Tree of Life Mothering

I’ve noticed that my blog post titled “Catch this Gift For Yourself For Christmas” is the most popular post on my site. For those of you who are disappointed that you are too late in getting the gift of downloads from the LDS Holistic Living Conference last year, here’s another gift. It’s a set of downloads as well, like the gift being given in the afore-mentioned blog post, and it’s still available.

These are mp3 files of talks given by my friends at the conference I sponsored almost two years ago for natural living LDS moms. I don’t know how much longer I will keep them up on my site, so download them while you can. Speakers include Leslie Householder, Donna Goff, Joyce Kinmont, Jonell Francis of http://myfeelgoodfoods.com, Vernie DeMille, Diann Jeppson, Aneladee Milne. Go here http://treeoflifemothering.ning.com/page/free-recordings-from-the-2009 to get your gift and tell your LDS crunchy granola mom friends about it too!

Whew, last week was busy. It started out on Sunday by hearing a talk on BYU’s radio station featuring Sister Bonnie Parkin, formerly the General Relief Society President of the LDS Church. Her talk was all about having a personal ministry. (see http://www.byub.org/talks/Talk.aspx?id=121) That was a new idea to me. I mean, I always hear of “ministering to the one,” when people talk about Jesus but I had never really connected that to how to do that in my life.  She said there are many things we can do quietly as acts of service by following the generous impulses we get. Then I realized the idea wasn’t so new to me. I have witnessed many people throughout my life do kind things not because they are given a church calling or public recognition to do it, but just because they feel like it. I want to be more that way. I am learning it doesn’t have to involve spending money or spending a lot of time. It doesn’t involve making a wedding cake when cupcakes, or even nonedible, but sweet sentiments, will do. It can involve simply smiling at someone, welcoming new people or visitors at church, getting to know your neighbors, making phone calls, and wishing people happy birthday.

Sister Parkin said that her daughter-in-law’s mother was that kind of person. This lady once felt like making a tie for President Kimball out of some silk she had bought. She started taking it over to him but then felt like she was being out of place, giving a homemade tie to the prophet. She decided to give it to him anyway, almost apolegetically, and he told her to never suppress a generous impulse.

That answered a question in my mind. I have been working on family history research. Right now the names that are right before my eyes in my research are not names on my personal ancestry line, but “sideways names” on my family tree. I  researched the relations of my fifth great grandfather’s nephew’s wife. So they are in-laws. They are all in Georgia. I found a lot of them as a huge goldmine of names on findagrave.com. They haven’t had their temple work done. I had been wondering if I should submit their names and get their work done. “Never suppress a generous impulse” tells me that it’s OK that I do them. I’m calling the work I do for them part of my personal ministry.

Every week my three oldest children go to the temple to do baptisms to do the family names I’ve been finding. So now I have quite the pile of names to do the rest of the work for. Over a year ago I had the problem of how to find names since my direct line has been a ways back. I like this new problem of having too many  names. I decided I would go do some initiatory work at the Bountiful Temple last week. It took some planning and finagling to fit it with my children’s schedule. I originally just thought I would go on Saturday when everybody’s home and either my husband or the older kids could be in charge. Then I remembered I would be gone on Saturday to the Freedom Bowl with my older children.  I finally determined the best time to go to the temple would be before I have to pick up my children at their weekly commonwealth school. I haven’t done initiatories in a long time, what with having my baby eighteen months ago. I am getting back into the groove of doing temple work regularly. And best of all, I am doing family names. I love it!

It felt so marvelous to go to the temple in the middle of the day on a Thursday. I have never done that before. Ever. Not even before I had kids. It’s so wonderful to have older children to babysit. Having kids has and having them grow up has opened up my life to new possibilities. I did a dozen names and then went and picked up my two children at their commonwealth school. It feels good to go to the temple more. I am going to make this a habit, now that my baby is eighteen months old and can separate easily.

The day before my girlfriend Shauna called me at 7 AM announcing that she had found a toilet for sale for only $15 on ksl.com. This is my friend whose frugality puts Amy Dacyzyn to shame. This toilet was perfect for the basement she is finishing. She begged me to go buy it for her before someone else nabbed this screaming hot deal since it was only 10 minutes from my home and 45 from hers. It would certainly take some time out of my day but I was happy to help her out. Fetching a toilet can be part of my personal ministry anytime, despite my husband’s jokes.

Saturday I spent nearly all day with my kids at the Freedom Bowl in Salt Lake City. My two older kids won first place (for the third time) and my third child won second place. It was so much fun! Of course I watched some rounds, and that was fun, to see my kids compete, but it was also fun to visit with Shauna, and Aneladee, my girlfriend who helped co-found the Commonwealth School model with Tiffany Earl. Shauna had never met Aneladee and it was so fun to see them visit and talk about remodeling homes and scholar phase. I  get a lot of satisfaction from networking, putting people together who I know will just hit it off. I’ve seen it happen in the La Leche League groups that I’ve led as I see moms in my group engage in passionate conversations and arrange visits and now I am seeing it my social life as my circles keep widening.

The previous week my attorney husband and two of my kids participating in the mock trial program had been to my friend Lily’s home to prepare for mock trial. Lily is such a talker that after the practice was over my family stayed till about midnight chatting with her. She is a second generation homeshooler and has an interesting perspective. In fact, it was her mom’s talk at the LDSHEA convention years ago that totally inspired me. So at the Freedom Bowl Lily gets together with my girlfriend Shauna and they find out that Lily used to babysit for Shauna’s sister-in-law Christy once a week when Christy would go to the temple. So that gave them hours of material to talk about. Shauna said that Lily is the first person she has met who could out talk her. Lily had to be practically dragged out of the building by her son when their ride was leaving the event because she wanted to finish telling her story.

At these homeschooling competitions, I like to give my children the best edge. I intervene as I can if I see something that’s not right. It’s not like I am a pushy stage mother, I just like to do my part to make sure they get their best opportunity to show what they know. So I made sure I was there for the training of the judges/volunteer parents. I was told that I couldn’t be a judge since I had children in both divisions, sr. and jr. That was OK. I looked over the schedule and saw that son and daughter’s team was competing against girlfriend Shauna’s daughter’s team the very first match. This was the match of the century, since it was pitting teams who have won first place before against each other. My friend Katie’s husband was put as the judge of that match. He was proclaiming stupidity (he is actually quite smart), saying that he didn’t really want to judge any match since this was the first time. I was willing to have him be a judge, I just didn’t want him judging the most critical match of the tournament. So I spoke up and said it was the most critical match and that I wanted somebody experienced to judge it. So the organizer got the writer of the program to be the judge.

