The image above shows all the symptoms that the carnivore diet eliminated or alleviated for Tammy Peterson, wife of Jordan Peterson. Wow! That’s all the inside stuff. To top it off, her body looks like it’s in the shape of someone in her 20s! Watch below to hear her tell of how she discovered the carnivore diet, and how it helped her, her daughter Mikhaila, and her husband Jordan. For Mikhaila, it was specifically the lion diet, which is just beef, salt and water.
Want to learn more? Go here.
This week’s product is a deck of cards featuring artwork, text, and images depicting the classical works of Western civilization. It is called Classics Cards. The deck comes from The Refined Schoolhouse over here. Cost is currently $64.99 for the deck of 148 cards.
It’s a simple product with potential for great impact for education. The subtitle of the product is “A Daily Introduction to the Classics.” That’s how I strive to use it, as in daily, but I sometimes forget, truth be told, LOL. I keep it at the bookshelf by my dining room table, with this poetry book, and my decks of trivia and other question cards from games, and some of my mealtime games.
The idea is to do one card a day and the poem of the day from the poetry book at dinner time. Then we do some trivia questions and a getting-to-know-you question or two. One side of a Classics Card features the artwork or the image of something to do with the classical work or the creator of the work. The other side has an excerpt from the poem, or bio info about the creator, or a description of the classical work, and often the date. Sometimes it has a QR code to scan so you can instantly listen to the classic if it’s music. Sometimes the images are in full color, but mostly they aren’t. The 4″ x 6″ cards are fairly thick and durable to stand up to lots of use from little hands.
My only two minor complaints about this product are:
I’ve been feeling this mixture of melancholy, family love, joy and curiosity. A couple of weeks ago, I got word that my Uncle Lou, my mom’s brother, passed away. He was 92. He’s the boy, holding the dog, in the photo above. My mom was the baby of the family, the littlest girl in the photo. I got to go to the funeral for Uncle Lou this past weekend. Wow, what a wonderful, emotional trip down memory lane. The funeral was held in a little town in southern Nevada, called Overton, where my mom and uncle grew up.
She grew up playing with cousins a lot because her dad had brothers who lived there and worked with him as farmers. She still has a lot of relatives living there, including cousins, nieces, and some of their descendants. As a kid we made a trek to this town to see my grandparents once or twice a year, either at Easter, or Thanksgiving. If we were really lucky we got to make the outing for both holidays each year. We had a bunch of cousins who lived there as well. One bunch of cousins, Uncle Lou’s family, lived behind my grandparents. It was super fun to go back and forth between the houses, through a gate in the backyard fence. Then my grandparents built a new house, their dream house, that was about two blocks away. It was a mansion compared to their old home. What fun we had there as well!
The whole town was just a magical wonderland. It was always either hot or hotter, having no winter with the nasty cold, wind, hail, sleet, or snow of Utah. I only remember it raining once in all my visits there. The place boasted palm trees, red rocks, mountains, and strange, rare tropical fruit called pomegranates that grew on trees in people’s yards. This wonderland was so warm that one of our great aunts used a golf cart as her main mode of transportation. Imagine! This all seemed like something straight out of a fairy tale story book.
One time when I visited, I got to play with kittens, at my grandparents’ home. How delightful! I never knew creatures could have so much fun with just a piece of yarn. All the other times the fun animals featured were Uncle Lou’s cats and his two dogs (George and Cocoa). He had so many cats, I can’t remember their names. It totally doesn’t surprise me he is holding a dog in the top photo, as he had such a huge love for having animals as friends. Amongst the photos displayed at the funeral was a framed photo of one of the cats.
