Scouts, Soccer and Some other pictures (September 2013)

Trainboy earned his wolf badge in September pack meeting. He was very excited, he also earned 5 arrow points and several belt loops.

Because Fixitman had a class scheduled at the same time as pack meeting, I had the joy of taking my two younger ones with me to pack meeting by myself. Enter the use of electronic babysitters. Coloring and reading have not worked in the past, but sadly the tablets didn't seem to keep them quiet enough either. But they did allow me to go up with him for receiving his badge so he could put the mom pin on me. I think there was a fingerprint smudge on my lens for these pictures because they all have a slightly out of focus sheen to them. Oh well.

Dinoguy also earned quite a few badges and things at this pack meeting. He had earned his arrow of light at this point but the crossover ceremony was planned for the following month.

He loves scouting!

Trainboy really enjoyed both practices and playing in the games and was quite into what was happening.

For the first time, Dinoguy and Trainboy chose different sports. Dinoguy chose to do flag football again but Trainboy decided he wanted to play soccer. The limitations of a camera phone are extremely apparent when attempting to photograph sports.

On the far left here, running to assist his teammates.

On the far left here also. Their team had the dubious distinction of getting the "hot pink" jerseys. I always argued it was a fluorescent shade of orange but that may have been my sunglasses distorting the color. They decided to call their team the Panthers.

I decided to take pictures of my pregnant self at 32 weeks pregnant.So here I am at age 32, 32 weeks pregnant. Being a number lover, 32 = 2^5, and I am pregnant with my fifth child. Yay for numbers!

One Sunday before heading to church. She asked for a picture.

Trainboy is ready for church with scriptures and tithing ready to go!

I love this snapshot, I just took it one day while we were waiting to pick up Dinoguy from violin lessons. Isn't he handsome?

Of course Princess ask me to take her picture too!

Princess is developing her photo bombing skills here.

FHE Lesson - Avoiding Bondage

Our next FHE lesson, it was my turn to be teacher again. I have been struggling to read the book of Jeremiah in the Bible recently and so I was drawn toward the talk by Quentin L Cook who expounds on some of the messages of Jeremiah and what we can learn and apply in our own lives. His talk was called Lamentations of Jeremiah: Beware of Bondage

My notes as I prepared

I spent a lot of time reading and re-reading this talk and then looking up all the footnotes. I also opened up my old Old Testament Student Manual and started really trying to understand Jeremiah better. It became quite interesting and I had to tear myself away and work on my lesson plan instead of just studying more.

Perhaps because my kids have recently been watching a Flintstones version of A Christmas Carol, but the idea of bondage immediately made me think of Jacob Marley in chains. I started thinking of other images that might help my kids understand the concept of things that can hold us in bondage and put together a series of pictures on my iPad to use at the beginning of the lesson. I had a picture of Jacob Marley, a guy in jail, a person smoking, a person buying lots of stuff with a credit card, people playing video games and someone using a social media site. I asked them what these people might all have in common.

Then I used a heavy rope and some small free weights to create some bonds like Jacob Marley's for one of my kids. I added a small weight to the rope describing an addiction or bondage they might have happen in their lives. Trainboy was my helper for this and he was a good sport, holding the weights and rope up. I thought this would be a good visual for the kids.

Next I had several quotes for reading and discussing, knowing that Little Guy would love handing those out to people to read. I probably had too many but there were so many great quotes in the talk!

Turning from the worship of the true and living God and worshipping false gods like wealth and fame and engaging in immoral and unrighteous conduct result in bondage in all its insidious manifestations.

Bondage, subjugation, addictions, and servitude come in many forms. They can be literal physical enslavement but can also be loss or impairment of moral agency that can impede our progress.

God intended that men and women would be free to make choices between good and evil.

Substituting the philosophies of men for gospel truth can lead us away from the simplicity of the Savior’s message. 

 Our primary emphasis, however, should always be to make any necessary sacrifices to protect our own family and the rising generation.

