Tree of Life Mothering

Today I had a lot of fun driving the carpool home for the kids who live in the north area of this county from our Commonwealth School, a once a week school for homeschooling teens. On the way home the kids were talking about the theory of relativity and future technology. I didn’t know that the theory of relativity says that light is the only constant in the universe. That’s what one of the kids was saying. And that light doesn’t defy everything, it’s just that everything bends to light. Wow, deep thoughts!

One of them mentioned that Steve Jobs passed away yesterday. What would the world have been like if he hadn’t been born? Did you know that he was adopted? His birth mother was an unwed college student. What if she had chosen to abort him? You can read the rest of the story here http://artofnfp.org/2011/10/has-the-next-steve-jobs-already-been-lost/

Last Thursday night was so awesome. I am so excited about this! This idea is so powerful! If you have older teens and you homeschool, you will want to know about this. It will change your life and your children’s lives! In the past 6 years of me being in the TJED community, I have observed that sometimes teens in the years after 15 or so flounder somewhat. They don’t know what to do. Some drift until they go on a mission. Others go to community college. Some go to George Wythe College, but not a lot. I wish every one of them would go to college, because after reading the book by President Eyring’s son, Major Decisions, about why college is so important, I think every one should go to college. These youth take LEMI classes (LEMI is like a homeschool jr. high/high school alternative), but when they are done they are left wondering, now what? If they take the LEMI classes starting at age 12, they can be done by age 14 or 15.

Aneladee Milne and Tiffany Earl have decided to create a new scholar project. It’s called “Be the Author of Your Life” and it’s for TJED youth. Scholar phase, one of the phases of learning described by Oliver DeMille in his book, A Thomas Jefferson Education, has four levels: practice scholar, apprentice scholar, self-directed, and mentored scholar.  This new project by Tiffany and Aneladee is for self-directed scholars. The other LEMI classes are all for practice and apprentice scholars. It’s time for the scholars to create their own projects for what they want to learn and how they want to do it. This is called The Edison Project.

So to launch this new class/project, a group of homeschooled youth from Idaho and Utah met with some parents and mentors at this retreat. It was going to be in Eden, UT but there was a glitch so it couldn’t be there. Aneladee called Diann Jeppson for help and Diann hooked up the group a family. Thank you to the M. family and their large home! Their family room alone is 1200 square feet. They graciously opened it up for us and let us use a wing for their retreat. I want to have a home like that someday, where I can host large groups of people and have plenty of room.

Aneladee told this story about last summer. She said she had so much fun planning her daughter’s wedding. She sewed dresses for the wedding and had loads of fun on the wedding day decorating and socializing.

She wondered, “Why can’t I just throw parties and sew dresses the rest of my life? Why do I have to study and put myself out there and go through the pain of leading?” She knows it’s because God is calling her to do more than sew and party. She told the youth that the same will probably happen to them. They will be called to do hard things.

Then she shared how a song she sings to herself when the adversary whispers in her hear, telling her she can’t do something. “Get thee, behind me Satan…I want you out of my head!”  We had a good time singing with her and her guitar.

The youth were supposed to read the book Autodidactic by James Parkinson. This is a book by an LDS man who is an attorney in Palm Desert CA. The book I ordered for my daughter did not arrive in time, so we haven’t read it yet, but the youth who did read it shared so many awesome comments. See their cute expressions below.

Aneladee said that the man who would become her son-in-law told her about the book when he was dating her daughter. He was leaving his misison and told his mission president he wanted to work hard and get an education when he got home from his mission. The  mission president told Andrew to go home and get this book. It is written by the mission president’s friend. So Andrew came home and found the book, and then when he met Aneladee, after starting to date Tatiana, Aneladee’s daughter,  he told her about the book. She started reading it and was so amazed by the content. I am excited to read it myself.

This is Jane, sharing with us her excitement over one of the concepts in the book Autodidactic, that your thoughts are determined by the words you know.

Tiffany Earl shared with the youth how to use the journal she created for them. Every night they are supposed to write answers  to five questions, to help them track their progress as an autodidact:

Mental Skills Assessment—To be kept daily

1. How motivated was I today?

2. How present was I?

3. What did I do well?

4. What should I improve tomorrow?

5. (Do you want to add any questions of your own that are particular to you?)

These are such great questions I want to start answering them every night!

These are my cool friends the Bowlers who mentor youth at the Commonwealth school in St. George. They brought up the southern Utah contingent.

I messed up the date on this picture, because I had to change batteries. It really was 9/29/11.

The other LEMI projects for younger homeschooled youth involve vision, mission, skills, and abilities already enumerated by the creators of the LEMI projects. These are called the scholar ladders. For this self-directed project, the youth create their own vision, mission, skills, abilities, and habits. They were given a binder with pages to write these all down. They also have a mentor, not their parent, that they meet with once a week to help them create them. They also meet with their parent once a week for parent-mentor meeting. If you want to learn more about this to provide it for your youth, contact Trffany Earl at tiffanydearl at yahoo dot com or Aneladee at aneladee at yahoo dot com.

I am eager to see what these youth create. I envision that they will get an inkling of their life-long mission in part from this project.

They are all smiling because they are so thrilled to embark on this new project!

