Tree of Life Mothering

Back to school time is coming. Sometimes that means dread because you don’t want to face another year of what you had before. Tears, fights, stress, homework, rush to get out the door. UGH!  If you want something different, consider homeschooling. You can do it! So many resources abound to help you. If you already homeschool, maybe you just need a different perspective. Leadership education has helped me because it is “organic education.” It has helped me see that kids go through seasons of learning. It’s really OK not to have your 5 or even 9 or any age child doing worksheets all day. It’s OK to let them play instead of “learn.”There is a season to learn while playing and there’s a season to learn from doing academic work.

If you want some help with homeschooling younger children, consider doing the “closet.” Go to http://home-school-coach.com and click on “getting started.”

If you want help with homeschooling older children who are ready to study and not just play (and it’s OK if they just want to play, just make sure they are doing a lot of housework too!) then Tiffany Earl  and Aneladee Milne are the girls for you.  And James Ure is the man. They know a LOT about how to get teens to study and become scholars.

Tiffany is offering a program to get youth excited about learning and homeschooling. It involves becoming a member of LEMI, her Leadership Education Mentoring Institute. You can join for only $5.95 a month. That will allow you to have your teens join in on a monthly conference call to meet with other teens to talk about topics relevant to them. I am so excited about this! Go here to get more details http://home-school-rocks. I have already signed up and my kids are going to love these conference calls!

Aneladee Milne was formerly Tiffany’s business partner and together they wrote The New Commonwealth School. Aneladee is now in business as Leadership Education Alternatives for Parents but she still partnered with Tiffany to do LEMI Training a few weeks ago. Aneladee’s site is http://theparentmentor.com. She offers private coaching for parents on how to mentor your children. Her site doesn’t seem to be working that well so here is her contact info aneladee at yahoo dot com.

James Ure has created Williamsburg Academy. It is a fabulous online academy based on TJED for high school age. Since it’s online, students can attend from across the globe. See http://wacademy.org. I was so pleased with what my son learned last year while attending. It costs money but if you are in Utah you can sign up through two options to have the state pay for it. See http://harmonyed.com or http://giantcampus.com/online-schools/utah-tech-high/welcome

It just so happened that we got to be at Cove Fort on Pioneer Day. We were driving home from our vacation from CA.  What fun! I love Cove Fort! I want to stop every time we make the trip to southern Utah. It’s really not that far away, only 3 hours from our home and 2 from my mom’s in Highland. They are having Cove Fort Days Aug 5-6, with free food (hot dogs, though, so you might want to bring your own food. Dr. Sears says that hot dogs are among the worst food on the planet) It’s on I-15 as you drive south in Utah, close to the junction with I-70.

My aunt through marriage is descended from the Hinckleys who settled Cove Fort. She has a journal from them that I want to read some time.

I just think it’s really cool that the pioneers did what they did and were able to erect such a great structure out of the desert. They did what they did because they knew God lives and was speaking to them through His prophet.

Here are some pics. Gradually I will add text.

One of my beautiful daughters!

This is an 1879 copy of the Book of Mormon! Wow!

These are real Indian blankets.

This is a real Spencer rifle from after the War Between the States.

One of the gun ports that was never used.

The Hinckley cabin that was transported from Coalville where the HInckleys lived when Brigham Young called them to build Cove Fort.

Sister Hinckley’s goal was to create an oasis of refinement and hospitality in the desert.

Things I thought about, was reminded of, or learned on my summer vacation:

-my son is great at shuttle diplomacy between me and my husband.

-I am so grateful to have my camera back!
-a mom can’t have a true vacation unless someone else does all the cooking and watches the baby
-that’s OK because it is wonderful to have someone to be the universe to

-it was nice to have most nights of fixing dinner off because my sisters and sis in laws rotated.

-it’s past time for me to set up a rotating system of fixing dinner at home for my older kids

-it is fun to listen to John Bytheway CDs on a road trip

-my kids think it is lots of fun to listen to The Silver Chair  by C.S. Lewis on CD on a road trip but I can not focus on it.

