The Cottage at Pollywog Pond

Several Short Book Reviews

2012-02-03T16:14:00.003-07:00

I've been slowly but surely making my way through my book lists. During the last few months I've read or listened to several books on the Group 2-4 lists. I thought I'd take just a minute to give a very brief review of some of them. There are, I am sure, plenty of plot synopsis to be found online for each of these works, so I won't get into that here. This review is merely to give our opinion of which were good, bad, and great.

The Princess stories, by George MacDonald.

On a few different road trips this fall our family listened to the librivox recordings of "The Princess and the Goblins" and "The Princess and Curdie." Both recordings were done very well, although it took a chapter or two to get used the reader of the second.

The stories are allegories, alluding to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our family especially liked The Princess and Curdie, in which Curdie is sent by God on a special mission, and is given the gift of discernment to effectively fulfill that mission. Since the time of reading, I have often wished that I could discern the character of a persons heart as easily as Curdie did as he shook a person's hand.

Both stories have earned the BOLD RED rating. The Curdie story was our favorite, but I recommend reading the two books in order to get the necessary background info.

The Story of Doctor Doolittle, by Hugh Lofting

We listened to this story on a road trip, and the quality of the recording was not nearly as well done as the Princess stories. Read by a man apparently of Indian descent, his accent at times was hard to understand.

It didn't matter too much though, because I found the story to be hollow and dumb. There weren't any bad parts to complain about, but it was the absence of any quality passages that got it ~~crossed off my list~~. There just isn't enough time in life to waste any reading sub-par literature.

Perhaps I missed something and am being too harsh on Mr. Lofting. If you have read this story and enjoyed it I would love to know why, so feel free to comment!

Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

This book is, of course, AMAZING! I love, love, love it! The character lessons taught are just as applicable as they were 144 years ago when the book was first published. If you have only seen the movie then you have no idea what you are missing! I recommend reading Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan either concurrently or prior to the reading of this story, as it is referred to so often in the tale.

Marme is my hero! I want to be as wise as her some day. Definitely going to read this one over and over. I can't believe it I let it sit on my shelf so long.

The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame

I suggested Jester read this book last year, and he narrated each chapter to me as I worked on my quilt. I decided that I would read it this month, thinking I would breeze through it. Ha, Ha! I looked up 77 words! And I thought my 10 year old could read it? :)

Well, that is why I am going through these level 2 books, right? I would not say this book would be a good read for an 8-10 year old reader, it is pretty difficult. It would be OK for a read aloud though.

I am still debating which rating to give this book. I really liked the lessons on friendship that are subtly taught. I want to be as good a friend as Mole, Badger, and especially Water Rat. I was really impressed with his character. As I read, it was funny to read so many parts that I don't remember Jester narrating to me. Particularly the scene of the miraculous rescue of Baby Otter. There were obviously many parts that were over his head.

I was quite disappointed with the ending. It just didn't seem that there was enough restitution for Toad's wrongdoing. There was a bit of repenting, but it just didn't quite go far enough for me.

What are your thoughts? Have you read this book? What would you rate it at? Like I said, there are some great lessons about friendship in it, but it isn't in the same class as Little Women.

Old Mother West Mind, by Thornton Burgess

This is a new addition to the book lists. Our family has really enjoyed these cute little animal stories by Thornton Burgess. At bedtime when I pull out the Kindle, Noteworthy asks me to read him "Johnny Chuck," and he snuggles in and drifts off into a happy slumber after a chapter or two. My six year old likes to read these to herself. Some of the stories have nice little lessons. Some are more educational. I look forward to reading more work by this author. There are several free titles in the Kindle Store.

Dotty Dimple Stories, by Sophie May

This cute little series is another new addition to my book list. So far I have just read the first story in the series, Dotty Dimple at her Grandmother's. I read this at bedtime the my 3-10 year olds and we enjoyed it. Dotty Dimple has to work through the difficult task of applying Sunday School lessons in her real life, and is learning that it is not as cut and dry as she thought. There are some good discussion points. The lessons about comparing ourselves to others that seem "less righteous" were quite pertinent for us.

Organized Simplicity, by Tsh Oxenreider
I blogged about this a couple of weeks ago, when it was free on Kindle. I have really enjoyed it, and found that it is definitely worth buying. It is not just a book about getting rid of stuff or organizing your stuff. It is a book about how to "happen to life" rather than letting life "happen to you." It is about discovering who you are as a family, and making choices that will help you be what you want to be.
I have read many things about "mission statements," but the chapter in this book about creating a "Purpose Statement" taught me in a way no other work has been able to do, and my husband and I were able to create a working statement that has so far been a real guide to our choices.
This book has wonderful, practical advise on how to choose how you spend your money and time, what you keep and what you do. She gives you advise on how to manage your life as she walks you through your home and helps you see things in a new light.
There is a lot more to this book than I originally thought. I would definitely recommend it to anyone wanting to take more control of their home, their stuff, their calendar, their life. The book is no longer free, but you can read it for free if you have Amazon Prime.

Here We Go Again

2012-01-27T21:57:00.002-07:00

It hits me like a ton of bricks at about 1:30.

So cold.

Why does my tummy ache? And my hips. And my head. My head.

Could this be why little Noteworthy was so lethargic at the zoo on Wednesday? Why he wanted to be held all day yesterday?

If only I had known! I would've held him more. I would have passed up free zoo day. I would have saved helping my neighbor pack for another day. I wouldn't have gone to the Mother's Who Know book group. Would've listened when he said that his tummy hurt, instead of thinking he was only hungry...

I would have stayed home and held him. I would have tried to be a better Mother Who Knows.....

It wasn't obvious.

If only I could go back.

No, we can only go on.

So today, we snuggle under the royal quilt, he and I. The crimson and cobalt remnants I stitched together last spring as Joyful told me about Rat and Mole and Toad Hall. Tiny stitches done by hand so that we could talk, could share the experience without the whir of the machine. So I could look him in the eye.

We don't do that enough around here, look each other in the eyes. Striving to do better...

Back to the present.

He brings it to me, the big blue book that is "his." And we read about Mister Dog and The Kittens that lost their Mittens and Where in the World Can a Bunny Find a Home?

That's his favorite illustration, the two bunnies snuggled together in the burrow. Masterful colored pencil sketches of Garth Williams.

He drops off to sleep and so do I. Only I have one ear open to the sounds going on in the rest of the house, hoping someone will hear that Freddy has waken and keep an eye on him for me. And please don't let him choke on the Legos....

After a time I wake, but Noteworthy sleeps on, snuggled like the bunny who has finally found his home.

I roll over and open my tablet to pass the time in bed with Ann Voscamp, Diane Hopkins, and others. My blog list is full of new encouragement and edification this afternoon.

Admiral passed through for a confidential chat. One that has been waiting for the right moment. The moment that Mom is not doing anything important. Then he goes off to be the man of the house until my man comes home to take over. He is excited about the driving lessons Dad hinted at. The prospect of learning more in a summer than he has the rest of the year combined.

You see, before the bricks fully arrived on me this afternoon Leader and I were talking over our beans and rice, could we possibly make it happen this summer? Not the full-time, year long hope. Something more realistic. How much vacation time will we have by July?

Time Flies on wings of Lightning, we cannot call it back. If we don't go this summer, will we get the chance before......

before

Before he leaves. Before he is grown and gone and the time for lessons and preparation is past.

He's becoming a man right before my eyes. I'm not sure I'm ready for that.

And I lay there and I read it, and the tears come. And Admiral laughs at me. But I don't care. I think about the minutes passed and the minutes ahead, and I pray for wisdom to know which lessons are the most important for me to pass on in the next few years.

I'm feeling awfully sentimental tonight. Maybe it's the fever....

Ha, ha, ha!

2012-01-25T08:38:00.004-07:00

The kids got a kick out of this....

Free Simplicity Book, (Today only?)

2012-01-20T14:14:00.003-07:00

In the Bible is says, "And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight." - James 3:12

Well, I have something wonderful to offer you today!

It's not from me. I'm not one of those cool bloggers that does give-aways. :)

I was over at A Holy Experience (my new favorite blog by the way) today when I noticed a little link on the side that said
"Free e-book: Organized Simplicity

by Tsh Oxenreider.... "

What? Wahoo! (now you can imagine me doing the happy dance. In my mind, that is...)

I became aware of this book a while ago, but I didn't want to spend money on it.
I spend way too much money on books.....

And now, low and behold, you can get the Kindle version for free!

Today.

Not sure if it will still be free tomorrow.

Here are a few little excerpts from the book:

The author writes that she was happy with her typical middle class suburban life, but,

"I wanted more...intentionality. More certainty about the why behind the decisions I made as a home manager. I didn't want life to happen to me; I wanted to happen to life."

She wanted to live abroad with her husband and children, so she ended up needing to pare their possessions way down. In the process, she learned this,

"I've come to realize that those things are just things, and while they aren't inherently evil, they can erode my family's purpose in life-or at least water down the potency of our choices. They can multiply the surfaces I need to dust. They can even cause stress. And they can keep my family from living life to the fullest because we've slowly allowed our stuff to own us."

"So what is Simple Living? ...living holistically with your life's purpose."

Through the book Ms. Oxenreider will take you step by step through the process yourself. I am excited to get started! Though we've come a long way in the last 2 years, I still feel the need to simplify further, to get to the core of who our family is and what we truly want to accomplish.

Don't have a Kindle? You can download a free Kindle reader for your iPhone, iPod, android tablet or even your P.C.

As the number one read post on my blog is, "I Don't Need a Bigger House, Just Less Stuff," I figure that maybe some of you might be interested in reading Organized Simplicity.

Enjoy!

I know I will....

Where am I Today?

2012-01-16T17:47:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I'm not here.

Sometimes, I prefer to be somewhere else.

Not physically, you know. Mentally. Dreaming about being somewhere else.

Not here surrounded by messes.

Not here listening to bickering.

Not here teaching multiplication and spelling.

Not here. Not here.

Time to get reset and realigned.

Our family went on a 1 hour bike ride along the river on Saturday.
I have loved that place since I discovered it in college. When I feel disconnected with life I go there and it fills me up. It centers me. It resets me.

My daughter didn't even wear a coat over her t-shirt. That's El Nino for you, eh?

When we got home we were all so exhausted. It was 6:30 and we were getting ready for bed.

I needed a new book to read, as I'd finished Little Women on Friday. I browsed the archived titles in my Kindle.....

It's full of all sorts of good old, old, old free books. Wonderful old public domain wisdom. Did I mention free? Wonderful, wonderful.

The Kindles have been in nearly constant use since they were unwrapped last month. Admiral has nearly exhausted the Lousia May Alcott collection already.

We got the old black and white non-touch screen variety. The e-ink display is amazing......

We've only paid for one book for our Kindle. Jeff felt impressed to buy it. Maybe I should read it....

I snuggle down deep into the arm chair, sleepy baby snuggled on my chest, and I begin to drink deeply.

Drink deep in the moment. The warmth. His soft cheek against the nape of my neck. His contented sigh.

Ahh.......It is good to be present in this moment. Why would I not want to be here?

I sigh, enjoying the moment, and then I begin the book.

Johnathan Livingston Seagull.

Have you read it?

The big kids are enjoying the rare movie night downstairs while I sit by the lamp reading page after page after page.

And before the movie ends I come to the end of the book. And I sit there and think, think, think.

The baby is still snuggled down, snoozing away.

I don't realize it right away, but little by little it works on me.

I know why I have a hard time being here sometimes! I know why I am always looking to the future, to the next thing! I am Johnathan Livingston Seagull!

I came to the Earth to have experiences! I am not one of those seagulls that is content to fly from shore to fishing boats and back to shore, day after day, over and over again. I am the one who wants to learn, to improve, to push the limits of my abilities and to try and do and try and do.

I think I have a spirit that craves new experiences. To try new things. To see new things.

And when I feel trapped and done with here, maybe I just need to make something new happen here.

I really shouldn't say that too loudly, because this little person likes to make new things happen here. Perhaps that is why he was sent to me. To give me some new experiences right here.

Baby "Leggies" Made from Socks

2011-12-16T17:10:00.000-07:00

Have you discovered Pinterest yet? It is an online visual "Pin board" where you can bookmark all the cool stuff you find on the internet.

I told myself that I would waste too much time with it if I allowed myself to join. But then I was dumb and joined anyway, and yes, I have wasted a lot of time there. (sigh)

Anyway........

Pinterest is really a neat tool that I have used a lot since I began. It is such an easy way to organize and save things, and makes it so easy to find the link you are looking for.

Another nice thing about it is that you can access your pins from any computer with internet, no need to be on your own PC. That means that if I am visiting someone and I want to share something with them I can just look it up on my Pinterest boards right then. (Well, that is if I could remember my address....)

O.K. so, if you are interested, here is the link to my Pinterest.

http://pinterest.com/crcorradini/

I have 46 pin boards there ranging from everything from recipes to homeschool to home decor to funny stuff.

O.K. now that that is over with, I have to share with you the funnest thing that I have got from Pinterest so far: Baby Leggings made from Adult Knee Length socks!

I got the idea from this nifty little pin that I repinned from some total stranger (Thank you total stranger for pinning this fun idea so that I could find it and try it and love it!!!)

The basic idea is this: you take a pair of knee high socks, cut off the toe, slit up the sole, sew the two socks together, and voila! Baby leggings!

Are those totally cute or what?

Oh wait! I forgot to mention that I didn't follow the instructions on the pin exactly. Instead of sewing the elastic directly to the socks I made a simple little waistband from my stash of knit ribbing that I never use. This made them go up the waist a little higher because I am old fashioned and like my waists to be, you know, at the waist.

I had some old socks lying around so I gave it a try. I loved it! I was doing a little shopping at Target and saw that they currently have a very cute assortment of knee high socks for $2.50, so I made a few more pairs.

These little leggies fit both my baby and my skinny three year old. They are long enough to be pulled down and cover the baby's feet if we go out somewhere.

One of the nice things about these leggings is that they are nice and thick, which makes them very warm. We went to the park this week and both little guys had a pair of these under their regular pants and neither got one little bit cold (it was about 30* outside).

So cute, so fun, so EASY! and FAST!

So go sew some yourself!

Classic Advise For Idealists

2011-10-05T21:51:00.000-06:00

For fun, I am currently reading "Anne of Avonlea" to myself, a chapter at a time, while I nurse baby Tiny. The last time I went through the series was 12 years ago, and I felt it was high time to read it again. I love these classic stories about Anne Shirley. They never cease to inspire me and entertain me simultaneously. They get you laughing, and get you thinking. They teach you things about life, and help you not take yourself too seriously.

This week my favorite passage has been this one:

Oh, I can SO relate to Anne! I am an idealist. And like Anne, I never quite live up to my ideals. Oh well. Life goes on.

P.S. I have given Noteworthy a new nickname. In my mind he is now "Davy Keith." If you can't imagine why, then perhaps you should read Anne of Avonlea. Noteworthy is very much like Davy, except he is only half so old and cannot talk nearly as well. I expect him to be very much a little Davy in the years to come!

P.S.S. Speaking of Noteworthy, he was so cute this week, (when he wasn't being horrid, that is.) Us girls were in the bathroom doing our hair and he came in to do his. He wet it down quite well and then combed it up and back and exclaimed happily, "I have (Jester) hair!", and indeed, he did look just like his favorite big brother. Later he found Admiral's Sunday belt and tried it on (wrapped around his little waist 2 and a half times) and walked around the house saying that he was being Daddy, who is the only person in this house that wears a belt every day.

P.S.S.S. While I'm at it, I may as well tell you a little more about Note. He has been making great progress in using the commode, and has taken a fancy to playing house with his stuffed elephant. He still has an enormous sleep debt and I have been taking him on drives at 7 pm to get him to fall asleep. Tonight I took advantage of dark stormy skies and took the drive an hour early. He was tired and went right to sleep, but woke at 6:45 when heard his Daddy laughing and was up to 9. :( Slowly but surely we will get his habits to improve. I hope!

Fun this week: Tour the Lego factory, and more

2011-09-28T17:54:00.000-06:00

We are having a fun week! I've been thinking about sparks this week, and trying to notice and pursue the sparks my children are exibiting more often. It has been a fun adventure! So far this week so we have learned about:

the isle of Janitzio in Mexico

The Battle of Little Big Horn, Custer's Last Stand, Sitting Bull, etc.

Burlap: what it is made of (Jute) and what it is used for (Hank the Cow Dog's bed...)

The Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer, etc.

Lake Superior and other U.S. geography

Lots of animals, including wolverines, weasels, cow and bull moose, and lots of birds.

Some of the things we've had fun reading:

C.S. Lewis' Space trilogy
Anne of Avonlea
Paddle to the Sea, by H.C. Holling
Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby
A Story to Tell

We've found some really fun things online, such as:

We thought you might like to check them out, too. Enjoy!

What is Scouts really teaching our boys?

2011-09-16T19:46:00.180-06:00

My husband and I have been serving as our ward Cub Master and Assistant for almost a year now. When a boy is presented to us to receive his Bobcat, the first rank advancement, we used to ask the boys to repeat the Cub Scout Promise, which is as follows:

I, (name), promise to do my best

To do my duty to God and my country,

To help other people, and

To obey the Law of the Pack.

That shouldn't be too hard, since that is one of the requirements for earning the Bobcat badge. But guess what? None of them know it!

So, then we tried to have them repeat something easier and shorter, such as The Cub Scout Motto, which is:

Do Your Best.

Unfortunately, they couldn't do that one either. How about the cub scout handshake, sign, or saulute? Nope. Not gonna happen....

So now after being encouraged by parents and others to stop embarrassing the boys, we skip it altogether and just give them the little unearned 1 1/2 inch square of glue and metalic thread for their parents to proudly sew onto their outrageously expensive blue shirt.

Now let me jump to another seemingly unrelated topic. I'll get beck to Cubs in a minute.

A few months ago I started receiving little inspiring e-mails from Oliver and Rachel DeMille, authors of the Thomas Jefferson Education model. This month the topic was the 7 Keys of Great Teaching.

When a parent starts to learn about TJed one of the first things they learn are the 7 Keys, which are:

Classics, Not Textbooks

Mentors, Not Professors

Inspire, Not Require

Structure time, Not Content

Quality, Not Conformity

Simplicity, Not Complexity

You, Not them

As you go along the path of implementing the TJed model, there is a lot that you are trying to change as you get "off the conveyor-belt." Sometimes we start to forget about the 7 Keys.

So Oliver DeMille sent out this nice little summary the 7 Keys Re-Boot, to help us get back to the basics, and I've been studying it this month. I've had some a-ha moments. The key I've been pondering on related to Scouts is #3 - Inspire, Not Require.

First, read what Oliver and Rachel have to say about Key 3:

"There are really only two ways to teach. You can inspire the student to voluntarily and enthusiastically choose to do the hard work necessary to get a great education, or you can attempt to require it of him.

"Unfortunately, most of us were conditioned to believe that if we aren't forced to learn, especially something like math or advanced science or a skill like playing a musical instrument, we won't do it. In truth, force does teach lessons, but they are the wrong lessons.

"The negative lessons of force include:

Do the bare minimum.
Learning means pleasing the authority figure.
Learning, schooling and studying are no fun.
Playing is when you don't have to learn.
To be a good student I have to study somebody else's interests.
My own interests must be pursued on my own time, and they aren't as valuable as the "accepted" topics of study.
If nobody is making me study, I'd rather be entertained then learn.

Image credit: http://blog.tsemtulku.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/animals-vegetarianism/conveyor-belt-of-death.html

So, I had been studying all of this and thinking about Cub Scouts. I had this a-ha moment when I realized that Cub Scouts is just another Conveyor belt! O.K., I already knew that, but I guess I was just trying hard to ignore it because Cub Scouts is the church's program for 8-10 year old boys and so it should be good, right?

Well, it depends on how you look at it. If your kids have been going to public or private school for 2 or 3 years then they probably no longer have a love of learning. They are used to following a conveyor belt system, and they have probably successfully learned the above listed lessons (especially if they are boys that have good grades.)

"But we don't force the boys to learn the Cub Scout material at Den Meeting!" you might say. "We try to make it fun and inspiring!" Well, that is probably true. But aren't you supposed to require things in Cub Scouts? If my son is getting an award I want him to have done the work that is required for that award. If he chooses not to do it that is OK, but don't give him the award without requiring it, OK?

You try to inspire and not require, huh? Do you still sign things off in their book and give them awards? Even if they didn't learn anything? Remember, repeating back information and then forgetting it is NOT learning it. (Sort of how most of us got through high school and college, right? Just passing the tests and not becoming any better for it. Sorry, but that is not learning. This is an especially bad lesson when they are Boy Scouts learning things like CPR...)

So in my mind, Cub Scouts adds another few lessons to the above list, such as:

I get rewarded for showing up and "listening" to my leader, even if I don't really pay attention and don't learn the skills being discussed.
Partial work and partial effort count as much as working hard, so why work hard?

In our pack, one of my responsibilities as Cub Master Assistant is to get special awards for those who earn the Arrow of Light. At the beginning of the year I was given a list of all the boys who will be earning this award. 12 months in advance! Why does this bother me? Hello! It is totally assuming that EVERY boy will be receiving this award, and the Webelos leaders make sure they do! I am all for being a great mentor and helping the boys who want to get the award, but aren't we just sending the boys down the scouting conveyor belt? Were the boys ever asked of they wanted to earn the award? Or whether they wanted to participate in scouts, for that matter! In our ward we have one family that has asked their boys whether or not they want to participate in scouts. The oldest did, and went through the whole program. They younger two have chosen not to. This family is brought up in EVERY committee meeting. "How can we get them to participate?" They are being discussed as though they are inactive in the gospel just because they don't do Cub Scouts! Ridiculous!