That was a very good thing because Mr. Swain, the writer, remembered to rephrase each question in the match. The rephrasing threw Shauna’s daughter, Lighting Answer Girl, off. Lightening Answer Girl has opposed one or more of my children every year for four years. Two and three years ago she won first place, last year she lost to my two older children. No longer could she rely on her memorized question/answer bank. The kids actually had to listen carefully, not cut the judge off after two words, and think. It was a close match, but my kids won so after that I knew they had won the tournament. Now they can attend AYLI’s Simulations Week for free. Yippee!

Who knows what would have happened if someone else was the judge, someone inexperienced who forgot to rephrase the questions. My kids might have lost. I am learning that these little interventions I can make as a mother matter. I really am not the pushy, bossy type so I do it politely. I am seeing that mothers can make all sorts of interventions, especially homeschool moms. It really does make a difference in your kids’ lives. There are lots of times when I just want to be alone and study and have a break from supervising and intervening and mentoring and phone calling. I am constantly seeing that my kids need me in different ways from when they are babies. When they are babies, I really enjoy breastfeeding and being an attachment parent. Those things are easy to do. As they get older, I am learning that it takes some creativity and thinking and still sacrifice of my free time to make phone calls, do research on classes and scholarships and programs and having mentor meetings to facilitate their achievement.  I am liking it. It’s part of my personal ministry as a mom. If I don’t do it for them, who will?

Moms, as the Savior is a tree of life to you, you are the tree of life to your babies. Nobody else can give your baby your milk and a breastfeeding experience, the best and biologically normal start in your life. It’s worth whatever sacrifice it takes. When you are exclusively breastfeeding your baby, you are a literal tree of life to them, giving them everything they need for sustenance. That experience can be a model for the rest of your mothering career. As your children get bigger and wean, they don’t need you for your milk but they need you for mentoring. nobody else can mentor them like you can in their education and intervene in their behalf.  Being a tree of life to our babies is something we can resist or something we can choose to feel honored about and embrace. It’s actually quite fun, and infinitely more rewarding than any CEO or attorney job,  so go for it!

It’s official! My 17 year old son got word last week that he has been accepted into a major private university for admission, starting fall 2011. He is still applying to other colleges and for scholarships. We will see which school gives him the best deal and then he will decide which one to attend. This is the university that I obtained my bachelor of science degree from, as well as the same school that my husband did. It’s the university where we met, when he was going to law school and I was an undergrad. So we are feeling a bit nostalgic. We realize this university isn’t perfect, but with the knowledge my son has of how to really learn, I know he can choose to get a liberal arts/leadership education there. He has yet to apply to George Wythe College, which is also on his list. It will be interesting to see if he gets accepted at every college he applies to and which one he will pick.

(My son with his cousin, who is also a homeschooled TJED youth,)

I am also breathing a  HUGE sigh of relief. As my oldest child, he is my guinea pig in homeschooling. Since one of the goals of my homeschooling is to get my children into college, I can say that homeschooling works, at least for this child. He has never set foot into a public school to attend classes. He has done some online charter public schooling. That lasted for a year and then we decided it wasn’t for us.  Not every homeschooler has the goal of getting children into college. If it’s your goal, you might want to read on.

How to Get Your Homeschooling Child Into College

1. Start with a burning desire to homeschool even before your child is born or you get married. For me, this desire came from coming out of the public school system myself. After seeing the poor, spiritually toxic attitude and behavior of the kids I was surrounded by (i.e. “What will you give me if I do this work?”, not to mention the worship of football and basketball and careless attitudes towards scholarship, despite the fact that schools are supposed to be for scholars) I knew my kids would have something better, if I had to do it myself. This desire has been strong enough to withstand the negative comment from my father, a former public school district board member, and other occasional negative comments from my mother-in-law and others.

2. Because the adjustment to doing public school at home was a little hard with a baby and a preshooler as well, do school only three days a week. Take a break the other two days and let him play a lot.

3. Hear Oliver DeMille speak at a homeschool convention in 1999. Miss most of what he says because you are so sleep deprived with three children five and under and a husband who is gone every week traveling on business that you fall asleep while sitting on a hard chair. See that one of your email friends refers to him in an email she writes on a Charlotte Mason email group. Realize that what he said must be worth paying attention to. Tuck that info into the back of your brain.

4. Have fun poring over homeschool catalogs. Feel like you are a kid in a candy shop. Tell your husband that you are homeschooling his firstborn. Why should the school teachers have all the fun learning with your child?

5. Get Mathusee math materials. At first, watch the Mathusee video with your son while eating popcorn and see how much fun math is. See that he does a page a day of math before he plays. Be skeptical of the “inspire, not require” mantra applied to math and children.

6. Go to lots of homeschooling conferences and see the Noah Plan from the FACE people promoted. Feel frustrated that you can’t afford the curriculum. Realize that it it’s OK since your child is not in scholar phase and this program works best for children in scholar phase. If the children aren’t in scholar phase it burns out the mother.

7. Get copies of What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know and then What Your First Grader Needs to Know. Start reading them to your son. See that he is not interested. Realize that it’s better to let him become interested in what he needs to know when he wants to (except for math :-)). Keep the books for him to read later on his own in scholar phase.

8. Help him polish his reading skills using the book Reading Reflex. (He already taught himself how to read when he was four.) Do a lesson or so a day for a few months. See his reading skills take off as he enjoys reading on his own.

9. Get the Italic writing series workbooks and have him do a page a day of handwriting.

10. Have fun buying fun homeschooling items like Math Shark, all the books by Peggy Kaye (Games for Math, Games of Learning, Games for Reading, etc.) the picture book biographies by the D’Aulaires, Phonics Firefly for his younger sister, arts and crafts material, a gyroscope, and a Chinese jump rope.

11. Enjoy teaching him how to multiply when he is only six by using a lesson in the Games for Math book while fixing soup for dinner. He is in the kitchen and is eager to learn. All it takes is a piece of paper and crayons and his inquiring mind.

12. Supplement his home education with creative dance lessons, soccer, basketball, and gymnastics.

13. Do a once a week “group” school with other homeschoolers where you each do one lesson for one subject.

14. Feel frustrated that it’s really hard to do science “class” with him, because the baby always seems to be into all of the materials, wanting to finger paint or eat them. Read Diane Hopkins’ article “The Baby is the Lesson.” (http://lovetolearn.net/policies/baby.lasso) Hope that someday he will have the desire and the ability to do these science projects on his own. Let go of the conveyor belt notion that kids have to know certain objectives of science education at certain ages.

15. Have more babies. Give your child more responsibility helping around the house, like making a loaf of bread in the breadmachine every day and doing the dinner dishes.

16. Have fun teaching him and his sister to draw with the book Drawing with Children.

17. Read aloud to your child at night. Read aloud during school time as well. Enjoy books like Hillyer’s A Child’s History of the World and A Child’s Geography of the World.