This magical place also had a porch swing, and a trampoline at Uncle Lou’s home. Often, we found inside a treasure trove of piles of comic books featuring Archie and Lulu. Such things did not exist at our home. Beyond his home, the town had swimming pools, a movie theater, friendly people, and loads of cousins, (first cousins, second cousins, first cousins once removed, and probably other iterations I don’t even know about). All of this amounted to lots of play, play, play. I have such fond memories of the whole place. It wasn’t Uncle Lou, but a different one, who owned a hamburger joint on the main drag called “The Desert Freeze.” It was in front of his and my aunt’s home. My siblings and cousins loved going there to get soft serve ice cream. It was a long walk, but we could walk from the cousins’ home to the Desert Freeze. The hot air of the desert surrounded us like an oven, which made the ice cream even tastier.
In this time of the late ’70s, we, my siblings and cousins, loved watching the Muppet Show in my grandparents’ big living room on their big TV. These cousins were the children of Uncle Lou. To this day, any time my kids watch a Muppet movie, the music takes me back to that living room with the happy feeling of cousins watching with the adults in the nearby dining room talking and laughing. All was well! For Christmas one year Uncle Lou and Aunt Diann and the cousins capitalized on our love of the Muppets by giving us a record album of the soundtrack of the Muppet 1971 TV special entitled, “The Frog Prince.” We played that record over and over!
Sometimes we got to go visit Lake Mead, which was nearby, and go swimming and tubing. Uncle Lou’s wife Aunt Diann had yummy brownies to eat on those lake outings. Whenever I eat the gluten-free brownies I blogged about here I think of those lake trips.
At Uncle Lou’s house, which was behind my grandparents’ home, we, my sisters, cousin, and I, played a lot with Fisher-Price Little People. We had an elaborate ritual preceding the play. Whoever was being the most self-aware at the time would call out “first dibs.” Then the rest of us would call successive dibs. Then we would pile all the people, buildings, furniture, and cars into the middle of the playroom. Then we would take turns picking one thing from the pile, going around and around until every item was claimed.
With each mini-collection under our temporary stewardship, we would set up the town with our goods and act out fun scenarios of neighborly and domestic bliss. It seems like the cousins had all the FP Little People sets we had, like the village and the camper, plus the cooler Sesame Street and castle sets. They also had the cute blue house with the yellow roof and the groovy A-frame vacation house.
As we got older, we graduated to the more mature indoor activity of playing a lot of board games. Of course, we already knew about the run-of-the-mill fare of Monopoly, Risk, Sorry, and Clue. We had most of those. But here in this vacation cousinland we found the never-heard-of-before exotic games. It was at Uncle Lou’s house that my siblings and I learned about the word game Boggle, and the unusual, more sophisticated Parker Brother games, including Pay Day, Trust Me, Masterpiece, Billionaire, and Inventors. Overton had no big box store like Target or Walmart (I don’t think it does to this day), and this was before Amazon. Uncle Lou must have picked up these games from one of his many trips to Las Vegas. Oh, the hours of fun we had playing so many games! Inventors was my favorite. It had this cool gadget that you would use to put these metal clips on cards to represent the inventors’ patents. I still plan on finding it on one of my thrifting jaunts. I know I can buy it on etsy or ebay but I’m holding out for the thrill of finding it so much cheaper at a thrift store! It was just a few years ago that my mom told me that my dad and Uncle Lou used to pull “all-nighters” in their younger days, playing Risk together. This is all where I must get my love of board gaming! (If you’ve never read any of my stuff on using board games for homeschool, go here. If you want to read some of my board game reviews, go here.)
Sometimes we went camping with these cousins, and other cousins, like to the Grand Canyon, McCall, Idaho, or Pine Valley, Utah. One of my mom’s Overton cousins lived down the street from Uncle Lou. She had a swimming pool, so we often got to go swimming there. If we couldn’t go swimming there, we would go to the community pool. Decades later, whenever I go swimming in a chlorinated pool, the pattern of diamonds that I see in the water reflecting the sun, and the heavy chlorinated smell, usher in memories of Cousin Vacationland: palm trees, clear blue skies, sunshine, and the heavenly feeling of relatives surrounding me.