–The Silver Chair has a part that I can focus on, the part where C.S. Lewis depicts that Jesus truly is the only way to happiness

-Miss Manners writes books that really make you think after paragraph, if not every sentence
-I like reading The Social Animal  (for an online  colloquium on Aug. 4th http://thesocialleader.com/2011/07/feed-social-animal-david-brooks)  but wish the language wasn’t vulgar at times.

-The Walmart in St. George has less than helpful employees

-how could a Walmart on a Saturday morning be out of twist ties in the produce department?

-my sis in law Sally is a wonderful hostess
-It is amazing that I can see pictures and words that come out of thin air into a little black box that we bring into the car and the condo, when it has no cord attached.

-I am grateful for inheritance money from my grandparents that allows my extended family to meet once a week for a year at a Marriott vacation club. Vacations when I was a kid were camping in tents and staying at Motel 6. My kids are so spoiled!

-Cell phones work even when you are out on the ocean miles away from the coast
-I can feel seasick very easily.

-it’s not good to eat a hard-boiled egg right before you get on a boat

-Harvey Karp’s secrets still work on little babies. I had fun putting my baby niece to sleep without nursing her (don’t worry, I am not into crossnursing)

-I want to be better at following promptings I get to be more organized. I feel terrible about letting 8 quarts of fresh strawberries go moldy by leaving them in the car for two days at my sister-in-law’s house.

-My sister-in-law had the job from *** and has a blog to gripe about
it. Maybe she can supply fodder for Dilbert.

-I can’t decide between an iPad or an iPod touch. My brother, the lucky duck, has both.

-Even after all these years of thinking I am good at avoiding sunburn, it still happens to me. I disagree with what Lara Gallagher shared on Facebook, you can still get sunburned! I dare anyone to go out on the beach or in a pool at Palm Desert and come out unscathed.

-My big brother has been to North Korea and has pictures of his trip. Communism is alive and well but some people do own their own gardens.

-this same brother has phenomenal language skills with Korean. It is quite possible that the U.S. gvt. will ask him to live in Pyongyang someday. If so, my sis in law refuses to live there.

-I am glad I am not this same brother and have HIllary Rodham Clinton for my boss.

–My little daughter can play with her cousins ALL DAY without tears or fighting.
-My little sister knows how to throw a birthday party.

-My little sister who I always thought of as perfect actually made a mistake.
-I am not the only one who has had problems with people in authority over me making bad judgments regarding my child

-Newport Beach has swarms of junior lifeguards, like 500 of them (see the red and white clothed kids in the background)
-playing at the beach is as fun as ever

-it’s fun to watch your kids and their cousins design and make T-shirts with freezer paper, bleach, and an iron
-My nephew is an artist

-My kids would rather go swimming with their cousins than with my husband, the littles, and me
-Kirk Duncan has a lot of interesting information on being a mentor

-I should avoid reading USA Today on vacation, or any time. It is so dreadful to read about the evil in the world.
-It is possible to lose something and then have it appear where you know you left it, thanks to the intervention of angels.

-Eating a meal with fat and protein really helps you feel satisfied, especially after a road trip day with carb snacks and snacks of cheese in the car.

-it is so nice to know people besides my sis in law in St. George, so that when she can’t host us, someone else can. Driving from Palm Desert to home in one day is too much. Thank you Bowler family for hosting us overnight!
-Cove Fort is just as delightful as I remember it being.

-It’s really not fun to tour Cove Fort in high heels.

-I am really blessed to have so many hospitable friends and family in my life.

I love Pioneer Day.  I love studying about these amazing people who walked away from the normal way of living for their time and faced tremendous hardship and fatigue, all because of what they knew to be right and true.   As a child I always wondered if I was strong enough to do what they did.  I now know that I am, at least on one level, because I am doing precisely that: walking away from the normal way of living and facing hardship and fatigue because of what I know to be right.  Any homeschooling mother who has watched the iconic yellow schoolbus drive by on a day when the children are fighting and refusing to help has felt a longing similar to what the pioneers felt leaving their homes.  And like them, we know we will not go back. 