18. Hear Aneladee Milne speak at her seminar about The Hero Generation. Know that you want your kids to take part in the Commonwealth School model that she has helped develop with Tiffany Earl that she talks about in her seminar.

19. Move an hour away to a place where a lot of people are into Thomas Jefferson Education, including Aneladee. By a miracle of God, run into the above-mentioned friend in point #3 who referred to Oliver DeMille on an email list. Find out that she lives in the town you moved to and she is starting up a group for moms interested in TJED.  Learn more about it and decide it might be worth practicing.

20. Enroll your son in the commonwealth school when he is almost 12. Feel so excited for him that you almost want to attend the classes for him, abandoning your younger children.

21. Learn more about TJED by reading more, attending classes, and talking to people. Have some frustrating talks with your husband because he doesn’t feel like your son is learning enough, which you translate into meaning that you are not doing a good enough job of homeschooling.

22. Have a downturn in your family’s economy. Feel frustrated that you lack the money to buy math books. Try out the K12 program for a year when your son is 13. Decide that it’s too much of public school at home, and what’s the point of doing it to get “free” curriculum when they ask for it back at the end of the year?

23. Have weekly mentor meetings with your son, discussing his academics as well as his emotional, physical, and emotional life. Read the Scholar Phase article by Oliver DeMille, which is now a chapter in the book, Leadership Education: the Phases of Learning. Know that that is exactly what you want for your son. Give him the responsibility of owning all of the family’s laundry and lots of time to study as a scholar. He no longer has to clean the bathroom every week or do dishes every day.

24. See his interest in Shakespeare and history take off because of the projects he takes part in at the commonwealth school. See him get excited about Robert E. Lee and acting. Watch him enjoy all the classes offered at the commonwealth school, including the hardest one of all, Thomas Jefferson Youth Certification. Sometime in all of this turn over the correction of his daily math work to him by giving him the answer key.

25. See his knowledge of computers and programming build as he listens to podcasts on his mp3 player while doing his chores. Consciously decide that you will not have any X-boxes or Wiis in your home to distract him from studying.

26. Enroll him in an online charter school, Open HIgh School, because you worry that maybe he needs a diploma, but you don’t want to send him to the local public school. See that he can do well at “regular” tests and schoolwork.

27. Decide that Open High school isn’t exactly what you want after a year of him doing it. Cheer when you hear about Williamsburg Academy http://wacademy.org. Figure out a way to pay for it (for us it was using our tax return). Sign him up.

28. Host an ACT boot camp with Ann Meeks so that your son can take the boot camp for free. See him take the test and be pleasantly surprised that at age 16 he gets a better ACT score on the practice test than you did when you took it for real at age 18. Don’t tell him that.

29. Realize that he doesn’t need a diploma or a public school transcript to get into college. You can make a transcript up for him!  See your conveyor belt ideas continue to wither away.

30. Watch him enjoy his classes and mentors at Williamsburg Academy. Feel jealous that you couldn’t have the same experience as a kid, reading and talking about Montesquieu, de Tocqueville, and Locke. The only time you learned about Montesquieu was when your AP history teacher said that he influenced the Founding Fathers with his book The Spirit of the Laws.

Hear about the book Major Decisions by Henry Eyring, from Ann Meeks. Read the book, obtained from the public library,  and feel more inspired than ever to have your children go to college. Ask your parents to give the book to your son for his birthday.

(He looks real excited, doesn’t he? It really is a great book, he just didn’t know it yet!)

31. Find out that he wants to go to college next year, even though technically he is a junior and was going to take another year at Williamsburg. Remember that he doesn’t need a “complete” high school transcript or diploma to get into college. Continue to let go of conveyor belt ideas.  Direct him to signing up for the last ACT test of the year so that he can start applying in the winter to go to college in the fall.

32. Encourage him to take at least three practice ACT tests. Watch him do them and get better scores than he did on his first practice test with Ann Meeks. Be glad that you can actually read his handwriting. Give him feedback on his writing test. See that he doesn’t really want your feedback.  Pray that he will write better on the actual test. Remember that Andrew Pudewa said in his writing workshop, that most graders of standardized tests take only 5 minutes a test.

33. Encourage him to start applying to college. Spend an afternoon over Christmas break when five of the six younger siblings are gone, making a transcript up for him, following the model you get from a homeschooling friend who has two daughters in college. Go over his educational history for the last five years, since he was 12. Rename the classes he took at the Commonwealth School with more generic names like Ann Meeks suggested in her talk at the TJED Forum (see http://tjedmarketplace.com/forums/slc/2010/youth-forum-ages-16-18/college-reading-classics). For instance, change Key of Liberty to  American History I and Sword of Freedom to American History II.  Watch your husband and son take the transcript and tinker with it some more.

34. Watch him get his ACT score back and cheer that it is over 30! 

35. Watch him get all the paperwork done and send it off to the first college. Pray that he will get accepted.

36. Be the first one to hear him say as he checks his email on a cold, bleak and dreary Thursday morning in February before the sun comes up (while you are doing your own education of “you, not them”), “I got accepted!” Feel prouder than the day he took his first step or rode a bike. It is so swell to see him getting accepted into the college that you, your husband, your four siblings and all their spouses, your parents, and grandmother graduated from. Homeschooling, parenting, and mentoring don’t get much better than this. What a sweet payback time!

Yesterday I drove to Provo to meet with my friends the Bowlers. Amy, the mom, and her husband, Kent, and their son Brad and I are all presenting to the youth at the TJED Forum together on March 19th in SLC which is put on by http://tjedmarketplace.com. We will be speaking about the Hero Generation and The Fourth Turning. I am so excited! They had driven up from St. George to drop their son off at the MTC for his mission to Siberia. (Oy, I am glad that it is him and not me. God bless you Chris in the land of snow and the former Gulag!) I can only imagine what it will be like when I drop my son off in a year and a half. Families literally drop their missionaries off now. In the old days, with my brothers, the whole family would dress up like we were going to church and we could go into the MTC and have a program and watch a movie and sing songs and tearfully say goodbye. Now the families just get to drop them off at the curb and drive away, as if they had just left their dry cleaning. It seems a bit abrupt and unsentimental but I guess that’s the way the brethren want it now. 

Anyway,  our meeting was nice for Amy to help her keep her mind off the fact that she had just said a two-year goodbye to her son. We got right to work and ditched my original outline and made a new outline for the presentation. Now we each have some homework to do to get ready. We shared some amazing stories about WWII that we are going to present. We are going to have so much fun in this. These are not your typical congratulatory stories to tell youth that “you are so great and wonderful…you have a mission to do…oh you are so special!” These are stories to get them thinking about the hard decisions ahead of them that they will most likely have to make as children of the Fourth or Hero Generation. (If you don’t know what The Fourth Turning is or a Fourth or Hero Generation go to http://fourthturning.com) It all started when I went down to TJED land last June so my son could go to Youth for Freedom.  I stayed with my sister-in-law and she made that casual remark about her friend Amy’s son who wrote a paper for TJYC about Abraham Lincoln.