I have always loved having pickles on my sandwiches. I used to buy them all the time. Nothing tastes so good for lunch, especially on a bleak winter day, as a sandwich with lots of crunch from assorted crispy vegetables, some cheese, maybe a little meat or not, and zingy pickles and mustard. When I found out about the Feingold diet though,  I started scrutinizing labels even more then I already did. What’s this? Yellow no. 5, on every pickle label i could find. And propylene glycol sometimes, too. As much as I liked pickles, I just didn’t want to buy them any more now that I knew they had petroleum in them from the food dye. If you want to know more about the Feingold diet, watch this video below.Yes, it’s true, many foods we think are safe actually have petroleum in them.

It just so happened that I made this discovery about the time I actually cracked open the Nourishing Traditions book I had bought over six years before but just sat on a shelf. It was so thick it seemed intimidating. But I found a recipe for homemade pickles! It didn’t even require canning equipment. I could use canning jars, but I didn’t need a canning bath.

Here’s the recipe:

4-5 cucumbers

4 c water

1 T salt

2 T fresh dill, chopped up

1 T mustard seed

4 T whey (if you don’t have whey then use 1 T salt more)

Wash and slice the cukes. Place in jars. Mix up the ingredients, then pour over. Screw the lids on. Let sit for three days at room temperature, then store away, preferably in a cold storage room, but I don’t have one, and the ones I stored three years ago in a hot garage have been fine. I have been eating these ones recently and they taste great! I didn’t plant much of a garden two years ago when I was pregnant over the summer, and last year I didn’t plant cucumbers, but this year I planted a bunch of cucumbers and we’re having a bumper crop!

It’s amazing to me that the Creator provided a way for people who don’t have access to electricity (freezer or stove) to preserve food. This is how our ancestors preserved food. The salt inhibits bacterial formation until the lacto bacillus bacteria, which is found naturally on the food, starts causing the food to ferment. The fermented food then is preserved by the lactic acid and safe from bacteria or decomposing. This process was lost when the modern food industry took over the production of most food. Preserving food by lactic acid fermentation is a lost homemaking art that will increase your family’s health. If you eat lactic acid preserved food, you will be sick less often, because the bacteria helps your gut by killing the bad germs in there.

Thinking of pickles, the food, makes me think of Pickles, the comic strip. Here’s a fun video about the Pickles comic strip, created by an LDS guy, Brian Crane.

Wow, I loved General Conference this past weekend. I have been waiting for that talk by Elder Neil Andersen for a long time. He said that the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe in having children and families. It was a gentle reminder that LDS should not delay or limit having children. I think that was a subtle hint that even if you have 7, you keep going and have more. He also said not to judge others by the size of their families. His voice got really tender as he said that. I wondered if and his wife wanted to have more but couldn’t.

I saw this lettering on a friend’s wall. I want to put the same on my wall, and add “children” to “our friends.”

He did say that family size is a private decision between husband and wife AND the Lord. I think though, that far too often, couples leave the Lord out, or ignore what He is saying to them when He is calling them to have more after they’ve had 4 or 6 and feel done. I’ve always felt that a woman should have as many as she physically and mentally can, right up to menopause, as long as she is able to in a healthful way. Like the blogger said, who Elder Andersen quoted, “Children are what God gave you time for.” I’d like to paraphrase it and say, “Children are what God made your body for.” That’s not to say you have to have a baby every year. The scripture comes to my mind from the Book of Mormon, “Don’t run faster than you have strength.” Women’s bodies have seasons like trees do, or at least they can if we let them. Ecological breastfeeding and natural family planning are the way to have these seasons.

I’ve always loved what Joyce Kinmont wrote in her book Diet Decisions, that children are a blessing. When God wanted to bless the Lamanites because they were being righteous, how did He bless them? With material blessings of more land or gold or silver? No, He blessed them with an increase in seed. See Helaman 7. How many people see having more children as a blessing?

I’ve also believed that, like Joyce wrote in her book, that you should do things to increase your ability to have children, so you can physically and mentally cope with as many as God wants you to have. So you can receive all the blessings He wants to give you. We live in a world that tends to think that our health is something we have to settle for, when really, physical health can change dramatically based on what we eat, the supplements we take, and our exercise. Exercise, cod liver oil, wholesome, traditionally-prepared foods, and elimination of bad foods can all help tremendously to build your body. Reading about disciplining children, and then actually implementing it,  and teaching them to work can help you mentally cope with more kids. So can marriage counseling and or reading books on increasing happiness in marriage, like Fascinating Womanhood. There are so many things we can do instead of just saying, “Sorry, I can’t handle any more. The kitchen is closed.” I want to have as many as God wants me to have, and that’s what I want for you as well. Only you with the guidance of the Spirit know how many that is.

Now I wonder if we will ever have an apostle promote NFP again like in the 60s. Have you ever read what the apostles said back then when the Pill first came out? They spoke against it, and other forms of artificial birth control. Read here from a First Presidency Statement from 1969:

We seriously regret that there should exist a sentiment or feeling among any members of the Church to curtail the birth of their children. We have been commanded to multiply and replenish the earth that we may have joy and rejoicing in our posterity.Where husband and wife enjoy health and vigor and are free from impurities that would be entailed upon their posterity, it is contrary to the teachings of the Church artificially to curtail or prevent the birth of children. . . .However, we feel that men must be considerate of their wives who bear the greater responsibility not only of bearing children, but of caring for them through childhood. To this end the mother’s health and strength should be conserved and the husband’s consideration for his wife is his first duty, and self control a dominant factor in all their relationships.