I think that fifty or so years from now when this generation’s chips are all down they are going to be studying us the way they now study the pioneers.  They will look at the homeschoolers, the mothers who went back to the basics and back to nature, and they will talk about our determination and our vision and they will say “Look at what has come from that movement.  It started small, but look at it now!”  I will go even further and say that I believe that what we are doing and what we are teaching our children will end up playing a key role in the establishment of Zion and that when that great City has finally come into being we will look back at how it happened and say “Wow!” 

It began with the Pioneers.  The torch has been passed to us.  And someday we will all rejoice together. 

While on vacation here in CA I got to meet my sister’s sis in law. We were at Newport Beach and I found out that my sister’s husband discovered that his brother John was also vacationing in CA. So my brother-in-law invited him and his wife to meet them at the beach. I got to meet John’s wife Jen. She is a lovely woman and looks so completely normal and beautiful for being the mother of 10, including a set of twins, with one on the way. After she found out that I have seven children she then told me about her blog http://megafamilies.blogspot.com/. It’s a listing of blogs for large families, which she defines as at least seven children. I can’t wait to check it out more. One of the principles of Tree of Life Mothering is to be, how shall I say it, fecund, like a tree, producing good fruit, both literally, in the form of babies, and symbolically, in the form of good works. Just remember a tree has seasons so it doesn’t burn out. I am not saying to have a baby every year. I am eager to read this blog more to glean tips from mamas of large families on how to be a happy mama of a big brood.

So my son winning the Andau was a miracle in my life, and I also experienced another one. This is going to sound hard to believe, I know, but, I think I was recently the beneficiary of angels working in my life. I think they visited the very room I have been sleeping in. It sounds wild, but here’s the story.

So after all the excitement of my son winning the Andau, plus getting my lost camera back, plus having a birthday party for my third son, all while staying at my sis in law’s home en route to a family vacation in CA, I could not go to sleep. My body was wound up tighter than a corset. I lay there for a while, then I got up and wrote in my journal and then turned on General Conference on my iPod to put me back to sleep. Hey, it works all the time during the day during real time General Conference so why not at night? I feel asleep during my favorite sleep-inducing speaker. I will let you guess which one. I woke up briefly to tuck the iPod under my pillow. In the morning I took the iPod out from under my pillow and put it in the little zippered compartment on the inside wall of my purse. That is its place. 

We went to sacrament meeting because I am a firm believer in going to church wherever you are, even if you are on vacation. During the service I started feeling sick. Some of Sally’s (my sis in law’s) kids had been sick and now maybe I was catching it. I knew I needed to throw up. When we got back to Sally’s I asked if she had any peppermint essential oil. I know from doing it myself at home that if I lick just a little bit, it makes me throw up. Supposedly it is known for settling the stomach but not for me. Sure enough, within fifteen minutes I threw up and felt much better. But I still felt very cold. I was in sunny St. George where it gets 120 degrees but I felt freezing. I wondered if all the excitement from the day before was overworking my adrenals and thyroid. I decided to take a soak in the tub to warm me up. Whenever I get sick I love a soak in hot water.  Everybody was wanting to be on the way to CA but there was no way I was going to travel a road trip feeling lousy like this. I felt so grateful for my brother in law, working his tail off, driving truck, to provide this home for his family and for it be a way station for me and my family on our way to CA, especially for me when I was feeling ill.

After my soak in a hot tubful of water I felt 100% better. I also felt great knowing that God had helped me to know what to do for my body, without using drugs. So we finally got in the car to go and on the way out of St. George I discovered my iPod is missing. It is not in the pocket. I checked three times. It was not there. My oldest son checked as well and he can vouch for me, it was not there. Where could it be? We drove back to Sally’s and checked all around the bed where I slept and all through the sheets and the blanket. I went through all of my clothes in my suitcase and no luck.