 Our challenge is to avoid bondage of any kind, help the Lord gather His elect, and sacrifice for the rising generation 

 We must always remember that we do not save ourselves. We are liberated by the love, grace, and atoning sacrifice of the Savior. 

 Lastly because I really liked the comparison and discussion of Jeremiah and Lehi, who were prophets in Jerusalem in the same period but had very different missions, I had some pictures of Lehi and the Liahona to go along with the last quote about following the light and keeping the commandments like Lehi's family followed the Liahona and I found a great connect the dots picture of the Liahona to use with the kids at the end of the lesson.

When Lehi’s family fled, they were led by the Lord’s light. If we are true to His light, follow His commandments, and rely on His merits, we will avoid spiritual, physical, and intellectual bondage as well as the lamentation of wandering in our own wilderness, for He is mighty to save.

My mom was here visiting because of our new baby when we had this lesson and she gave me a low five afterward, hopefully because she liked the lesson, not just because it was over! I am not sure I did a good job at focusing on one message only for the kids but I tried. I feel like I learned a lot about Jeremiah and how to liken his difficult messages to our life today and I hope I shared some interesting ideas with my family about avoiding bondage.

Grandma put new baby boy to sleep quickly. He was out!

We had mini cupcakes for dessert and played a quick game of Set for our activity before bed. Set is a great family game, Little Guy yelled "Set!" every two seconds the whole game. He also likes to hold any sets I found. Princess almost has the concept of what makes a set figured out and really tried. Fixitman handed her any sets he found while the older two easily find sets on their own at this point, often before I see them.

Arrival of new baby boy Duff (November 2013)

After my last post about the birth rally, you may be wondering how the birth of our fifth child went. I am happy to report he arrived quickly and safely and was quite healthy. I am still processing the birth in my mind and will write the birth story here on the blog later but here are some pictures of our new baby boy!

Rally to Improve Birth September 2013

Let's start with some background:

So here I am pregnant with my fifth child in a place I have not given birth in before. I have previously had two babies in a hospital setting and two at birthing centers. I personally preferred the birthing center environment and was happy to find one birthing center in the area. However after meeting with the midwife and doing some research, it turns out I was unable to have my prenatal care and birth experience at this birthing center because it did not accept my insurance and I could not pay several thousand dollars cash instead. The next closest birthing center was over an hour drive away. I would either have a ton of driving to do over this pregnancy and birth or I would need to choose an alternative. Alternatives include a home birth with a midwife (insurance doesn't cover, can't afford to pay myself), an unassisted homebirth (Fixitman and I both did not wish to choose this), temporarily moving elsewhere that had better care or a hospital birth.

I really prayed about this a ton. I did not know what to do! If ever someone felt they needed Heavenly guidance and inspiration about a difficult decision, it was me. I knew my wonderful husband would support me in whatever decision I made.

The impression came several times to meet with a certain doctor some of my friends had used. They all had positive experiences and had spontaneously told me what a great doctor he was. I resisted the impression and kept trying to figure out what to do. I tried to choose moving away and did not feel good about it. I tried to choose driving to the further away birth center that did accept my insurance and did not feel good about that decision. The impression came again that I should use this doctor. So reluctantly I called his office and scheduled a visit.

I told the doctor I was unhappy with having to give birth in a hospital setting and he recommended the birth center. I explained that I had already explored that option and it was unavailable to me. We talked for quite a while and I felt like we might be able to make it work at the hospital. He seemed willing to work with me and my desire for an unmedicated birth with as little intervention as possible.

Fast forward to late summer. Because of my experience having choices unavailable to me, I was doing a lot of research about birth interventions and standard practices and procedures. I came across a group called Improving Birth. Their goal isto make the best care available to all women. This did not mean telling women they could not use pain relief drugs or what kind of care provider to choose. It meant using scientific research to inform the practices of care providers all over the USA.