 

 

 

And here’s a gem from Elder Ezra Taft Benson:

 

The world teaches birth control. Tragically, many of our sisters subscribe to its pills and practices when they could easily provide earthly tabernacles for more of our Father’s children. We know that every spirit assigned to this earth will come, whether through us or someone else. There are couples in the Church who think they are getting along just fine with their limited families who will someday suffer the pains of remorse when they meet the spirits that might have been part of their posterity. The first commandment given to man was to multiply and replenish the earth with children. The commandment has never been altered, modified, or canceled. The Lord did not say to multiply and replenish the earth if it is convenient, or if you are wealthy, or after you have gotten your schooling, or when there is peace on earth, or until you have four children.

 

 

 

It was also so grand to hear that another temple in Provo will be built, and one for Star Valley, WY, and ones in Paris, the Democratic Congo of Africa, and Colombia and another place I can’t remember. Wow!

I have been thinking a lot about General Conference and temples and the prophet. I think every time conference rolls around we all wonder, “What is the prophet going to say this time? Is he going to tell us it’s time to move to Missouri because Armageddon is coming? Is he going to tell us that it’s time to build fall-out shelters?” I don’t know about you, but sometimes I want some HUGE call to repentance or some call to Missouri. I tend to want something dramatic and earth-shaking. Something new and big and thrilling.

I realized that Pres. Monson’s talk last April was a HUGE call to repentance. He asked those of us who live close to a temple to sacrifice more to do temple work. I was reading his talk a week or so ago and realized I hadn’t done what he said to do. I have increased my temple work, definitely, in the last six months, but I hadn’t done another thing he asked, which was to put a picture of a temple on the wall in the children’s bedrooms. So I dug out my file of temple pictures that I’ve collected over the years and let them each pick one to tape on their wall, foregoing the perfectionist urge to frame each picture and just get the pictures up so we can not delay any more in following the prophet.

The more I thought about Pres. Monson’s talk on increasing temple work last April, I realized he was asking us to do something earth-shaking and thrilling. If everyone of us went to the temple at least once a month, or if you are already going once a month, once a week, that would excite the spirits of the spirit world so much they would shake the earth for us, for good!

I have a friend, a member of this network, who told the story of a friend. Her friend’s husband got addicted to porn. It got so bad and he was unrepentant so she felt the Spirit tell her to divorce him. This woman had a big family to support. She immediately started going to the temple every week with her youth. She also opened her home to let the sister missionaries stay in her basement apartment. Whenever this friend needed something materially, she would pray. One time she really wanted a bench for the porch of the apartment where the sister missionaries could rest. She prayed and the next day the bench showed up on her porch! She attributed this to her weekly temple work. I like to to think that the spirits of the people they helped brought the bench to her porch.

In the early days of the kingdom of God on earth, the children of the Lord were asked to sacrifice the first of the fields and the first of the flocks. That was their very best. Most of us don’t live on our own fields and flocks, so we don’t have that to give to the Lord to show our devotion. What can we give? We can sacrifice the very best of our “field and flock” which would be our time. Giving up Facebook time and other Internet time, TV time, or other recreation time will give us time to increase our temple work. 

Since the beginning of the year, I have been going to the temple a lot more. My baby turned 18 months last winter and became more willing to separate. We are still nursing, but he’s no longer nursing on demand and eats a lot more solids. My husband and I have been almost every month, and sometimes twice a month. I even went and did a few initiatory sessions on my own, for names I found by my very self. That was a first for me, a milestone. My three oldest children, the youth in our home,  have gone a lot, too, to do baptisms, almost once a week. They started a trend in the ward for youth to go as a group, just as an independent activity of a group of friends, not sponsored by the Mutual. I am so impressed by their leadership. I always thought, growing up, that I could only go if my YW group or the Mutual were going. It never even occurred to me to round up a group of friends to go on my own. We have reaped the blessings of increased temple attendance! i feel the happiest I have felt in a long time. Our family is happier. I feel the Spirit more in our home.

My terrific big brother and his wonderful wife have a really cool web site all about family history work. It’s http://sudweeksfamily.com. Go there and click on “class handouts” and you can read all about all the marvelous blessings that can be yours from doing temple work.

This is my family with mother-in-law, niece, and sister-in-law at the Bountiful Temple.

I don’t like leaving a little baby to go to the temple. I know that there’s a season to separate from my nursing baby. When I have a tiny baby who is solely surviving on my milk, I can support temple work by submitting names from my own computer, even while I nurse at the keyboard.

If you want the blessings of doing temple work for you own kindred dead, and don’t know where to start, get your ward family history consultant to help you. Maybe the program directed at youth doing family history work announced today by Elder Bednar would help you too at https://lds.org/youth/family-history?lang=eng I am so excited for Elder Bednar’s talk and his invitation for techno-savvy youth to stop wasting time on the Internet and dedicate that time to save the eternal souls of their kindred dead.

I loved the increased emphasis in this most recent Conference on the Book of Mormon and the Savior’s redeeming role. What are your thoughts about General Conference? Please share in the comments box below.

I keep thinking, after such and such is over with, I will have more time to blog. About five blog topics bounce around inside my head at once such as the following:

• how to “play the queen” like it says in “When Queens Ride By”
• how fun my Zion Finishing School is

• Valor’s trips home from college
• how sometimes when I feel like weaning my toddler simply weaning from certain nursing times actually works better. In other words, the night weaning has worked!
• how I am getting a tad frustrated with rude people who ask me if I’m pregnant (I’m not, just fat) or don’t identify themselves on the phone when I pick it up after it rings and just start asking questions of me
• how my little girl actually thanked me for helping her clean her room.
• the new Relief Society book
• my conference coming up that I am putting on for LDS moms
• .the Relief Society General Women’s Meeting, with President Uchtdorf’s forget me not talk on waiting for your Golden Ticket.
• the pilot project LEMI is doing for self-directed scholars
• how to love your naturally curly hair
• following the prophet’s last General Conference counsel about doing more temple work

Life just happens too fast to blog about it all. Sigh.