Having six boys, four who are ages 9 and above, I have had a lot of experience with both the Cub Scouting program as well as the Boy Scouts. Both my oldest and my third son were enthusiastic "Love of Learners" when they turned eight and began Cub Scouts. Through the three year program I watched them gradually loose their natural curiosity and interest in learning and achieving. I used to think it was a phase for that particular age, but I now believe it has much to do with the Cub Scout program.

Another lesson I think is learned in Cub Scouts is the whole "checking off" thing.

Been there, done that. What's next that I can check off? And what will you give me if I do?

The thrill then comes from the list of check marks and the praise they receive when given an award, rather than the learning.

That one is related to this one:

"I have worth because I have accomplished all of this."

I want my children to learn that they have worth because they are Children of God, not because they got something checked off in their books, were given a badge or a treat.

When I first read "The Headgate" and FAQ by Keri Tibbets I was surprised that she did not allow her son to participate in Cub Scouts but now I wish that I hadn't had my sons participate either. Not the way the program is typically run anyway. I wish they hadn't learned these lessons. It has taken a lot time to regain that Love of Learning, and it may never be as good as it would have been.

The results are even more disastrous when a boy begins Cubs while he is still in Core Phase, as my other two boys have been. I am starting to realize what a distraction academic lessons are to someone in core phase. The lessons to be learned in core phase are good and bad, true and false, right and wrong, family values and character. As the children learn those they have the opportunity to fall in love with learning. When we try stuffing academic knowledge into someone who has not mastered the Core lessons we are distracting them form learning the things they really need to learn. There will be plenty of time when they truly are in Love of Learning to learn all of those things.

I am not trying to say that there is nothing of worth in the Cub Scout program. Please don't misunderstand me. The Cub Scout books have some wonderful "Character Connections" that are designed for the leaders to discuss character qualities such as respect and honesty with the boys. They are a bit boring, but I think they could be a springboard for parents in teaching these character qualities to their Core Phase children.

Just sitting here looking through the Bear handbook on my desk I see many things that are good lessons, such as what to do in emergencies, how to live our religion, how to get and share information and how to manage money. I am not saying these things are bad. What I am suggesting it that the method in which they are presented is not the best. I really think that these lessons could all be learned more effectively in a family setting where the emphasis is on becoming, not on achieving.

This may be a new concept to a lot of us, as our society is enamored with achievement. "But isn't achievement good? Shouldn't we be keeping our children busy from morning until night and help them pile up a long list of achievements?" Well, maybe not. I'll leave that thought for another day.

We really do not need to force feed this information to our boys. That really does them no good. How much better it would be to have a Scout Handbook available to the boys to fall in love with when they are ready. Or go on family camp outs and inspire the boys with a reason to learn those skills. (By the way, I can't remember if I wrote about it last month, but the Teachers in the ward went on an 8 mile backpacking trip. Actually only about five of them went. The others didn't want to, and that's OK. Of the 5 boys, 3 are eagle scouts and none of them could (or would) build the fire. When one of the adults (my husband) finally lit a fire because he was cold the boys let it go out while he was gathering wood. So you tell me what those boys learned by becoming Eagle Scouts because I haven't figured it out yet.)

And if they are never "ready" to learn scouting? That is OK with me. Good grief, not every boy needs to be a scouter and outdoorsman. There are all sorts of missions that we fulfill in this life. Scouting can be a good tool for some of them.

Baden Powell never meant for ALL the boys to become Eagle Scouts. He didn't! He only hoped that most boys would get through the first few rank advancements and learn some basic skills in Emergency Survival, Citizenship, Fitness, Conservation, etc. The path to Eagle was for those boys who truly cared, for those who were becoming leaders!

I've been looking through the rank requirements for the Boy Scout advancements this morning. There are some great things there! I wish my boys and all those who have gone through the program really did learn those things, but guess what? They haven't. You can't force feed this information. You can't force a person to become something great. They have to choose it for themselves. You can help, coach, and mentor them along, but the choice has to lie with them. Going to the meeting once a week and going through the motions of whatever the leaders are presenting is not the same thing as learning the material! Especially if you are going just because it is "the thing to do" because you have reached a certain age. **I should say here that I think the results are probably different for scout troupes outside the church where boys join because they love the program.

Jumping back to Cubs, a few final thoughts:
I'm not really sure if having a midweek activity is good at Cub Scout age (8-10). At this point I am thinking maybe not. Kids want to get together and play and socialize. They don't want to have to sit through yet another lesson after being in school all day. Get them together to have recreation, such as the old fashioned neighborhood pick-up football game at the park! Those are definitely a thing of the past, as most kids are far too busy to participate in something that won't count as an "achievement" on their transcripts.

Work on Cub Scouts at home, if you wish. Let the boys see the books and get interested in learning the material if you wish. But don't try to force feed it. By doing so the boys WILL learn lessons, mark my words. But they will not be the lessons you had intended.

So what do you think? Do you agree or disagree? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

What are we teaching our daughters?

2011-09-09T19:32:00.001-06:00

My 6 year old daughter, Nurturer, was invited to go to a birthday party this evening. She doesn't get to do too much with girls, being raised in a dominantly masculine home, so we decided to let her go even though she is not really friends with this girl and the only reason she invited her was so she would get another present (as if 10 aren't enough....) Sorry, I digress... back to the subject at hand....

She is the only home-schooled girl at the party,
the only one who doesn't play with barbies,
one of the few whose mother has taught to not wear spaghetti strap dresses, short shorts, and other revealing attire,
and tonight she will be the only one who is leaving before the fun outdoor movie starts.

(They are all active members of our local congregation. Just sayin'....)

Why will she be leaving, you may ask? The movie the will be watching is Disney's newest attack on our daughters, Tangled.

I wish I had time to craft a whitty and convincing post for you on why this movie is unacceptable to us. Unfortunately, it is time to put the little ones to bed and if I wait til tomorrow I'll forget to write about it.

So, instead of writing what most of you would consider to be the rantings of a crazy over-zealous old-fashioned out-of-touch mom, tonight I'll just point you to the most enlightening review I have found on Tangled. I hope you will take time to read it and really think about it's message.

---Click here for the review: Mangled: Stay at Home Daughters on the Silver Screen---

Here are a few little tastes of what you will find there:

"... as I walked out of the theater last week, my thoughts were on a different vein. It was, in fact, the film’s perceived harmlessness that made it so disturbing. To be sure, there are a number of things to pick on- from thugs delivering sermons on the basic goodness of man, to magic droplets from the sun god, valley girl vernacular, and much more, but the most troubling parts of the film were the overarching themes.

Rapunzel, in turmoil over her choice to run away, is advised by Flynn,

“Does your mother deserve it? No. Would this break her heart and crush her soul? Of course, but you just got to do it…..This is part of growing up—a little rebellion and a little adventure. This is healthy.”

This is the first major sermon statement of the story, and from here things spring into action as we’re shown, for the remainder of the film, that chronic rebellion is innocent, healthy fun, and disobedience in pursuit of our heart’s wildest desires actually leads to enlightenment and maturity.

...But the story marches on, and we find that rebellion has its rewards as romance fills the air. We also find out that children’s movies are a great way to ensure a break down of morality in the future. We see this in a number of ways- running away from home with a complete scoundrel, camping out in the woods with said scoundrel, an unbiblical view of love, emotional enticements (e.g. smolder), and also, within the dialogue.

...In the end, Rapunzel is finally reunited with the king and queen and as the film closes, we discover some final lessons- that good governments reward sin and indulgent parents are real parents. Flynn is embraced, his thievery ignored, and welcomed, as Rapunzel’s new husband, a prince in their kingdom. His fellow thugs realize their dreams, too, and all of this was achieved, of course, without good character on anyone’s part; by the end of the film, we’re left without a single good role model in sight. (Andrea Reins, Mangled: Stay at Home Daughters on the Silver Screen, www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com)

And finally, the most important part of Miss Reins message:

"The credits roll and that’s The End. Or is it? While the intellect may recognize danger, a film that appears as innocent and adorable as this delights the emotions. We exit the theater and, as our bodies go back to the real world, our minds are still in false one. In this make believe world, freedom is equated to license and duty to bondage. But, this so called freedom is nothing more than bondage to sin. The reality is that we live in a world governed by a sovereign Creator and only a life lived on his terms leads to blessing and freedom. Tangled is aptly called a fairy tale, because in the real world sins have their rewards and a life of unmitigated bliss is not one of them. Packaging all of this in a humorous, expertly crafted children’s film is ingenious, really. As such, it is heedlessly given the stamp of ‘wholesome entertainment’ and we, leaving our discernment at the door , imbibe the beliefs of a culture that is at war with God. Among children, though, one brilliant exhibition isn’t enough. They’ll consume it, again and again, until, through sheer repetition, their souls are imbued with depravity."

I hope you will all take the time to go read the article in it's entirety, and then come back here and share your thoughts with me.
I would love to hear your comments, as always!

p.s. My next post will be an epiphany I had this week about what Cub Scouts is teaching our boys.

Variety Within Structure

2011-08-04T07:50:00.000-06:00

I've been listening to lectures on CD as I go about my business the last few weeks, mainly those by Andrew Pudewa, director of the Institute for Excellence in Writing. Last night I listened a fabulous one titled "The Profound Effects of Music on Life." I highly recommend it! It is rather long (aprox. 2 hours) but very worth your time. In the lecture he cites several studies that were done with mice and plants, and the effects of various musical styles upon them. Fascinating information. You can buy it HERE.

This summer we have had may too much "Variety without structure," and I can see the effects it has had on my family. We are all ready to get "back to business" I think, and resume our regular schedule. This week we've received all of our newly ordered "school stuff" (books, CD's and a microscope!) and it has been like Christmas! We can hardly wait to get started!

But first, I need to finish painting the house! We have lived in this house for over a year and I am ready to make it my own with some wall colors we actually like! There is something about having a new baby that gives me the desire to paint my house. I was thinking about that this week as I rolled on the lovely new shades of antique white. I painted my family room after I had each of my last 4 children when they were somewhere between 1 and 4 months old.

Say Nothing

2011-07-14T22:08:00.000-06:00

Someone was using my camera without permission......It's cute though.

Today I was really grouchy. Not sure why, probably a combination of lots of things. Perhaps it was from eating too much decadent fudge from Sweet Aftons. Noteworthy has been giving me a run for my money this week. Biggest of all, I am under ginormous amounts of stress this week, planning the upcoming school year. I am trying to decide whether I want to do something really crazy that will be a lot of work at first but should pay huge dividends in the end (more on that another day).

I found that I was really frustrated with my sweet husband, and as I thought about it I found that there was really no basis for my feelings of ill will.

So I made a really smart choice. I decided to SAY NOTHING. I don't mean giving the silent treatment. Just consciously choosing to ignore all of the negative thoughts in my head that wanted to come exploding out.

And you know what? I'm feeling pretty good now. And so are my husband and kids. No bridges were burned and there are no casuallties of war. The grouchies always pass, given time, and it is so much nicer to come out of the pit of dispair without regrets.

So tonight I am giving you a challenge. The next time you get the grouchies, remember Proverbs 15:1 and

Say nothing!

You won't regret it. :)

The IKEA cabinets are FOR SALE!!!!

2011-07-10T17:33:00.002-06:00

We used to live in a home with very little storage. Instead of moving to a bigger house, we stayed there many years longer by buying these fabulous storage cabinets from IKEA. We bought three, then a few years we bought three more, and some time later we bought three more! They can hold an amazing amount of stuff! We stored everything from food storage to educational materials to clothing in them. I love how beautiful and yet functional they are.

We have since moved to a bigger home and downsized our possessions quite a bit. We now have ample storage space, so I simply don't need all these beautiful cabinets anymore. I know many of my friends and neighbors have admired these cabinets for years. Now is your chance to own one for CHEAP!

Three of these PAX wardrobe cabinets are disassembled and ready for a new home. 2 are in excellent condition, and the third has a few flaws.

You can learn more about them here at IKEA.com

Prices:

The 2 in excellent condition I will sell the frame and 2 doors for $100.

The third has some damaged wood on the bottom. It is usable, but you may want to buy a new frame for it. I will sell this frame and 2 doors for $50.

This is a great buy, as the doors cost $80 each new, and the frame is $100.

I don't think I have any drawers available, but at IKEA you can buy plastic or wire basket drawers, as well as a whole array of accessories to add, (See here)

Unfortunately, it looks like they no longer sell the wooden drawers you see in my photos.

I will include up to 6 shelves or 2 clothing rods with each cabinet, your choice.

If you live close to me and ask real nice, I just might deliver and assemble it for you!

Sometimes I wonder...

2011-07-10T11:23:00.001-06:00

Sometimes I wonder if I really know anything about parenting or educating my children.

Are my kids going to turn out O.K.? Are the things I am doing the right things? Am I wise to not be doing those things that I believe are the wrong things?

Sometimes I just get so tired of being the strange one. Ya know? And then I wonder if I am doing the right things.

I don't really wonder about the big things. There are so many "absolutely not!" things that I know we will not partake of. Such as broadcast TV, and most, most movies. And on, and on, and on. You all know the list.

Actually, I guess I really don't question my own standards at all. We try very hard to live by the Lord's standards, as set forth in His gospel, and I never question them.

I guess what weighs on me is that so many of those around me are setting their standards according to the world and not the Lord. It makes me sad for them.

I really do get tired of living around so many with low standards. People that should know better.
I worry about the influence they will have on my children. I'm a pretty protective parent, but I can't be there all the time for all of my children.

Things bother me like, why are they letting their girls wear immodest clothing to church (or anywhere, for that matter)? And why are they calling women who dress that way to teach Sunday School or Seminary. I'm not talking about my "ultra conservative" standard for modesty, I'm just talking about, you know, wearing skirts that don't cover the garment, sleeveless dresses, etc. And how about those tops that really look like lingerie that they wear skin tight over skin tight t-shirts? Those "shirts" really scream "Look here fellas!" No one says anything. How DO you say anything? A friend of mine who also has several boys once told me that she won't say anything, but she might have to start bringing trench coats to wrap those girls in. Good idea!

I cringe when I think about all the things that other youth are seeing / hearing / reading on a regular basis. Pornography, immorality, violence. And how about just plain meanness? We try to have a heaven on earth in our home, and really don't know much about these dark things that are out there. However, I'm glad Misty takes the time to inform me about things. (See *here* and *here* and *here* for starters, but don't do the 'log in to see this section' parts.)

It is good to be informed, but it is painful sometimes. And surprising.

I really shouldn't be surprised. I know the parable of the Ten Virgins. And I know that all ten represent members of the church. I hope that I would be counted as one of the wise. We are really trying to be wise.

Yet it makes me so sad. Will there be anyone worthy and clean for my children to marry? Yes, I believe there will be. The gospel will never be taken from the earth, and there are others who are trying to live apart from Babylon. It may be harder to find them, but they are there. Here is proof! This young lady is the epitome of virtue. She is beautiful and accomplished, virtuous and educated. She could have been married years ago, but it took some time to find the right man. But he was found.

So, where am I going with all of this? I don't know. I had something entirely different in mind to write about today, but this is what my fingers typed. I guess I'll write about that next time. Maybe I'm hoping that someone will read this, or some of the links, and wake up! But not really, because the only people who read this blog already live the way I do. Or maybe they don't. I'm still not sure who all is reading this blog.......

I'm not trying to sound like a Pharisee, the one who believes she is more righteous than everyone else. We have things to work on and repent of, too. But we are trying be be a peculiar people, a people focused on the gospel of Jesus Christ who are trying to model our lives after his. I just wish others would try a little harder to do the same.

"May we go forward with determination to try a little harder to be a little better. "
Gordon B. Hinkley, from We have a Work to Do.

You can only have 2 out of 3

2011-06-28T16:35:00.000-06:00

A few years ago I attended an informative class on home organization and teaching your children to work. It was taught by a very wise homeschooling mother of 8 children. I was very impressed by how smoothly her home ran and how she taught her children to work. I only had 5 children at the time, and had not yet done a very good job at training my children. Many changes took place following the meeting!

During the meeting she shared something that has stuck with me, and I want to share it with you. I have thought about it a lot, and I think it is a true principle. This is what she taught us:

You can only have 2 out of these 3 things:

1. A clean house

2. Lots of stuff

3. Happy children

You see, you can have a clean house and have lots of stuff, but your children will not be happy. This is because you will be constantly nagging about cleaning up and there will be lots of chores to do to maintain all the stuff and keep the house clean.

You can have a lot of stuff and have happy children, but most likely you home will not be clean. Happy children love to scatter stuff all over the house!

OR you can have a clean house and happy children but not have a lot of stuff.

I vote for #3!

During the time I attended the class I was still in the "figure out how to organize and store all this stuff" mode. When we were talking about toys she confided that the only toys they had left in their home were a box of Legos and a box of Lincoln Logs. And maybe she had a small box of baby toys too, I can't remember. I just remember being so surprised. I had about 20x that amount of toys! No wonder I was having a hard time maintaining it all! Being the Toy Police is no fun at all!

With the arrival of Tiny we have been going through a Mom-just-had-a-baby-plus-it's-summer-vacation-and-we-just-want-to-play phase the last few months. My house is getting trashed way too often. Everyday, in fact. I'm still amazed at the amount of stuff we have! I'm so tired of trying to maintain and coral it.

The kids are tired of it, too. I think most of the messes are caused by 2 or 3 of the children, but it is hard to tell. The messes just seem to appear out of nowhere! Whenever it is morning work time and I assign Good Fellow a chore he complains, as only a kids with autism can pull off, "Mom! More or Less a Mess is turned on! I don't like more or less a mess. Turn it off!"

Time for another purge! My goal is to have a nice empty garage like my senior citizen neighbors have by the end of the summer. We don't need to purge so much of toys this time. Most of the messes lately are composed of books, paperwork, shoes, socks, fishing poles, and crackers. Maybe we mostly need to organize those things better, eh?

(Yes, yes. It is also time to get back into our cleaning habits, I know. But with this cute new baby to play with who wants to spend so much time picking up and putting stuff away?)

Lessons Learned From Broken Pipes

2011-06-20T18:07:00.002-06:00

We have no running water today. This morning the city said they expected that the problem would be solved in 30 minutes, but it has now been several hours. Water is the main beverage drank around here, and we have really noticed it's absence. I have learned some things today that I thought might be useful to share.

1 - We have a lot of water stored, but none of it is easily accessible. All 3 or 4 hundred gallons are in large plastic barrels in the basement. To use it we must find the special wrench to open the lid. Then we have to find the pump that we can put down the hole to pump some water out into a bucket that we can carry upstairs to be used. We have not yet done this, but will resort to it if the water is not turned back on soon.

2 - We have 3 toilets in this house. We have 7 people who use them. Not being able to flush is, well, smelly and gross. No one wants to use a toilet that is full of someone else's waste.

3 - Murfy's Law states that water outages will occur on one of the following times:
a) Monday morning when you have a sink full of dirty dishes because
yesterday was a day of rest.
b) Laundry day
c) The first work day after a campout out or other nature outing,
during which you created a lot of wet, muddy clothes.
d) At least one person in the house is sick and should be
drinking a lot of liquids.

**Lucky for us, today is: e) all of the above!

These little emergencies would be so much easier to live through if we had some easily accessible water. Some for drinking, some for cooking, and some for clean up.

I plan to start saving milk jugs and filling them with water. I think we need at least 2 gallons in each bathroom for flushing toilets. We drink so much water we probably should keep one gallon of water per person in the kitchen.

Having baby wipes has been handy for washing hands and sticky toddler faces.

Think outside the box:
The kids started grabbing ice cubes and holding them til they melted a little and washed their hands with them. I then realized that even though I don't have water I do have electricity, so I boiled a pot of ice cubes to get enough water to make steamed veggies for dinner.

I also filled a pitcher with ice cubes so that we could drink the water after it melted. I wish I had thought about doing that as soon as we discovered the water was broke.

Isn't it nice when we can learn from "little emergencies" so that we can be better prepared in the future?

Yoda Said It Best

2011-06-07T19:26:00.001-06:00

How to be the COOLEST MOM / WIFE EVER:

Watch Star Wars with your kids and hubby.

Yep. It was that easy. My family is so funny. They kept talking like I had never seen Star Wars. Of course I have seen Star Wars! It had just been a really long time. Just because I had had no desire to sit and watch it all the 20 times they have watched it in the last several years does not mean I have never seen it.

Fans of Star Trek are called "Trekies," so what do you call a fan of Star wars? A "Jedi Wanna-Be"? Well, whatever you call them, the guys at my house would be it.

So anyway, I recently felt the desire to watch episode IV. Don't ask me why. The thought came totally out of the blue. But anyway, the kids hauled my comfy chair down to the basement and were thrilled to have a little movie night. It was a lot of fun. Our family is a big fan of the music of John Williams and we love to sing the Star Wars song by Moosebutter. It was amusing to hear the actors say the lines that are used in the movie, especially the part about Luke whining. If you are a Star Wars fan and you don't know what song I am talking about, you have got to check out *This Video*.

Well, a week or two later we had another movie night to watch Star Wars episode V. I love the wisdom of Yoda. As we watched him speak to the Ghost Obi Wan about why he didn't want to train Luke, I felt like he was talking about me. Here is what he said,

(for the best effect, try to say this with your best Frank Oz voice)

“All his life has he looked away; to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was, what he was doing.”

I feel like I am like that.