All these feelings of fun, love, family togetherness and happy memories came rushing back to me as I drove into the valley and attended Uncle Lou’s funeral with my husband this past Saturday. I love the tribute to the wisdom of a father, to Uncle Lou, that my cousins had placed at the table as we entered the viewing area. See photo below.
I love it! The tribute perfectly captures the wisdom of Uncle Lou and the grateful, respectful feeling I hope we can each feel towards goodly fathers and our Heavenly Father. It reminds me of the wisdom of good fathers and the ultimate wisdom of our Heavenly Father’s beautiful plan for each of us.
It was such a beautiful funeral. Uncle Lou was a wonderful man. He lived an ordinary life but touched people because of his love of life and his jolly personality. He was a great husband and father of 6 children. I loved hearing one of his daughters quote him as saying that the most satisfying, joyful day of his life was when he knelt across his bride at the altar in the St. George Temple and gazed into her eyes, as he was sealed to her for time and eternity by the sacred Melchizedek priesthood power.
It was fun to hear the memories shared by two of his daughters who spoke at the funeral. They shared how he loved all creatures great and small and took tender care of them. One time he was pulling a trailer with his truck down the highway, to go camping. He pulled over to gently remove a grasshopper off his windshield and deposit it safely into the grass on the side of the road. When one of his girls found that some mice had made a nest in the family’s mop, he set the mice free in a vacant field, saying goodbye to them in a squeaky high voice. He cared so much about his dogs and cats that he would taste-test the cat and dog food to make sure it would taste OK to them.
My favorite all-time memory of Uncle Lou is the time I was sitting in a math class in high school. It was the Monday after a BYU Football game. One of my close friends walked into the class late. She sheepishly confessed to me that she had missed the bus. Uncle Lou had come to her rescue by giving her a ride to school. He had been in town for the football game over the weekend, spending the nights at my childhood home. Somehow my mom heard my friend had missed the bus and got her brother to give my friend a ride to school. He didn’t even know this girl but was willing to give her a ride, just because he’s a nice guy. He was always willing to help someone out. He served faithfully in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in many callings. I am confident that he helped many people in those callings, which among them were temple worker and senior missionary.
I love that at the funeral, one of his grandsons sang the song, “I Know that My Redeemer Lives.” I too know that He lives. I am so grateful to know this, for it gives me the sure knowledge that someday, because of Jesus Christ’s redeeming power, we will see Uncle Lou again in a perfectly restored body. He will be robust with his hearing intact. The first thing my sister thought of the morning of the funeral as she awoke was, “Hey, Uncle Lou can hear again!” He suffered for a few years at the end with a loss of his hearing. His body was frail and tired. He was miserable, but now he has been released from all of his body’s limitations.
I love these Book of Mormon verses about death and resurrection. I believe these words!
“Now, concerning the state of the soul between death and the resurrection—Behold, it has been made known unto me by an angel, that the spirits of all men, as soon as they are departed from this mortal body, yea, the spirits of all men, whether they be good or evil, are taken home to that God who gave them life. And then shall it come to pass, that the spirits of those who are righteous are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care, and sorrow.”-Alma 40:11-12
The back cover of the funeral program had this quote from Winnie the Pooh:
“How lucky I am having something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
Yes! Because of Jesus, it is just merely a good-bye for now, but not forever. To Uncle Lou, good-bye for now. Thank you for being a kindly wonderful dad and uncle. Thank you for contributing to joyful memories of my childhood in the Cousin Wonderland you provided as a great father and uncle. Truly this is a joyful foretaste of heaven to come!
We had our first all-day rainy fall day yesterday. It felt like a Karen Carpenter song, as it was a rainy day AND a Monday. Ugh! I just felt slow all day, wishing I could have stayed in bed instead of going to our homeschool co-op. Nothing like co-op on Monday!!!! I mean, I enjoyed so many parts of it: the fact that I got to do a 10 minute-presentation to the moms on one of my many passions (family traditions), plus the fact that we, the moms, discussed Anne of Green Gables while making flower crowns. I’ve been wanting to discuss that book with other moms for years. So yay!!! But the rain poured all day until 6 PM.