On Saturday before the Relief Society broadcast I finally got to pick up the newer edition from the library of Fascinating Womanhood after having it on hold for several weeks. It has more stories than the original edition that I read. Helen Andelin even mentions homeschooling in it!

While I was gone to the library picking up that book, Valor, who left for college over a month ago, four hours away, apparently stopped by to get something!!! When I got home Cowboy told me he saw Valor. “Right, ” I said, totally thinking he was kidding. It turns out he wasn’t. Valor popped in, totally unannounced, on his way to Idaho for a friend’s mission non-farewell. What a surprise! We get to see him when he comes back every three weeks for his ortho appointments. For his first night back he picked Mexican lasagna for the menu. I was happy to oblige. I had forgotten that is a great dinner. This time I didn’t follow a recipe and it turned out the best ever. After 20 years of homemaking and marriage I follow a recipe less and less.

Speaking of recipes, that makes me think of Celestial Education. There isn’t an exact recipe for Celestial Education, only guidelines. That’s because it involves the Holy Ghost, telling you what you need to do as a mother/mentor for each child to assist them in gaining that education. There’s no cookie-cutter formula. For one child it might mean having him in public school, for another it might mean homeschool, and it can change every year for each child. Here’s more of what I learned from the fireside that I hosted with Aneladee Milne on the topic. She shared what she learned from a conference sponsored by the Sutherland Institute on agency-based education.

• Celestial Education is the same thing as agency-based education. Agency-based education is education that allows for the freedom of the student to choose what he/she wants to study. Neil Flinders wrote about it in his book, Teach the Children. Oliver DeMille has written about the idea in his book Thomas Jefferson Education to appeal to a broader audience.

• Telestial education is based on force and rules. Terrestrial education is based on morals, choice, and love. Celestial education is based on conversing with the angels. Aneladee says you can not give celestial education to your child/student, you can only create an environment that invites the child to seek it for her/himself.

• it is possible to have homeschool LDS seminary. Aneladee is doing it. She told the long story of finally getting her dream of this after asking for ten years. She has worked it out with a teacher at Woods Cross UT Seminary. The kids*  meet once a week with the seminar teacher at Woods Cross Seminary at 7:30 AM. They review the previous assignment, discuss the scriptures, and get a new assignment, based on the scriptures.

• Aneladee recommended three books to read: Revealed Educational Principles in the Public Schools by John Monnett, Teach the Children by Neil Flinders, and Educating Zion, by BYU Studies. (Hey, I have that book, I got it at D.I. for only 3 bucks!)

• BYU-Idaho was charged by the prophet five years ago to be the educational college of the church, based on principles of education found in Doctrine and Covenants 88 (see below). BYU-Provo is the research college. To fulfill this charge BYU-Idaho started the following  things:

• BYU-Idaho no longer offers tenure to its professors.
• BYU-I no longer has intercollegiate sports, only intramural.
• BYU-I is to be very affordable.
• BYU-I was to extend its reach over the world through online courses offered at local Institutes of the LDS Church.

• Steve Adams, a graduate with his bachelor’s degree from GWU, is now the director of curriculum at BYU-I.
• BYU-I hired a disruptive innovator to help it achieve the above goals.
• BYU-I has the following steps for its students as the teaching/learning model, see http://www.byui.edu/learningmodel/src/default.htm :
• Every student comes to class prepared
• Every student is expected to teach one another (Does this sound straight out of the Doctrine and Covenants: “The teacher is no better than the learner”?)
• Every student is to ponder and prove the course material.
• BYU-Idaho has these five principles for the students, straight out of Doctrine and Covenants 88:
• Students/teachers exercise faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as a source of action and power.
• Students/teachers  learn by the Holy Ghost.
• Students/teachers  lay hold of the Word of God.
• Students/teachers act for themselves with responsibility.

• Students/teachers love, serve, and teach one another.

Aneladee shared a funny story. So the director of curriculum started going around telling professors that the new format was no more 100% lecture. The new format is discussion. One professor had a difficult time accepting that. “What? I know so much more about this subject than these students! For over 20 years I have been lecturing in my class the whole time! We’ve never had a discussion.”

The director responded by saying, “We understand you have been on an ego trip for 20 years. The prophet has said, ‘ No more ego trips!’ ” LOL!

Wow, I am thinking that BYU-I is educational nirvana! Anyone out there with a child at BYU-I (Cyndi?) want to comment…?

*all the kids in this seminary class are homeschoolers, from SDLA, a commonwealth school in Bountiful, Utah. If you don’t know what a commonwealth school is go to http://shop.lemimentortraining.com/The-New-Commonwealth-Schools-by-Aneladee-Milne-and-Tiffany-Earl-105.htm and read the book

Come learn with me about essential oils! My friend Tara is holding a fun night at her home where she shares about how essential oils can heal depression, anxiety, mood swings, and other emotional challenges.

It’s Tuesday night Sept. 27 7 PM at her home in Clinton, Utah. Email me at celestia_shumway at yahoo dot com if you want the address.

John Adams has that famous quote about celebrating Independence Day with pomp and fireworks. I’ve often felt sad that we don’t celebrate Constitution Day with the same vigor.