Do you ever chuckle and sigh to yourself when you find an old list of your personal goals and realize that there are things on it that are still weaknesses you are striving to overcome? Today I was looking in my blog archive for something else and I came across just such a list, written last summer, on which I have written:

"Be present more."

You know, live in the moment. I am very good at planning and looking ahead, but living in the moment is hard for me. I think maybe I am getting better at it though, because I have not been too good at planning ahead lately. Tonight I need to run to the store to buy food for a sack lunch and trail snacks for Admirals high adventure that starts at 6 a.m. tomorrow. I hadn't even thought about it until about 2 this afternoon. See how good I am at living in the moment? Ha!

Essential, Necessary, and Nice-to-do

2011-06-01T07:40:00.001-06:00

During devotional last month we memorized a quote from Sister Julie B. Beck, general Relief Society President:

“Education is wonderful, but being able to feel the Lord’s power and Spirit upon us is the highest education we can achieve. With that, we have power and influence. Without it, we will not be able to navigate in this life. The adversary will pick us off one by one, and we will be drawn off course by the many, many voices that are out there distracting us. With the Lord’s Spirit upon us, we are strong and solid and will be able to walk with Him.”

“When our priorities are out of order, we lose power. If we need power and influence to carry out our mission, then our priorities have to be straight.”

As we were taking turns reading one day, the thought really struck me, "Are my priorities straight?"
I decided to do what Sister beck suggested, that is to list out my priorities in the categories of Essential, Necessary, and Nice-to-do.

“What has to go in the category of essential?” What things must be taken care of, and if I don’t take care of them, the blessings of eternal life won’t be mine nor will they be my family’s."

These are the things that I must make sure fit into the schedule FIRST. Your list may be different from mine, but here is what is currently on my Essentials list:

Seek the spirit (revelation)

This includes making time to pray, study and ponder, and go to the temple.

Make and Keep covenants and commandments

This includes taking the time to serve others

Teach the gospel to my children; Strengthen testimonies.

Maintain strong family relationships (with husband, children, and then also extended family)

"On my necessary list, then, went some other things. I started thinking about my home and family and what was necessary to create an environment or climate where the Spirit of the Lord would be. There were some necessary things to take care of. Homemaking took on a new meaning for me. I wanted to make a home where the Spirit of the Lord was present."

My Necessary list includes:

Keep my family healthy with good food, healthcare, personal hygiene, exercise and sunlight.

This means I have to schedule time to shop and cook, give children baths,
plan activities outside, etc.

Keep my family modestly clothed.

This means that I have to make time to sew sometimes.

Maintain a clean and orderly home where the Spirit of the Lord may dwell.
Teach my children to work and serve others.
Fulfill the duties of my calling
Personal and Family history

This means that I must find time to write in my journal and organize family
photo albums (doesn't need to be fancy, time consuming or expensive!)

Homeschool

I have taken on the responsibility of educating my children.
Things that I feel are essential things to teach them include: the 3 R's, manners,
a love of learning, how to learn, things that pertain to their personal missions.

My education.

My patriarcal blessing tells me to take advantage of all the education that is
available to me, so that is a necessity.

The Nice-to-do list:

Blog reading and writing / web surfing
Scrapbooking (above and beyond Family history, taking excessing time to make it "cute".)
Movies, Novels, and Games for fun. (except for when this is wholesome family recreation, in which case it fits into the essential category under Maintaining strong family relationships.)
yard work / gardening
home decorating
homeschool: extra stuff, such as projects, field trips, art, sports, classes etc.
awards: working with children to earn scouting or church awards.

I realize that some of the things I put in this list might be in other Moms essential or necessary lists, but for me they fit better in nice-to-do. They are nice to do, and I enjoy them, but there are only so many hours in the day.

After making my lists, I realized while I was managing to do most of the essential things, the necessary were getting neglected because of too much time in the nice-to-do area. Oops! It's so helpful to have everything listed out and prioritized, isn't it?

Time Flies

2011-05-29T17:23:00.002-06:00

Time flies on wings of lightning,

We cannot call it back.

It comes, then passes forward,

along it's onward track.

And if we are not mindful,

The chance will fade away,

For life is qhick in passing.

Tis' as a single day.

This has been one of those weeks when I've had that song pop into my head a lot. Everyone is growing up!

I ran into an old friend and her daughter at the store. I asked the daughter if she was graduating this year. No, she answered. She graduated last year. I thought maybe I was thinking of her sister, but no, she graduated 3 years ago and has gone on a mission! Where has the time gone?

Then I got a graduation announcement in the mail for my cousin's oldest son. He looks so grown and handsome and mature. I think the last time I saw him he was only about 14.

Other people's children seem to grow up so fast because I'm not watching. I don't see them very much.

But my children are starting to grow up fast too!

Baby Tiny outgrew his newborn clothes already. Noteworthy now goes to nursery happily and I don't need to stay. Nurturer has lost 4 teeth already and is as tall as my armpit. Mr. Social, almost 9, is as old as Admiral was when we lived in Virginia! (and he seemed so old back then!) Jester, 10, is suddenly looking very grown up to me. He doesn't look like a little kid anymore. Good Fellow and Admiral are almost as big as I am. I have to buy their clothes in the MEN'S DEPARTMENT!

Here is the biggest shock to my motherly heart: Admiral will be 14 this week.

F-O-U-R-T-E-E-N!!!!

NO WAY!

He has started doing a few high school courses online. He just got braces. He has started his own lawn care business.

14!

That means I only have 5 years until he leaves to preach the gospel to the world! Maybe only 4 years until he leaves home. Makes me sad just thinking about it. (And happy too, of course. I mean, that is what we want for our children, right? That they will grow and leave home and be wonderful, responsible adults that change the world for good.)

But it is coming up so fast!

Do you want to know what it makes me want to do?

It makes me want to buy this:

and hit the road and spend a year just being a family.

No neighbor distractions. No yard work. No on call, overtime, or extra meetings.

I've had a dream if doing that ever since some friends of ours did it in 2007.

I want to take my kids to all of the wonderful historic sites back east. American history. Church history. National parks and museums. I want to show the kids where the older two were born and where Dad went on his mission.

I want to do it before my older children leave home. Then I want to repeat it in about 13 years for the younger kids when they are old enough to appreciate it.

Doesn't that toy hauler look great? Put some bunk beds in the garage and it will be like having 2 bedrooms. Plus, it has a loft bedroom as well. Perfect for our family. Of course we don't happen to have $60,000 just sitting around to purchase it and the truck needed to pull it. I've tried to convince my husband that we should sell our house and use the equity. When we get back from our trip we could buy something that doesn't require so much maintenance as this house. We don't need this much space now that I have learned how much "stuff" I do not want to own. Lots of space just means lots of space to get messy and lots of work.

He would have to quit his job so we can travel for a year. I've mapped out 10,000 miles of adventure!

You can imagine his reaction. :)

Yes. Well, it is a nice dream isn't it?

He thinks maybe we can swing it if it is only a 3 month trip, and we buy something that our van can pull, such as this:

I know that looks big (it is), but trust me, it is light enough for our van to pull.

I'm not sure we could see everything we want in just 3 months though. It takes a week or more just to get from here to there.

He is hoping to convince his boss to let him take a 3 month vacation (assuming that he can save up that many vacation days, which would take about 3 years). It would be so nice if they would just let him work from home full time. Then we could be gone for as long as we want. He could work on our break days, maybe do 4 10's, and then we could all explore together the rest of the time. It would be easy enough, since all of his work is on the computer and most of his meetings are over the phone. I'd even be willing to pay to fly him back once a month for on site meetings. But the company does not like work-from-homers. At least not during business hours. They LOVE it when the guys work from home during the night and weekends!

Grandmas, don't worry! Even if we do end up going, it won't be for a while. Admiral will have his braces on for at least a year. I think it would be good timing to go when all my middle boys are done with cub scouts.

But that is 2 years away. At that point Admiral will be wanting to get a job. Maybe even wanting to date! (Let's just not think about that.....) And of course he'll be wanting his drivers license. I can just hear it now,

"No, you cannot drive the truck and pull the R.V.!"........

Slipping Into Old Habits

2011-05-26T22:33:00.000-06:00

The weeks and months after having a new baby are a good time to evaluate the training of our children. While Mom is "out of commission" she can sit back and watch and see how effective her parenting has been.

What an eye opening experience this has been! There have been some happy surprises, as well as plenty of disappointments. My children are a lot more capable than they were the last time I had a baby. They can handle much of the cleaning themselves. BUT - they only do it when MOM assigns it to them. I've also noticed that the quality of the jobs can sometimes be quite inferior when Mom does not inspect their work immediately.

This last week I've been reading Keri Tibbets newest e-book, Parenting. It is based on the principles found in the Love and Logic method. I have never liked this method, mainly because it didn't seem loving to me at all, rather some sort of pretended empathy. However, in the e-book Keri has done an excellent job of teaching how to apply these principles with real love for our children.

I am learning a lot! First of all, I hadn't realized how often I have "carried" my children through work and consequences so that no learning actually took place on the part of the child. It is very deceiving. The job gets done, the consequence paid, the "sorry" said, so we think that the child has learned the lesson but this is not the case. They have in fact only been carried through the experience, and have not learned what we intended at all. When we are carrying our children through work, they do get the jobs done, but they never learn to do it on their own.

Take chores for example. In our home we have been working on creating a "morning routine" habit. Since we home school we don't need to be anywhere at a certain time in the morning, and don't really need to be dressed for that matter! But I want my children to get into the habit of doing certain things in the morning anyway, such as tidying their rooms, brushing their teeth and hair, etc. We've been working on this for SO LONG! Yet it is still not a habit for most of the kids. When I remind, nag, reward, etc. it gets done. When I am busy caring for the baby in the morning it doesn't get done.

Kari says this:

“A parent may believe that they require chores in their home simply because
they insist on the chores being done, and by the end of the day the chores are done. A parent may believe that good manners are required of each person in the
household just because they teach good manners, and they find that eventually they can pacify their children into behaving peacefully. But who is working around the clock to “make sure” these bridges are being crossed. If the children themselves are working hard to “make sure” that they are behaving and responsibly completing chores on time, then we can be sure that actual learning is taking place. Thus, it is not the end results that determine if our teaching is taking root; the end results could be too deceiving. It is, rather, the sustainability of our efforts which determine the success of them. Have we given effort to a system that now gives back, or must we pour daily that same amount of effort into our system?”
“If the parent must walk the child across the same bridge day after day, then the child has not learned to cross the bridge. If the parent carries the child at first, walks beside them next, and finally leads the child by walking ahead of them as an example, and then sees the child walk independently across the bridge, they can be sure that real learning has occurred as less and less effort, and eventually no effort at all is required of the parent as time goes on.”

Ah, yes. That was a big "aha" moment for me! I think I am beginning to understand the problem. There has never been a consequence for not having morning routine done on time. Well, I take that back. I did institute a consequence at one time, but only enforced it a few times and then stopped because I felt bad about it. How awful is that?

The problem is much farther spread than just morning routine. I need to learn how to choose appropriate consequences and I need to be more consistent! Another thing I've realized it that I need to be more loving when administering the consequence. I tend to be too relaxed, and then frustration builds until I'm "fed up" and at that point it is really hard to administer the consequence lovingly. That leads to sorrow on both sides from loss of good relationship, which leads to me being less consistent, and the cycle just goes round and round!

“When we deliver the consequence with love the child is left to focus on what
they did wrong and how they can improve for a better outcome next time. When we deliver a consequence with even the slightest bit of frustration, the child is robbed of the opportunity to focus on changing, because they are too busy conquering a more important challenge—that of figuring out how to get their parents’ love back. They may experience feelings of anger and resentment themselves because of how their parents are treating them. Or, they may buckle under their parent’s authority and experience feelings of guilt and shame, all of which are unhealthy as they introduce the ego and shun the true self. Some children also experience the added thrill of noticing that they can control their parents’ emotions like a puppet, causing them anger or happiness depending on their behavior. But if the parents simply deliver the consequence lovingly, all of this complicated emotional mess can be avoided and the children can simply learn to stop committing these certain errors, keeping their self esteem all the while.”

Oh I have so much work to do, it is hard to know where to begin. This week I noticed more contention than normal between the children, so I decided to begin there. We had a family home evening about contention, and how we want the atmosphere in our home to feel. Since then, whenever I have heard contention I have tried to sweetly remind the children that that behavior is taking away from the good feeling in our home and that they (all parties involved) must go to time out. Much of the first day was spent in time out! However, since then the amount of contention has decreased quite a bit. Now the children are starting to call each other on it before I have a chance because they don't want to go to time out! Yea! It is working!

This children's science museum in Boise, Idaho is really cool!

I have also been trying to be more consistent with my 2 year old who does not obey very well. He seems to be rapidly improving, although there is still a long way to go! I have tried extra hard to show him love, since he has been displaced as the baby of the family. He still is not too jealous. He loves little baby Tiny!

Kari's newest book has these and many more words of wisdom. It goes hand in hand with The Headgate. I can see how applying these parenting principles with make living "Headgate style" much smoother. I highly recommend it to all parents! You can find it at the link above.

How to Memorize Things Painlessly

2011-05-19T14:25:00.000-06:00

Last summer I wrote a post about the Charlotte Mason method for memorization. (read here)
I tried her method and was pleasantly surprised at how easily the children picked up the poem.

Since January my children and I have been having regular morning devotionals. I had always wanted to do that in our homeschool, but had a hard time making it happen consistently. We would do well for a while, and then it would slip away. Finally though, we have been consistent with it for 4+ months. I decided that I would have devotional even if nothing else gets done in the day, and since then we rarely miss.

During our devotional we have been working on memorizing scriptures, hymns and quotes from General Authorities. I want to fill my children's minds with wholesome, uplifting thoughts that can help them when they need it. I typically choose a talk from the most recent conference, then pick scriptures and a hymn that go along with the theme. Our method is similar to the Charlotte Mason Method that I wrote about before. It is so extremely simple, I am amazed at what my children have been able to memorize.

Here is how we do it:
We gather for devotional sometime in the morning before lunch. It is helpful to not care about the exact time, then we can't ever say "Oh, it's past x:xx so we I guess we missed devotional for today." Since Tiny has joined the family our devotional happens later in the day than usual, but it still happens!

Each of the 5 children who can read has a "school binder." We keep a number of things in these binders. Maybe I'll tell you about it more in depth someday, but not today. In their binders each child has 3 papers at the beginning: the hymn, scripture and quotes of the week. I copy and paste the text from lds.org and change it to an easy to read large type font. Once I have chosen what we will be memorizing it only takes me a few minutes to prepare and print the papers. I typically choose new selections every 2 weeks.

Whenever I can manage it I call the children to come to the family room for devotional. They each bring their binder and their scriptures. We start by singing the hymn along with the CD. (We have the hymn and primary song cd sets from church distribution.) If we are learning a newer primary song then I play it on the piano for accompaniment or we sing a Capella. The first day with the song we discuss and define words.

Following the song, the child of the day says family prayer. Sometimes after family prayer we have a quiet moment for personal prayers. They we simply take turns reading the scripture and quote. Depending on the length of the selections, after one or two weeks 4 of the 6 children generally have the scriptures and quotes memorized! And all we do is read it. In one week each of us has read it aloud 5 times and heard it read 25 other times. That's all it takes!

Magic!

The children get so excited when they read or hear one of "their" scriptures or quotes in another setting. They always run and show me when they come across one in their personal reading. They impress their church teachers when they can quote scriptures used in class! (they make me look like such an awesome parent! hee, hee!)

After we take turns reading we read in the New Testament and have a short lesson if Noteworthy is behaving. Sometimes he can't handle any more devotional and we skip it.

Happy, Happy Mother's Day!

2011-05-08T13:32:00.003-06:00

Isn't being a mother WONDERFUL! I love being a mother. I am so grateful for the seven precious spirits that Heavenly Father has sent to me to raise. I take my job as mother pretty seriously. It is stressful at times, but nothing brings me more joy and satisfaction than watching my children grow "in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man."

I'm so grateful for the privilege of being a mother!

Meet Baby Tiny. Isn't he cute? He's even cuter in person. He has everyone in this house wrapped around his little finger. Nurturer wants to hold him all day long. Even Noteworthy thinks he's pretty cool, and hasn't acted jealous at all yet.

All went well and we had a successful VBAC delivery. The doctor was concerned that I might be developing pre- pre-eclampsia and that the placenta was wimping out, so he wanted to get me delivered quickly. We were able to induce slowly and didn't need to do a c-section. He was born at his favorite time of day, which happens to be the middle of the night in my part of planet earth. Which is one of the reasons I chose to have my first epidural - I just wasn't up to laboring at 2 am. I also wanted to be ready should we need to do an emergency c-section. Not feeling the contractions helped me stop panicking about the possibility of uterine rupture, and Leader and I were able to nap until Tiny was ready to make his debut. It was quite a different experience!

In spite of not growing for 3 weeks and being born 9 days early, he is a healthy 8 lbs. I think he had been ready to be born for a few weeks, as I kept having early labor during the night that would stop by morning. Maybe my body forgot how to labor without help, after having been induced the last 3 babies. These are times I am so grateful for the blessings of modern medicine and wise doctors. Somewhere around 13 babies were born in that hospital that night. It was fun to hear them crying all around as we waited for ours. So many valiant spirits coming to the earth for these last days. You could almost hear the trumpets of heaven announcing their triumphant arrival.

A few more thoughts on the Sacrament of Birth

2011-04-28T08:15:00.001-06:00

I've been thinking a bit more about the analogy between pregnancy and birth and the life of our Savior Jesus Christ. These thoughts might not make sense if you did not read the original article, as the things I wrote about previously were on a different tangent.

Last week the kids and I were reading about the Saviors final week in St. Matthew during devotional time. Several things struck me, being great-with-child as I am.

As the Savior knew that the end was near, he spent much time teaching and preparing his disciples to be able to carry on when he is gone. So too, a mother spends a great deal of time preparing her household for the event of her temporary absence.

As a mother is near the time of delivery, her burden becomes heavier (literally) to bear. So too did the Saviors. Think of all of the persecution and trials he faced that last week.

There are people around you that do not understand what is about to happen, just as the Savior's disciples didn't really understand that He was to be resurrected. We are trying to prepare Noteworthy, now 2 1/2, for the arrival of his little brother. I thought maybe he finally understood, since when asked where the baby is he points to my tummy. But last night he told me that the baby was in his tummy....

When Jesus retires to the Garden of Gethsemane, he knows that the suffering is coming. So too does a woman preparing for labor. However, in Mark 14:33 we read that He was "sore amazed" at how painful and difficult it really was. I think all women who have had a natural childbirth can relate! Even after having done it before, that last little transition is still "sorely amazing!" However, we have that wonderful euphoria just minutes later as we hold that sweat new baby in our arms. I wonder if the Savior had anything like that? There is nothing mentioned about it. Perhaps there was no relief afterwards, as His suffering was not so much of a physical one as a emotional/spiritual one.

Well, I think I had more thoughts about all of this, but I can't seem to remember them right now, so this will have to suffice.

Here we sit like frogs on a lilly pad, frogs on a lilly pad.....

2011-04-26T18:09:00.001-06:00

...frogs on a lilly pad,
Here we sit like frogs on a lilly pad,
Waiting for the time to come!

It's a good thing that I have such a comfortable bed because my doctor has decided that I should get better acquainted with it. Not that I don't spend plenty of time there anyway, 10-12 hours in it a night. But he wants me to spend some quality time there during the day as well. (By the way, this is totally off topic, but who made the rule that you should never start a sentence with the word "but"? That is one of the few rules I remember, probably because I like to break it so much.)

Yes, good ol' bed rest. It's quite a milestone for me, the first time in 7 pregnancies that I've been put on bed rest. Nothing to worry about, really. Just had some high blood pressures at the office that go away when I sit down, so now I get to spend lots of time sitting until Junior decides he's ready to make his appearance. Which should be very soon, I hope. He's been practicing making his debut every night for a while, but then he gets stage fright and decides that riding in Mom is very nice.

I am passing the time working on digital scrapbook pages. Have I ever told you how fabulous Picasa is? It is free and does everything I want it to do. It is so easy to make nice scrapbook pages with Picasa. I used it to scrapbook all of 2009, and then I uploaded it all to Persnickity Prints and had it all printed. The price is just $1.99 for a 12 x 12 page, and the quality is exceptional. I am so very happy with the results! Clover Lane has some great photo and video tutorials on how to use Picasa.

I'm now working on 2010, and should have it done with another day or two of mattress warming. I don't spend a lot of time making my pages fancy. The photos are what I want to see, not fancy clip art. I do like to include pertinent narrating on the pages, though I didn't show you any of those because they all include names and other private info. Right now I'm really liking this Mosaic Collage mode for those events that I have tons of photos of, such as these below.

Perhaps I'll also find the time to post some interesting things here. I have had a few blog post ideas floating around in my mind, but just haven't taken the time to type them out.

Having Children Makes You Smarter and More Loving

2011-04-14T10:44:00.001-06:00

Did you know that bearing children can actually make you smarter?

Listen to this:

"Neuroscientists have determined that hormones released in a woman’s body during pregnancy and nursing contribute directly to an increase in brain power. With a permanent and quantifiable increase in dendrites and glial cells a mother has a greater capacity to store long-term memory, develop increased motivation and empathy, increase multitasking and prioritizing skills, and decrease fear."

I am not the person I was before having children. My thoughts, motivations and understanding have grown tremendously. Perhaps these hormones have had a hand in my growth and development. I estimate that I have spent less that 24 months in the last 15 years NOT being pregnant or breastfeeding.