Since it was recently President’s Day and people have been thinking about Lincoln, the following may be of interest. Soooo  many people glorify him. We’ve been trained to think that he was the savior of the nation and so great that he could nearly walk on water. I got to speak to Stephen Pratt about Honest Abe recently. Stephen is a self-made scholar of history. He studies history and then he gives presentations about what he has learned, independent of any college or organization, other than the one that he owns. (See his site http://libertyandlearning.org) He doesn’t give the traditional view of textbook and mainstream media history, which is always written by the winners. It’s history with a paradigm of asking questions and keeping the Constitution in mind.

So I asked Stephen about Lincoln. Stephen said that he has read at least 50 books about Lincoln. He told me has read The Real Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo. I read that book last summer and asked him what he thought of it. The book portrays Lincoln quite negatively. Stephen said that he felt the book was a little too harsh and judged his character as bad. DiLorenzo says that Lincoln was a smooth politician, in other words, a consummate liar. After reading that book you start to feel that Lincoln was a dirty rotten scoundrel and you almost feel like not letting any five dollar bills into your home. I personally feel that Lincoln was misled by the big business interests that were surrounding him as his advisors and the powers that be that get presidents elected. In other words, he was not evil, just wrong and deceived. He was interested in using government to create a better society by expanding the nation’s power through the tariff and government money spent on canal building and railroads. From what I can tell, this is when government spending on things the government shouldn’t spend money got started. Now we know what mess that has led us into.

Anyway, exciting things have been happening in our family. My firstborn, my 17-year-old son, just got word today that he’s been accepted to start BYU this fall. Hooray! Now we are waiting to hear about scholarships and if he’ll get accepted to the other places he applied to. Then he’ll pick the best deal.

Yesterday I took my little kids to the Museum of Church History and Art across from Temple Square in SLC. It has the cutest exhibit for children. With a Latin American and Book of Mormon theme, it invites children to learn more about missionaries, Latin American culture, and the Book of Mormon stories. My daughter actually said she was bored some of the time, because she is such a fickle child. And I don’t even spoil her. But my sons had a blast throwing the fish out and back into Nephi’s ship. I always feel such a special feeling whenever I go to LDS Church buildings. A feeling of peace and anchoring. It just helps me feel in touch with LDS heritage, my roots, and God.They had a display about sharing the gospel like the people did in Book of Mormon times by inviting people into your home and having the missionaries come. Oh yeah, I thought, I haven’t had the missionaries over to dinner in a long time. Hmmm.

While we were gone my other son had his first Mock Trial competition. He is 13, and has watched his older brother and sister compete the past four years in mock trials and has eagerly waited for this. I was sad to miss it but had already told my littler kids that we could go to the museum for getting the bean jar full on our way to meeting the Bowlers in Provo. (The bean jar is an ingredient to TJED. See Leadership Education: the Phases of Learning book by Oliver and Rachel DeMille to learn more about it.) He did very well! He got “Best Attorney” award and his team won! I will for sure be going to the next competition. These mock trials are a great way for kids to have a simulation and learn the importance of oral and written skills and thinking on your feet. He stayed up late to practice. He is such a thespian that he really gets into the act of being an lawyer.

Last Sunday I was enticed into going to the monthly Cousins’ Fireside that my mother-in-law puts on every third Sunday at her home. She said she would be telling family history stories and displaying much memorabilia before she ships it out to her niece in California. I am a sucker for family history these days so I went, eager to hear new stories. I gave up my journal writing, goodreads.com updating, and putting library books on hold time. Those are all the things that I do when I stay home with the baby and send everybody off to grandma’s home once a month. Oh those Sunday evenings once a month are precious. When you are a stay-at-home mom your alone time is just about only the times you visit the bathroom, and even then you might get invaded if you don’t lock the door. I am not truly alone because I keep the baby with me, but when you have seven kids, any time with just the baby seems like being alone. I was disappointed that I didn’t hear any truly new stories. I didn’t really have time to pore over the memorabilia either.

A blessing did come of out of it all though. My sister-in-law mentioned she had a treadmill to give away, because her daughter-in-law, who had been using it, was switching to an elliptical. At first I thought, I can’t have it, I don’t have room. But by morning, I had come up with an idea. I’ll just put it in my living room, over by the fireplace. So I texted her on Monday morning and now it’s Thursday and it’s here, thanks to my son and husband getting it for me on their way home from the BYU basketball game last night. (They won by the way!)

So what if my living room looks like a gym now. The idea struck me forcefully that the health of my body is more important than the looks of my living room. Now I truly have no excuse for not getting up early and running. I was getting good at it last summer and fall and could run for 30 minutes at a time but then when winter and snow came, I started being picky about when I would go run. Only if it was a dry day and not in the morning when it’s dark. Now the only limiting factor for me to exercise is that the baby has to be asleep. I don’t want any curious little hands getting caught. I did a work out this morning and whew! I worked up a huge sweat. I walked and ran for an hour, after I got the baby down for a nap.

My three older kids went baptizing for the dead this morning to the temple. Oh, the joys of having a teenage driver.  I have been working on research lately and found a few names here and there for them to take but nothing like a gold mine like two weeks ago when I discovered findagrave.com. But wouldn’t you know it, after they left I found a family name on findagrave.com with tons of links to other family members. A gold mine! So now I can’t wait to get to my next appointed time to do family history research, which is Sunday. I am wanting to apply the rules of the closet to myself and have “structure time, not content” for me and my nonurgent activities so they don’t spill over into my more urgent, but less fun, homemaking duties. It’s a tricky balance and I am still figuring it out. I have been good about staying off the computer during our school time but then in the afternoon when I should have been doing other homemaking things I was sneaking in little bits of time here and there to research names at ancestry.com. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been as successful at finding names, because I wasn’t keeping my promise to myself to do other things that need to get done around here.

When you are a mom, it’s sometimes hard to put boundaries of time between “your activities” and what’s not yours because so much of what you do is for others and so many things you do are for little people who are unpredictable. It can be hard to have boundaries of time. You can have time and space carved out to do something just for you and then have it totally blown away because of a sick child or baby. Like what happened to me eight years ago when I was going to go out with my mom for lunch on my birthday and then my baby threw up right on my pillow as we were lying in bed that morning. But if my heart’s in the right place and I trust God, I am learning that he always makes up for my disappointments.