Most people wouldn’t know Constitution Day if it came up and waved a flag in their face. Sept. 17? What’s the big deal about that date? Some people in Utah are starting to change that! And I love that these people live in Davis County Utah because that means the celebration is close to me! This is one of the few times I am not wishing I lived in southern Utah.

For the past few years they’ve been holding a “Freedom’s Light Constitution Day” celebration in Bountiful, Utah. Every year it gets better and better. Maybe we can get the legislature to let us have fireworks next year for it!

This year they had some people dressed up in costume to be historical figures who told their story. We got to hear from Christopher Columbus and Lydia Darrington.

My scholar phasers’ commonwealth school, South Davis Liber Academy, had their booth, like they’ve had previous years. It was all about virtue. It’s fascinates me to learn about this concept of virtue.

Why did people used to just assume that you had to be virtuous to be free, but people now don’t think that any more?

My friend Steve Russell, a homeschooling dad and attorney, calls this period of time we are living in now “America’s Grand Experiment”. It’s an experiment with the question of, “Can a vicious people be self-governing?” By vicious, he’s not calling people mean, he’s saying that people are vice-ful. It all has to do with the three deterrents to vice that John Locke wrote about in his essay on human understanding and that those three deterrents are all gone for most vices.One of these days I will transcribe his talk, which he gave at my Tree of Liberty Youth Conference, maybe, and put it up on this site.

I love his definition of what virtue is: “Virtue is an act or habit that establishes or maintains the family.” It’s more than just being good, it’s being good so you can build a family, so that you can fulfill what God’s desire is for you, which is to have a family like He does, so you can feel the happiness and love that He does. The SDLA booth had these cool pamphlets that stated that Aristotle believed that virtue meant fulfilling what your creator planned for you.

I predict that this grand experiment is going to fail miserably. People can only be free if they are good. That’s a no-brainer.  Somehow our society is in this self-delusional fog where we don’t believe that any more. The Founding Fathers all knew it and wrote about it. The booth had all these cool posters that one or a few of my awesome homeschooling girlfriends lovingly crafted. The booth also sold these cool T-shirts that say, “Want Freedom?” on the front, and then “Get Virtue” on the back. Totally cool!  You can buy one here http://getvirtue.com My son and I took a shift at the booth selling these shirts. It was so interesting to see the look on people’s faces as we read the quotes and talked about it. They looked a little bit surprised and refreshed that we would talk about something so basic.

My son followed in his older siblings’ footsteps and won his Freedom Bowl contest with his team of homeschoolers against Centerville Jr. High. It was a very close match! They competed for three rounds and won two out of three. After he was done with the competition I went south to drop my kids off at Grandma’s and then head up to Heber for the Leadership Education Family Builder Retreat. Normally I would let Virtue babysit them all but I am in the process of weaning Bugsy from night nursing. (whole other post…he’s two, OK, and I didn’t want to separate from him during the night. We don’t nurse any more at night but sometimes he wakes up and wants me to be with him to hold him and get a drink of water. I knew if he woke up and I wasn’t there he’d freak out so I drove back and forth from Heber at night and in the morning so I could be with Bugsy overnight) I got to ride with my friend Sherrie and that was tons of fun. More on the retreat later.

They called themselves the Fedoras and the Flower, because Morgan, the only girl teammate, had a flower. I love pretty flowers to dress up girls’ hair!

The retreat was a whirlwind and before I knew it I was back in Davis county to get my kids to their Primary program practice and then off to help volunteer at event where David Barton of wallbuilders.com would be speaking live! I was so excited about this! I have one of his old videos from years ago and listen to him on wallbuilderslive.com.  I saw lots of friends so that helped make it even more fun.

The final round of the senior high school Freedom Bowl was held there and David awarded the winners trophies. I couldn’t help but think that Virtue could have been there as she is an expert at the Constitution Bowl, being a multiple time winner for the AYLI bowl, but she decided to be generous and not compete for this one. No, really, she is doing a lot with the LEMI’s new self-directed scholar project and Williamsburg and is learning not to take on so much this year.

David spoke for over an hour about how the Founding Fathers were godly men who believed that people should believe in God, and that religion has a place in society, and a role to play by influencing godly men. Religion is what allows us to be self-governing. He shared all this to disprove a book called “The Godless Constitution.” He showed a page from it where the authors clearly stated they dispensed with they usual scholarly apparatus of footnotes. How terrible that they would do this! They didn’t dig into history because they already knew they would find that the Founders believed in the Bible. The historical record is clear…the Founding Fathers believed in God and reflected that in the Constitution.

David showed little hints in the Constitution that show that. He pointed out that religion is needed in society today just as the Founders said it was needed for good government back then. All of the businesses that were bailed out by the government, the mortgage, insurance, and auto businesses, failed because people lied and cheated. That’s a direct result of the lack of morality in our country, and David says you can’t have morality without religion. I agree! People need a god to be good for.

He had this totally fabulous powerpoint with lots of references to Bible verses. He went through about 12 of the signers of the Constitution and what their religious beliefs were.

He ended his talk with the same talk he gave at the Eagle Forum convention last January. He based that part on Thomas Jefferson’s inaugural address, which listed five points of good government:

1. Acknowledge a creator

2. Protect life

3. Punish criminals

4.Promote the free market, don’t interfere with it.

5. Respect people’s property and income

A government that is not limited to these five points becomes unlimited government, and unlimited government, by any name, is ultimately fascism. Not good! Not American!