I was very bummed. I was so looking forward to listetning to the “Our Island Story” chapters (a history of Great Britian for children) that I had downloaded at http://librivox.org We did have some boring hours. Nobody wanted to sing or play games and I discovered I should have packed more for my toddler. Through the miracle of technology though we did get to watch and listen to the video recording of my son’s oral exam for the Andau that was on my newly recovered camera, uploaded into his laptop and “auxed” to the car’s stereo system. I completely forgot about the three John Bytheway CDs that I had packed. I honestly feel sometimes that I am losing my mind with all these things I keep losing and forgetting. I am just so grateful that I haven’t yet left a child at a rest stop. 

Warning: never travel south on I-15 from Utah to CA on a Sunday afternoon or night. What was supposed to be a five hour trip turned out to be 9 hours! Everyone and their cat who live in so. CA must have been leaving Vegas to go back home. We had several traffic jams. There was also an accident and some other interesting scenes I won’t mention.

So we got here at 11 PM Sunday night. We were so grateful to devour the Polynesian chicken on rice, rolls, and salad, that my sister had fixed for the whole family. I did fix those granola bars like I blogged about and brought fruit but after nine hours we all wanted something that was a meal, not a snack. The next day I unpacked. We have this lovely apartment/villa that has a full kitchen, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a laundry. I wished for my iPod to help pass the time. I heard a voice in my head tell me to go check that inside pocket in my purse. I did and my iPod was right there! I swear it was not there on Sunday afternoon. I feel that there was some reason why our trip was supposed to be delayed by thirty minutes, maybe so we weren’t involved in that accident. So God had an angel take that iPod and then put the iPod back on Monday. I feel that we are barely conscious of all the ways God works in our lives to protect us.

I am on vacation in California and having a blast. We went whale watching Tuesday, getting up at the unearthly hour of 4:30 so we (all nine of us and then most of my siblings and their families) could be to the boat by 9 AM and out on the Pacific Ocean off of Newport Beach, breakfasted, sunblocked coated, and with lunch packed and gear to go swimming later.

This is my niece who looks beautifully recovered after feeling sick on the boat and lying face down to take a nap and escape the seasickness. I saw some whale tails and backs and spoutholes and now know for sure that such creatures do exist because I saw some with my very own eyes. If you look hard in this next picture you can see the whale’s back and spouthole with a spray of water coming up. Sorry the picture’s not the greatest, it’s the best I could get with the camera that I have.

Then we spent some hours on the beach. I love the beach!

My nieces found sand dollars.

Thanks to my generous parents who are paying for our lodging, we have a condo right next to a pool at a resort in Palm Desert. We are enjoying the sunshine and water of California with grandpa and grandma and aunts and uncles and cousins, all 35 of us. The really nice part is that all 35 of us are not in the same condo. Each married couple/family has their own unit. I have a king sized bed that makes cosleeping and nursing my toddler in bed much nicer.

All of this fun pales however to last week. The most excitement that I have had in a long time came on Saturday. It just so happened that we would be traveling to CA the same weekend that the Youth for Freedom people would be announcing the winner of the Andau Character Prize. This is a one-year tuition-paid scholarship to George Wythe College. See http://youthforfreedom.org/YFF2012/Andau_Character_Scholarship.html God definitely had a hand in the timing of this. YFF picked the date for the announcement of the winner and my dad picked the date for this week’s family vacation/reunion in California.

I am not sure what I am looking at, maybe a bird?

My friend Aneladee’s daughter won the prize, so did my friend Roslyn’s son and my friend Amy’s son, all years ago. I have watched these amazing youth and hoped that someday at least one of my children would win it. I have been to the web site for George Wythe College countless times and stared at the tuition page, wondering how we would pay for it. I have been to the Andau Character prize page countless times and wondered how I could inspire my son to go for it. I have known about GWC since its beginnings because my sister-in-law Mary was in the charter class. She had Oliver DeMille as a mentor and Tiffany Earl as a classmate. Wow, that would be so fascinating. She doesn’t realize what an amazing opportunity she had. As I have looked over the listing of the books that the students read I have thought, I have read some of these, during my college education, but how cool would it be to read all these books and know them thoroughly. Drooling over this list of books made me realize I wanted my children to go to GWC.