I really liked what I read and found many useful articles. They were planning a nationwide birth rally on Labor Day 2013 and I wanted to participate! However the closest planned rally to me was 90 miles away. I would either have to drive to it or start a rally in my own town. I resisted this idea because it was so outside my comfort zone. Eventually I decided to do it, feeling that my own lack of options in birth could be turned to some good by trying to bring change to my community. So I jumped into the uncomfortable planning with both feet. It was not easy for me, but I kept at it.

My kids mostly played on a playground at the local park and ate popsicles but they did hold up signs for a little bit. (It was HOT!)

Because I started planning with less than a month to go and did not get the word out all over the community and there turned out to be another birth event in my town on the same day that I had not known about, I didn't have super high attendance. I did have people join me though and we did get on a local TV station so we took the message to more people that way. I did feel happy about making the effort. I did my best and I shared a message I really believed in.I joined the movement, I tried. Overall the rally happened nationwide in more than 160 cities. Women everywhere want to have more options and better care when giving birth.

You can see more about the local rally and find great articles about improving the state of maternity care in this nation at my local rally page on Facebook.

You can watch the local TV station news clip at this link.

Yes I am planning to participate in the rally next year and hope to make it bigger and better. It is a peace rally intent only on helping bring education and information to the community. It is something I have a little bit of a passion about also. Women deserve better care! I have not gone into details in this post about what can be improved because this is my personal blog and that is not the point of this post. But you can find lots of details in the links I have created above.

FHE Lesson - Small and Simple Things

LOVE this picture so much.

Our next Family Home Evening lesson (FHE) was taught by my wonderful husband, Fixitman. Despite his very busy schedule as a PhD candidate and teacher he has made sure to be home for FHE every Monday evening. I know he is super tired and probably just wants to eat something and go to bed when he gets home but he is an active participant and parent instead. What an awesome dad!

Fixitman chose to use the talk by Arnulfo Valenzuela entitled Small and Simple Things. This week because I was about to have a baby, we also had some dear friends visiting who have three small children. So FHE had seven kids!

First Fixitman talked about the story of visiting the MTC in Mexico and meeting all the new missionaries. Then he discussed the story of the guy who just wanted a hug (or abrazo) and was willing to come back to church. He explained to the kids (with many interruptions, including Princess trying to make herself throw up in the bathroom) that often times, people just need a little love or a simple act of kindness to help bring them to the gospel.

Then he asked if the kids knew the story of Naaman from the bible and both of our older boys raised their hands eagerly. They got thru the story with a little bit of help and we discussed how the Lord often performs miracles through simple means and doesn't need big showy productions. He finished by sharing his testimony of this.

While talking on the phone to me earlier, Fixitman had asked me to look for a coloring page for the kids, and I found one of a child sharing the Friend magazine with another child that worked well for the idea of simple ways to share the gospel. So after the lesson I gave each child a coloring page. Usually our kids love coloring, today I think two of them actually did some coloring. Two of them folded the paper up into various shapes and the others simply ignored the paper and moved on to the dessert treat. I think all of the parents were ready for bed after this so we counted the coloring page as the activity and started bedtime afterward!

Gratitude and Thankful List 2013

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because I love food, family, and gratitude. I love making delicious food and eating delicious food. I love spending time with family making memories! I also love being grateful. A grateful heart is a happy heart. I have learned that when I fill my life with gratitude everything seems better.

With that in mind, I am sharing a list of some things I am grateful for this year. It's going to be sentimental, so don't read if you aren't in that kind of mood right now.

1. My wonderful husband and children. I have the best husband in the world for me. He is supportive and loving and caring and wonderful. I also have wonderful amazing children that I feel honored to be trusted with in raising.

2. The ability to visit family and have family visit. Modern means of swift travel are amazing! I am so glad we have gotten to see so much of our extended family this year! Those we haven't seen, I hope we see you soon!