Julie Earley has a terrific speech about this idea, you can get it here http://www.tjedmarketplace.com/forums/slc/2010/adult-forum/tale-extremists-effective-influence-liberty

Happy Constitution Day America! I have hope that by us educating ourselves, we can resurrect the Constitution from its coffin.

(We went to the aquarium last week for a homeschooling field trip. My son also won his Constitution Bowl contest for the Constitution Day celebration in Bountiful. I have a lot more pictures about that coming up, including some of David Barton. Stay tuned.)

Here is the link to the powerpoint presentation Sally Fallon made on proper diets for healthy babies and children that I blogged about recently. So go to that page, scroll down, and click on “Healthy Pregnancy and Children.”

I love the idea on slide #17 of the presentation:

The body is like
a house or temple, (Hey, we as Latter-day Saints believe that!)
built of bricks and mortar
BRICKS = Minerals
MORTAR = Fat-Soluble Activators A and D

So you can be taking in tons of vitamins and minerals with green smoothies and salads, but if you don’t have the right fats, with the fat soluble vitamins A and D, the vitamins and minerals are not going to stick! You are not going to have strong bones and teeth! So that’s why Mary Poppins was right! Children, and adults, need cod liver oil, because it is the right fat that has vitamins A and D. The Word of Wisdom is more about just avoiding tobacco and alcohol. It’s about taking in what’s really good for our bodies and avoiding empty calorie foods. Even if you are vegetarian you can have problems. Vegetarianism seems like the natural way to go, but did you know that sets you up for tooth decay? Is it natural to have tooth decay? Dentist Weston Price found out that it isn’t.  See the story below of my friend for an example.

This is the recipe for bright and beautiful children. Dr. Price gives lots of pictures of bright and beautiful children. These are children with round heads, full palates with enough room for all their teeth, no cavities or crooked teeth, and broad faces. He says modern children tend to have narrow faces, crooked teeth, and tooth decay. This recipe promises to give health like the primitive people that Dr. Weston Price studied in the 1930s all over the world.  I recently studied Weston Price’s book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration where he tells this story. It fascinates me to know that these primitive people Dr. Price studied had no tooth decay, degenerative disease, obesity, impacted wisdom teeth, asthma, and all of the other modern illnesses we have. What is going on here? We have incredible blessings of technology and information, but as a whole we are literally starving for health.

I have been interested in health and nutrition since I was a junior in high school and read Fit for Life by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond. For several years I was vegetarian, partly because of what I learned from reading that book. Then I read Diane Hopkins, of lovetolearn.net  and happyhomeschooling.com, tell her story of how she decided that vegetarianism was not healthy in the long run. She cited Dr. Price’s book that I mentioned above and her own experience, which was that the babies she conceived when she was vegetarian and sometimes vegan had horrible teeth.

Diane’s story correlates with the story of one of my friends, Caralee. She was vegetarian for a long time before she learned of Dr. Price’s teachings. This is her story:

“In a nutshell, I had perfect teeth (as a vegetarian) until after my third child, when my teeth
began to decay, to shortly after, when I had my fourth and fifth children
(born 13 mos. apart), I went from no cavities to 11 or 12, two of which
needed root canals!  I hadn’t even had refined sugar, grains or chemicals in
my diet for years!  I have been very health-conscious since I was 15 years
old, but I was vegetarian, even vegan at times for twelve years.

“Changing my diet (and I changed my diet to properly prepared whole foods, adding in
whole, raw, pastured milk and eggs and some high-quality meat) made a big
difference for me, but what was really the kicker was the cod liver oil and
high vitamin butter oil, 1/2 teaspoon three times a day.  I did that on and
off for a couple of years (I was REALLY scared to go back to the dentist)
but when I knew it was time for my sixth child to be conceived, I decided I
better go have any dental work done that needed to be taken care of.  I went
back, shaking in my boots, but to my delight, the dentist found that
secondary dentin had filled in, covering my roots so I no longer needed root
canals!  Yea!  Also, my teeth were healing, and my dentist made comments
like, wow- your teeth have great structural integrity.  He couldn’t believe
that I hadn’t been to a dentist in over two years with the diagnosis I had
had before.  Since then, I have had teeth that had deep cavities heal all
the way through to the enamel, inside out, only leaving a stain where the
cavity used to be.

I have watched my children that needed baby pulpotomies
have secondary dentin grow back in as little as six weeks, making it
unnecessary to have the baby root canal done!  My three youngest that have
been raised on cod liver oil and raw milk have beautiful teeth with great
palates (ample room for their teeth to come in), whereas my older three
vegetarian babies all have dental issues (yes, I feel terrible).  The teeth
will heal, and the younger the individual, the faster and more responsive
they are, but we all can heal if given the right tools.”

The right tools are given in the powerpoint by Sally above. Helpful websites are also http://westonaprice.org, http://healthyhomeeconomist.com (home of a Weston A. Price chapter leader in Florida, Sarah Pope. She is also the author of the article on traditional home remedies that I refer to on this site in my discussion forum on being Dr. Mom. She has video tutorials on how to do the practical home cooking applying Dr. Price’s principles) and http://thenourishingcook.com which has a goal of blogging about all of the recipes in Sally Fallon’s cookbook Nourishing Traditions.