I found such a cool web site for helping with family history research. The story goes like this…

I have been doing family history research like crazy. It is so addictive! Like an overeater with chocolates, I can’t control myself. I keep saying in my head, “Just one more…” Only in this case, it’s one more name. One more name to do temple work for. As a mother who doesn’t want any of her babies to suffer, be cold, or lonely, I feel that way towards these distant people who have left the earth but need temple work done to be exalted. I came across a name in the transcription of an 1850 census listed as “Nagaline”  as the youngest child of age 2 in a big family. This is a family of distant relatives by marriage to my ancestors. That sounded like an interesting girl’s name. I checked though and it turns out this person was a boy. Hmmm, what a funny name. I looked at the actual handwriting and the letter “g” actually looked like “p,” so it was Napaline. What a strange name. I started writing down all the names and figuring out the approximate birth years of the children in this family. Then I did some more research. I felt drawn to this person with the funny name. First I searched for him in ancestry.com with his name and birth year. Nothing came up. Then I searched for a person with the initials, first and middle, and the last name of this “Nagaline/Napaline,” and the birth year and birthplace. One thing that came up was a list of soldiers in the Civil War, with that person, only it said that his name was “Napoleon.” Hmmm, is this really the same person? Then, for some reason, I decided to do a Google search for this person.

Wow, what came up was a hit to a site called http://findagrave.com. It had a picture of his gravestone, said that he was a Civil War vet (for the Confederacy) and most importantly, gave me some family links. It said he was the son of the two people that I was hoping he was the son of, giving me their exact names and birth years, so I could confirm. It also gave me bonus information! It told me the name of his two wives, and the children he had by these two wives, and then the name of the child that his son had. Wow, I felt like I had hit a gold mine! I also found gravestones for some of the Durham family. That’s the family I wrote about in the last post. The grandfather was a doctor in Georgia, and he had sons and grandsons who were doctors. He had a 13 acre herb garden that he used for medicine. My children got baptized for these people yesterday. I feel that the Spirit guided me to this man’s name. He is in the spirit world happy to know that someone searched him out and is doing his temple work so he can be with his family forever.I think he’s also happy that some one figured out his name is Napoleon and not Nagaline or Napaline. I am wondering if Napoleon said with a Southern drawl sounds like Napaline.

This site is so cool! It is a genealogist’s dream! You can see the graves of famous people, and search for anyone you want. They don’t have everybody’s graves, but I think the database is growing every day. Not all of the gravestones have comments attached with family links, but the one I just mentioned just happened to. This site was founded by some guy in SLC. I think it would be a cool job to work for findagrave.com, going around the world taking pictures of gravestones.

The spirit of Elijah has caught on fire in me. My sister-in-law told me that the spirit of Elijah, according to Elder Russell M. Nelson, is a witness from the Holy Ghost that the family is the divine, eternal unit of society. It makes your heart soften towards your ancestors and relatives, and in turn that softens your heart towards your children. It is intertwined with the atonement of Jesus Christ, as it helps the human family be united as one family in Christ. It is the medicine that today’s world needs, and the way that the earth will be saved.

I haven’t blogged much lately. Is it ever an overstatement for a mom of seven to say so much is happening in her life? Tonight was FHE and I gave a great lesson on service…taken from the Gospel Principles lesson that we are studying this month in Relief Society. I love these basic lessons. I connected the idea of service to love since it’s Valentines. I had grand ideas of getting Valentines made during our homeschool this morning and leaving them on lonely widows’ porches but it just didn’t happen. Sadly, the activity my son did didn’t go over so well and he was disappointed. His older teenage brother and his dad were nearly passed out in sleep. In past weeks we have been playing our new board game from Christmas, Word on the Street, for a quick 20 minutes for the activity. I have never seen my children get so obnoxious until we played that game. My 12 year-old has mastered the art. The whole idea is to be so annoying with suggestions to your opposing team that they can’t think clearly. It’s lots of fun if you can get used to your son being a pestering motor mouth.

I’ve also been climbing my family tree, doing lots of family history research and sending names to the temple with my older children to do the baptisms. It is so fun to find the “bare branches” on my family tree and make them fruitful. I am finding a ton of people in the 1800s who don’t have a spouse or children identified. So I find their spouses and children in ancestry.com or the new web site of the LDS Church familysearch.org, which got revamped recently and got released from beta testing. Then I plug them in new.familysearch.org and claim them for getting the temple work done. My older kids have been going almost every week to the temple to do baptisms. I can just send the names with them. Last Saturday I got to do a temple endowment session with a name I had found by my very own self for the first time. It felt good.

In my research, I found a family on one of my branches, a collateral line,  whose dad was a doctor. They had two sets of twins. The dad used herbs in his practice in Georgia and had a 13 acre herb farm. I love learning about my people. And with the collaboration allowed on new.familysearch.org, everyone is “your people” as my sister-in-law says. It’s not about “your people” and “my people” but “our people.”

A while ago I found out that I qualify to join the Daughters of the Revolution. I found out around Christmastime from my brother about one of my ancestors being a Revolutionary War vet, but in the past week I have found out about two more. One of them even fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill.  I was all hot to apply for membership so that my son could apply for this really great scholarship for college that only DAR member children can get. I started getting the documents in order with the help of my genealogy guru extraordinaire sister-in-law. But then I realized there was no way I could get a DAR membership number in time to put it on the scholarship application. So we will just have to save this research for the rest of my kids and their cousins for them to apply in future years.

Last week I got the word from Diann Jeppson that I will be speaking at the SLC TJED Forum for Youth on March 19. My friend Amy Bowler and her son Brad will be my co-presenters. See http://cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Custom.aspx?cid=19&e=487e545c-56b1-47fb-9f99-d8301509a214. We will be talking about Hero Generations and The Fourth Turning. I am really excited. Diann has a lot of new speakers coming.

It’s going to be a full day. This year I get to take the whole family. Last month Mary Ann Johnson, the Home School Coach (see http://home-school-coach.com) asked me to be her assistant all day in the new Love of Learning Center. That’s the fancy term for the all day babysitting of the kids that come with their parents. The idea is to do more than just babysitting, to have activities that the kids will excitedly engage in all day. I told Mary Ann I might be speaking too and she said we would we would work that out. So my four younger kids get to be in the LOL day care center all day. Saaweet! Now I don’t have to pay a baby sitter. Every year that is a challenge for me to think of who to get to tend the younger ones and how to pay for it. Two years ago my husband babysat (or fathered, it bugs me to say that a mom or dad babysits) and then we realized, hey, he should be coming too. This year I was feeling especially challenged wondering what to do with my toddler. He is too young, with his nursing, to be gone from me all day, but I definitely did not want to take him to the Forum with all of his rambunctiousness. Thanks to Mary Ann’s offer, the problem is solved. I love the woman! Somehow the angels influenced her to think of my name to be her assistant. Maybe all that temple work I’ve been doing is giving me payback.