Another interesting quote:

"It is the very process of bearing and laboring that prepares a mother to also love and nourish her offspring after birth. The same hormone, oxytocin, that is present in the woman’s body to dilate the cervix and start uterine contractions also serves to fill the mother with love and helps her bond with her newborn."

I also thought that this was fascinating:

"Throughout eternity the Savior’s body will remain marked by His great sacrifice for each of our lives. Throughout mortality, a mother’s body will likewise bear the markings of her sacrifice. These markings may include scars from incisions and tears, stretch marks spanning from thighs to abdomen to breasts, entirely transformed mammary gland tissue, and even internal biochemical changes. Studies reveal that women carry the cells of their children (even in the case of an abortion or miscarriage) within their bodies throughout their entire lives. Furthermore, these fetal cells may even perform important and healing functions within the mother’s body."

To find the references to these quotes, and to read many more interesting things about pregnancy and birth, check out this article: The Sacrament of Birth

Thanks, Karen for sharing this link. I found it very interesting.

Two New Words

2011-04-12T10:19:00.001-06:00

I am reading Walden by Thoreau presently. Here are two of the new words I am learning:

Forsooth and Abstemious

for·sooth/fərˈso͞oTH/Adverb

1. Indeed (often used ironically or to express surprise or indignation): "forsooth, there is no one I trust more".

2. Used to give an ironic politeness to questions.

ab·ste·mi·ous

adj.

1. Eating and drinking in moderation.

2. Characterized by abstinence or moderation

3. restricted to bare necessities

Can you think of a good sentence to use them in?

Learn to like...

2011-04-10T14:14:00.000-06:00

I read this somewhere this week and liked it. I hope it is inspiring to you, too!

Learn to like what doesn't cost much.

Learn to like reading, conversation, music.

Learn to like plain food, plain service, plain cooking.

Learn to like fields, trees, brooks, hiking,

rowing, climbing hills.

Learn to like people,

even though some of them may be different...

different from you.

Learn to like to work and enjoy the satisfaction of doing your job as well as it can be done.

Learn to like the songs of birds,

the companionship of dogs.

Learn to like gardening, puttering around

the house and fixing things.

Learn to like the sunrise and sunset,

the beating of the rain on the roof and windows,

and the gentle fall of snow on a winter's day.

Learn to keep your wants simple and

refuse to be controlled by the likes and dislikes of others.

Lowell Bennion

Living with Less - Clothing, Shoes, Baby stuff

2011-04-08T15:36:00.002-06:00

We just finished the Great Clothing Exchange today. Whew! I'm so happy to have that done before the baby arrives! A few things have changed since I wrote that post in 2008, so I thought that maybe I should report.

1. My children do all of their laundry sorting now. I no longer mark clothing with an "x" because they all know which clothes belong to them, and they each get their own out of the pile to put away. Happy day!

2. I no longer have a large box of hand-me-down clothes for each child. Children #1 and #2 wear almost the exact same size, as do #3 and #4. Buying clothing for my daughter is tricky, so it is best to take her to the store and have her try things on when she needs something new. After being worn by 4 boys there is not much left worth keeping for the 5th boy. And finally, I think I accidentally donated the box of baby clothes, so Newcomer gets all new clothes. There you have it!

Now I have the following hand-me down stashes:

-2 boxes with clothing that is between the big boys and the little boys. I only keep really nice things that I think the younger boys would want to wear., church clothes and scout uniforms.

- 1 drawer in the changing table that holds any clothes waiting for Noteworthy.

- 1 box in the basement of clothes between Noteworthy and the new baby.

- 3 boxes of baby girl clothes that i just don't want to get rid of. I'm too sentimentally attached!

This clothing "swap" went pretty fast because there were almost no clothes waiting to inherit, which was a bummer in many respects. We just took out the worn out clothing, made a list of what they had and what was needed, and then went to the store. It only took 5 shopping trips to 4 different stores and we are all set!

Can anyone tell me where to find modest girls clothing? By that I mean shirts that don't show the belly without the need of wearing a camisole.

Boy it is hard to buy modest shirts for girls these days! Thankfully, my daughter is big boned, so we go to the thrift store and look for clothing that is labeled about 4 sizes larger than her age. Assuming that it has shrunk in width but not length, these shirts end up being about the right size.

This post is my finishing up with the questions posted over at Being a Mother Who Knows last week. Here are the questions:

How much clothing/shoes does each family member have?

I blogged last fall about some clothing organizing we were doing >HERE<
After a while I opted to move all of the clothing back up to the bedroom closets because I wanted to use that room for other things. I am now in the process of making it a full time Mud Room, because we could really use one.

Anyway, there are some pictures in that post that can give you an idea of the amount of clothing we have. Each child has about :

2-4 pairs of everyday pants
2-4 pairs of shorts
6 short sleeve shirts
6 long sleeve shirts (This is the goal. They currently are each down to about 2 long sleeve shirts, so more will need to be bought before winter.)
about 8 pairs of under wear and socks
1-2 pair P.j.'s

Boys have:

2 church outfits - one short sleeve and one long sleeve
Scout uniform (shirt, pants, neckerchief)

Girl has:

3 skirts, 2 dresses
1 pair tights

Shoes:

1 pair sneakers in good condition
1 pair sneakers in holey condition for yard work
1 pair church shoes (girl has 2: 1 black, 1 gold)

Seasonal stuff:

1 pair of snowboots, snowpants, gloves, hat, etc. (actually I still have a drawer of extra gloves to replace lost ones!)
by summer they will each have a pair of flip flops
swim shorts and shirt

I have found that this is plenty of clothing for our family. I wash the clothes twice a week now that I have my handy-dandy new super capacity washing machine. When we went on vacation last month the kids each took 3 pants and 4 shirts. I ended up doing laundry at the hotel once - for our swim suits.

Adult clothing:
My pregnancy wardrobe consists of:

4 skirts (these are for non-pregnancy times as well - I'll share my pattern soon!)
2 pair yoga pants (they fit wonderfully over the baby belly!)
3 pair p.j.'s (2 for winter, one nightgown that is so fabulous to wear when pregnant)
about 10 short sleeved shirts (6 of which I wear regularly)
4 sweaters that I can wear over the shirts on cooler days
1 pair of sneakers that I hardly ever wear so they have lasted 10 years
1 pair everyday shoes (brown mary-janes that I can slip on quickly)
2 pair church shoes (one black, one white)
1 2-year old pair of flip flops that really should be trashed
3 maternity dresses

It has been so nice to have just 20 items hanging in my closet. Very easy to choose what to wear! Most of the clothing can match more than one thing, so it can make several different outfits. This week I decided that I would go through my non-maternity clothes before I have the baby, so that I only have what I want in the closet. I had these clothes all stuffed into the corner of the closet, and I am embarrassed to admit that I had WAY more clothing than the kids. And I thought that I had done a good job of clearing it out before! How could I have left so much in there?

As I went through the clothes I found so many things that were just sitting there taking up space. I never wear them because they either don't fit comfortably or don't match anything else. There was a huge black garbage bag of these clothes! I think there are about 10-15 outfits left now. I really like the simplicity of having fewer, classic pieces that can be mixed and matched.

2. How many baby clothes and blankets do you really need?

Baby things that I think are a necessity, or at least really nice to have:

for little babies:

2 blankets
about 6 flannel burp cloths
about 10 sleepers
some onesies
a sweater
a hat
a Sleepy Wrap - bar none the BEST baby carrier there ever was! Worth every penny!

a bouncy seat like this one so that baby can sit in the bathroom in safety while Mom showers.

O.K. that is not the best demonstration photo because there is a blanket thrown over it, but doesn't tiny Noteworthy look cute? He loved to stare at the colorful towels in the bathroom.

A car seat (obviously!) Must be less than 4 years old or the hospital won't let you take your baby home in it. I don't know if that is just a law in my state or what, but when Noteworthy was born they didn't want to let us take him home in the seat we had. I think the only reason they gave in was that it was Sunday and we had been there in the NICU all week, and they were eager to discharge us!

For older babies / toddlers:

10 pants
10 shirts, preferably onesie snap-on style. Long or short sleeved, depending on the season.
1 jacket or sweater
1 coat, hat, gloves
a high chair
a stroller

Notice I didn't list a crib because I prefer to have my babies sleep in my bed. We used to have a large baby swing but it was always in the way and doesn't get used nearly as much as a bouncy seat. Hmm. I can't think of anything else.

Toys for toddlers:

buckets, baskets, and bags with zippers
little things such as blocks, little people, animals or snacks, which can be carried around in the buckets
1 or 2 stuffed animals
a few little blankets for playing with
pots, jars, spoons
maybe a cloth doll (although I prefer animals that don't have clothes to take off and drag around the house)

Wouldn't it have been nice if someone had given me that list about 14 years ago! So much money could have been saved! So much time was wasted organizing and picking up all the other "stuff" we had.

Requiring Work - Doing Hard Things

2011-04-06T18:35:00.002-06:00

This post is my response to Deanna's questions over >HERE<.

I have thought a lot about this lately as well. We don’t live on a farm. We don’t heat our home with wood. We are not set up to grow all of our own food (although I think that would be great!) So what WORK can my children do regularly and consistently, to learn “how to do hard things”?

We require work every morning after devotional. Sometimes it is just one or two quick things, and then they are off to do school. Today I had a lot that I felt needed to get done, so we worked for quite a bit longer. Sometimes we have major projects such as moving or gardening or building a shed, etc. that we work on all day long. I don’t think that we need to do tons of work every day, or always work for a specified amount of time or anything like that. When there is work to do we do it. When things are in good shape then we are rewarded for our cleanliness by having more time to do other things.

In thinking about people who have “done hard things” throughout history, I realized that their entire life was not spent in doing hard things. They didn’t do hard things every day. These major things were little stories that stand out in their normal life. Almonzo Wilder risked his life to go on a wild goose chase through a blizzard after wheat that he didn't even know if it existed, all to feed the starving people in his community. It was a heroic Hard Thing. He didn't do it everyday. He didn't do it every year. He did it once.

I think reading inspiring stories to the children is important so that they can understand that when there is a need to do hard things that they can step up and do it. That is where Core phase “mastering values” comes in. We want them to have courage, faith, honesty, determination, etc. that can be drawn upon when it is needed. I think those things can be learned from doing the mundane, everyday things consistently, as well as from inspiring stories. From learning obedience by doing whatever is required of them.

I started out requiring math, but now my children do it because they want to for the most part. Two of my children make themselves lists of school work and fitness activities to accomplish every day. They are requiring it of themselves, and it is working out much better than when I was requiring things of them.

I don’t require piano. I want them to see it as a privilege, not a chore. If they are musically inclined and want to learn an instrument they have that opportunity. Once they sign up with an instructor they are required to practice or lessons will cease.

I think Boy Scouts, Duty to God, and Personal Progress are all great opportunities to do large scale projects. Many of these achievements are “hard things” that not only build their knowledge and skills, but also benefit others in their family, community, and the world. The important thing to remember is that YOU, parent must be the one to make sure that your child is actually doing the hard work expected and not just floating along getting things “passed off” without much effort.

The hard things our children will have to accomplish in these latter days are different than our ancestors challenges. They are less physical and more spiritual in nature. We are not all (hardly any of us are) farmers. Our men have different types of careers. My husband is a business professorial and works very hard everyday. It taxes his brain and is very stressful, but it doesn't take a lot of muscle. He has to step up and teach the gospel more in the home than his parents had to. He has to work hard to keep evil influences away from his family.

For one of my children, his “hard thing” right now is learning to read. It really is hard for him! Another son is learning to control his temper, and another’s hard thing is writing. And even though we homeschool, we have a lot of interaction with those who don’t. Many of the neighbor kids who we go to church and scouts with do not have the same standards as we do, even though they belong to the same religion. Dealing with this discrepancy and choosing to stand strong and faithful is a hard thing that my children have to deal with everyday! It will be, perhaps, the hardest thing that they will have to do in their lives!

Living with Less - "Stuff"

2011-04-02T20:30:00.021-06:00

My answers to more "stuff" questions:

1. What do you still have left in storage that you can't bear to part with yet?

Well, I have 3 boxes of GIRL clothes. :) Only used by one little girl in this house.
I have an enormous box of K'nex. I don't think I'll be getting rid of it though. I think I'll want to save it for getting it out occasionally.

2. What, if any, Christmas decorations (or other holidays) do you still have?

I still have a lot of decorations in the storage room. I always liked having a decorated house growing up, and I enjoy decorating my home too. However, after studying about plastics I think I'd really like to get rid of our fake Christmas trees (we have a small one that we bought the first year we were married, and a large one we bought years later) as well as the fake pine garland stuff.

I did get rid of almost all of the fake plants that we had bought to "stage" our last house for sale.

Even though I like to decorate, I don't want to keep too many decorations. I think I want to keep as many as will look nice on top of the piano for any given season, plus some lights and Christmas tree decorations.

3. How many wall hangings/decorations/pictures to you have in your house now? How did you choose what to put up?

On top of our piano I have the one remaining fake plant and a few keepsakes (a rock I picked up on our first date, some geodes from a family trip, a little statue of the temple we were married in, etc.)

I have 2 maps on our dining room wall.

I have an unfinished quilt top stapled to the wall in the hall by the laundry room. It is covering an ugly patched paint job. Someday I will get that wall repainted and then I don't think I'll hang it back up.

3 clocks

I have a few pictures of family or Jesus. 5 maybe? I'd actually like to add some more family photos, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

4. What do you do with the little junks and paper your children get from primary?

I throw them away when we get home. It is something that my child is particularly proud of I put it it their journal binder. Last year I went through all of my children's school work, journals, drawings, etc. I kept only the stuff that was worth keeping and put it all is sheet protectors in binders.

5. How have you organized your computer/desk area?

I re-arrange my house A LOT, trying to find an order that works and feels good. My husband has to be able to work from home on the computer. My kids use the computer for school (mainly math), and I use it a lot, too. Anyway, we've had office and school stuff in various places in this home trying to find what felt best. Nothing felt right. I really wanted to have a CLEAN feeling family room, free from all that school/office stuff.

So, I convinced my sweat husband and kids to re-arrange once again and made the front room the STUDY. All the office and school stuff is in there now. Well, OK, I guess there are a few file boxes that need to be transferred to the new cabinet, but other than that it is all moved.

Our family room went from this

...to this! I love it!

This is one of the 3 red walls in my home that I am not crazy about. However, with all of the other color out of the room I think it looks pretty nice! (I know, I am probably C.R.A.Z.Y to have white slipcovers on my sofas, but I think it looks so nice!)

The little bookcase holds our scrapbooks, stereo, and a basket for current church magazines. The tall cabinet in the other corner holds sheet music, CD's and DVD's, and the games we kept. It is our "entertainment" stuff.

The hope chest is just there for extra seating when needed. The Guinea pig is sitting on an extra dresser that had been crammed into an unused closet in the boys room. We moved it down here and tried keeping the kids school binders and books in the drawers, but it didn't work as nicely as we had hoped. Now it is just holding 2 tablecloths and animal food.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Our messy stuff is now all in one room. It is not as messy as it used to be because we don't have nearly so much stuff there. But still it is office and school, and with 8 people using it it tends to get messy.

Here is the computer / office area. This binders contain genealogy, school curriculum, stuff I am studying, binders for our callings, our pre-children scrapbooks, and the kids journal binders. We have a laptop for the kids and one for the adults.

After purging, this is what is left of the "school stuff." It contains art supplies, math manipulatives, reading games, science experiment equipment, etc. There is a drawer full of educational posters that I use when I teach co-op classes, and a drawer of old church magazines. Almost everything in this cabinet could be lived without, but since we have the space we might as well keep it just in case I ever decide to use it.

This is the toy / office cabinet. In the bottom are 2 drawers with toys for the little tykes: wood blocks, a couple of cloth dolls and tiny blankets, a few stuffed animals, bean bags, puppets, buckets, baskets and bags.

Above are office supplies such as printer paper, the letter writing kit and envelopes, maps for traveling, blank CD's and DVD's (we seem to have a lifetime supply...) camera stuff, and some scrapbook binders that were purchased on sale. On top there is a bin of craft stuff I use for history crafts (such as candle dipping and quill pens) and a box of my keepsakes that hasn't yet been moved to my treasure box in the basement.

So....it is a big improvement over what is used to be!

The other side of the room looks like this. The tables at the wall are for my 2 studiers. These are a new addition to the house so that they can have their own place to spread out all of their stuff. There is usually another small table in the middle of the room (it is currently holding the TV in the family room for general Conference), and the 3 other kids share it and the window table when doing their writing and drawing.

This is what remains of our books.

I'll answer the clothing and baby questions some time next week in another post.....

Living with Less - Kitchen, Bathroom and Food Storage

2011-04-02T19:43:00.001-06:00

I decided to take my turn at answering the questions posed over at Being a Mother Who Knows. What are those things that we think are essential that others do not? What do we really need in our homes? What is just distracting us?

I am still learning to simplify and de-junk. My answers will probably seem silly to those of you who have been living this way for longer. It is funny though. The more I get rid of the more I want to get rid of. The larger my family gets, the less I want to own. I have gone through several major purges this last year. Each time I go at it again I am amazed at what I kept from the last purge that now seems unimportant, distracting, unneeded, etc. It is a process.

I have felt a huge desire to clean, purge, and organize this month (yes, it's that old baby-nesting syndrome I suppose!) In preparing for another little person to take care of I see so many things in my home that I don't want to take care of. I think I've donated somewhere between 10 and 15 large black garbage bags of stuff in the last few weeks, along with a few boxes of curriculum and furniture pieces that were just taking up space. It is so nice! I sort of wish that I could go back in time to see my little newly married self and tell her not to buy anything more than what she had at that moment, except for clothes for the children as they came along! Ah well. I'm getting there. I remember a friend of mine telling me a few years ago how much she liked seeing empty space on her shelves, empty shelves even! I didn't quite get it then, but I do now. How I am enjoying empty space in my home!

O.K., on to the questions! Someday this blog will be a book for my ancestors to learn more about my life, so my answers are detailed and long. I'll split them up into a few posts, and maybe I'll get motivated and post a photo or 2 as well.

1. What things in your kitchen have you realized you really don't need and you now realize you can live without?

Well, I really don't need all of those cool little gadgets that I never used, like sandwich makers and lemon juicers and nut choppers. I don't need multiple crock pots, popcorn poppers, etc. I don't need plastic dishes and tupperware. I don't need spices that I never use. I really don't need so many cookbooks.

My microwave broke quite a while ago and we have not repaired or replaced it. The only thing I really miss it for is softening butter! At first it took some getting used to not being about to heat leftovers, but I have learned that I can do that in a pan just as easily and almost as quickly.

A dishwasher, I must say I really enjoy having! We didn't use ours last summer because it was having issues, and I am very happy to have it again! We have ample opportunities to work around our place, so it is nice to have the dishes done quickly.

I'd like to have only things that I use regularly in my kitchen, but I'm sure everything there does not fit that description. I really like having an almost empty "kitchen tool" drawer with only things that I use in it. So easy to find that I want!

For the long answer, here is a sampling of what I have in my kitchen that I find essential:
1 large pot, with steamer insert
1 medium pot
1 small pot
1 wok that doubles as a frying pan to brown hamburger

Broiler pan
3 rectangle cookie sheet / jelly roll type pans
1 large cutting board

I have 3 glass casserole dishes (I only need 2 of these)
A few platters for serving stuff. 2 that I use nearly daily, and a few that I keep for parties and holidays.
1 gravy boat and 1 little pitcher that we use for syrup.
Bosch kitchen machine (mixer, blender, food processor)
Wheat grinder
Toaster
Large crock pot (missing lid, so we have to cover it with tin foil to use it)
Medium crock pot (better for taking to church pot lucks and such)
Waffle iron
Large griddle
Air popcorn popper

Glass plates, bowls and cups, utensils (service for about 16 so we can use it for 2 meals or with guests)
1 pitcher (I have 3 but only really need one. Why do I have the others? They are 3 different sizes)
about 6 mixing bowls of different sizes that are used for preparing and serving food.

can opener
child cheater (a.k.a. -rubber spatula)
3 wooden spoons
1 ladle
about 4 serving spoons of various sizes, some slotted
1 pancake turner
2 vegetable peelers (one for me, one for the kids)

cloth cleaning rags
a scrub brush for washing pans
2 glove pot holders
3 or 4 hot pads

containers of oats, cornmeal, sugar, etc.
One shelf of spices
1 set of measuring cups and spoons
1 glass 2 cup measuring cup

I have a few bread pans, circle cake pans, and glass pie plates (I finally broke down and bought these last thanksgiving because my husbands family is a pie eating family and I am expected to contribute!) These things mostly sit in the corner cupboard not being used, but they are good to have a few times a year. This cupboard has such a tiny opening that it is not good for storing anything else, so I guess these things are fine there. They are the type of thing that I would forget to pack if I moved, so I guess they are NOT essential. :)

I have a set of 10 glass food storage containers. That is about 5 more than I need, but I could see it being useful when traveling with food during the holidays.

Lots of glass jars from pickles, peanut butter, etc. that I have kept to store nuts, honey, grains, etc. I have way more of these than I need, so if anyone wants some then come an help yourself! I hate to throw them away because they are so useful, and my city doesn't recycle glass.

For camping / traveling, I also kept:
paper plates
Medium griddle
Blender

(Speaking of which, if you plan on using a griddle in a hotel room, make sure you are not doing so right under the smoke detector! That can be quite embarrassing! Don't ask me how I know.)

Other things in my kitchen that are not essential, but are nice to have:

2 round pizza pans (I think these can go. I haven't used them in ages! I want to replace them with one pizza stone.)

garlic press

potato masher

Rice cooker (could probably live without, but it sure is convenient!)