Wow, the fireside with Aneladee Milne was such a spiritual feast!  We had it in our backyard. The above photo is our apricot tree in our backyard. For years I have dreamed of hosting a fireside around this tree. It is just so pleasant in the evening to be there. My plans didn’t quite work out though. I have also dreamed of having a big home so I can host firesides indoors with lots of people. I finally decided I could host large groups in the backyard a few years ago and so I have hosted a few gatherings. The other turnoff for hosting inside, besides being too small, is that my carpets have tons of stains. We haven’t been able to afford an all-over carpet cleaning like we used to do every year or so. It never occurred to me that I could spot clean it, until my husband mentioned that that is what his mom used to do. Two years ago it was looking really bad, right before my baby was born, and my  mom took pity on me and cleaned it. That was a great service, not only to get it clean but to show me that really, it’s not that big of a deal to get down on your hands and knees and scrub the carpet.

I haven’t gotten around to doing that again two years later, and the dining room carpet (don’t ever have carpet in a dining room if you have lots of kids) looks so bad. I am embarrased and didn’t want anyone coming in to see it. I meant to clean the spots before the fireside but with everything else going on, like being gone all day to the Summit for Knights of Freedom the day before, I would have to choose sleep over clean carpet and pride, and I chose sleep. But then with it threatening to rain I wondered if we might have to use my living room, which is connected to my dining room. So people will see it.

Well, I figured out that I could move the living room furniture to cover up some of the spots. So I did that and felt better.  I was ready to host if it rained. But then it didn’t rain so I decided to have it outside. But when we went outside I discovered that since Aneladee wanted to plug her laptop into the outlet on the house, everyone had to be facing the house, and the cluttered patio, instead of the lovely tree. The patio had the remains of my kids’ homemade Tom Sawyer raft propped up on buckets and assorted sundry items. Oh well. And then we ended up going inside when it got dark, and some efficient fairy in my family had returned all the furniture to the original places so the carpets spots showed! So much for pride. I learned that I should tell people my plans and not to move things until we are truly over.  I had to swallow my pride and just hope that people appreciated my willingness to bring Aneladee and her knowledge to the gathering and that they didn’t care about the spots.

Well, 26 people RSVPed saying they would come. I think they all came,but one, plus Aneladee and and me and my husband, so we had 28 people. Two people from Idaho even came! Wow! Aneladee shared some amazing things. Basically, the three types of education look like this: telestial education is force and rules. Terrestrial education involves choice, and celestial education is conversing with the angels. What would that be like to have a home where you and your children converse with angels daily? She said that you can’t give your child a celestial education. You can only create a terrestrial education environment which encourages your children to choose it for themselves.

She shared how the prophet went to BYU-Idaho and gave it five charges five years ago straight from D&C 88 and how that is being implemented. I don’t have time to go into it all right now, but watch for a blog post soon where I recap the fireside.

The line down the left side is the rope for the tire swing for my kids.

Aneladee is such a pioneer in LDS education. She is finally getting what she asked for ten years ago, which is homeschool seminary. A group of youth from our commonwealth school have a seminary class just for them at Woods Cross Seminary that meets once a week and does the rest of the work at home. This is such awesome news! I won’t go into my seminary tangent, but sufficeth to say that my daughter went off to the class this morning, even though she had been going to Layton Seminary since the start of school..

For my finishing school two weeks ago we learned why Mary Poppins was so right. Children need cod liver oil daily. It makes healthy children who have round heads, broad chests, and glowing skin. Imagine what life would be like if there were no degenerative diseases, no birth defects, no ADD, no autism. This is what life was like for the 14 primitive groups of people that Dr. Weston Price studied. I have a whole other blog post about this coming up. Why are the children of deseret so sickly? Even though we have the Word of Wisdom, LDS still have health problems.  I once got to see a list of youth going on a Pioneer Trek for their summer youth conference. The majority had major health problems that required taking daily medication! Is that what a multitude of children “bright and strong” is? We’ve got so much more to learn and do about nutrition to be truly free from the grasp and greed of “conspiring men” in the last days that the Lord told Joseph Smith about in D and C 89.

I thought it was very fascinating that in this powerpoint I found from Sally Fallon, student of Dr. Weston Price, that she said our bodies are temples, and the bricks are the vitamins and minerals, and the mortar is good fat, like cod liver oil. Makes so much sense to me. Some vitamins are only soluble in fat, like A and D, so they need fat to be used by your body. You can be taking in tons of vitamins and minerals with vegetables and fruits and green smoothies, but unless you have good fat, which is saturated fat, then those vitamins and minerals are going to pass right through. I think that’s why I always felt so hungry when I was vegan and vegetarian.

Here’s the corn we grew in our garden! I know Dr. Mercola thinks corn is evil but I have a hard time accepting that.

This is a random home I drive by whenever I take Venture to Knights of Freedom. I just think the flower bed is so lovely!

For my finishing school two weeks ago we learned why Mary Poppins was so right. Children need cod liver oil daily. It makes healthy children who have round heads, broad chests, and glowing skin. Imagine what life would be like if there were no cavities or tooth decay, no wisdom teeth to be pulled, no degenerative diseases, no birth defects, no ADD, no autism. This is what life was like for the 14 primitive groups of people that Dr. Weston Price studied, because they got 10 times the nutrients, namely vitamins A and D, that are in cod liver oil, than the standard American does. I have a whole other blog post about this coming up. Why are the children of deseret so sickly? Even though we have the Word of Wisdom, LDSaints still have health problems.  I once got to see a list of youth going on a Pioneer Trek for their summer youth conference. The majority had major health problems that required taking daily medication! Is that what a multitude of children bright and strong is? Our bodies are like temples, but do we truly treat them that way? No! We put in junk like MSG, and food dyes made from petroleum. I thought it was quite ironic/hypocritical that in Primary last month my kids were being taught to treat their bodies like temples and then at the end of sharing time they were told to go to the bishop’s office after Primary was over, tell him what they learned, and then they would get a piece of candy laden with petroleum based food dyes.

