T-Tapp workouts with Pilates. I can finally do the Intermediate T-tapp workout without taking a break during the leg exercises, yay! I wanted to use my usual Pilates for Dummies DVD but could not find out, so I found this Pilates workout on Youtube. Wow, it doesn’t look challenging until you try it yourself! Pilates is similar to T-tapp in that you use your own body weight and no jumping, bouncing, or running, to get your heart racing. I love watching the lady in this workout, she is so fluid and graceful. I don’t know how many years it’s going to take me to move like she does, but a girl can dream, can’t she? The stretches in this workout feel SOOOO great! Some of these movements were the very same from my Pilates for Dummies workout, and some were brand new to me. I love Pilates, it’s so good for my body and mind.

My husband says I post irrelevant pictures for the text on my blog. Well honey, I have very few photos of breastfeeding moms. I don’t want to use the one I used in the banner above or the other one I have used repeatedly. I picked this picture of flowers because flowers are feminine and breastfeeding is a feminine, womanly art, as in the womanly art of breastfeeding.

Here’s yet another reason to breastfeed: scientists found a protein in mother’s milk, called Trail, that fights cancer. You can read the story here.

I got into a little Facebook wrangling with an acquaintance about breastfeeding recently. He’s the classmate of my little sister from high school, so he’s not a close friend, but I claim him as a Facebook friend just because we both graduated from the same high school. I was promoting breastfeeding on Facebook with a link, and he wrote that people should stop making moms feel guilty if they can’t breastfeed.

I replied with empathy for his wife and encouragement to seek more information and education the next time she has a baby. Then he said she’s already done that and it didn’t work and people should stop making his poor wife cry. I told him there’s a difference between guilt and regret. I then refused to get involved in an argument and wished him a great day.

It’s really not about guilt. If you can’t breastfeed, truly and sincerely, because of lack of glandular tissue that makes milk, or the need to have chemotherapy, then please choose to feel regret, not guilt. If you don’t make enough milk, or have an adopted baby, or have a double mastectomy, you can still breastfeed (with the help of an SNS) Iike in this blog here about a mom who has Insufficient Glandular Tissue. I applaud this mom for not giving up on breastfeeding.

If you do feel guilt, then perhaps that’s a motivation from the universe telling you that your body is capable of producing an amazing substance for your baby. Get education and support to do it, as if you were an athlete who could win a Olympic gold medal if you just had the right education and supportive environment.

I finished listening to Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe on Thursday. I have been  listening to it on librivox.org,  for the LEMI scholar phase project Sword of Freedom that I am mentoring with my good friend Katie and my son, who is a youth mentor. (LEMI stands for Leadership Education Mentoring Institute.)  After seeing my three older children do this project, it’s great to finally read the books myself! I love learning about the time period of the Civil War, aka the War Between the States, or the War of Northern Aggression.

This is a book that I want everyone to read! But if you have a public school education, as I do, you probably weren’t exposed to it. I certainly wasn’t. Even though some school districts have banned the book go here to read why it’s important to read it anyway.

In this day of political correctness, when people don’t want to read or discuss anything that mentions God or Jesus or heaven, I can see why this book would be banned. The main character could only do what he did because of his faith in Jesus, which he mentions repeatedly throughout the story. This book reminds us about a past in the United States that we never want to relive, but does exist in some parts of the world, when sadly, people are treated as objects to be bought and traded and worked to death.  It also reminds us about a faith in a Savior who is as much alive today in heaven as He was when this book was written. But another part of the book is how often Mrs. Stowe mentions the power of women as homemakers, wives, and mothers.