3. My amazing body that is no longer swollen and pregnant. It is amazing because I was able to grow a baby, give birth to a baby and now I am quickly recovering. What a miracle and blessing our bodies are!

4. Supportive wonderful friends near and far. I am a lucky girl with so many caring wonderful women around me that bless me with their love and friendship.

5. Hot water and running water. I absolutely love the luxury of a hot shower or warm bath and they are so easily available to me. It is a miracle every time.

6. All the firewood my dear husband chopped that helps heat our home and keep our heating bill low when it is cold outside. We were blessed to get access to the wood for free and then that he is strong and able to chop it for our use. It smells fabulous too.

7. The knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ and that my Heavenly Father loves me. Knowledge of the purpose of life on earth. What a blessing this knowledge is to me! I am starting to really love reading the scriptures too.

8. Chocolate and other food. I love chocolate, it is so tasty! But I am also so grateful to live in a land of plenty where my family has never had lack of food. I also love fresh pineapple, grapefruit, apples, cheese and bacon. Yum.

9. Freedom to have opinions that are different. Freedom to worship God in my own way. The privilege and responsibility of voting for our government leaders. Freedom to work toward changing and improving my life and that of others on things that are important to me.

10. Work for my husband and myself. The blessing of plenty of work to do and the ability to work. My husband has a job that keeps him busy, pays him and he likes it! This is a huge blessing. I have two small part time jobs that pay money and then one large full time job as a mother and home executive that is much harder but pays in much higher dividends. Our life is busy and happy.

Well, that's enough time spent on that. I know I could make a very long list of all sorts of things but thinking about these is a good start. Happy Thanksgiving!

September 2013 Visitors

In September we were all excited when some special visitors arrived all the way from Idaho! From getting to eat at a buffet (a big highlight for a 10 year old boy) to Fixitman taking his parents to campus to show them around and to attend the class he teaches, everyone LOVED having our visitors.

This dog is named Lady Reveille. She is the official mascot of A&M and First Lady. If she barks in your class, class is dismissed. After being assured she doesn't really bark ever, Fixitman invited her to class with his parents. She barked 10 minutes into class. 

After a fabulous visit, I realized we hadn't really taken any pictures! So before they were allowed to leave, I insisted on taking some pictures for memory sake. They were good sports about it though I'm sure they wanted to get going on their drive and our kids were being silly. It'll be nice for the kids to see the pictures though and remember the visit.

  

Grandma and Grandpa, come visit anytime! 

FHE Lesson - The Strength to Endure

Our Next Family Home Evening (FHE) lesson was scheduled to be given by Little Guy who had just turned 3! I was not sure how best to involve him so that he felt ownership over the lesson but it was still following our General Conference theme since previously when it has been his turn, we just have him share a scripture story or I've just done it for him. So really this was a challenge for me to more actively involve my youngest son in sharing the gospel with our family.

I pulled out my list of short quotes from each speaker at General Conference and read a few to him, asking him if there was one he liked the best. After some deliberation, he picked the quote from Elder Richard J Maynes that seemed to be about the gospel fundamentals. "We need to study and learn the fundamental principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then we must do our very best to live them." Great! Sounds like a good lesson for a young kid right? Let's talk about what the fundamental principles of the gospel are! Well it turns out there was a bit more to it - Elder Maynes' talk was entitled "The Strength to Endure" and the fundamentals of the gospel are what give us that strength to endure. As I read and studied the talk, I realized that this lesson was a message that I needed to hear right then. At 39 weeks pregnant I was begging the baby to just come already and I might have been a bit TIRED of being pregnant. I just wanted to be done.

I read the talk and highlighted quotes and things that stood out to me on Sunday but I still wasn't sure how to organize it so that Little Guy was mostly in charge. I prayed for inspiration and guidance over the next day and sat down Monday afternoon hoping I could come up with a decent plan after a day of letting the thoughts percolate in my mind. I really believe the spirit guided me to exactly what to write down at this point because a clear plan came out on my paper quite quickly. Putting it together took longer thanks to computer difficulties but I knew how to make it happen!