Mary Ann has been blessing my life so much. I have been testing her Closet Mastery Pilot Program for homeschooling. She has mastered the art of using the closet ingredient of TJED and teaches parents about it. As I went through the lessons in the workbook and did the assignments, I had a lot of introspection. One of the rules of using the closet is “to be present.” I realized that I had not been present enough for my children, not in the “school time” part, but in the foundation we lay every morning for school. The morning routine. I had been staying on the computer after they woke up and just telling them to do their morning routine instead of being present with them and doing it with them. That delayed the start of our school a lot because they would dawdle. Even with my Miracle Music playing.

Michelle Brady Stone’s admonition in her Celestial Education DVD has been ringing in my ears for a few years now. “The mother is the Holy Ghost,” meaning the mother should be the young child’s constant companion. 

(OK, So not literally. Not every waking moment can we be right by our young child’s side. But we can be in the same room for a lot of the day and at least the same house for all of the day, most days. We do have errands to run and business and play that is best done without children around.) I had a visit with her at the LDS-HEA convention when we both spoke years ago and told her that idea jived with the idea of TJED that in core phase the parents are supposed to work and play with the kids. The phrase should be, “Let’s get dressed now,” and “Let’s do this work together now,” as in “LET US” instead of “Do this alone” and “Do that alone.”

So I realized that I needed to treat my mornings with them like a sacred duty. I have a sacred duty to stay off the computer from the time they wake up in the morning until after school time and lunch time is over. That way I can be truly present with them for the foundation of our day, and that gives me more time to be present with them during school time. I had to face the fact that I was spending too much time with the computer over them. If I could be addicted to anything, it would be sugar, and the Internet. It’s great to nip this in the bud now. I conquered the sugar thing in college and now I’m doing the digital world.

This whole introspection made me think of my visit with Kelli Poll and Wendi Jackson one day as we rode down to Cedar City for a George Wythe College seminar two years ago. Kelli has been my informal homeschooling mentor since I moved to Davis County, UT. She has been doing TJED for a long time, longer than the DeMilles practically. She speaks every year at the SLC Forum.  We were talking about the idea of “structure time not content” and she likened it to the idea of dedicating a specific chunk of time to an area in your life. You tell yourself, OK, for this three hour block of time, I am going to work on dejunking the play room. Or for two hours on Friday I will work on family history research. You don’t tell yourself you have to get this and this done. You just tell yourself you will work solidly on dejunking or research, staying focused, not getting distracted. (OK, with children around, I am talking about major distractions, not the minimal ones to be expected with little children.) When the time is up, you leave the activity and move on to something else. During the chunk of time you focus on that activity. You don’t give in to distractions of “Oh, I am just going to get on Facebook and see what my friends are doing while I wait for the dryer to buzz, then I will take the clothes out, then I will get back to dejunking.” By focusing on the activity, you dedicate yourself to it. That means you build a sacred space of time and don’t let things intervene or distract.

So that made me think of the temple. The temple is dedicated as house to the Lord, wherein his purpose of sealing families for eternity is performed. It is a “sacred space” that doesn’t allow distractions or things that don’t belong there. So if I am going to structure my time for homeschooling I have the honor of building boundaries, like temple walls around the time, to create the sacred space that doesn’t allow activities that don’t belong there. That mental image has really helped me to increase my homeschooling joy. My homeschool day morning is like a temple and it needs a sound foundation of a morning routine with me, the mom, as a companion to my children. Being present at more than just school time is the best present I can give them and me.

Two weeks ago on the conference call for the Closet Mastery Pilot Program, Mary Ann shared with us her idea of time management that extends this concept of dedicating chunks of time even further. I am excited to learn more. She said her daughter Jodie Palmer would blog about it. When I find the info I will let you know.

I know I promised to blog more about the Eagle Forum Convention. Steve Russell’s talk was so amazing that I want to tell everyone about it. I also want to brag about how my 9 year-old won the Pinewood Derby (this is the second son in a row to win, I think we have the secret down), my 15 year-old daughter did a great acting job in her Shakespeare play, my little girl just turned five, and my baby is SOOO cute!  But I am going to take a break from being political and braggy to blog about babies in general and breastfeeding.

Sometimes I forget that not everyone thinks the way I do. I live in an attachment parenting world, where moms breastfeed on cue and keep their babies close by, in bed and during the day. The other day I was counseling with a mom, at her request, about breastfeeding. Her baby was about 8 weeks old. She felt her milk supply was going down and she wanted to know why. As we talked, it became apparent that she was into scheduled feedings. She kept saying, “The books say this or that,” and “the books say to feed this often.” Finally, I asked, “What are these books that you are reading?”

“Oh, one of them is Babywise…” Inside I screamed, “AARGH! No wonder she is having problems!” I squelched my desire to launch into an attack on that book. The author has been discredited by many organizations involving children’s health and feeding. Instead I mustered up my best communication skills and gently said, “Many mothers find that they have a lack of milk supply if they follow what that book says.”

As we talked more I discovered that she had been away from her baby for several hours-long blocks of time and had missed feeding and or pumping, in order to go to church meetings. She is in the YW stake presidency and had let her husband stay home with the baby and feed the baby her pumped milk, as well as for times she went to church. She had been barely nursing 7-8 times in a 24 hour day. I explained to her that many mothers find that in order to have a full milk supply, they have to nurse at least 8 times. That’s a bare minimum. Usually it’s 12 to 14 times in 24 hours, so that means going no longer than 2 hours to feed or pump. I really don’t count how many times a day I nurse my baby, or how much time goes by in between nursings, I just nurse him any time he fusses or even before he fusses sometimes.

I wish she would bring her baby to the church meetings and not separate, but I understand her concern about the baby getting sick if she brings the baby out in the winter. But I personally think the baby is much less likely to get sick if the baby is always within arm’s reach, if not attached to the mom’s body, through nursing, cosleeping, and babywearing. I encouraged the mom to sleep with her baby because then the baby is much more likely to get more nursing at night. The baby was sleeping in a crib in a separate room and sometimes going 6 hours at night. I encouraged her to wake up the baby after 2 to 3 hours and nurse. It’s no big deal to wake the baby up if you don’t have to get out of your cozy bed, but she said she didn’t want to cosleep. At least she is pumping and giving her baby her milk.

Yesterday Sheila Kippley, the author of Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing, and founder of http://nfpandmore.org, sent me this cool article about attachment parenting. It explains how I have mothered my babies and how I wish all babies were mothered.  I am copying part of it here.