It has so many gems in it about the value of homemaking and how to be a good woman, wife, mother, and homemaker. Mrs. Stowe uses characters to foil each other, as good and bad examples. I have to laugh every time she has Mrs. St. Clare speak. That woman is so silly and pathetically selfish and weak as a wife, mother, and homemaker! Then she has the good example of the Quaker woman who helps some slaves escape to Canada, below:

By her side sat a woman with a bright tin pan in her lap, into which she was carefully sorting some dried peaches. She might be fifty-five or sixty; but hers was one of those faces that time seems to touch only to brighten and adorn. The snowy fisse crape cap, made after the strait Quaker pattern, – the plain white muslin handkerchief, lying in placid folds across her bosom, – the drab shawl and dress, – showed at once the community to which she belonged. Her face was round and rosy, with a healthful downy softness, suggestive of a ripe peach. Her hair, partially silvered by age, was parted smoothly back from a high placid forehead, on which time had written no inscription, except peace on earth, good will to men, and beneath shone a large pair of clear, honest, loving brown eyes; you only needed to look straight into them, to feel that you saw to the bottom of a heart as good and true as ever throbbed in woman’s bosom. So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don’t somebody wake up to the beauty of old women? If any want to get up an inspiration under this head, we refer them to our good friend Rachel Halliday, just as she sits there in her little rocking-chair. It had a turn for quacking and squeaking, – that chair had, – either from having taken cold in early life, or from some asthmatic affection, or perhaps from nervous derangement; but, as she gently swung backward and forward, the chair kept up a kind of subdued “creechy crawchy,” that would have been intolerable in any other chair. But old Simeon Halliday often declared it was as good as any music to him, and the children all avowed that they wouldn’t miss of hearing mother’s chair for anything in the world. For why? for twenty years or more, nothing but loving words, and gentle moralities, and motherly loving kindness, had come from that chair; – head-aches and heart-aches innumerable had been cured there, – difficulties spiritual and temporal solved there, – all by one good, loving woman, God bless her!

 

That quote makes me think of Michelle Duggar, although she’s not that old. But she’s definitely soft-spoken and only speaks kind things. At least in all the 19 Kids and Counting episodes that I’ve watched. Whenever I raise my voice at my kids I think about Michelle and how she wouldn’t be yelling. At least I am thinking about that. I hope someday to ALWAYS speak softly to them. Actually, I do feel like I am getting better. I notice sometimes that I am speaking too harshly and I change my tone. I also think of my mom, pictured above. She never yelled at us. She’s the lovely woman in my pictures above and below, talking to her grandchildren.

I love this description of happy family life involving breakfast chores on an ordinary morning with a wise beautiful mother presiding:

 

 

The next morning was a cheerful one at the Quaker house. “Mother” was up betimes, and surrounded by busy girls and boys, whom we had scarce time to introduce to our readers yesterday, and who all moved obediently to Rachel’s gentle “Thee had better,” or more gentle “Hadn’t thee better?” in the work of getting breakfast; for a breakfast in the luxurious valleys of Indiana is a thing complicated and multiform, and, like picking up the rose-leaves and trimming the bushes in Paradise, asking other hands than those of the original mother. While, therefore, John ran to the spring for fresh water, and Simeon the second sifted meal for corn-cakes, and Mary ground coffee, Rachel moved gently, and quietly about, making biscuits, cutting up chicken, and diffusing a sort of sunny radiance over the whole proceeding generally. If there was any danger of friction or collision from the ill-regulated zeal of so many young operators, her gentle “Come! come!” or “I wouldn’t, now,” was quite sufficient to allay the difficulty. Bards have written of the cestus of Venus, that turned the heads of all the world in successive generations. We had rather, for our part, have the cestus of Rachel Halliday, that kept heads from being turned, and made everything go on harmoniously. We think it is more suited to our modern days, decidedly.

This was a fun family meal we had on a family vacation a few years ago. That looks like a raw hunk of meat by my dh’s right hand! I am still figuring out what that was.

This particular passage describes what I would like to achieve in all of our preparation for meals and the actual enjoyment of the meal. I love how she writes of the knives and forks having a “social clatter” as they are being set on the table and that the chicken and ham have a “cheerful and joyous frizzle in the pan, as they rather enjoyed being cooked.”