Our plan:

Open with Little Guy asking questions: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Next: What will you need to do to do that?

Share story from Elder Maynes about getting into shape after his mission for basketball and how it took dedication, perseverance and self discipline.

Have Little Guy choose someone to read a quote and hand them the paper with the following quote:

" A testimony, like your body, needs to be in shape if you want to endure. So how do we keep our testimonies in shape? We cannot get our bodies into good basketball shape by simply watching basketball on television. Similarly, we won't be able to get our testimonies in shape by simply watching general conference on television. We need to study and learn the fundamental principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then we must do our very best to live them. That is how we become disciples of Jesus Christ, and that is how we build an enduring testimony."

Next question: Do you know what it means to have dedication, perseverance and self-discipline? 

Have Little Guy hand out papers with matching word to definition and pencils to everyone. Give everyone time to figure it out and then go over definitions.

Next have Little Guy hand out quote about choice:

"Heavenly Father has organized our journey through life to be a test of our character. We are exposed to both good and evil influences and then given the moral agency to choose for ourselves which path we will take. As the ancient Book of Mormon prophet Samuel taught, "Ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made you free." (Helaman 14:30)

Point out that it is our choice to choose to strengthen our testimonies and be able to endure. Share testimony that I believe it is the way to happiness.

Have Little Guy hand out last paper to everyone, for drawings about the fourth article of faith. It is a simple paper where everyone can draw an illustration each for Faith in Jesus, Repentance, Baptism and the Holy Ghost. Share belief that the gospel is simple and basic and these are the first principles to understand. End.

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End of Lesson report: Having Little Guy hand things out and ask questions went fabulous. He really liked being the center of attention, asking the questions and having the important job of passing out paper. Telling the story about basketball training was the big hiccup because he wanted to tell the story. I should have had pictures for him to hold while I told the story, even though it was a short one or I should have tried to teach it to him to tell in his own words. We made it through taking turns telling a story (his involved a chicken crossing the road I think) and the lesson went well overall. I think the main points of the talk came through for the kids but the biggest reason I think it was a success is that I chose to involve my son in giving it and I have learned more personally that they really aren't too young to actively participate, even though sometimes they are little terrors. 

We finished the evening with chocolate pudding and a game of Sequence which is a fabulous family game that even 2-3 year olds can fully participate in. It felt like a fabulous family night!

I am already really grateful for this exercise of making the general conference talks the themes of our FHE lessons. I have learned so much about teaching my kids the gospel just in trying to help them with lesson prep and in studying the talks with FHE in mind, more than I ever have before studying the talks on my own. I do believe I am being guided and gently taught by the Holy Spirit how to be a better mother through this process. I hope you are enjoying reading about our lessons and perhaps feeling inspired to try sharing some thoughts from General Conference with your family.

Preschool themes and activities in September 2013

The first week of home preschool, we used the theme All About Me to discuss our bodies and families. Our activities included measuring height using rulers and other objects like megabloks,  making footprints and handprints with paint (Little Guy refused this one!), making a drawing of our family tree, playing find that body part, singing Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, making bean people, painting a wooden initial letter of our name, sorting googly eyes by size, and playing body part bingo.

The family tree was entertaining, initially I wanted to include all their cousins, but that turned into a reeealllly long chart even when they were all squished together so we opted for immediate family and grandparents only instead. Princess LOVED coloring a real tree outline around the bubbled names I drew. This activity went really well with one of the books I checked out of the library called All About Me or something like that which discussed families.

A fuzzy picture of our Family Tree we made. Yes, I included our future baby in the kiddies.

Another fabulous book I checked out this week was Hands are not for Hitting. It made an impression on the kids and the physical violence that siblings dish out to one another regularly definitely took a dive for the next week or two. I had them repeating the phrase even when others were hitting. That was nice. Sadly it was just a phase.