But a plus for the day was that, for the first time, I left the afternoon class of 6-7 year olds that I mentor with Katie Hansen of houseofthebook.org, feeling refreshed instead of feeling like I’d been wrestling with pigs, which every week had felt like that, until yesterday. The difference was her magical storytelling plus she let them draw the story in new notebooks she gave them, AND they each got their own package of crayons.
All of that aside, just the rainy day itself was a little bit of a letdown after such a delightful General Conference weekend, which was this past weekend. We had relatives over both days: cousins plus my daughter and her little family on Saturday, then the same cousins on Sunday night. After so many years of living away from close family and friends, it’s so great to have people pop over all the time. God just orchestrated it that we moved back, then my husband’s sister and her family, then my daughter and her family this past summer.
I still figuratively pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming, that we are actually back with close friends and family, even though it’s been three years since we moved back. Not only that, one of my older children moved back in with us a month ago, to live here while he attends college, because he loves us so much! Seriously! He earned enough money over the summer to live on his own for the school year but he missed us the past 5 years that he’s been gone, so he asked to live with us. Score!!!
He said he moved back home because he misses our little family rituals! That would be our nightly and morning rituals of family prayer and conversation and weekend games, and family mealtimes. This has been very validating for me. I’m hoping to capitalize on his enthusiasm and get us all singing a song or two every night, since he’s such a fan of singing. He is definitely my favorite child right now! (None of my children read my blog so I feel safe in saying that, LOL.) We also went apple picking with one of my grandsons on Friday! Pics of that coming soon!
For months, I have had a habit to accompany going to bed to give my day a peaceful benediction, or in the morning, to dissolve the sluggishness of early morning and to help turn on the brightness of hope found in Jesus Christ. This is the habit: I read stories from the Gospel Library app of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That’s how I found this story. It’s just so delightful! The rainy day yesterday reminded me of it.
Here is the story, called, “Faith Under the Overpass.” In this story, a young man named Greg decided to start a hay-hauling business with his brother. They carried hay from eastern Washington over mountains to the Seattle area with a truck to sell to farmers to feed their livestock. They went on a few trips with their dad supervising, and then they were on their own. On their first solo voyage without supervision, the pickup was normal.
Here’s the rest of the story, copied from the October 2006 Ensign magazine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:
“The return trip was uneventful until we noticed that it was starting to sprinkle just a bit. We immediately found an overpass on the freeway and parked underneath it just as the sprinkles turned into rain. We had not yet been able to purchase a tarp to cover the hay, and no animals can eat the alfalfa hay if it gets wet because it starts to rot and mold quickly. We knew that if we lost this load of hay, our business venture would probably fail.
“We sat under the overpass for quite a while, waiting for the rain to stop. Eventually, we realized that the Lord would help us if we prayed. My brother offered a prayer, and we waited. The rain did not let up. We decided that perhaps I, the elder brother, should offer a prayer. It started to rain harder. We sat there for what seemed an eternity. We knew that once we left the protective cover of the overpass, the next possible shelter was an hour away and home was another hour past that.
“Finally, one of us remembered the admonition that faith precedes the miracle, and we realized that we needed to exercise our faith. We put our trust in the Lord and left the cover of the overpass. To this day I remember every drop of rain that I saw land on the hood of the truck as we inched out from under the overpass. It was a severe trial of our faith, but by the time the cab of the truck was out in the open, the rain had stopped. The next two hours were filled with much prayer and thanksgiving.
“We made it home with our load in good shape, and as we were pulling the truck into the barn, the heavens released their pent-up downpour. Our business survived, and both of us were able to successfully fund our missionary service.
“Not all of my prayers have been answered this way, but I am very thankful for the lesson in faith my brother and I learned sitting under the freeway overpass in the rain.”
I just love that!!!! If you want more stories full of faith in God, please go here to get my Celestial Family Devotionals Ebook. It is full of enough stories you can read a new one almost every weekday for your family devotionals.