While all other preparations were going on, Simeon the elder stood in his shirt-sleeves before a little looking-glass in the corner, engaged in the anti-patriarchal operation of shaving. Everything went on so sociably, so quietly, so harmoniously, in the great kitchen, – it seemed so pleasant to every one to do just what they were doing, there was such an atmosphere of mutual confidence and good fellowship everywhere, – even the knives and forks had a social clatter as they went on to the table; and the chicken and ham had a cheerful and joyous fizzle in the pan, as if they rather enjoyed being cooked than otherwise; – and when George and Eliza and little Harry came out, they met such a hearty, rejoicing welcome, no wonder it seemed to them like a dream.

At last, they were all seated at breakfast, while Mary stood at the stove, baking griddle-cakes, which, as they gained the true exact golden-brown tint of perfection, were transferred quite handily to the table.

Rachel never looked so truly and benignly happy as at the head of her table. There was so much motherliness and full-heartedness even in the way she passed a plate of cakes or poured a cup of coffee, that it seemed to put a spirit into the food and drink she offered.

It was the first time that ever George had sat down on equal terms at any white man’s table; and he sat down, at first, with some constraint and awkwardness; but they all exhaled and went off like fog, in the genial morning rays of this simple, overflowing kindness.

This, indeed, was a home, – home, – a word that George had never yet known a meaning for; and a belief in God, and trust in his providence, began to encircle his heart, as, with a golden cloud of protection and confidence, dark, misanthropic, pining atheistic doubts, and fierce despair, melted away before the light of a living Gospel, breathed in living faces, preached by a thousand unconscious acts of love and good will, which, like the cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple, shall never lose their reward.

 

That my friends, is the power a woman has with mealtime. To make a slave feel equal at the table, because of the love you put into the food and the way you serve it. And aren’t we all slaves in some way to appetites and addictions? May what we serve at the table, both in terms of food and conversation, give hope and life to our family members and friends who dine with us, to increase their vision and their desire to change and come closer to God.

This isn’t my current home, but it’s the image I hold in my mind of my dream home.

I stumbled across this book because my mom was reading it during our family vacation. She heard about it from my sister, who sings its praises. If you or anybody in your family suffers from depression, anxiety, the blahs, or emotional oversensitivity, I highly recommend this book. You will learn that those four conditions I just mentioned are “false moods.” It’s OK to feel them, but if you are stuck in one of those moods, you are missing out on healthy moods. The author, Julia Ross, has questionnaires in this book to help you determine if you fall into one of the false moods. She has a specific nutritional plan to treat each of the false moods. One of my family members suffers from anxiety. We started the treatment for it as recommended in this book, along with counseling, and a weekly class called Eternal Warriors, and now the anxiety attacks are gone. I can’t recommend this book highly enough! The author’s main point is that you can change the way you feel by the nutrition you give your body. She recommends a Nourishing Traditions diet with plenty of good healthy saturated fat along with nutritional supplements, namely amino acids like 5HTP, which my family is using to treat anxiety. 

I had to chuckle when I read what she said about eating fat: when you return to eating whole fat like sour cream and butter, it’s like coming home to old friends and feeling happy again. This book is a companion book to the author’s other book, The Diet Cure, which talks about eliminating food cravings. Again, the solution is to get the right fat into your body: butter, good cod liver oil, sour cream, and animal fat.

The videos below give you a great overview of her nutritional philosophy.

The first video introduces why it’s important to find alternative, nutritional treatment for bad moods, instead of using prescription drugs.

The second video below has a memorable line, “Junk moods come from junk foods!” Such true words! You can’t feed your body and brain any old, junky, even if it’s tasty food, and expect to be happy and well! Feed your brain the raw materials your brain needs to produce good moods!

In this episode, the Duggars shoot BB guns, Joy Anna talks about learning to drive, they go fishing and hiking, and the girls treat Grandma Duggar to a pedicure. Michelle also talks about homeschooling, phonics lessons, and how to deal with energetic little girls like Johannah. Johannah is the 16th child, and by the time she graduates, Michelle will have homeschooled for 32 years.

We went to a family reunion in Idaho this past summer and stayed at my dh’s cousin’s home.  I noticed this magazine rack on her wall and love the idea! What a great way to keep all your church magazines in one place. I want one of these!