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In September, the Preschool themes we used were Weather, By the Sea and In The Woods. For each topic I first looked at what other preschools had done using blogs and pinterest and then also looked at what appropriate books were available at the library (if I made it there).

Weather
 We read books we had at home about the moon, the seasons, clouds and the water cycle in addition to whatever books the kids wanted. I didn't really get to the library before this topic so I didn't even get to look for some of the other great books I was considering. I decided this was okay, we still read books every day!

Our weather activities included making clouds in a jar and letting it rain and making tornados in bottles. We also tried out cloud nomenclature cards for identifying some types of clouds.

 This is the second time we made "clouds". The first time we didn't use enough shaving cream and the color went thru immediately. This time, Little Guy's cloud had too much shaving cream and the food coloring never "rained" thru to the water underneath. But Princess' cloud worked well, and you could watch the food coloring come out the bottom of the cloud and drip into the water.

I didn't take any pictures of the tornado bottles apparently, but they were a big hit. The tornado was pretty faint to see for us though.

Princess liked the cloud nomenclature cards alright. We matched the pictures up to their names. It felt too much like a school exercise to me though and I'm not sure that more nomenclature cards will appear in our preschool time.

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By The Sea
We read books about many types of sea creatures this week, including jellyfish, starfish, hermit crabs, and sharks. Originally I wanted to go to the beach during this week but I didn't have the energy or time for it. We still had a lot of fun.

This is from the book A Home for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle. We used pattern blocks to recreate his shell and friends.

I bought a bag of play sand at the home improvement store for less than $3 to refill the sand box in our yard and the kids spent hours several days in a row playing in it, especially after I introduced the game of "buried treasure" where you bury some small toys and then search for them.

We also made paperbag jellyfish, colored rice starfish and wave bottles this week. The paperbag jellyfish were easy and fun, as were the starfish.. Princess and Little Guy played with them for weeks too! The wave bottles are not as fun without little things to put in them I think, but they were interesting for the kids to see the water/oil interaction and how it was like waves. I also attempted homemade playdough and it turned out nicely! I colored it blue, yellow and white for water, sand and clouds. We played with shells and toothpicks in it to make anenomes, jelly fish and shell imprints. Here is the awesome recipe for playdough that I found worked really well.

Painting Jellyfish bags

I had hoped to go to the beach at the end of this week but I was too tired and it didn't work in the schedule. We did create some fun treats (jello with gummy fish, teddy bears floating in life savers) and have a good time overall, though I definitely over planned.  Here was my pinterest board of ideas.

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In The Woods

For this week we read books about raccoons, vultures, birds, owls, bears and other animals you might find in the woods. We also read One Small Square: Woods and used it as a basis for outdoor hikes in the woods in our back yard. We found tiny spiderwebs, little cactii, heard bird calls and lots of different kinds of leaves. Since our dog was following us and there was LOTS of noise, there wasn't much chance of seeing any other creatures, but it was a lot of fun for the kids anyway. I didn't take lots of pictures this week however. 

Princess was happy to give the grocery store mascot "5". Most of the other kids were terrified.

Free cookies!

We also took a field trip this week to the grocery store with other toddlers and preschoolers from our Music Makers group of friends. Every week we try to go to a free music makers class that is done by moms in the area and is pretty fun. It involves lots of singing of kids songs and rhymes, a parade with instruments, parachutes with balls and story time. It is exhausting to me but so rewarding to the little kids as they sing the songs all the time that I think it is worth it. The field trip was entertaining as Princess warmed up to the guide and started telling her all sorts of interesting things. It was themed around healthy foods and the kids each chose a fruit and vegetable and were given them as well as a gift bag with trinkets and coloring pages. 

Well there is a quick summary of some of the preschool activities we had in September! I learned a lot about my own style for preschool this month and also how much to plan and I think Princess and Little Guy really enjoyed themselves.