To continue with the back-to-school theme of fostering learning, my picture book of the week is Nothing Stopped Sophie by Cheryl Bardoe, illustrated by Barbara McClintock. It’s all about Sophie Germain, a German mathematician. Sophie grew up in a time when women weren’t expected to do much with their brains, unfortunately. She had a passion for numbers and even though her parents did everything to discourage her from studying math, she persisted. She would stay up late, studying in the dark with the candlelight from the stubs of candles. I’m so grateful for her and other women who showed the world that women have brains and can study and learn too. This is such a great story to share with both boys and girls, to show that girls can do math too. As a fan of math since my elementary school years, I can vouch that math is for girls too. I have always loved math and have always felt good at it. Kudos for Sophie for being a math girl who paved the way for other math girls after her.
The celebration of the U.S. Constitution Day (September 17) continues! Last night we got to go to a patriotic devotional held at the American Heritage School in American Fork, UT. Sister Bonnie Cordon, a leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and former Congressman Christ Stewart, both spoke. It was all so good! My nephew sang in the choir which sounded so beautiful. I’m so grateful I got to go!
They spoke about God’s hand in America. Mr. Stewart also called upon his wife to speak impromptu. I’m sure she was thrilled about that (not!) but she was a good sport and shared some touching stories. We also got to watch a short video featuring Tad Callister, another leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mr. Callister wrote the book above and is in the video below. I’ve included screenshots from the video below it.
I love all the scriptures and the quote. It’s all true! Jesus was meant to be the God of America, as it says in the Book of Mormon. See Ether 2:12. Jesus is the source of liberty. The closer we follow Jesus, the more liberty we will have. Columbus was inspired to discover America. The Founders were inspired to create the Constitution.
Please watch the video and feel the Holy Spirit testify to you that it is true. Then read Mr. Callister’s book above to know how it all applies to you today. You can watch the whole devotional at the very bottom of this post.
It’s so important that as many U.S. citizens as possible are convicted of the truth that God orchestrated the founding of America to be a light of liberty and limited governmental powers for the whole world. It’s so important that we call our elected leaders out when they step beyond the bounds of the divinely-inspired Constitution. Please watch these videos and pray to know if they are true.
In addition to reviewing picture books, and the occasional movie and books for moms here on the blog, I’m going to start reviewing products. Here’s the first one to kick it off: a strainer to turn regular yogurt into Greek yogurt. I love this!!! Kudos to my darling sister-in-law/girlfriend for finding this and gifting it to me for my birthday last fall. She’s a genius! She knows how much I love Greek yogurt and was thoughtful enough to find this product.
I shared my Greek yogurt recipe over here, years ago. Greek yogurt was a staple in my diet for many, many years. I was in love with it! Then I turned carnivore and rarely ate it. I ate it every so often, like on Sundays when family members were eating ice cream. Then I gave it up all together to finally meet my weight loss goal. Anyway, at the bottom of that linked post above, you will see that in order to turn the yogurt into Greek yogurt, I tell you to line a colander with a tea towel or the remnant of an old sheet or other tightly woven cloth. Then you put the colander over a bowl. Then you ladle the yogurt from the crock pot into the bowl. The whey drains out to give you thicker yogurt, aka Greek yogurt, but then you have to scrape the fabric off with a rubber scraper, and then wash the fabric. The whole ordeal can be quite awkward and gloppy, getting yogurt on your hands. With this product, the clean-up is so much easier! No more messy towels to scrape off, rinse out, then hang to dry and then wash in the washing machine. See the inner basket below? It involves a mesh wall that is fine enough to allow the whey to drain out of the yogurt.
So, when the yogurt has the consistency you want, you just scrape the yogurt out into your storage container (I use glass jars) and then you pop the mesh basket liner into your dishwasher and wash it. Voila! Greek yogurt with easy clean-up. I give it a 5 out of 5 stars!