In my food storage room I have a shelf of canning supplies. I don't use very often at this phase of my life, but have in the past and hope to be able to use them more in the future. These include a pressure canner, a steam canner, steam juicer, applesauce mill, cherry pitter, ice cream maker, and hand wheat grinder. I also have many, many canning jars waiting to be re-filled.

2. Where do you put your food storage?

I am spoiled and have a food storage room in my basement that hold all of our food and emergency stuff. Before we moved to this home I had it in the crawl space and in an IKEA PAX cabinet in the living room. Sometimes we re-arranged and crammed all our kids into one bedroom and used the other as a "store."

3. What are things in your bathroom that you have realized you don't need and you can live without?

A fancy shower curtain! I brought a curtain from our old home that I loved and it had been hanging in our master bathroom for almost a year. The color really didn't match the bedroom colors though, so I took it down and put it away, thinking I would buy something to replace it. I found that I really preferred the plain, white fabric curtain I had hung in it's place. I have the same plain, white curtain in the other bathroom as well and it is so pretty.

We have one towel for each child, labeled with their initial, and they each have their own hook to hang it on. My husband and I have 2 towels each. I had intended to donate the other towels, but chose to keep them in an out of the way place for emergencies (a flood or something.) It is nice to not have them accessible everyday though. Much less laundry.

We only have basic stuff in the bathrooms that we use everyday.

In the Master bathroom:
This is the "girls hair-doing" bathroom so we keep the rubber bands, bobby pins and a small box of fancy hair bows in there. Adult and baby toothbrushes and floss are in the cabinet, as well 1 lotion, Biofreeze, Tums, and hairspray. 2 different curling irons and a hairdryer are in the drawer. Deodorant, razors and my hair vinaigrette go in those little baskets. Makeup, combs and brush all fit in the black bag. Under the sink is full of toilet paper.

Kids bathroom:
We keep all of the kids toothbrushes and paste in a bucket we put in a hall closet when not being used. This is so the toddler won't get into it. We don't keep anything in the drawers, except maybe a few combs.

Laundry bathroom:
On the main floor of the house. We keep a case of diapers in this bathroom, as well as extra baby wipes, since this is where I usually change diapers. We store T.P. and laundry soap under the sink. We also store the light bulbs and a few cleaners in here as well, in the nifty little drawers under the washer and dryer. The brooms and vacuum stay in there when not in use.

I used to store all sorts of lotions and cleaners and such that we don't use. Why? I don't know. Not wanting to be wasteful, I guess. This hall closet holds all that is left. The haircutting stuff, First Aid boxes. Extra toothbrushes and soap. You can't see it in the picture, but there is a big empty space at the bottom of the closet. Empty! Now that I look at this picture I am wondering why we have so many Q-tips in there when we hardly ever use them. Hmm.

"The Headgate" - one year later...

2011-03-31T15:02:00.001-06:00

A friend recently wrote on her blog about her progress in applying the principles found in the article, "The Headgate" by Keri Tibbets. In each of the 5 steps she graded her progress. It got me thinking about how it has changed my family life, and so I'd like to write a similar post. Not trying to be a copy-cat. It was a really helpful exercise for me. So thanks for the idea, Deanna!

If you are unfamiliar with the article I am referring to, you can request a free copy HERE.

The grading scale I will use will be: poor, fair, okay, good, great.

My thoughts from the Preface:
I believe that there are many good lessons to be learned from reading The Headgate. I believe that Mrs. Tibbets has hit upon many great truths in parenting and educating our children. I have learned some valuable things as I have applied these ideas to our family. However, I do not agree with all of her ideas. I believe that some of her assumptions have been made too early, from her experience with one or two of her oldest children for a few years. I have many children, with many different learning styles. From observing my children, I can see that these principles may not necessarily work with all children. When I disagree with any of her thoughts, I do not mean to be critical of her or her work. Rather, I am simply sharing what I have noticed to be the case with my own children. It would be fantastically simple if there were a one-size-fits-all method, but that is a myth. I appreciate the things I have learned from Mrs. Tibbets.

While reading the Preface, I thought it interesting that as she talks about her children falling in love with great books she says,

"These are the things that children's hearts and minds are made to fall in love with. This is why they have such great memories, and such incredible capacities for cataloging and storing details. The reason the children who live in this type of environment will fall in love with great books as opposed to other less valuable activities, is simply because great books are the most satisfying of any entrée they could possibly partake of...they are naturally attracted to the most nourishing and satisfying, the most gourmet and refined, the most heavenly and enriching, because these things inherently provide the most growth."

I believe it is narrow-minded to assume that this is the case for ALL children. What about their unique missions? Not everyone is meant to be a scholar. Not everyone has the personality to love reading great books. Some children are meant to grow up to be mechanics, forest rangers and inventors. They really might be more interested in watching the grass grow or taking things apart than reading great literature, no matter what environment they grow up in.

Again, going along with this, Mrs. Tibbets states that the children will,

"...follow their hearts all day and consequently end up mastering the very things they were meant to master."

Understanding this to be true, you must accept the fact that perhaps they will not fall in love with reading literature or math. They may follow their hearts, but the things they master may not be what you are hoping for. You may try to create the perfect environment, free of wasteful, distracting things, but a radish seed will grow to be a radish, not a tomato. That is, unless your environment is so rigid that it will not allow any radish activities. In that case the seed may just sit in the ground un-sprouted.

One more observation from the Preface:

On the chart on page 4, I found it interesting that age 13 in not listed. The chart lists age 0-8 as Core Phase, age 8-12 and Love of Learning, and 14+ as Scholar. My oldest is nearly 14. He seemed to be in "no mans land" for about a year and a half after his 12th birthday. Seriously. He had been a love of learner since age 4, but suddenly he was not interested in much of anything. So we tried requiring more, taking classes at school and such. It didn't work. We dropped all of that and he has, in the last few months, taken off again and he now studies on his own several hours a day. He has interests that he is passionate about again. It was a scary transition for me as mother! I wonder how many children go through "no mans land" at age 12 and 13. Perhaps that is why it is not on the chart. He is my first to go through this phase, so I cannot say. My 2nd son is 12 now, but he is handicapped so he is totally different.

Step 1: Create a House of Order
Our grade: good
This step includes order in relationships, order in appearance, and order in your schedule. I think I have improved in all three areas this year, since reading The Headgate. Our more simple schedule has made it easier to have meals on time. I have learned that it is OK (even preferable) to have a simple meal of toast, fruit and vegetables. The important thing is the regularity - sitting down all together.

I have really grown in the area of "Order in appearance." We all function better in a clean, de-cluttered home.

Relationships: I am pleased to say that my children all "know their place." They are all obedient and cheerfully do what I request of them. O.K. - all except the 2 year old! He is the one that needs more training right now.

Room for improvement:
1) there are still places to improve the order in appearance. One step at a time! We will eventually get there.
2) having a designated shopping day would be helpful, as well as one for other appointments.
3) the toddler needs more discipline, more attention, and more opportunities to help and participate.

Step 2: Require work
Our Grade: good

I almost gave us a "great" because we have made tremendous progress in this area. I love having a clean home. Getting rid of tons of stuff helped a lot.

I'd like to state here that the purpose of having my children work is NOT to help me. It is to help THEM! They need the discipline and skills that they are learning. They need to learn to joyfully serve others. So do not misunderstand, this step has nothing to do with Mom needing their help. (I got a comment about that recently, so I thought I'd better clear that up!)

I need to do more cleaning WITH Nurturer and Mr. Social. AND with Noteworthy. He has been so much happier this last week as I have let him help unload the dishwasher and do other things that he is capable of. He wants to be part of what is going on!

Step 3: Inspire Daily
Grade: okay

According to Mrs. Tibbets standards we are doing better than okay. We read together every night, and throughout the day they can see me, and sometimes Dad, pursuing a variety of interests. I, however, feel that much more inspiring is preferable, and I can't currently do as much inspiring as I would like. I think a mother can do more inspiring than is suggested in the article without doing what she calls "spoon-feeding."

I do believe that we have made much progress in getting rid of boring and wasteful schoolwork. I try to make our assignments relevant, interesting, and worth saving.

I do not agree with Mrs. Tibbets conclusion that you should only offer lessons in a subject when your child asks for them. Sometimes children do not know how interested they are in a subject until someone gives them some lessons in it, even if they didn't ask for it. Perhaps it depends on how inspiring the lesson is?

Step 4: Understand Lessons and Daily Application
Grade: good

I love her example of how to give positive feedback during lessons. Child tries the new thing (reading or writing or whatever). Mom says, "Good. Now try it like this." And on and on it goes, mom always saying "good" after each attempt. This is something that I have tried to get better at, but still have room for improvement.

I do not really agree with Mrs. Tibbets opinions about lessons. I have had children who come to me asking for a lesson in something, but they do not have the necessary foundation to learn that skill. This can be especially true in math. When my 13 year old became interested in Physics, for example, he was handicapped because he didn't have enough math education. Physics requires Algebra 2, but he is still working through Pre-Algebra. I think that it is OK to (gasp!) require work in math so that when they are ready to apply it they will be able to. The key to remember is not to try to introduce things too early or too fast. Often, with young children, the math skills are almost learned without much if any lesson through their daily life, when their brains are ready for that information. However, children can in the "Love of Learning" ages benefit greatly from regular practice.

Also with reading, I believe it is OK to ask my child to narrate to me what they read. They can do this orally or written. It solidifies the information in their minds when they have to repeat it. Some children love to talk about everything and will do this automatically. Others do not. But it is beneficial to both. Also, if we make them pace themselves through a book, reading only a few chapters a day instead of plowing through the book in a few days, their brains have more time to digest what was read and apply it to their lives.

I have learned much this year about useful lessons, through reading The Headgate as well as the writings of Charlotte Mason. I feel that our family is in a much better place in regards to lessons than we were a year ago. I have peace knowing that I am requiring the right types of lessons, and not forcing busy work or letting the children "do nothing."

I do believe that Mrs. Tibbets makes a great point about what our goal should be for each phase. We really DO want our Core Phasers to master values above all else. It is a helpful reminder to think in terms of growth in that area at that age. It really doesn't matter to me if my children can speak Latin or do multiplication if they are rude and unhelpful people! First things first! Love of Learners, however, can benefit from some direction once they are in love with learning.

Step 5: Close the Headgates
Grade: good
First, a little reminder about what that means:

"A right headgate is defined as any activity you would want your children to voluntarily engage in, that would develop their mind and direct their motivation towards wanting to read."

"Wrong headgates include many things that are not inherently bad, but they are labeled wrong headgates because we do not want them open, as they act as a divergent to the water flowing through the headgates we so wanted it to flow through..."

"The initial purpose of determining right and wrong headgates is that the right ones lead to love of learning and the wrong ones lead to love of play."

Children already have a love of play and we do not need to do anything to prolong their childhood longer than it would normally last. We have an epidemic in this country of adults who never really grew up because there are so many "big boy toys" to entice them.

I believe that this step is essential for a successful home education, regardless of the educational method used but certainly if pursuing a Thomas Jefferson Education model.
I have given us a "good" grade because we have made significant progress in this area, but there are still some things to address.

I have always been a "strict parent" and have been careful about what I let into my home, but The Headgate opened my eyes to which things in my home were really good for my children and which were not. It enticed me to entertain new ideas I had not previously considered.

We have been able to simplify in so many ways. We no longer make junk in the name of education (crafts that soon get thrown away.) Between simplifying our environment and closing the headgates we have given away many van loads of stuff. Our home really feels so much nicer! With every load I trash or donate I feel freer. There is still quite a bit of stuff that needs to go.

I have seen a lot of progress in my children this last year. There are still some headgates that need to be addressed, as I was not ready to change everything at once.

Here are the ones that I am having a hard time dealing with:
1) Neighbor kids
Social time is important to my kids. The other kids homes have many wrong headgates open. They way we are dealing with this issue is to only play with friends at our house. At first that was hard. We are new in the neighborhood so sometimes other parents don't feel comfortable sending their children here. Now however, we have been around long enough that there are many families that like to send their kids here because they know they will be outside playing actively and creatively. We had about 10 boys here not long ago watching Jester and Admiral carve bows and arrows out of sticks. They started a "business" and the neighbor boys "bought" bows and arrows with pretty rocks. I have found it is harder to get little girls over. Many like to stay at home and play Disney Princess dress up or other things, but my Nurturer would rather be out riding bikes and climbing trees.

2)Paper. We have stacks of paper for the printer, and the kids like to do origami, make little books that get thrown away, print mazes and pictures out of historical coloring books. I am almost ready to address this issue. They all have sketch books, but they are not used much.

3) Screens. We still have a case of kids DVD's (like Blues Clues) for use when babysitting. This is becasue our babysitter is a boy and well, that is not the same as a girl babysitting! We have a 12 year old with autism and a 2 year old mamas-boy, so it helps Admiral to have the option of turning on a DVD. However, Good fellow will sometimes get into them and watch them on the laptop at other times. He also recently found some old Reader Rabbit game cd's and is constantly trying to waste time "learning to read" (he is already a good reader) on the old desktop computer. Another new time wasting play thing is Microsoft Power Point. Admiral made a slide show for a scout achievment about a month ago, and since then all the boys have learned the program. They, however, don't use it for any useful purpose, but instead play with clip art and shapes and animations and make silly stories. Time to get rid of that old pc, I think.

4) Dart tag guns. This one is probably the hardest one. The kids don't really play with them except when neighbors come over, but that is getting to be a bit too often (several afternoons a week.) I suppose I have kept them around so that we wouldn't seem too weird or extreme to the neighbors. But the play is neither joyful or creative. Maybe now, after a year, we can remove them.

5) We also still have Legos. The kids get to play with them during "entertainment time" during Friday night dates or on Saturday if we are not doing family work projects. That seems to have worked out OK, but little Noteworthy has been getting into they at other times are spreading them around the house, and sometimes the older boys sneak them out when neighbors come over (again, so as not to be the weirdo.) That will be rare now that the weather is turning warm, but it shows that the kids are not convinced of the reasons for the limitations and they don't want to be seen as weird.

Conclusion
All in all, I am really happy with the progress of our family since reading The Headgate. We have grown and changed in wonderful ways. My 13 and 10 year olds spend a great deal of time studying, and the play of the younger ones is cleaner, more active and more creative. They have all learned to work cheerfully and help one another. Our home is simpler. We have more time to do meaningful things.

There is still plenty for me to work on. Perhaps in a year we will have to do this again!

One more smoothie recipe

2011-03-28T17:30:00.003-06:00

This is my new favorite green smoothie recipe. One caution though: drink slowly because it can give you a brain freeze if you chug it down too fast!

3 leaves of Kale, stem removed
1 ripe banana
1 can (~16 oz.) pear halves in pear juice
2 cups of ice

That's it! Yum, Yum YUM! Enjoy :)

While we're here, check out this interesting video of a "smoothie" that you DO NOT want to drink!

Sister Julie Beck on Saturday

2011-03-20T19:11:00.001-06:00

I had the wonderful opportunity yesterday to listen to Sister Julie Beck, General Relief Society President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, speak to all the stakes in my city.

I want a permanent place to keep my notes, so I'm going to record them here. They are all paraphrased, of course, since I am not that good at shorthand. I will put her thoughts in quotes, worded as closely as I can to her actual words, but please understand that these ARE NOT direct quotes. Of course, she said a great many more things than I will list here. These are just the things that impressed me. She talked for almost 2 hours. She delivered her prepared talk, then had a question and answer session.

Before Sister Beck spoke, her husband stood to say a few words. He told of what is was like for his wife to accept such an enormous calling, and how in the end she is just a sister like the rest of us doing the best she can. Then, Sister Beck said something like the following,

"We are all called to do monstrous and monumental tasks. I think this is so that we will all become beggars. The only way to do it is to pray for help everyday."

What is the Purpose of Relief Society?

"Relief Society isn't a program, it is a way of life for Latter-day saint women. Relief Society has the responsibility to teach the sisters how to live the gospel in their homes."

"We are prepared for this way of life as we go through the Primary and Young women's programs."

She spoke of the parable of the Good Samaritan:

"We need to take care of immediate needs, then set up the sister to be self-reliant."

Then she spoke about the story of Mary and Martha, which she said has unfortunately been misunderstood.

"Martha brought the Savior into her home. (Good)"

"Martha served the Savior" (also good)"

These were both good an worthy things for her to be doing. But the Savior wanted her to to more. At this time and place in history being a disciple was something for the men to do. The men, not the women, went to the synagogue, etc. But in this story the Savior was clearly inviting the women to be his disciples, to learn of Him and follow Him."

The Purpose of Additional Relief Society meetings, and how to get the sisters to be interested and involved:

"We are not in the entertainment business. We are in the salvation business. Relief Society is the place where we begin to serve and continue to learn and follow the Savior."

"Additional Relief Society meetings should be RELEVANT! You need to know the sisters in your ward, and know what they need. You should be praying and pondering "What would the Lord have the sisters of this ward learn?" You should be thinking, "How can we help fill immediate needs and set sisters up for long term self reliance?" When your meetings are relevant and meeting the needs of the sisters in your ward, they will come because they will need to learn what you are offering. If they don't come, it is probably because it is not relevant and needed in their lives."

The world is in turmoil. we here have so much. How can we help others around the world? (This questions was prompted by Sister Beck telling of faithful saints in Africa and India that cannot afford to go to the temple even once.)

You can donate to the Humanitarian fund. This money and goods is sent to anyone around the world that needs assistance, regardless of their faith. Some Fast offering and Tithing money goes into special funds to help others go to the temple. Saints in remote areas are being asked to save money (taking years) to acquire their own visas. Once they have their visa and are prepared to attend the temple, the church pays for their flight and hotel stay in a city (such as Hong Kong) so that they may receive their saving ordinances. **I thought this was so neat! It makes me want to pay extra offerings. Maybe some day there will be a specific fund set up on the tithing slip where we can contribute directly to the temple going fund.**

How can we be an influence on the world?

"Blogging is not for you to neglect your families and spend hours on the computer. It is an opportunity for you to share what you know to be true. Relief Society sisters should lead the women of the world in all that is right."

"The Lord expects you to lead an influence for good. One way is to provide missionaries - "a force that we export to the world." We should also help get the younger generation to the temple.

"Don't underestimate your influence on the world by what is going on in your own home today."

How can we get the sisters to have a testimony of visiting teaching?

"Visiting teaching is about watch care and meeting needs. It is not about entertainment. when you accept a calling to be a visiting teacher you are agreeing to be an agent for the bishop. He is busy and cannot know what is going on in all the homes in the ward. He needs you to shepherd the sisters you visit, to make sure they are OK, and help meet their needs."

What is your greatest concern for the women of the church?

"My greatest concern for the women of the church is that they are not aligned with the will and priorities of the Lord." She talked about 2 Nephi 28, and all the things that are listed there that we need to be aware of (being angry with that which is good, apathy, flattery (there is no hell), and entitlement.

"We need to not listen to the predatory messages Satan is aiming at us: the message of sensuality, power, things that are important to the world are not important to us."

"We need to think about the categories of our priorities: essential, necessary, and nice-to-do."

"The list of essential things we should be doing is small. We need to make (and keep) covenants, and serve. We need to read the scriptures and pray daily so that we are aligned with the Savior."

"Necessary priorities: Serve, be self reliant. We need to care for our families, which means we must spend some time shopping and cooking. We need to clean and beautify our homes. Not so that we can impress others, but so that we can create an atmosphere where the spirit can reside. For some, education is necessary. "

"Nice-to-do: hobbies and interests. I have noticed that when we focus on the essential and necessary thing, it is surprising how much of the nice-to-do we have time to do."

"We can be precise and intentional about what we choose to do."

"If you have a feeling to do something good, then do it. Camilla Kimball said, "Never suppress a generous thought."

Favorite GREEN Smoothie recipes

2011-03-17T16:21:00.003-06:00

On Sunday the lesson in Relief Society was on the Word of Wisdom. I was happily surprised to hear so many women talk about how much they love their gree smoothies. I can't wait to get some recipes!

Being St. Patrick's day, I thought I would share with you a few of our favorite green smoothie recipes. They are all just estimates, because really I just dump stuff in the blender and stop when it looks yummy.

I suppose I should preface this by saying that I do not have a fancy $400 blender. I started out using a cheap $17 blender from WalMart and it worked fine. I finally had my Bosch repaired, so now I use it's blender and it works even better. I'm sure those fancy blenders are great, but I can't justify the cost right now. You can use whatever blender you have and still have a yummy green smoothie!

My favorite green to use is Kale, sometimes called Curly Kale. It is highly nutritious, easy to find, and has a milder taste than spinach. I use frozen berries from Costco. I like the blueberry-raspberry-blackberry mix and the whole strawberries.

Not- Green Green Smoothie
2 leaves of Kale (wash, remove spine and break the curly leaf into pieces)
1 ripe banana
about 1 c. of frozen mixed berries or about 5 strawberries (I confess, I don't measure so this is just an estimate. I just dump some in from the bag)
some liquid - however much to get the consistency you want. This is usually 2 c. water. Sometimes I add milk if I have any, which is not often. We also like to add about 1 c. plain unsweetened yogurt (look for a brand that doesn't have "stuff" added, such as thickeners and emulsifiers.)

If I am using fresh berries then I add some ice cubes. Blend it all up (for maybe 1 minute) and you have a yummy berry smoothie. It will be magenta if you use the mixed berries and pink if you use strawberries. If you have a regular blender you will see flecks of green. If you blend it for too long then it will turn an ugly greenish brown color. My kids all love it (even my picky eater).