Why African Babies Don’t Cry
Posted By J. Claire K. Niala On December 31, 2010 (8:30 pm) In Culture

I was born and grew up in Kenya and Cote d’Ivoire. From the age of fifteen I lived in the UK. However, I always knew that I wanted to raise my children (whenever I had them) at home in Kenya. And yes, I assumed I was going to have them. I am a modern African woman, with two university degrees, and a fourth generation working woman – but when it comes to children, I am typically African. The assumption remains that you are not complete without them; children are a blessing which would be crazy to avoid. Actually the question does not even arise. I started my pregnancy in the UK. The urge to deliver at home was so strong that I sold my practice, setup a new business and moved house and country within five months of finding out I was pregnant. I did what most expectant mothers in the UK do – I read voraciously: Our Babies, Ourselves, Unconditional Parenting, anything by Sears – the list goes on. (My grandmother later commented that babies don’t read books and really all I needed to do was “read” my baby). Everything I read said that African babies cried less than European babies. I was intrigued as to why.When I went home I observed. I looked out for mothers and babies and they were everywhere, though very young African ones, under six weeks, were mainly at home. The first thing I noticed is that despite their ubiquitousness, it is actually quite difficult to actually “see” a Kenyan baby. They are usually incredibly well wrapped up before being carried or strapped onto their mother (sometimes father). Even older babies strapped onto a back are further protected from the elements by a large blanket. You would be lucky to catch sight of a limb, never mind an eye or nose. The wrapping is a womb-like replication. The babies are literally cocooned from the stresses of the outside world into which they are entering.My second observation was a cultural one. In the UK, it was understood that babies cry. In Kenya, it was quite the opposite. The understanding is that babies don’t cry. If they do – something is horribly wrong and must be done to rectify it immediately. My English sister-in-law summarized it well. “People here,” she said, “really don’t like babies crying, do they?”It all made much more sense when I finally delivered and my grandmother came from the village to visit. As it happened, my baby did cry a fair amount. Exasperated and tired, I forgot everything I had ever read and sometimes joined in the crying too. Yet for my grandmother it was simple, “Nyonyo (breastfeed her)!” It was her answer to every single peep.

(The article goes on, click on the link above to read the whole thing. It concludes with the following:)

A week or so before my daughter turned five months, we traveled to the UK for a wedding and for her to meet family and friends. Because I had very few other demands, I easily kept up her feeding schedule. Despite the disconcerted looks of many strangers as I fed my daughter in many varied public places (most designated breastfeeding rooms were in restrooms which I just could not bring myself to use), we carried on.

At the wedding, the people whose table we sat at noted, “She is such an easy baby – though she does feed a lot.” I kept my silence. Another lady commented, “Though I did read somewhere that African babies don’t cry much.” I could not help but laugh.

My Grandmother’s gentle wisdom:

1. Offer the breast every single moment that your baby is upset – even if you have just fed her.

2. Co-sleep. Many times you can feed your baby before they are fully awake, which will allow them to go back to sleep easier and get you more rest.

3. Always take a flask of warm water to bed with you at night to keep you hydrated and the milk flowing.

4. Make feeding your priority (especially during growth spurts) and get everyone else around you to do as much as they can for you. There is very little that cannot wait.

Read your baby, not the books. Breastfeeding is not linear – it goes up and down and also in circles. You are the expert on your baby’s needs.

Article taken from InCultureParent – http://www.incultureparent.com
URL to article: http://www.incultureparent.com/2010/12/why-african-

babies-dont-cry/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, I just feel like indulging in doing a typical braggy mommy blog post. So here goes…just skip if you can’t stand bragging.

A few weeks ago my oldest child, my guinea pig in homeschooling, got his ACT score back. He scored over 30! He had taken a practice test given at Ann Meeks’ ACT boot camp last spring and scored 29 (see http://acetheact.com. ) After taking the boot camp and practicing the test a few times, including once at Weber State, we were pretty sure he could get over 30. Well, he got the official results back and we are thrilled. College on a scholarship, here he comes! He’s always been a smart kid. This was just official proof. Or at least proof that he’s good at taking tests. I realize that you can have a bright kid who scores low on the test.

I feel somewhat vindicated in my educational approach for him. He has never been to public school, and has had few standardized test. He has been schooled at home and also in the community in a commonwealth school and some momschools. For one year he did Open High Schoot, which is an online charter high school. Currently he’s going to a private high school online. It’s Williamsburg Academy, named after the place where George Wythe lived, Williamsburg VA. George was the law school mentor of Thomas Jefferson. (See http://wacademy.org) It is a fantastic school! It challenges him and he is reading from a ton of classics.

He has had a Thomas Jefferson Education for the most part. (See http://tjed.org) I say “for the most part” because one of the keys of TJED is “inspire, don’t require” and I did actually, shh, require math when he was young, a page a day.  I wasn’t totally sold on the TJED idea of waiting until a kid gets on fire to study math.  Then I relaxed a bit after becoming converted to TJED years later. His Pyramid Project class through LEMI motivated him to do math consistently again so he did, but if he hadn’t been motivated that way, I would have started requiring it, like I have with my younger children.

At the ACT boot camp, as I observed the math instruction given by homeschooling mom Cyndi Hampton (a former public high school math teacher), I could just see many of the students’ brains fogging up (All but three of the fifteen or so there were TJED homeschoolers). I could tell they were not getting it. For many homeschoolers, especially in TJED, math is a weakness. Some of them don’t take it seriously and put off studying it for years. You just can’t cram math. In order to do math skills quickly, to analyze and compute quickly, as in to solve what is it, 60 math questions in 60 minutes on the ACT,  you have to draw upon a solid math education. That doesn’t happen in a year or two of cramming after avoiding math until scholar phase. So my advice, if you homeschool, not that you asked, is, do require a little math every day, at least a page, from the time of the love of learning phase. (Use bribery, like food, or privileges, if needed. Eventually they will find it fun. And use mathusee.com, it’s the best. Both Ann Meeks and Cyndi Hampton agree with me.) That is, if you plan on your student going to college. If they are going to college, there is no way around the ACT. Even if they go to George Wythe College. I have heard that GWC will have to require the ACT as part of getting accredited, which they are on track to do.

As for going to college, yes, not everyone needs to be a college grad to be happy and successful. After all, Bill Gates is a college dropout. For most people, though, doors will be closed to them that would further their mission, if they don’t go to college. I really love this book by President Henry Eyring’s son, Henry Eyring, about why college is so important. See http://majordecisions.com He gives some very important reasons, including increased competition for jobs due to increasing automation and globalization of jobs. 

Oops, my braggy mommy blog post turned into a soapbox speech. I couldn’t resist. Now get one of your kids to do her math.

I went to the Eagle Forum Convention on Saturday January 15. David Barton, of http://wallbuilders.com was the keynote speaker. I had heard of this guy years ago and got a video by him called “America’s Godly Heritage.” In that amazing video, he explains how the supreme court has exercised judicial legislation in things like outlawing prayer in school in the 60s. Judicial legislation like this has taken us away from our godly heritage. This lecture he gave on video was so fabulous that when I heard he was coming to Utah I knew I wanted to be there to hear him speak.