I also remember hearing Oliver DeMille speak over 12 years ago at an LDS homeschool convention. He told the story of some Latter-day Saints who were waiting to embark on a ship to travel from Buffalo New York, I think it was, to go to Ohio. One of their leaders, I think it was Wilford Woodruff (which would be cool if that’s really the case because my 5-great-grandpa taught him the gospel and baptized him) and all of the sudden he felt the Spirit tell him these saints should not board the ship. People believed him and did not get on the ship and were spared disaster because the ship sank. That story has always stuck with me. When I heard it long ago it planted a seed in my heart. I wanted my children to be like that, to be able to feel the Spirit and to know when they were and to be willing to follow the Spirit and go against the flow of everyday life. Well, all I can say is, be careful what you wish for because it just might come true.

 Because we would be driving through southern Utah anyway we decided to leave on Friday, spend two nights at my sis-in-law Sally’s home, and be there for the announcement of the winner at the end of the Youth for Freedom session. I am sooooo happy to share the news that my son won this year’s prize! He and two other youth were finalists and they were all there for the announcement. I haven’t cried out of excitement like that in a long time. I feel like we have won the Superbowl! But instead of saying he’s going to Disneyland my son can say he’s going to TJED Land.

Thiis is a picture of three of my sons, their three cousins who also “do TJED,” my husband, and me. 

My son also applied to BYU and got accepted with a half-tuition scholarship. I come from a huge BYU family. My dad and brother are both professors there. I and all of my siblings have bachelor’s degrees from there as well as each of our spouses. Even my grandma has a degree from BYU. I felt great pride knowing that he had a scholarship to BYU. I did want him to go to George Wythe, but wasn’t sure how we could pay for it or that my son would win the Andau. The BYU scholarship was a great “cushion” to fall back on in my mind, if he didn’t win the Andau. Unbeknownst to me, however, before my son went to Youth for Freedom in June to compete for the Andau (while they are at the camp the Andau candidates are watched like a hawk and given character tests. Those who pass the character tests and the essay exam are then given an oral exam) he called BYU up to tell them he had decided not to go to school there and that he did not want the scholarship. I found out a few weeks later and just about had a heart attack. What?!!!? Couldn’t you wait until after you heard about who the winner of the Andau is in July? No, mom, he told me. My younger son explained to me that he was applying the law of the vaccuum that Leslie Householder teaches. “He has to make room for the Andau by letting go of the other scholarship.” My older son also explained to me that he had been praying and the Spirit was telling him not to go to BYU, that he was to go to George Wythe. So I finally got my wish, a child who is willing to follow the Spirit, but does it have to happen when the stakes are so high? Apparently so. My brain wanted to argue him out of following this path but I knew my heart was agreeing with him, so I accepted his decision without any more talking about it. I had to remind myself that this was his decision to make, because it was his education, not mine.

This is Hilton with Margaret Milius, one of the judges, GWC grad, and former Andau prize winner. It’s pretty ironic that my son decided to wear his BYU tie. I guess he will always be a huge fan of its sports teams. We still like BYU and I still wouldn’t mind any of my children going there. Go Jimmer!

When Margaret Milius announced Hilton’s name as the winner I felt such a rush of relief, gratitude, and euphoria. I felt like I feel after I just have a baby. All those mentor meetings I have had with him, all of the dinner table conversations to generate excitement over learning and following a non-conveyor belt education, all of the times I have put my foot down and not let him play video games, so that he would spend his time more productively. i.e. reading and studying, all of the seminars and talks I have been to be a better homeschooling mom, all of the times I have spent reading a book, hoping that it rubbed off on him, it had all come to fruition. I am feeling extremely blessed and grateful right now. Dreams really do come true. Thank you God for working this miracle in my life! I owe this all to you, and to Diann Jeppson, owner of http://tjedmarketplace.com, since she raised the money for the Andau.