Pina Colada Green Smoothie
4 Leaves kale
3-4 bananas
1 can (20 oz) pineapple (use the juice and all)
1 can (15 oz?) coconut milk
1 mango (optional)
ice (maybe 2 c. per blenderful.)

This will make 2 blenders full, so I blend half at a time.

I also like to make the above smoothie with canned peaches (canned in pear juice) and omit the mango and coconut.

There. Now I've shared my favorites. What are your favorite green smoothie recipes?

Answers to questions in comments

2011-03-02T17:41:00.004-07:00

Buyog,

I had a good laugh when I thought of your son liking the healthy habits chart! I really can see him enjoying that, because I could see Little Buyog liking it 30 years ago! Hee, Hee! No offence intended! Liking that chart certainly doesn't make you less manly! Actually, you bring up a good point, that not all boys are alike. I just know that all of MY boys hated that requirement! Even Jester, who would've been the one to like it if any of my boys had. I am curious, did your son complete the chart for the entire 2 weeks? Mine do well for about a week, and then........

The Co-op I used to teach in dissolved last summer. We had stopped attending anyway, as there were several problems with the way it was being run. A big problem was lack of discipline and accountability. Secondly, nearly all the teachers were Moms, which is OK, but we are women and tend to think differently than boys. Also, we were Moms, which means we had a lot of other things to worry about as well as trying to put together a lesson. Not all the Moms put forth the same amount of effort, so some of the classes were just plain not worth attending. The teachers that were hired from the community (not mothers of students) often just wouldn't show up. I came to find out later it was probably because they weren't getting paid! I could go on....

Anyway, YES! A small co-op or private school would be ideal. One of the reasons we bought this home was so that we would have room to host one here and renting a building would not be needed. I had a co-op all planned to start last fall, but then it didn't feel right. I soon found out that baby 7 was on his way, so I was glad I wasn't trying to get a co-op off the ground. In the meantime I've changed some of my ideas about how I would want it run, so maybe I'll give it another go this coming fall, bringing in awesome men to teach merit badge classes and such.

Crazy4boys:
I love your ideas for competition within the family. Just move to Utah and we'll save a spot for you in our school...... :)

Being a Mother who Knows and Buyog:
I wish I could say that I am surprised by the pressure put on YM presidents, but I guess I'm not. Those parents need to be given a copy of "Raising Up a Family to the Lord," which shared studies about what really affects whether children cling to their religious beliefs when grown (namely family and personal prayer and scripture study.)
Here is how I see the youth and scouting programs: They are great tools that are made available to the youth of the ward. They are not compulsory. If a youth is involved in scouts, great! If he is too busy trying to pass AP classes or get a softball scholarship, great!

I Have a Dream.....

2011-02-28T16:23:00.002-07:00

It is a crazy dream, but I would love to open an all boys jr. high/ high school.

I have been doing some research, and as far as I can tell, there are no single sex schools in Utah, public, charter or private. None at all.

The more I think about some of the things my boys need to grow up to be real men, the more I realize how difficult it will be for me to accomplish at home myself.

I am only one me, one Mom. I still have little ones to take care of. I'm still changing diapers and teaching reading. AND - I'm a female. :) I'm glad I am, but boys need good male role models on their journey toward manhood.

My husband is a good man, but he is home so little. Normally in the peak of wintertime he is not home during a single hour of daylight. He works with people on the other side of the world, and so he has to be to work early or stay late in order to talk with them, and this happens more often than not. And besides, work is so stressful that he comes home tired with headaches and doesn't feel like doing much with the time he is home anyway. He is now trying to come home at lunchtime to work with the boys, but that time goes so fast.

So, I need to find some good male role models for my boys. Older men, proffesionals in their fields that would be willing to take time to mentor my (and other) boys. Wouldn't it be cool to have a school that would be based on the Boy Scouts? To have men who are passionate about their work come and teach it to the rising generation. Men who would teach science, politics, history, music and mathematics in ways that matter to boys. Men who would teach auto mechanics, carpentry, animal husbandry, etc. and guide the boys through their projects.

We could try to offer some sort of co-op or club experience at home. That would meet some of the need. But wouldn't an actual school be great? It would offer ample opportunities for young men to compete, perform, and do real work. I want something like Plumbfield in Louisa Alcott's "Little Men."

I know what some of you are thinking: "Why not just send your boys to the schools that are available, and let them handle things?" Well, that's a good question. The schools offer many great opportunities. But many are not run in a boy friendly way. Some boys get through OK, but it is not the right environment for many boys. I'd really like an all boy school where my young men can learn without being distracted by the immodestly dressed girls flirting beside them. A school where it is cool to learn, and you are not made fun of by the loosers. That may be real life, but I say let the boys deal with those things when they are men, when they have confidence in their abilities, talents and interests. Besides, they would hardly be growing up sheltered. They would still have to deal with those things at church, in the neighborhood, etc. But let's separate academia from teenage hormones as much as possible.

But here is the problem (See paragraph 4): I am only one me, one Mom. I am still raising little ones, changing diapers, preparing meals.........When do I have time to start a school?
So, I wish someone else would start one for me, and not charge too much, because I will have up to 4 boys there at a time. And I want to be on the school board so I can have a (BIG) say in how the school is run. :) I want it to be located within a 15 minute drive and I want it to provide a real, healthy lunch so that I don't have to pack one.

Boys to Men: Competition, Scouting

2011-02-21T17:16:00.004-07:00

*Don't ask me why this post has so many different fonts and boldnesses. I didn't write it that way. Maybe blogger is playing an early April fools joke on me. :)

Going back to "Boy's Adrift", I was also quite interested in Dr. Sax's comments about Competition. Some boys are born competitors, and will be much more engaged and interested in participating if there are 2 factors that Doctor Sax mentions:

there are winners and losers, and
the outcome is in doubt. Anybody might conceivably win and anyone might conceivably lose. Everything depends on how hard you play.

This is a new thought to me. I tend to not be a competitive person. I've never enjoyed competitive sports. I like to see everyone win. But I am a silly female. :) It never occurred to me that some of my children might need this competitive atmosphere to thrive. I have at least one boy in my home that seems to thrive on a competitive atmosphere. He craves authority. You know who it is :)

We don't have many opportunities in our home school for competition. I do not believe in having my children compete with one another, especially since it would be an unfair competition because of age differences. Although my boys are very active, sports aren't really our forte. I'll have to do some more brain storming about ways to increase competition for my boys. If you have any great ideas, I would LOVE to hear them!

Doing Scouts the wrong way

When my competitor was 8 and we lived in Virginia the scout troupe had an unusual rule: When one boy earns his Wolf badge, ALL the boys will receive theirs (so no one feels bad or left out, of course!)

How does a competitive boy take that? As an insult. Why try to "be the best" if everyone, including the slackers, must be the best with you? What is that teaching the boys? That they can show up (or not, sometimes!) and still get an award. Why try? Why care?

I think the Boy Scout program is one of the best ways to raise boys to men. There are merit badges that focus on many different manly careers and interests. Many skills can be learned through the scouting program that are not learned anywhere else (except for 4H type programs, I suppose.) Scouts offers the opportunity for boys to learn to be leaders, and many opportunities to see the fruits of their labors. To work hard to accomplish something and have the sweat reward of recognition.

All that having been said, I have a BIG BEEF with the way the scouting program is typically run in the church. This is not written with criticism of the church or any of it's programs, mind you. It is a criticism of how we leaders tend to run the program. Many times, especially in wards with many young men, things are done in a hurried and watered down fashion. Requirements are overlooked or ignored, all to have the prestige of having the majority of the boys earning Arrow of Light and Eagle.

I have watched my boys enter the Cub Scout program full of enthusiasm and interest, only to have it gradually diminish over time. By the time they are Boy Scouts I think they are burned out. Why? Because the scouting program in the church is run very much like public school. It is a conveyor belt. Put the boys on when they are 8, and have them slide off as an Eagle Scout at at 13 or 14. The boys go to scouts and get filled with lots of Wissenschaft. Especially in Boy Scouts!

Just this week I went to a parent/scout meeting where the calendar for the next 6 months was gone over. In the Deacons quorum hardly any scouting is done on mutual night. The leaders expect that the boys will already have advanced through most of the rank requirements before they turn 12. They go on camp outs so that the boys can earn the camping merit badge, but the purpose is to "give the boys a fun experience," not to teach them skills or require any work, such as cooking. They claim that all the boys all have leadership roles in the troupe, but my son doesn't know what his is, and my husband rarely sees the boys do any work or skills when he tags along on campouts.

During the meeting a few mothers spoke about the "need" to push our boys through the program quickly so that they can get their Eagle before they enter high school. They gave lists of several places in our community where your can "drop your boys off, come back in 2 hours to pick them up and they have earned a merit badge." The way they accomplish this is often by giving them a long lecture on the topic and have them take notes on a "merit badge worksheet."

Excuse me? Have they read the list of requirements? Boy Scouts is supposed to be about Kenntis, not Wissenschaft!

Take the Citizenship in the Community merit badge. One of the requirements is to visit a City Counsel meeting. Another is to think of an issue that is important in the community and speak to a City counsel member about it. Another requirement is

Develop a public presentation (such as a video, slide show, speech, digital presentation, or photo exhibit) about important and unique aspects of your community. Include information about the history, cultures, and ethnic groups of your community; its best features and popular places where people gather; and the challenges it faces. Stage your presentation in front of your merit badge counselor or a group, such as your patrol or a class at school.

So how is a boy to accomplish all of this in a 2 hour class with a worksheet? HE ISN'T!

My competitive son was part of a merit badge class for this particular merit badge. I think the leaders told the boys to do those first 2 mentioned requirements on their own and report back. For the last requirement I think the leaders brought a few brochures and had the boys work together to cut and paste pictures on a poster and stand up and show it to each other.

Needless to say, all the other boys were awarded that merit badge. I'm not sure how many of them actually completed requirements one and two. I asked some of the boys what they talked to the City Counsel about and they didn't know what I was talking about. The leaders tried to give a badge to my son as well, but I won't let my children be given an award that they have not earned, so we are still working on it. How does Mr. Competitive take that? Why do the work to earn an award? No one else did!

I want my boys to really grow and become something better by participating in Boy Scouts! I am starting to think that I will have to sign up to be a merit badge counselor for everything if I am to make sure that my boys truly earn the awards.

But then, that wouldn't be so good either. I am not a professional or knowledgeable in many of the areas of focus, such as Chemistry or Rifle shooting. I am a woman. I could do the Cooking Merit Badge, or Geneology, or other such. But as for the manly merit badges, the only way I could be a counselor for those merit badges would be the Wissenschaft way. Maybe that is partly the reason that the program is run the way it is. We need more competent men signing up to be counselors for their areas of expertise.

Here is another example of Wissenschaft Scouts, the Communications merit badge. Here is a partial list of requirements:

1. In a small-group setting, meet with other scouts or with friends. Have them share personal stories about significant events in their lives that affected them in some way. Take note of how each scout participates in the group discussion and how effectively he communicates his story. Report what you have learned to your counselor about the differences you observed in effective communication.
Do ONE of the following:
1. Think of a creative way to describe yourself, using, for example, a collage, short story or autobiography, drawing or series of photographs, or a song or skit. Using the aid you created, make a presentation to your counselor about yourself.
2. Choose a concept, product, or service in which you have great confidence. Build a sales plan based on its good points. Try to persuade the counselor to agree with, use, or buy your concept, product or service. After your sales talk, discuss with your counselor how persuasive you were.
Write a five-minute speech. Give it at a meeting of a group.
Interview someone you know fairly well, like, or respect because of his or her position, talent, career or life experiences. Listen actively to learn as much as you can about the person. Then prepare and deliver to your counselor an introduction of the person as though this person were to be a guest speaker, and include reasons why the audience would want to hear this person speak. Show how you would call to invite this person to speak.
Attend a public meeting (city council, school board, debate) approved by your counselor where several points of view are given on a single issue. Practice active listening skills and take careful notes of each point of view. Present an objective report that includes all points of view that were expressed, and share this with your counselor.
With your counselor's approval, develop a plan to teach a skill or inform someone about something. Prepare teaching aids for your plan. Carry out your plan. With your counselor, determine whether the person has learned what you intended.
Do ONE of the following:
1. Write to the editor of a magazine or your local newspaper to express your opinion or share information on any subject you choose. Send your message by fax, email or regular mail.
2. Create a web page or blog of special interest to you (for instance, your troop or crew, a hobby, or a sport).. Include at least three articles or entries and one photograph or illustration, and one link to some other Web page or blog that would be helpful to someone who visits the Web page or blog you have created.
3. Use desktop publishing to produce a newsletter, brochure, flier or other printed material for your scout troop, class at school, or other group. Include at least one article and one photograph or illustration.
Plan a troop court of honor, campfire program, or an interfaith worship service. Have the patrol leaders' council approve it, then write the script and prepare the program. Serve as master of ceremonies.

So, my son went to a class for this merit badge. For the "teach a skill" requirement the leaders had the boys pair up and "teach" each other how to peel potatoes. I can't remember what they did for the other requirements, but it was equally un-life-changing. Again, they tried to give my son the merit badge. I pointed out that while I wasn't sure if he had actually accomplished many of the requirements, I was SURE that he had not done #8. They told me that with so many boys in the troup they couldn't all do that one, so don't worry about it. ( Huh?)

Is there a better way to do Scouts?
Many parents push their boys through scouts early so that they are done before entering high school. This is understandable. There are statistics that back them up. Once a boy is in high school he is generally too busy with tough classes and extra curricular activities, and there is no time for scouts. I believe, however, that a lot of the merit badges and rank advancement requirements are better done by boys that are a little bit older. My eleven year old boys do not generally think the same way about community issues as they do at age 14 or 16.
I would rather risk my boys not getting Eagle and have them do the merit badges when they are developmentally ready. Let them (require them to) actually do the activities (gee, what a concept!). Let them think a bit more deeply about the subject, what it means to them and others, and why it matters.

How about Cub Scouts?

Thankfully, there are many fun activities that the boys can work on at Den meetings. Most of the requirements for advancement, electives, belt loops and patches are fun, hands on things. But here again, the requirements can be fulfilled by actively learning or by talking and writing. And parents must really be involved to make sure that the boys are actually doing the required work, not just showing up and being handed awards. Unless of course you want to teach your boys that they can receive awards without earning them.

There are a few requirements that are not boy friendly, such as "Make a healthy habits chart and mark on it each time you brush your teeth, get a drink of water, wash your hands etc." What boy would want to do that one? I could maybe see my girl doing that, but not my boys!

Hmmm, where am I going will all of this? Maybe no where. I am just rambling. It is helping me put the pieces together, helping me understand some of the factors contributing to the Boys Adrift epidemic.

Boys to Men: Kenntnis and Wissenschaft

2011-02-17T12:57:00.004-07:00

I have been focusing a lot of thought on my boys lately. How can I help them to grow up to be men in today's world? Real Men. What is it that is causing so many boys and men to float along unmotivated and uninterested in life? I have noticed, both in my own boys and boys I come in contact with at church, etc, this lack of motivation. Thankfully my boys don't seem to be as badly affected as some, but they are still young. How can I avoid those problems and raise real men?

I just finished reading "Boys Adrift: the Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men" by Dr. Leonard Sax. It was a fascinating read and it gave me a lot of new things to think about. I highly recommend it to anyone who is raising a son.

The five factors written about in the book are:

Changes at School
Video Games
Endocrine Disruptors
Prescription Drugs (such as those prescribed for ADHD)
Devaluation of Masculinity

My children do not go to public school, and I try to make their education "boy friendly," but I think there is still some room for improvement in that area. This book has taught me some interesting things about what a "boy friendly education" looks like that I hadn't thought of before.

One example, Dr. Sax points out that there are two different ways in which we use the verb "to know." In English we use the same word for both meanings, but in other languages different words are used. In German, for example, knowledge of a person or place that you have actually experienced (such as "I know Sarah") they use the word Kenntnis. Knowledge learned from books is Wissenschaft.

Most of our Schools have a heavy emphasis on the latter, Wissenchaft, knowledge that comes from books (or lectures, etc.) Much can be memorized that way, but children really need to have multi-sensory experience with the real world. This is especially true for boys.

"For boys in particular, emphasizing Wissenschaft while ignoring Kenntnis may seriously impair development - not cognitive development but the development of a lively and passionate curiosity. "

'Boys that have been deprived of time outdoors, interacting with the real world rather than with computers, sometimes have trouble grasping concepts that seem simple to us."

"We have forgotten what our grandparents knew: All children need a balance of Wissenschaft and Kenntnis, a balance between sitting and standing, a balance between classroom work and field trips. That's true for girls as well as boys. But if girls are deprives of that balance, if girls are saddled with a curriculum like ours today, all Wissenschaft and no Kenntnis, they will still do the homework - because for girls, as we discussed a moment ago, pleasing the teacher is a significant reward for it's own sake. Not so for most boys. If deprived of that balance between Wissenschaft and Kenntnis, they simply disengage from school . If you ask a boy to read about the life cycle of a tadpole metamorphosing into a frog, but that boy has never touched a frog, never had the experience of jumping around a stream in his bare feet chasing after a tadpole, he may not see the point. The shift in the curriculum away from Kenntnis toward Wissenschaft has had the unintended consequence of diminishing the motivation of boys to study what they're asked to learn." ("Boys Adrift", Leonard Sax, chapter 2.)

So I have been pondering Wissenschaft and Kenntnis the last few days. How can I have our "school" do more Kenntnis? Charlotte Mason style "Wild Days" are great, as is doing boy Scouts the right way. (More about Scouts another day........)

Too Busy to Blog, #2 - School

2011-02-08T07:33:00.001-07:00

Once all that important stuff is out of the way the house feels somewhat more clean and organized, we have done the most important things for the day, and we can all focus better on our work. Time to begin school!

I have done a lot of evaluating about school lately (umm, when am I NOT doing that?)

I realize that I really feel better when we are following a strict schedule of subjects and working on goals. I tried letting the older ones work on the Grand Plan, but I didn't like the feel it it. It was too unorganized and random. I believe there needs to be a plan in order to accomplish everything they need to accomplish before they leave home. They may not love everything they are learning everyday. That's OK. They probably wouldn't even if I didn't "require" them to learn it. But I want them exposed to all of these wonderful subjects so they can learn what their passions are.

And to really be sucessful in learning and in life, they must be equipped with LEARNING SKILLS. I love, Love, LOVE this article written by veteran homeschool mother Kathryn Louis: All Education is Self Education. I would love to hear your feedback on it. Here are a few little snippets from said article:

“ The only true education is self-education.” Many home education camps have this as their mantra. While it is true, one important aspect is missed by many. In the beginning, a child must have a guide for habit building, acquisition of skills, and development of a knowledge base. It is a rare youngster who voluntarily chooses hard work. Quite simply, without the acquired habit and application of doing difficult things, this child will be handicapped."

And one more:

"Leading is not dragging and nagging. By precept and example, we must teach good habits. Through building a prepared learning environment and schedule, we make the attainment of learning skills probable. Giving of our time, talents, and everything else we have for the building and betterment of our children, we pave the way for the gaining of a great knowledge base. Only then will the youth of 12 or 14 be prepared to pursue a self-directed education with or without a mentor. However, even at this point, youth need guidance, leadership, accountability, and possibly a little reading aloud of the hard stuff to get them past the beginning of this daunting new phase."

Kathryn has many more wonderful articles at her website, Milestones Academy. Some of the other homeschooling veterans I love to learn from are Diane Hopkins and Teri Ebert.
I love learning from these "old sages". They have "been there, done that" and they truly know what works and doesn't. Their children have grown into successful happy adults. Theirs is advise I can truly realy on.

Sometimes I try to do what works for someone else and it doesn't work for me because I am not them. It is so tempting to do that, isn't it. However, I am slowly but surely figuring out what works for ME. So, I hesitate to tell you exactly what I do, what books we use, etc., because that is what works for ME, and it may not work for you. So, read this with a grain of salt. Here is what we are currently doing:

The Binder
The kids each have a 3 ring binder to keep current work in. Every so often when it gets full we transfer it to the "permanent" binder system that I created last summer. In the front of the binder are pages with selections we are currently memorizing during Anchoring time.

Next comes a page that has 4 categories listed on it:

Things we do DAILY - All Together:

this includes all the morning routine things that I wrote about last time.
Mom or Dad reading aloud, mostly at bedtime. We are working our way through the "Little House" series again, as well as reading "The Pilgrim's Progress."

Things we do DAILY - Individually:

Teaching textbooks math lesson
Writing (could be journal, copy work, or other writing assignments)
Read your daily literature assignment and narrate to Mom (for the little kids learning to read, this means Mom sitting with them and helping them. Sometimes Mom gives extra reading lessons or plays phonics games. Sometimes they write new words in their word books, etc.)
Work on a Scout requirement
Spend some time outside
Work on a useful project of your choice

Things we do WEEKY - All Together: (these might happen once a week or more)

Mom read one "famous story" aloud. Narrate and illustrate for binder.
Science rotation lesson, experiments.
History rotation lesson, timeline or projects. Narrate and illustrate for binder.
Art appreciation and narration (if there is extra time) --**hasn't happened yet, but we have good intentions!
Feild trip of Wild day (when it fits into schedule and Mom feels up to it.)

Things we do WEEKLY - Individually:

read your science and history assignments
Make a page for your notebook about it.