I had some obstacles to going but was determined to get there. One was my baby. I like to bring my babies to events because we are almost literally attached from breastfeeding for the first years of life. But he’s a toddler now and busy. He’s not a lap baby and conference-friendly any more. So it was time to leave him with an older sibling/babysitter. This was the first time I would be gone from him for so long, about six hours. It ended up working just great. He was happy at home and I didn’t have to chase him around at the event. Of course we nursed as soon as I got home, as much for my sake with my full breast, as for his. So I didn’t get to stay for the whole thing. Over the next few blog posts I hope to summarize what I learned. The first speakers was David Barton, and then it was Steve Russell, a really cool homeschooling dad who spoke at the LDSHEA convention one of the years that I spoke. Steve’s talk was about the legalities of vice. I learned so much from his talk. I hope to summarize his talk next and then Kitty Werthmann’s talk after that.

But for now, I will do David’s talk. David Barton has been on the Glenn Beck show recently. I wonder if Glenn Beck has given him a Book of Mormon. He’s a Christian and knows the Bible very well. He had to leave right after he gave his speech to catch his plane back to Texas. He had no time to mix and mingle with the admiring fans. I wondered if he scheduled it that way on purpose so that the Mormons who went to the conference wouldn’t have a chance to proselytize him.

Anyway, he gave this fascinating power point presentation where he outlined the five principles of good government. These came from Thomas Jefferson’s inaugural speech. They are:

1. Government acknowledges existence of the Creator. Barton said that no secular government can be limited. The government has only 18 innumerable powers in the Constitution, and it should stay within those. He also interpreted  Romans 1:28 as saying that if you have “Creator consciousness” then your behavior changes.

2. Frugality. The government has to restrain itself on spending money. China owns most of our debt, Barton explained. He said that last year at least two bills were dismissed from Congress because China didn’t want Congress to pass them. We are slaves to China because of our debt. Barton quoted Proverbs 22:7 as saying that the borrower is servant to the lender.

3.  Government should punish criminals, or restrict the infliction of injury. He said that 1 Timothy 1:8-10 says that the law is for bad people, not to restrict good people. Then he said that common law was the foundation of American law and comes from the Bible.

4. Allow the free market. Barton said that today, sadly, 67% of American businesses are owned by the government.

5. Protect citizens’ lives and property. He said that if the government can tax your property, it can take it, so it’s not really yours. He said that the income tax goes against the Constitution because it is a direct tax, and the Constitution forbids a direct tax. He also stated that Sam Adams prioritized our rights. The right to life is the most important, then the right to liberty, and then property.

David explained that if you tell him how someone stands on the abortion issue, he can tell you how they stand on any other issue. The desire to protect life is always linked to the desire to protect property and liberty, and that all issues can be connected to protecting those three rights.

He also explained that in the Founders’ day, the phrase “pursuit of happiness” meant pursuit of property. That probably doesn’t sit well with anti-capitalists. On the way home, my husband and I rode with Matt Hilton, my husband’s cousin who is also an attorney, somewhat famous in Utah among the legal crowd, and a speaker at the conference that day. Matt told us that he has lots of quotes at home from the Founding Fathers saying that the pursuit of happiness actually means pursuing God’s will for your own life. Matt said he didn’t bring it up because he didn’t want to argue with our guest keynote speaker.

In my burst of cleaning in the week between Christmas and New Year’s I found this really cool article that relates to David’s organization, Wallbuilders. It is from an old Ensign. It told the story of Nehemiah in the Bible and his desire to build the wall in Jerusalem. He was living in Persia and heard the news that the Jews, God’s chosen people, were having trouble in Jersulem. The wall had fallen down. Nehemiah wanted to go to help, so he made it his personal mission to get permission to leave his post as the king’s cupbearer in Persia and go back to Jersualem to build the wall. The author of the article, a General Authority, explained that this story is symbolic of claiming a destiny as God’s chosen people.

It’s time that the believers in God, the Christians of America, reclaim our identity as God’s chosen people and reclaim our Godly heritage. It’s time to become conversant in historical events, our godly heritage, and current events so we can persuade common citizens and our legislators how we have gone astray. It’s time to hold legislators accountable or kick them out of office. Then we can  push back the evil tide of debt, sin, greed, and out-of-control government, and unconstitutional laws that have washed over our land. David is modern-day Nehemiah. I may not agree with all of his points, especially on religion, but I plan on keeping up with what he has to say because he has impressed me with his history and Biblical scholarship. I am going to listen to his podcasts on http://wallbuilderslive.com and invite you to do so as well.

Wow, I just read this amazing article by my friend and fellow La Leche League Leader (at least she used to be when I lived in Provo). Her name is Valerie Hudson Cassler, and I fondly call her my “grandma” in La Leche League. She was the reason that my friend Joyce Mitchell joined LLL and became a Leader, and Joyce is the reason that I kept coming back to LLL, and eventually joined and became a Leader.

Valerie is on the same wavelength as I am! She has developed a concept of “Two Trees” to explain gender roles in the plan of salvation. It is very similar to what I have written in my forthcoming book, Tree of Life Mothering. My sister-in-law Meg told me she is reading a book by Valerie called Women In Zion, Women in Eternity. So i just Googled it and found this cool article by Valerie here http://mormonscholarstestify.org/1718/valerie-hudson-cassler

Here’s some of the article:

“I am a convert to the Mormon Church from Roman Catholicism, and gained my testimony as the result of spiritual experiences that I cannot deny. In this essay, however, I will discuss instead why, as a feminist, I remain a steadfast member of the LDS Church.

It is very difficult to be raised in one of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity), as I was, and not come away with some fairly unpleasant conclusions about women. Depending on the religion and sect involved, one may be taught that the first woman was feeble-minded or a murderess and that all her daughters are marred by that fact, that a woman’s body is unclean, that God meant women to submit to their husbands and in general be subservient to men, and that divinity is male and male alone. (Of course, echoes of such teachings can be found in other faith traditions besides the Abrahamic, as well.)

“After decades of studying LDS doctrine concerning women (and carefully distinguishing it from LDS cultural understandings and practices, which in quite a few cases contradict that doctrine), I have been liberated as a woman from the erroneous and harmful beliefs about women that haunt those raised in Abrahamic traditions. How remarkable and in some senses ironic it still seems to me to have experienced “women’s lib” by conversion to Mormonism!

“…the LDS do not believe that the Fall was a great tragedy. Rather, we believe that the Fall was foreordained, that it was for our progression, and thus the Fall was a blessing. Number two, the LDS do not believe that Eve sinned in partaking of the fruit of the First Tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And number three, because the LDS do not believe Eve sinned, we also do not believe that Eve was punished by God for her role in partaking of the fruit, but rather rewarded.”

There’s a lot more so I encourage you to read it! Heavenly Father’s plan really is beautiful!