I used to call Leadership Education “ownership education.” I thought it was all about owning your own education and letting your children own theirs. Now I know a better term for it. When you let God own your education by giving him permission to guide you, and better yet, when you let God guide your child’s education and teach the child to let God guide it, it’s “stewardship education.” Let God guide your children’s education through His whisperings to you and your child and see what miracles unfold. Hey, I think that’s what being a student whisperer is all about. http://tjed.org/purchase/books/student-whisperer/

Back at Aunt Sally’s home with more siblings and cousins. The first thing Hilton wanted to do after winning was to call his younger sister and give her the news.

When I am on vacation next week  I am hoping to have huge chunks of time to blog about NFP and then the LEMI Training, and then my hair (yes, I love my naturally curly hair. My sis in law Sally gave me this great product for naturally curly hair on my last trip to TJED Land. I can just hear Sally, she’s rather frank, calling it “black chick cream.” It’s for women of color. I use it to let out my inner curl. When trips to the hairdresser get to be stretched out I start going curly to hide my roots more. But I just got my hair done, i.e. more blonde– hooray! and had her do the straight iron thing. My hairdresser can always get it more straight and glamorous than I can. I enjoy it for a while and then it’s back to the ponytails everyday and messy buns on Sunday.)

When I get back I can add a lot more pics to my latest posts, like this one, when I have my camera back. It is so time consuming for me to transfer pictures from my cell phone.  In the meantime I have to share what I learned today, it was so cool!

For my online finishing school today (which you all can still join, go here to learn more http://treeoflifemothering.ning.com/pages/an-online-finishing-school-for) we discussed G.K. Chesterton’s essay “What’s Wrong With the World, part 3, Feminism.” Read it here…http://readbookonline.net/read/19314/55233/

Oh my, this is such a magnificent essay! He says that women are the universal element of life. Men are specific, they have to be, in order to succeed in breadwinning. But women are like fire, they have many purposes, because they are homemakers. As Chesterton puts it, “To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe?”

We women get to be “everything to someone” (our baby, or even better, babies)  instead of the same thing to someone, which is what you do if you are the breadwinner. As he put it, “it’s a generous, dangerous, and romantic trade.” Amen, brother! Feminism is about discovering our female characteristics, namely our ability to be wives and mothers, and find the power in those roles.

Oooh, there are so many juicy jewels of fruit in this essay. Here’s another, “How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.” Wow! When we embrace our roles as mother and homemaker and wife, and truly dig into the science of nurturing our families with food and music and books and activities and a clean home and adventures outside the home, our task is huge, but God is there to help us. Chesterton  also says that woman can be the center and pillar of health in her family. I agree. This is the awesome power we have ladies.  As the blog that I link to below states, health begins with mom. It all starts with breastfeeding and then it expands to learning about the nourishing traditions Sally Fallon teaches that build healthy guts and happy lives. To quote my friend Jonell of http://myfeelgoodfoods.com, “Sisters we can build Zion from our kitchen counters!”

In my quest to build a happy upcoming vacation for my family I am searching for homemade granola bars to make for our trip. For some reason I always love to take granola bars on road trips. I have never found a good commercial granola bar that is free from all the harmful ingredients I watch out for. I found recipes here http://heavenlyhomemakers.com/homemade-chewy-granola-bars-without-corn-syrup and for a soaked granola bar recipe  here http://healthbeginswithmom.blogspot.com/2009/01/so-what-is-health-anyway-part-iii.html. Soaked granola is better for your health.  I am going to try the first one and see how it goes since I don’t have time to soak. These blogs are great resources for learning about becoming the center and pillar of health in your family.

I went to LEMI training and am still recovering. 🙂 In a good way. I will post pictures that I took at the training soon. I took them with my cell phone which aren’t as great as pics I can take with my camera. The training was AWESOME! I learned so much and I am so grateful that our commonwealth school paid for most of the training. It was so fun. I will blog about  my musings soon. But now we have our family Saturday work to do and it’s slow going with a toddler who wants to undo our work.

Anyway, I am so excited because the Youth for Freedom people found my camera! I left it there at the camp when I took my kids last month. I last remember setting it down in the restroom on the counter. I didn’t do my routine of normally keeping it in its case attached to my belt loop because I chose to wear pants without belt loops that day.