There you have it. Simple, yet organized enough to actually accomplish things. Years ago I created my own "4 Year plan," which is a rotation of mainly history and science subjects. Each time we come back to the same subject the child is older and ready to learn more in depth. Last summer I organized what I wanted to do for this years rotation, which is History: Middle Ages - Early Explorers, Science: Chemistry, Botany. Then I got pregnant, and public school wanted to dominate our time, and things just weren't getting done. But now we are getting back on track. I took a look at what hasn't gotten done, and assigned it all out into the remaining months before Junior is due. We are going to be busy the next few months! It feels wonderful to be following a schedule again. My children won't be mastering these subjects, merely getting exposure. They often want to take the books and read ahead. Then they get as much depth as they want.

So, here is how the day after Morning Routine usually goes.

Aprox. 10-12 we are working on the "Daily: Individual" stuff. In between listening to the Littles read I am doing office stuff, laundry, lunch prep. I am trying to organize a plan for my cub scouts to earn more patches and belt loops, since they don't do any of that at den meeting. Those activities are fun and make great field trips.

Lunch and more cleaning up.

In the afternoon we work on the "Weekly" lists, as well as play outside and work on projects. Sometimes I get to lay down for a few minutes and read to Noteworthy, if he is not too distracted by what everyone else is doing. If he is distracted then I lay down by myself for a few minutes. :) We also have scout den meetings in the afternoon.

Clean up and make dinner

Eat with Dad.

More projects, reading, relaxing, ignoring the mess because it will get cleaned up tomorrow morning.

Reading together before bed.

It takes THE WHOLE DAY! It is good. The kids also get in plenty (probably too much) play time. Neighbor children are distracting. Yesterday was their "early out day" and we had a boy wanting to come hang out at 1:30! As long as they combine "hanging out" with outdoor time or project building I am OK with it (sort of.) So history didn't get done until just before dinner. But it was a good time anyway. They worked while they watched the approaching blizzard cloud, just like Laura Ingalls. Today should be snowy and cold, outdoors will not be beaconing, so it will be easier to concentrate on more worthy accomplishments. It all evens out.

Perhaps next time I blog I will tell you about the projects we have been working on, it I get around to uploading the photos. If I find time to blog.....

Too Busy to Blog, #1 - Morning

2011-02-08T06:11:00.001-07:00

I think about blogging sometimes, but golly, there never seems to be any time for it anymore. We seem to be busy from dawn till after dark, and there never seems to be enough time to accomplish all I wish we could. I do have things on my mind I'd like to write about, but blogging isn't very high on the priority list right now.

Last fall my 2 eldest boys were going to school, one part time and one in a full time autism class. I made the difficult decision last December to have them both back home full time, and I'm so happy with it. For Achiever, there simply wasn't enough time to do justice to either his "fun" school classes or his important "home" classes. He was missing a lot of important things, and it is great to have him here again.

GoodFellow was feeling a lot of stress and picking up a lot of bad habits and ideas at school. Having him home all the time is hard; he likes to go places and doesn't like to do a lot of the things we do for homeschool. However, I felt prompted to bring him home and it has been good for him. He gets his school work done very quickly and then is not sure what to do with himself, but at least there is not the stress he was feeling before.

With everyone home again we are getting back into a good groove. Our morning looks something like this:

Wake up and wander downstairs to eat breakfast.
De-slob time, which includes grooming, making beds, and doing their housework "zone" upstairs. At first I tried to do de-slob time before breakfast, but that only lasted about 2 days. We all prefer eating toast and eggs in our p.j.'s.
Anchoring to Mission. This is our morning devotional time. Each day we work on memorizing a hymn, scripture, and quote from an apostle. Then we read a selection from the New Testament together. We have family prayer and usually a quiet moment for personal prayers, too. I had planned on reading some character stories and from the life of President Monson during this time, but Noteworthy is usually ready for us to be done anchoring after scriptures, so those will have to be fit in somewhere else.
Beauty and Order. This is our work time. I wander around the house in the morning and make note of what needs to be done, and then at the end of anchoring I give out assignments. It is amazing how quickly our house gets trashed. Everyone splits up and does the assigned chores. We don't have set assigned jobs for a few reasons. 1) Everyone gets tired of doing the same job over and over. 2) Different things need to be done each day. 3) All the children need to learn all of the jobs, as soon as they are old enough. Good fellow gets grumpy with his siblings because they are such slobs. Oh well. That's life, to clean up after other people, right? My children haven't figured out yet how much more free time they'd have if they weren't such slobs. Oh, I should also mention here our one "chore punishment." We were having a problem with kids wanting to play or read before they had de-slobbed, and then anchoring got delayed, etc, etc. So I told the kids that whoever dilly-dallies in the morning and is off-task will be assigned to clean the toilets. So far, so good. Our toilets are getting cleaned a little more often, and there is less goofing off. Whatever works.

I used to do my blogging before the kids woke up. Now that I'm pregnant though, I'm sleeping more, so I don't have time to get it done in the morning. This is especially true lately because we are staying up way late reading because it it so fun. I can squeeze reading a few of my favorite blogs into breakfast sometimes, but there is never time to write.

...to be continued

Book Review: The Hiding Place

2011-01-23T18:11:00.000-07:00

The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Appropriate for: teen to adult readers; selected portions from the first few chapters are appropriate to read aloud to younger children.

My definition of a "classic book" is that it must change me in some way. It can give me new information or understanding. The characters radiate strong moral character. A classic book must inspire me to be a better person. More faithful. More loving. More helpful. More knowledgeable. More committed.

As I am working my way through other's lists of classics, I have found some that do not make the grade, and some that are transformational to me. Both groups include fiction as well as nonfiction. Both include the well known as well as the obscure.

A few of those on my list of classics are:
Jane Eyre
The Little House of the Prairie series
The Standard Works (The Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of great Price)
The Pilgrims Progress
The Anatomy of Peace
Simplicity Parenting
The Story of Liberty

All of those are fabulous, but in terms of "life change," my newest addition to the list blew them all out of the water. I just completed my first reading of The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom.

This well known book had been sitting on my bookshelf for quite sometime. I had heard it was great, but I was afraid to read it. The Hiding Place is a true account of life in Holland and Germany during World War 2. As such, I was afraid it would be too graphic for me, another acclaimed book that did not meet my expectations. My fears were unfounded. There is but one chapter, near the end of the book, that I felt would be too much for a teen to read.

I learned so many lessons from Miss ten Boom's account of her life, is is difficult to know where to start. I have pages and pages of notes!

The biggest lessons I learned are these:

"In every thing give thanks : for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." (1 Thessalonians 5:18 emphasis added by me)
"...all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good." (D & C 122:7)
“I’m not giving you these experiences for yourself. Write them down.” (Henry B. Eyring, Oh Remember, Remember" General Conference 2007)
"I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me." (Philippians 4: 13)

And finally in my own words,

If we give our lives to God, he will use us to accomplish his purposes. He is master of the Universe and His hand is in all things.

Of course I knew these things before reading The Hiding Place, but Corrie's experiences reinforced them in my mind. It gave me real life examples of the application of these scriptures. Stories have the power to teach and transform in ways nothing else does. Perhaps that is why the Savior taught us with parables. (An excellent talk about the power of stories was given by Marlene Peterson at the TJEd convention in 2010. You can listen to it for free at this website. Scroll down to where you see the "Stories that Build Statesmen," near the bottom.)

This book taught me how to be a better parent, friend, and citizen. It showed me the far reaching impact a father's faith and devotion can have. It taught me to see past the present circumstances, to see God's hand in all things, and how to survive great pain and persecution, as well as personal disappointment. I learned that God will give us the strength we need to withstand the circumstances we are placed in, and that He will give that help in just the moment it is needed.

Thoughts about Toys and Activities, part 2

2011-01-19T14:37:00.000-07:00

A few nights ago I sat and enjoyed watching my kids play. The main “toy” each had was their personal afghan that grandma made for them for Christmas a few years ago. They also had a few empty baskets (that they had dumped the baby toys out of) a few Care Bear stuffed toys and a couple of hats. Add to those the slick wood floor, the kitchen table and chairs, and the fun begins! Each of the four children, ages 2, 5, 8, and 9, were very involved in their own game. Sometimes they interacted, and sometimes they just did their own thing. Their creativity and imagination were so fun to observe. I could try to describe what they were doing, but it would be difficult. It changed around a lot.

“THIS is play,” I thought. “This is REAL. This is fun!”

In the end the children were happy to clean up because it was pretty easy. And here is the key, they felt satisfied. Their play had done for them what it needed to do.

During the Christmas break we had a couple of kids come over to play. When they were told that TV and Wii were not options they had fun making up games with my kids in the basement. It seemed so much more satisfying to all involved than playing video games together would.

So, how is it that my kids are really playing, while the boys up the street are all staring at screens? What is the difference between what we are trying to do, and what is common in other homes? I don’t have all the answers, and we aren’t perfect, but I have found some good things that I’d like to share.

Today I am continuing my pondering about toys and activities, and I’d like to share with you some things I learned last summer. Revolutionary ideas that changed the way my home works. We’ll explore what The Headgate by Brian and Keri Tibbets has to say about toys and other activities. All the following quotes are from that work.

To start with, you need to understand the concept of the headgate. To be very brief here, it is simply this: A child is always progressing at something, just like water in an irrigation ditch is always flowing along. For a farmer to get the water to go to the right fields, he must close the headgates at the entrances to the other fields, or the water will not flow where he wants it to. Similarly, if we want our children progressing in wholesome, useful, fulfilling ways then we must "close the headgates" on other activities and leave open those that we hope the children will pursue.

“The children must progress somewhere, as they never remain stragnant. Therefore, once these headgates are closed, without force or coercion of any kind the children voluntarily flow right on through. They feel the same sense of progression, creation, and fulfillment from these lovely activities (reading, writing, knitting, cooking, carving, etc.) as they get from the wrong activities. However, after patiently waiting for and eventually tasting the fruits of the right headgates, the children actually appreciate the growth gained from the right activities, more than the illusion of growth gained from the wrong activities. It is important to note, that many children would never have had the patience to see those good activities through to the end when the fruits would be seen, it the parents had allowed the wrong activities to be available."

My 11 year old son, Good Fellow, has autism. He is extremely susceptible to “wrong headgates” and is addicted to anything with a screen, particularly “Mario games.” It is hard for him to want to follow through with more fulfilling activities that do not offer instant results. Even though we have not had these activities available at our home for some time, relatives, school and friends have not had the same rules. He became obsessed with going to one neighbors house because that was the only activity he pursued there. Within this last month we have chosen to remove him from school and have not allowed him to visit his friend. We have seen some happy improvements in his behavior. Now that he knows those things are not an option anymore, he is choosing to flow through more “right headgates.” These activities have always been available to him, but as long as he saw some other option he fixated on how to get it rather than pursuing something new. He is choosing to read, work on math, cook and draw. His conversation and participation with his siblings is also improving. Earlier today he was chuckling in the other room over a drawing he has made in his sketchbook. He could never get that satisfaction from an external source. It is like watching the spring tulips pop out of the ground, shooting their green stems upward. I look forward to seeing him bloom.

"Without knowing what is best for them, children will usually choose the activities that offer the most stimulation for the least amount of effort. The real skills, which we want our children to fall in love with (reading, writing, and other life skills) take tremendous effort for very slow-coming stimulation. The stimulation or reward or growth and progression felt by the children when they accomplish these real skills, not only feels richer to the child than the false, but in the end the child himself has become something."

"When they get their cheap thrill from the other type of activities, they feel as if they have done something, and in the end, they have become nothing greater than when they started. Therefore, if our children are naturally drawn toward this feeling of progression and growth (as we are), and will spend all of their waking hours trying to obtain that feeling, and actually care more for the real than the fake thrill, we should take advantage of this and provide our children with this fertile environment that they so desperately are striving for, and which only we can provide. "

The Tibbets then go on to give us 5 questions we can ask ourselves to help determine if a toy or activity is a "right headgate" that we want open, or a "wrong headgate" that we want closed.

Question #1: Does the fun or thrill of the play come from the child's own brain, muscles, or voice box?

"If your answer to this is "yes," then these toys will not entertain your children. Your children will have to entertain themselves if they are to get any enjoyment out of playing with them. These are plain and lifeless toys that the children must bring to life. They do not perform tricks for the children to enjoy. They will have to be creative and imaginative if these toys are to ever satisfy them."

"When a child is reared in an unnatural environment, of which battery toys provide, where very little or even no effort at all yields amazing results unlike anything in nature, the greatest disadvantage to the child comes as the perspective from which he will view reading. He may see it as simply too much work for what rewards it yields."

"The rewards of reading great books, however permanent, enriching, refining, unlimited and ever-perpetuating they may be, are subtle. Subtle rewards are not likely to be detected by children with an unnatural appetite for entertainment. Some examples of these kinds of toys are any and all battery toys, ipods, TV, video cameras, regular cameras, educational videos, computer games, or computers in general.

These “toys” are the reason that we have so many youth, and adults for that matter, that are in perpetual core phase; stuck wanting to play and be entertained all the time. They may go through the motions of completing their required school work or employment, but when they have time to do with as they wish they automatically seek for something to entertain them rather than learning, doing, or becoming something better. They may be bored and dissatisfied with their work because it is not exciting enough.

I think it is truly sad that this “unnatural environment” is becoming more and more commonplace. In fact, many people cannot see the “real” world anymore because they are so blinded by this “pseudo world”. They think that we are trying create an unnatural environment in our home by avoiding all of these new electronic gadgets and entertainment. They may think that we are “missing out.” But they are the ones that cannot understand how wonderful it is to observe a Northern Flicker in your own backyard. They are the ones who would rather spend 4 hours roaming the mall to find a deal rather than spending that time creating.

Question #2: Who was the creative one, the toymaker or the child?

"In my experience, the more creative a toy, the less creative the child will be for having played with it."

"These toys entertain your child as he follows the script the toy came with - the one the toymaker designed for the child......"

"This is too easy a route for our children if they are ever to relate to natural law. When they get inspired to read, they may want it, love it, and perhaps even know how to do it, yet they may never choose in their free time to read for fun because it is just simply too much work. They are used to flowing through unnaturally easy headgates. What should be naturally stimulating, valuable and lasting, will feel unnaturally difficult when nourished on a diet of scripted play."

Often toys that do not pass this test are part of sets with lots of parts and pieces. They come with a script or instructions to follow. Children are not free to fully pretend with these toys because parents do not allow it; especially if missing the pieces will ruin the set. There are rules placed on playing with that item, such as “only one puzzle out at a time, and the pieces cannot be used for any other purpose” or “No mixing the play dough colors” or “you may only play with that at the table” etc.

“This is not play! Play is pretend! These are more like real life adult rules, yet they are being applied to fake activities that produce neither useful products nor any useful qualities in the children, and at real life prices.”

This is really something to think about. I think it can be good for children to learn to follow directions and obey rules. They will, after all, encounter lots of rules throughout their lives. But the Tibbet’s point is, should those rules be applied to play? Should we be placing rules on “free time?” Could they learn these lessons in other ways?
We can learn to follow instructions as we attempt to crochet a sweater following a pattern or bake bread with a recipe. They can learn from these and other activities to clean up when done. The argument might be made that they can learn these lessons through play when young, before they are able to crochet or bake. But at young ages they could also learn to follow instructions through household chores.

Question #3: Is the activity using resources or wasting them?

“When a child uses resources, they get a thrill form the activity they were using the resources for. When a child wastes resources, they get an added thrill from the wasting itself.”

“When the child has a large stack of paper to ‘go through” they seem to really go through it. It is in this way that the paper is wasted. When it is in a bound notebook that sits in a drawer the say way whether they draw in it or not, they seem to only draw in it when they want to actually draw. It is in this way that the paper is used…for developing dexterity of the fingers, art skill, etc.”

“…the purpose of this rule is not to conserve resources, (sorry Gore), it is to focus the child’s time and energy on an activity that will lead them to love of learning rather than a love of consuming and wasting….”

This is one that we have not implemented very well yet. My children like to make “stuff” out of paper. They like to do origami. But it always ends up in the trash. They will make paper plane after paper plane, play for a while, and then they are trashed. None of it takes much effort, and none is valued.

Question #4: If the child is creating something, what is the end result or product, should this activity continue?

“When a child is allowed to create something useful, they get the thrill of creation slowly, after they have earned it through hard work. When a child is allowed to create something un-useful , they get that same thrill of creation and for too cheap a price.”

“If our children get used to living day to day in real life, with the right amount of rewards for their labors, they will not think reading is too hard a thrill to obtain. They will actually see it as great fun. Everything they ever do, including playing with a few simple lifeless toys in the nursery, takes hard work and discipline before many results can be obtained.”

See, here is the answer to my origami / paper airplane problem!

It is interesting for me to ponder. Good Fellow has been making a lot of paper junk this week. I am just happy he is doing something (only parents with autistic children can understand this.) But guess what? Today he found my knitting needles and wanted to learn to knit. He told me that he wanted to make a scarf! So I’d say that it is true, children care more for the real feeling of accomplishment than they do for the fake thrill they get when creating junk. Even Good Fellow could sense that. The first crocheting lesson didn’t go too well, but I’m not going to give up yet. He is still used to getting easy thrills.

5. What has the child become after the activity is finished? Have they become more for having participated?

“…if a child chooses an activity such as knitting, they feel a wonderful boost from creating something useful, and in the end they are left with a real skill that will bless them for the rest of their life. When they choose to paint in a non-wasteful way, they are left, aster many years, with a skill and a talent that could prove to be their avenue for changing the world someday. We may have a Monet or Picasso right in our homes. But how will we know that if they just “get their creativity out” by making neat greeting cards using stamps?”

“In conclusion, as we look at our homes and the activities available to our children, we should ask ourselves, ‘What is the end result o that activity, or what becomes of the child?’ Do they become a stamper, cardboard crafter, skater, neighborhood hoody, uninformed moviemaker, perpetual core phaser or do they become a knitter, baker, reader, writer and scholar?”

So what about riding their scooters around the yard? Yes, they are gaining some muscle. Yes, their social skills improve as they negotiate rules with one another. Anything else? Will they get bored of it and move on after enough time? Boys are tricky. Yes, we can teach them the same skills as we do girls, but it really isn’t their role to knit or bake all the time. Our society has made it hard for boys to grow up to be men. We don’t have the necessary work for boys anymore. (I think I have enough to say about this for an entirely different blog post!)

Conclusion:

While I have joy when things go right, we are not perfect. We are still gradually trying to apply these principles to our life. Which is part of the reason for my writing this post today; there are definitely some areas in which we can improve. But I hope I have given you some things to think about. It has given me some good things to think about!

(For more if this great information, please consider going -here- to download the free e-book “The Headgate.”)

Thoughts about Toys, part 1

2011-01-17T08:50:00.003-07:00

It is January. It is cold outside. Snow or mud cover the ground, and the air is smoggy, making us want to stay inside on even the warmer days.

So here we sit inside all day on most days. For me, January is always a time to think about the stuff that is surrounding me and how my children and I choose to spend our time. These thoughts usually start right after Christmas when I am trying to find places to put all of our new stuff. Thankfully, that is not the case this year. This year I am happily sitting back and wondering what else I am ready to part with. Getting rid of stuff is like eating an elephant. You do it one bite at a time until it is gone. For me, I think I go to the "all-you-can-eat elephant buffet" and get as stuffed as I can, and then I have to wait a while before I can handle more.

A friend and I had a nice chat the other day. Toward the end of our visit we talked briefly about toys. She said that she had pondered about how I had simplified our possessions, specifically our toys, and was not sure if it was something she wanted to do or not. We didn't have much time to talk about it, but it got me thinking about why I have done what I have done.

Last summer after being introduced to The Headgate and Simplicity Parenting I made a lot of progress simplifying our lives and eliminated a lot of clutter. Both of these books gave me new insights into the purpose of my stuff, and I was able to see toys in a totally new light. Each of these works contain a list of questions and criteria in considering the toys (or other activities, such as crafts) that we have available for our children to play with. I decided it was time for me to revisit these lists, as I can tell it is time to purge some more.

Like my friend, I thought some of you may be interested in these lists as well, as you ponder about your stuff. Really, I recommend you read both books, as they are both excellent and contain many more gems than what I will share with you today. However, some of you haven't been able to do that yet, so I thought I'd share some of the toy information here. Today's post will be the "toys you don't want to have" lists, next time will be an introduction to the headgate principle, and then finally I will write about the things we want to have instead.

"The 10-point checklist of toys without “Staying Power”

from Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne

When looking to eliminate clutter and the stress that comes with it, consider these 10 categories of toys that you really might not want to have in your home.

1. Broken toys
“If it is truly dear, and you can fix it or get it fixed, consider keeping it, but remove it until it’s repaired.”
2. Developmentally inappropriate toys

“You don’t want toys that your child will “grow into” in a few years. As you go through the toy pile you’ll notice that the simpler, more basic toys have a longer developmental life. A solidly built dump truck can be played with for years and years; the same applies to a beloved doll. Most toys, though, especially those ties to something specific –a character, television show, age range—have built in “expiration dates.”

3. Conceptually ‘fixed” toys
“So many toys in the average toy pile are detailed, molded plastic characters from movies, comic books, or television shows. 97% of American children six and under have products based on TV shows or movies. They may evoke memories of the original entertainment that inspired them, they may also point down a road of commercial possibilities, with more and newer products, “sequels of stuff.” …Whose image is being celebrated: Hollywood’s or the child’s?”

4. Toys that do too much or break too easily
“Chances are, the exploding lunar rocket that shoots flames and collects rock samples no longer does either. These specialized functions are prone to mechanical failure. And like other very fixed toys, the rocket doesn’t tend to morph into anything else in play. It’s own rigid concept takes the place of, rather than inviting, the child’s imagination.”