Two Fridays ago I got my hair done. I love it! Whenever I go to get it done I get a peek into the real world out there. My hairdresser has a salon in her basement, which I love, but I always feel a bit guilty when I go and see her kids watching the boob tube upstairs and then fighting. I feel I am pulling away a mom from her children. She and this other client were talking about their kids’ classes and homework in second grade and preschool. It made feel so relieved that I don’t have to deal with homework for my seven year old.

Two Saturdays ago we did the Knights of Freedom Summit. That was so much fun! We experienced a miracle. Around 3 Pm or so the beautiful day of blue skies disappeared and nature released her fury with a downpour. Fortunately we had a pavilion’s roof in the park to shelter us. The 149 boys prayed mighty hard for the rain to stop so they could have their final battle and the family feast. God granted a reprieve from the storm.

When I first started going to these summits I thought there was nothing for the moms and sisters of the boys to do. Boy, was I wrong. The sisters like to dress up as pretty maids and cheer the brothers on. I love to see the pretty hairstyles they sport. The moms can volunteer as matrons for the camps.

I ran into my friend who I met at LEMI Training, Rebecca, and she give me some laughs. At the end of the feast at the dessert table she and my other friend Shauna came by to get treats. “is this dessert you made healthy?” she asked me. “No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s got brown sugar.” (I didn’t want to take time to go get sucanat or rapadura and I was out of both, so I used brown sugar.) “Good,” Rebecca said, “I want some!” LOL! It’s true, lots of times healthful cookies taste like cardboard. One time my dear mother-in-law whipped up a batch and nobody would eat more than one. She had no fat in them and hardly any sweetener, hence they were as dry as toast and just as sweet.

I have figured out a way to make chewy, yummy cookies that are healthful if you use sucanat and don’t take a lot of time, since they are bar cookies and not drop cookies. That’s the one thing that I don’t like about making cookies, is the back and forth thing of taking them off the trays and putting them on racks. I just want to mix

em up, put em in pan and bake them. I sent a bunch to my son for his birthday since he is gone away to college. It is so strange to be this old to have a son in college!

For our first day of school, the day after Labor Day, I slept in! It’s my inner rebel coming out, from a buried memory I have of having to leave for public school choir practice in grade school at 7 AM. Actually, I couldn’t sleep the night before and was catching up. It is really luscious to enjoy the freedom of homeschooling and not let public school dictate my daily schedule.

Princessa felt inspired to  make a Santa Claus with her new markers, not sure why, when it’s only September, but that’s the fun of giving your kids freedom to create what they want.

For our first day, the kids enjoyed their brand new crayons and actually colored for about 15 minutes, a record! For some reason they have never been big on coloring. I am so proud of myself for getting our school corner more organized.

Venture begs to do his Rosetta Stone Spanish every day. The morning of the Knights Summit he got up at 6 AM to do it before he left! He’s truly in love of learning season.

Some of my books to inspire a love of learning.

For the first day of school I let Cowboy play with his Duplos while I started reading a new book for the kids that I picked up at a yard sale, Miss Hickory. It’s the perfect book for fall. I was excited to see it recommended in the Friend November 2010 issue. Every November the Friend has a two page spread of good reads for kids.

I have always wanted an official school room with non carpeted floor to be happy about spilled paint and play-doh, walls of shelves and drawers that are all matched like in Pottery Barn, and a lot more space. When I was pregnant with #7 I nearly cried wondering how I was going to get around that homeschooling table that is squeezed between the dressers and the closet and bookcase that we use for homeschool materials. I visited a friend after baby #7 and actually did cry when the visit was over, because she has the beautiful school room I want, and doesn’t even homeschool! Then I have to remember to count my blessings. At least I have a homeschool table, and don’t have to use the dining room table. At least I have a closet and dressers and a bookcase for our homeschool materials and a corner of a room to do it.

I cleared off my desk, dejunked the home school filing system I started when I started homeschooling my college-going son 13 years ago, organized one bookcase, and put posters up on our homeschool closet. I like this one from the Friend that states, “Let Learning Lift You.” It has a quote from President Hinckley, at the bottom, “Education  is the key that unlocks the doors to opportunity.” The Friend has so many colorful posters to inspire a love of learning and a desire to be fluent with the Holy Ghost.

Most of school for the rest of the week was harvesting tomatoes. I love knowing that for my little children it’s OK to delay academics and have school be helping mom do gardening, harvesting, and housework.  TJED calls it core phase. We clean walls, the bathtub, the floor, thier bedrooms, and that week we dried tomatoes.

I learned at Relief Society all about dehydrating. Thank you Relief Society for bringing that answer to me! For years I have felt stymied, knowing that I want to plant a big garden, but not having a freezer to preserve all the harvest. And I hate to can. I already had a dehydrator but thought it was just for fruit and tomatoes. But I didn’t realize I could dry the tomatoes and then grind them into a powder.

Now with drying food and grinding in a blender I can store the harvest in a much smaller space! We dried 4 trays of tomatoes and the grand result was a 1/4 full Mason jar. I can store my whole tomato harvest this year in very little space! I learned about this cool web site, http://dehydrate2store.com and feel I have stumbled upon a treasure trove of info!