I’ve learned so many lessons. #1 Label your things. You know what is yours but if you are going out and about, nobody else knows that it’s yours. It makes me think of Jesus. How do other people know that we are His? Do you have something on you that marks you as His? Would people who found you who didn’t already know you know that you are Christ’s? Is his image engraven on your countenance?

#2 Don’t change your routine when it’s working for you, especially when you are gone away from home and doing/visiting something new. I am always going to wear my pants that have belt loops when I plan on using my camera.

#3 God hears my prayers but he works in mysterious ways. Right after I lost my camera He gave me a dream that someone I met there named Misty was talking to me and then my camera appeared in the air. When I woke up I called my sister-in-law, Misty’s friend, to get Misty’s number so I could call Misty. Misty said “Yes, when I was there I heard someone announce that they found a camera.” I felt like a detective as I took down the names of all the people who she said were there and I had all their phone numbers because they were all my friends but one person. I hunted down a friend of a friend to get that last person’s number. I called them all and nobody had a clue. Just last night I asked God, “Why did you let me have that dream if it just led to a dead end?” I am still wondering. Maybe it was just so I could get to know Misty. She was at LEMI training. She asked about my camera and told me, “I get the feeling like your camera is still at the camp.” What a savant she is!  I talked with her more and shared the title of a book I am reading that maybe she needs to know about.

#4. When you lose something, don’t give up hope, but don’t let it ruin your life. As I heard from Cristie Gardner at the LDS holistic living conference say, “If some desired blessing doesn’t come right away, let go of your hold.” Last night I asked God to send me another dream telling me where the camera was. I asked him to let me know if it was in a garbage (and that’s when I would stop hoping to find it) if he would just give me a dream showing the camera in a garbage. I woke up this morning, remembered my prayer, and almost started crying when I remembered my wish and that no dream had come.Then during my morning scripture study I prayed that God will tell me a clue of where it was and then I asked Him to lead me to a scripture to answer me. The scripture I turned to was Jeremiah and had nothing to do with a lost camera. I was sorely disappointed.

So just today I had decided to let go of my hold of it. I would miss the  precious pictures and video I took, but I was counting my blessings of all the things I have still like my good health and all my family and their health.  I was planning on attracting a iPhone that would allow me to take even better pictures and video. And then lo and behold, I get an email saying they have it!

The night is always darkest before the dawn, so don’t give up! The bright day is just around the corner!

So, I just joined this site and I’m so excited because it’s like I’ve found my home planet.  I knew there were people like me out there, but I’ve had such a hard time finding them!  I’ve lived in Idaho, Oregon, Kansas, Utah, and Oklahoma over the last few years and I’m usually the weirdest person in my ward.  Homeschooling, home birthing, “no I won’t wean the baby just so I can go to Girl’s Camp”… It’s lonely sometimes, so I’m thrilled to find a place where I can totally be myself. 

And I just discovered I can blog on here too!  I’ve long been an avid blogger, but because of my extremely varied audience there are certain things I wish I could say on my blog that I just can’t.  Do y’all mind if I just come over here and say them?

Like this:  I realized today that my baby really needs to start solids and I have been dreading this!  She is more than seven months old and she’s been nursing very frequently lately and acting a little bit cranky.  I can tell she’s ready for more substantial food, but I’m wishing we could just keep nursing exclusively for a long time yet.  The biggest reason I’m avoiding solids is that I am going to have to stop being lazy and start charting again.  I know I should be charting right now, but I’m relying on the “chances are slim when you’re exclusively breastfeeding” concept.  But I could start cycling again anytime now.  Sigh. 

Also, breastfeeding is the biggest component of my weight loss plan and I still have 15 pounds to lose.  The more she eats from me the more calories I burn.  If I start her on solids, I have to be more careful about what I eat.  How obnoxious!

But my husband reminded me today how cute little babies are sitting in the high chair and eating things like blueberries and peas and little chunks of banana.  A whole world of delights is about to open up for my little Peanut and I should be glad for her.