5. Very high stimulation toys
“The toys that strive to re-create a video arcade experience – complete with flashing lights, mechanical voices, speed, and sound effects – set the “stimulation bar” very high for your child. They are designed to entertain, and like adult-sanctioned jolts of espresso, to “excite.”

“Why willingly hijack a child’s equilibrium? Individually, are these toys damaging? Is a roller coaster ride? No, but I believe we are seeing the effects of children whose nervous systems have been calibrated to “high” – the new “normal” – as a result of so much collective, daily sensory stimulation.”

6. Annoying or offensive toys
“These are often “favorite uncle” toys, purchased by someone who doesn’t have children, or knows that they’ll only be visiting for a short time. They make an awful noise, or project an offensive attitude, or they may quite simply be ugly. Toys that are truly offensive to the parents, but not to the child, still qualify as chuckable.”

7. Toys that claim to give your child a developmental edge
“This or that remarkable new toy will not make your child more creative, socially adept, or smarter, despite all the claims its manufacturer makes. Once we reclaim our child’s creativity, and the wonders of their developmental growth as intrinsic – internal and theirs alone!- we, and they, will be freer. As parents we won’t feel so pressured to “exercise” and “supplement” what they are naturally driven to develop. And children will have “play” back, as their rightful domain, rather than simply having tickets to our culture’s commercialized version of play.”

8. Toys you are pressured to buy
This category includes things that “everyone has,” fad toys, things your children pester you to buy. They will often be forgotten after a while and lost in the heap of toys.

9. Toys that inspire corrosive play
“…any kind of toy can sometimes inspire play that isn’t joyous, or even pleasant.”

“To address guns, it’s clear that boys will often make sticks or any manner of things into play weapons. That doesn’t concern me so long as the weapons are imaginary, and the play does not physically harm anyone. However, fully detailed plastic assault rifles are a step beyond. Even if they don’t actually shoot, in their specificity and detailed singularity they seem to condone and even glorify violence.”

10. Toy multiples
“Let’s say your child has a favorite stuffed elephant who sits in a place of pride on the bed when it’s not being hauled about. You and your spouse and any family member who sees this human/elephant love story can be inspired to re-create it by purchasing stuffed elephant siblings, other jungle animal cousins, or stuffed “friends” of every kind……If one speedy race car is a delight, that does not mean that three of them will be delight cubed. …Our best intentions to increase the circle of love surrounding our child can have the opposite effect. By overwhelming a true connection with too many superfluous ones, we can send a message that relationships are disposable.” - (Quotes and list from Simplicity Parenting)

So, as I think about our stuff, I see that we still have toys that fall into categories 1,2,3,5,7, 9 and 10!

Those that are in category one have broken since our last purge.

When you have multiple children of different ages, of course you are going to have toys that fall into category #2. But maybe I don't want those things, since after all I want my older children to be doing other things, not playing with toys. (See the Headgate toy questions below.)

Our Category 3 toys are all Playmobile. Cute, fun, and designed to promote all sorts of pretend play, right? To some extent, yes. That is the way I played with such toys as a child, alone in my room making up all sorts of fun scenarios. But Playmobile, Little People, and other similar play sets are still conceptually fixed. While the generic building can be any number of stores, for example, the car is only a car, the people are only what their uniform says they should be, etc. The way the kids play with them is quite conceptually fixed. The kids don't play with them too much anyway. I had really only kept them out so that the toddler would play with them while we were trying to do other things, but this only ends up in lots of little plastic figures being spread about the house. So, those are going into storage for the time being.

Category 5 - noisy, flashing, high stimulation toys. I have always chosen to avoid these. We do have one, however. It plays 20+ different songs, and Noteworthy likes to play with it. It gets put away often because it is a high stimulation toy, and it is also annoying after a short time. Reading aloud, narrating and music practice can't take place while he is playing with it because it is too loud. I think he will out grow it soon, so I'm not sure if I should let him enjoy it a little while longer (sparingly) or not.

Category 10, toy multiples, is a lot less than it used to be. (That of course excludes Legos! We have a million of those. They are the subject of a post in and of themselves!) The toy multiple that I have noticed I had fallen pray to is Nurturers "Care Bare" stuffed toys. It started with one, and somehow became 4. I am not too worried about it, however, because when divided between 4 children they are each only playing with one. The problem with them, however, is that often the boys end up teasing sister and "torturing" her bears (which makes them fall into category 9, right?). So maybe we will cut it back down to her favorite one and the rest will make some other child happy. I don't know. Care Bears could be conceptually fixed toys, but since my children are not exposed to the cartoons, they have not limited their play to acting out episodes.

Category 7 is where I lump all of the "school stuff" that I have in the cabinet. I wrote a while ago about how I noticed that I don't often get it out to be used, and probably don''t need it. It has been a security blanket. Time to look through the closet and see what I am ready to part with.

O.K. so that takes care of the Simplicity Parenting view of toys. Next time , let's look at what The Headgate by Brian and Keri Tibbets has to say about toys and other activities.

Hair Vinaigrette: How to go shampoo free

2011-01-11T13:32:00.003-07:00

Today I am going to write about something totally unrelated to my usual posts. Nothing about education or parenting. Today I want to tell you about one of my new favorite things: being shampoo free! But first, I will give you a little background as to why I would want to do such a thing.

Do you ever think about all of the chemicals in personal care products? Do you ever wonder what they are and what they are for? Do you ever wonder what they may do to your body, on the inside as well as the outside?

I am usually pretty careful about what I put INTO my body. Processed foods don't make me feel very good. I rarely eat foods with anything extra added. I'll take my food pure and simple, thank you.

I have avoided using chemicals for house cleaning for quite a while now. I have a natural, concentrated soap that I use when needed, but much of my cleaning only involves water and cloth rags.

Well, I started thinking about chemicals used on the body externally this fall. My 2 year old, Noteworthy, developed an itchy, scaly eczema on his legs. It was bothering him quite a lot, and he would scratch 'til it bled. I realized that it was caused by an ingredient in soap, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS for short) to be exact. You are probably somewhat familiar with it. You can read about it *HERE* and *HERE*, and *HERE* is a good one, too.

Anyway, it is a common ingredient in shampoo, including the baby wash skin and hair cleansers. (How a scientist could feel good about putting a known irritant in a BABY product is baffling. I guess money talks...)

It is also a main ingredient in liquid dish soap. My little guy was loving to sit at the sink and help wash the dishes, and in the process was getting dish soap on his legs. I searched and searched for a dish soap that did not contain SLS, but couldn't find one. We solved our dishwasher problem, so we went back to using it, stopped washing dishes by hand, and the eczema went almost completely away.

About that same time, I read a related article by Dr. Mercola. I found the link so that I could share it with you: Is Your Beauty Routine Causing Long-Term Health Damage?

Reading this article was sort of an "aha" moment for me. Several years ago my son Good Fellow was on a certain medication. It caused problems with many kids when taken internally, so it was made into a lotion. To administer the medicine, all we had to do was rub it on his arms and at was absorbed right into the blood stream. Prior to that I had always thought that the skin was some sort of impenetrable barrier, and that anything that touched it would stay on the outside. Now I knew that things could be absorbed into the body through the skin, but I didn't think much about health risks of what I was putting on my skin.

I don't use a lot of "beauty" products anyway. I stopped wearing make-up when I was pregnant with my first child, because it made me sweaty. I only wear it on rare occasions now. I also don't like the greasy feel of lotion, so that is not used often either.

Shampoo, on the other hand, has been a daily necessity for as long as I can remember. I have greasy hair, and could never stand the feel of my hair if I went a day without washing it. However, I also have thin wispy hair that needs conditioner to tame it. I didn't realize that daily shampooing was causing my greasy hair by stripping away the protective natural oils, that then went into overdrive to try and solve the problem.

I didn't like putting the shampoo chemicals on my skin, but wasn't sure what to do about it. I started hearing about people going "shampoo free," so I decided to try it. We were about to run out of shampoo, so I figured it was the perfect time for a test. I gradually eased off until the bottle was empty, and then went shampoo free.

At first I didn't have a good alternative to shampoo. I thought that maybe I would just have to deal with greasy hair until my pores adjusted to no shampoo and start producing the amount of oil needed. I continued to rinse my hair with plain water in the shower. I would occasionally wash my hair with the plain bar of ivory soap when the grease bothered me too much. This went on for a few weeks. I didn't really like the feel of my unwashed hair, so I did more research.

I love this article at Simple Mom. Click here to read it. She gives you all of the reasons for not using shampoo, and then tells you what to do instead. She used baking soda to wash her hair, and vinegar to "condition" it. I decided to give it a try. You can read her very good directions at the link above, so I don't think I need to say much here. I'll just tell you what I do differently.

I came up with a way to make it really easy to use this "Hair Vinaigrette." At first I made a whole bottle of the "soap" at a time, thinking I could use it all week. But it was COLD! Not working for me! So, here is what I have been doing for at least a month, and it is working great!

I have 2 glass salad dressing bottles that I keep on my shower. One is missing it's lid, but it doesn't matter. I just share the one lid with both bottles.
I have a little wall cabinet right next to the shower that has little baskets in it. In one I have my box of baking soda with a little spoon, and a jar of Apple Cider vinegar (I keep a big jug in the kitchen, and refill this little recycled salad dressing jar once a week.)
Before showering, I grab the jars and remove the lid. I put one little spoonful of baking soda into one of the bottles, and a little vinegar into the other bottle. The amount of vinegar depends on how dry I feel my hair is. I usually fill it halfway to the -V- line on the bottle, which is about half an inch or so.
I place the bottles on the window shelf and begin to shower. After wetting my hair, I fill the baking soda bottle with about one cup of warm water (about to the narrow neck of the bottle), put the lid on and give it a quick shake to mix. Then I pour in onto my hair, massage it in, and rinse. Simple.
Next I do the same thing with the vinegar bottle, diluting with about the same amount of water. Easy.
That's all! It is cheap and easy and healthy. Some people worry that their hair would smell like vinegar, but mine doesn't at all.

I have found that I don't need daily washing anymore. If I didn't use any hairspray I could go longer in between washings. I wash my daughters hair this same way once a week and it is great. Now I need to find a couple more salad dressing bottles to keep in the boys bathroom and teach them how to use it.

My hair feels healthy and clean. I don't think I will ever go back to using shampoo! Next on my list of natural body care products to try and make are lotion, hairspray, and deodorant.

Noteworthy's eczema has come back a little recently, and I am wondering if it it laundry detergent that is causing it. The ingredients are not listed on the bottle, so I'm not sure if it contains SLS or not. But we recently got a new front loading washer, so maybe all the detergent is not getting rinsed out. I am hoping that doing an extra rinse on his clothes will solve the problem.

Report on our 12 days of Christmas

2011-01-03T14:46:00.001-07:00

We have completed our 12 Days of Christmas, so as promised I thought I'd tell you how it all turned out.

Day 0 - prep day

We set up the TV and hooked the laptop to it so that we could watch the talk that our whole Christmas was based upon. I explained to the kids that all of the gifts would be something that would help us build one of the four relationships, and that even though they may not be exciting and fun they would be great. After we watched the talk we spent a lot of time watching other short videos on lds.org, and that was a lot of fun too.

Day 1 - Scripture kit

All the kids were excited about opening the first present. It was wrapped the prettiest and looked exciting. Some of the kids received their own little paperback copy of the New Testament, and they liked that.

Day 2 - Family Journal

Just receiving this journal has helped the kids start to think about the ways that God is blessing us.

Day 3 - Trip to Temple Square

It rained all day on the day we planned to go. We went anyway, hoping that the rain would keep the crowds limited. We arrived before dark and went to our traditional restaurant. We were excited to find out that it was "kids eat free" night! The rain stopped while we ate and we were able to stay dry while seeing the lights and visitors center. There are so many great displays there, we didn't have time to see them all. I'll have to bring the kids back on a weekday sometime.

Day 4 - 2009 Photo book

It worked out great that it was Good Fellow's turn to open the gift today. He loves to sit and look through our scrapbooks.

Day 5 - Game night

Pictionary and charades turned out to be just as much fun as I had hoped! All the kids were able to participate. Noteworthy didn't know what was going on, but he had fun taking slips of paper out of the bowl and scribbling on sisters easel.

Christmas Day

Each of the kids opened their individual gift. They were all thrilled, except Nurturer was a little sad that she didn't get a scooter like Mr. Social. She has since then had a lot of fun with her gift, an umbrella. Jester was the hardest to buy for this year, since he really didn't need anything, and didn't want anything but Legos. His Dad finally bought him a Mythbusters book and he has really enjoyed it. I would've bought him some other books as well, but he tends to hoard his things and not let others touch them, even books. So those will have to be a family gift instead. Good Fellow was very excited about his watch, as was Admiral with his tent. The kids all love their flashlights from Grandma and Grandpa and have been making up games with them in the dark basement. Everyone seemed satisfied and happy, and no one acted as if they "felt jipped" to only get one gift.

Day 6 - Letter Writing kit
While no one was looking Noteworthy opened this gift. I put it up and brought it out Sunday after church and the kids were excited to use it right away to write some thank you notes.

Day 7 - Birthday bags for the food bank

The kids loved this one! Each of the kids was given a cake mix, frosting, candles and balloons which they placed in a birthday gift bag. Then they all stuffed a little fleece "monster" that I had sewn up and added that to the bag. We had a good discussion about how blessed we are, and they all felt good to be helping someone in need.

Day 8 - President Monson's biography

Noteworthy opened this one secretly, and the other kids were having too much fun having snowball fights in the yard to think much about it. I am excited to start reading it though!

Day 9 - Ingredients to make treats for our friends

This was one gift that came too late! Before Christmas we made cookie mix and took it around to Primary teachers and scout leaders. The kids wanted to do something for some of their friends too. I told them that we were going to do something soon, but when Christmas came along they assumed that I had forgotten. On Christmas morning Mr Social took a candy cane over to a friends house. That friend gave him two candy canes in return, and so Social took them to 2 other friends. So anyway, when this gift day arrived, the kids were busy playing and didn't really want to be interrupted to make a treat! Good Fellow and I made some fudge, and it eventually did get given to friends. But it would have definitely been more exciting before Christmas! Oh well. Live and learn!

Day 10 - 72 hour kits

The kids enjoyed putting these together. We had bought so many snacks to include that it didn't all fit in the big box with the backpacks, so I wrapped some things separately. Noteworthy kept getting into these and unwrapping them. I tried to hide them in the pantry, but they were found, so by the time we assembled the backpacks we only had about half the snacks left!

Day 11 - individual gifts (we let them open these on Christmas day)

Day 12 - Journal supplies

I was not organized enough to get these wrapped, so they were just given on the first day "back to school." I actually reorganized all of their binders. I included the journal pages in them, as well as some new pages for scripture-quote-hymns that we are memorizing, pages to record books read and projects worked on. I adapted The Grand Plan for Jester and added it to his binder. So far everyone has enjoyed the new binders. They had sort of lost interest in Christmas by day 12, but it made a nice re-start school surprise.

All in all I think it went really well. I look forward to basing Christmas on a Conference talk next year. However, I think it will work better if all the gifts are given before Christmas, and maybe not do so many. Really, the kids were happy with their one gift given on Christmas morning. So maybe next year all of the other "gifts" will just be experiences, service and activities. I was really pleased with how well the service opportunity was received. I'd like to start including my kids in more humanitarian projects throughout the year.

My thoughts about Disneyland

2010-12-21T19:53:00.001-07:00

We took the kids to Disneyland last week. The last time I had been there was as a teen 20 years ago. I can't remember a lot from back then, just a few things. The Tiki Room is still there and still the same as far as I can tell. But alas! The Swiss Family Robinson Tree house is now the Tarzan tree house, complete with shiny fiberglass statues of Jane and the Jungle man himself. That was a big disappointment.

Being 20 weeks pregnant, I didn't ride any of the big rides. That was OK. I've always been prone to motion sickness, and even the little kiddie rides turn my stomach now. I did miss seeing the robotic animals singing Zipity-Doo-Da in Splash mountain though.

Noteworthy and I did a lot of sitting around waiting for the others the first day, as they rode all of the things that we couldn't. My cell phone had decided not to work, and we didn't dare separate. The next two days were better planned and we spent more time actually doing something.

I have learned that my tastes have changed over the years. I found that I really didn't like many of the rides, particularly the Fantasy Land rides based on classics such as Alice in Wonderland and Winnie the Pooh. I don't know if those rides have changed over the years, but they sure seem to be geared to the person with ADHD, or perhaps they are causing it. Just another example of dulling our children's senses. (read my friend's thoughts about that HERE.) In most of them you jerk along in your car from one room to another while the music is blasting so loud you want to cover your ears. The scenes and plot change at every turn, and you walk out of the ride wondering what just happened and glad that you are out in the open again. At least I did.

Although we had 3 day passes, we didn't care to ride most of those rides a second time. Only two were repeated. One was Winnie the Pooh, because Good Fellow really wanted to. It would have been nice if it had the calm, slow pace of the story and movie it is based on, but it doesn't.   Peter Pan was the other repeat. It was the only exception to the chaos. You fly through the building in a flying boat and most of the time you are soaring through a night sky. But if you want to ride that one you must stand in line for 30-60 minutes (unless you bring along your handicapped child, in which case you can get a special pass that lets you cut to the front of the line.)

We chose to go between the holidays while school was still in session, because that is supposed to be the slow time of the year. I think a lot of families were thinking the same thing as we were, because the park was packed with people. In the evenings there were so many people there it was hard to stay together walking through the streets.

We stayed for the fireworks show on our final night, and it was fabulous. After the show we rode the Monorail which ended up being a waste of time since all it does is take you to the new Downtown Disney shopping district so you can spend more money. After that the kids were so tired. Since we have started going to bed early they have a hard time staying up late (unless they are at Grandma's house and the TV and computer games are available!) It was our last night though, and I really wanted to go to the Great Moments with Lincoln show before we left. Five of the six kids fell asleep and missed it, but it was so wonderful!   The animatronics they used to create Abraham Lincoln were simply amazing, and the message of the show was very good.

There were some rides that are just plain dark and creepy that we didn't go on. Interestingly, those are the rides that everyone tells us that we should go on. We did, however, go on the Pirates ride, since people had told Good Fellow to go on it he felt he must. None of us enjoyed it. It gave us a good opportunity to talk about how dark and yucky a pirates life really is. Admiral kept asking about a particular ride that people had told him was a "must ride." I asked him if he liked the pirate ride and he replied, "No, not really." I probed further and asked if it was the ride itself (mechanics and such) or the atmosphere and he said that it was the latter. Then he was able to understand that he wouldn't feel good in the ride that he was asking about. It really is sad to me that so many people just can't feel the Spirit telling them that those experiences are not good. Why are so many of our fellow saints caught up in those things? I suppose they have been desensitized by the media they are used to indulging in, and in comparison these rides may not be a big deal to them.

I would say that at least one third, maybe half, of the tourists were wearing "Micky Mouse hats." We allowed Good Fellow to buy a rather unusual one with his money. It was the only one I saw like it, and it sure helped us find him in the crowds. I wonder though, who made the hats. I have been thinking a lot about where things come from since reading a thought provoking article at the Misfit Cygnet. (I'd like to write more about that, but will have to wait until I have more time.)

I thought it odd that so many people would stand in line for hours so their children could "meet" Tigger or a princess and get their photo and autograph. Seems so much like idol worship. Actually, is reminds me of taking kids to sit on Santa's lap, in the hope that they will still believe. (And by the way, Santa was the main attraction in Frontier Land, since kids no longer know who Mark Twain or Davy Crocket are.) Before moving on, I must admit here though, that it was interesting to see the costume they came up with for the "green army man" from Toy Story. He was completely green with the exception of his white eyeballs, and did look very plastic.

While there is much I do not like there, I still love the classic ambiance of Disneyland. The expert and cleaver landscaping and architecture are a joy to me. I like all of the "old fashioned" attractions that haven't changed, such as the Jungle Cruise, Mark Twain River Boat, and the railroad. They usually strive to teach something real, as well as offer a fun experience. We tried to arrive each day as the park opened and there were not too many people there. I liked walking up the street and seeing Disneyland the way I think that Walt Disney intended it to be. Fun and clean and, well, happy. There are still some good things there. Just a lot of yuck too. Just like everything else these days, the good mixed in with the bad. One must be careful.

I debated long and hard about whether or not to go, as I had researched and knew what it would be like. Good Fellow complicates life so much sometimes. We walk a fine, difficult line between our standards and his happiness. We did tell him that this was a once in a lifetime experience, so hopefully it will end here. He has gotten to go to Disneyland. Actually, he says he has gone "Nine Times", I suppose because that is how many times we went in and out of the gate. So there you go!

To end, I do want to quickly tell you about the great hotel we stayed at, Staybridge Suites. We have a large family, and cannot all fit into one hotel room. We often camp when we travel, but I was not up to that idea this time around. Staybridge offered a suite that would sleep up to 8 people, and the cost was less than getting two rooms at a regular hotel. Not only that, but it had two bathrooms and a full kitchen. The kitchen was equipped with fridge, microwave, 2 burner stove top, sink, pots and dish service for 6. We were able to save a lot of money and feel healthier by cooking a few of our meals. The hotel also provided a free breakfast that included fruit, waffles and oats, eggs,  bacon and sausage, as well as the usual cereal, juice and pastries. We found out the day we checked out that they also offered free hot snacks in the evening, such as nachos or baked potato bar. The laundry facility was also free (just add your own soap!) The hotel had a bus stop that we used to travel back and forth to Disneyland for less than the cost of parking. It was a good experience, and I will definately look for more Staybridge Suites the next time I travel.