I will be using it more now that I am transitioning off my carnivore diet. I met my weight goal of getting below my wedding weight so now I’m going to be eating a lot more yogurt as I maintain weight. I’d like to build muscle and lose the remaining inches of fat I can still pinch. I am ok maintaining the weight I’ve hit; I just now want to change the fat and muscle composition of my body. I want to be stronger and more fit so now I’ll be exercising at least four times a week.
The hubs and I went to see David Barton last Sunday night in Layton. I counted it as date night. David spoke about how the U.S. Constitution was inspired by God. This was to celebrate Constitution Day. As usual, he did an amazing job of presenting evidence for the claim. I’m sorry about the poor photo above, but it’s the best I could get sitting ten rows back from the stage. It will suffice until I can get the better photos from my husband’s phone.
Just who is David Barton? He is a collector of original, rare documents from the founding era of the United States, before 1812. He has over 120K docs. He has studied these documents and shares his knowledge about them via his website, wallbuilders.com, his Wallbuilders Live podcast, his books, and with his speaking tours. You can visit his museum of the rare documents in Texas by going here to schedule a tour. That’s definitely on my bucket list!
It was a wonderful event! We used to live in Layton, so I saw a few faces I know. That was fun! (Except, when I got back to the car, I scratched an itch under my nose and was horrified to discover a dried booger partly poking out of one of my nostrils. Ugh!!! I hope it somehow emerged after I greeted these old friends and not before!!!!) Years ago, David spoke in Layton for Constitution Day. He wowed the crowd with his ability to deliver an hour-long presentation with no notes, not stalling, and fast talking articulation. Last night was the same, except it was for about 30-45 minutes. He followed a musical number, a speech by former Utah Governor Gary Herbert, and a speech by Carlos Moreno, an immigrant who has become a U.S. Citizen. Carlos showed extreme gratitude for being able to move to the U.S. and live and work here. He said it is much better than his former home of Venezuela.
I found this video below that is similar to the presentation David gave on Sunday night. Besides, the top image, all the other images in this post are from that video.
I love that at the end, he repeated the challenge given by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay for every citizen of the U.S. to study the Constitution. Then we will know when our Constitution is being violated so we can call our officials out on it. See quote in image below (the image is not from the night I saw David speak, but from a similar presentation).
My board game of the week is How Do You Doodle? by Outset Games. This is similar to Pictionary. It’s different though in that each card has three words on it that are similar in meaning. So for example: pretty, beautiful, and gorgeous. Everyone draws a number to tell them which corresponding word to draw. Then you draw your picture, all at the same time. When the timer is up, you stop drawing and vote for what everybody drew. You get points for people correctly guessing what you drew, and points for correctly guessing what the other people drew. It’s a simple game but can generate a lot of laughter. I found it thrifting for only $3 and am happy to add it to my collection of drawing games: Pictionary, Pictomania, Oodles of Doodles, and Bob Ross’s Happy Little Accidents, among others.
We played it during my wedding anniversary getaway weekend. Go here and scroll down about halfway to read about that.
Then watch the video below to learn more about it. It’s not a game I would spend full price for, but if you see it at a thrift store, snatch it up. It’s worth a few bucks to give a bunch of laughs when you want a low-key game, and everyone involved is willing to be a good sport about his or her drawing ability.
My picture book of the week is the one above. To go with the fall, back-to-school theme that happens with September and October, I’ll be highlighting books that showcase a love of learning over the next few weeks. This book is definitely one of those. This is a true story, based on the life of Malala Yousafzai. It shows how one girl changed the world. Growing up in Pakistan, Malala thought that her life would be so much better if she had a magic pencil like a boy in her favorite TV show. Then she could erase the garbage dump by her house with its awful smell, create beautiful dresses for her mother, and conjure up an extra hour in the morning to gain more sleep. Because of her fight for education for her and other girls in her village, she ends up finding out that her magic pencil is in her writing. Read this book aloud to your children to show them how one girl valued education for girls and put her feelings into action. If you want to know more, you can read her book for older people below. She is the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Tree of Life Mothering 