Q&A

Since there are five Tuesdays in September I thought I'd post another Q&A since no one is scheduled for today. Also, I really want to see people's answers to this question because it is the same one I have as Zeke is getting older.

How do you handle money matters with your kids? Do you do an allowance? Do they have to do special jobs to earn money? How do you handle the fury when you tell them "no, you can't have that toy" and you have to drag them out of the store kicking and screaming? How do you ever build up the courage to go out in public where there might possibly be an item for sale that they want and you don't want to buy it?

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Happy Autumn everyone!   We celebrated the first day of Fall by making apple crisp, leaf-hunting, replacing a hair bow for a fake orange leaf at the top of my Autumn's braid, and setting out our handful of fall and Halloween decorations.  I can appreciate a well-decorated, seasonally-themed home. However, at this point in my life, I don't have the time, means, or space to have decorating be a priority.  I love the holidays, though, and a few simple items can make them more exciting and magical!  

I spent an afternoon making these Halloween mason jar lanterns a couple of years ago, and I still love them.  They are easy, adaptable, and inexpensive.  You might already have everything you need to make them in your house.  In addition to decorating your own home, I think they would also make a great gift or Activity Days/Relief Society meeting/craft group activity.

I got the idea from Our Best Bites-- a fun blog that I like to visit for their recipes and craft ideas.  A couple of tips from my experience: 

-You can use any glass jar that you have.  One I used was a maraschino cherry jar, and I love that it's a unique shape and size.  The variety of sizes makes it look great as a set.

-The photo is from Our Best Bites, so mine look a little different.  I made two orange pumpkins and also did the white ghost, purple vampire, and green Frankenstein, and it's so much cuter to have the variety of color than if I'd only done orange.  

-Some white tissue paper is SO thin.  Try to use white tissue paper that's a little thicker if you can.  The thin stuff kind of disintegrates on contact with the Modge Podge.  (p.s. If you live by me and don't want to buy a big jar of Modge Podge, you can use mine!) 

-To store them, you should put each jar in a plastic bag (like a Twist and Tie or Ziploc bag, and maybe a grocery plastic bag would work), then you can pack around them with tissue paper or newspaper.  The Modge Podge stays a little sticky, so new tissue paper/newspaper adheres to it even after it has dried.  If you pack them all together in a big plastic bag, they stick together and pull off each others' colors.  

Here are the step-by-step instructions, along with patterns for the faces:

http://www.ourbestbites.com/2009/10/crafty-in-the-kitchen-mason-jar-lanterns/

Happy crafting :)

p.s. Congratulations Laura and Stephanie on your little bundles of joy!!!

Life is precious

I did not even realize it was the third week already and totally missed my day.  Sheesh, this is harder than I thought it would be!
Thank you all for your birthday wishes.  It was a very bittersweet day for me.  Brandon is an amazing husband and surprised me with all our family over for dinner, and someone else brought it, so I didn't have to cook.  I have one amazing husband.
But it was all very difficult day as well.  As I was getting ready, my Relief Society president called to tell me that one of the sisters I visit had her three month old baby pass away.  They think it was SIDS.  They just went to get her up and found her not breathing.  She was declared dead at the hospital.  This is their first baby, and she was such a big spirit.  From the time she was born she was wide eyed and smiling.  And they are the sweetest couple.  He is actually our home teacher as well. 
It has been so sad as I think of their loss, and it has brought up a lot of my own sorrow as well.  We just celebrated Rachel's 1st birthday last month.  As I was cleaning up their house that day, I kept looking at all the darling pictures they had up, and thinking of the few that we have up if Rachel.  There is so much sorrow, it really is hard to express.  But at the same time there is so much joy as well.  Each child that comes down to this earth is sent lovingly from our Heavenly Father.  He does not make mistakes.  I know that He sends His children to specific families for specific reasons.  And some children have a short mission in this life.  Every life is so precious, and we all have a divine destiny.  I know that we are eternal beings, and mortality is just one short act of our lives.  And I am so grateful for how my life has been touched by these amazing spirits that only need to be in this life for such a short time. 
Take advantage of each day that you are given.  None of us know the future, only God.  Don't let yourself get into the mindset of, "I'll be happier when..." or "I'll do it later".  Live the life that God has given you, and find joy in it.  Even in the depths of sorrow, the joy of the gospel and the gift of the atonement shine through.

Lengthen Those Telomeres!

This is the post I meant to write up last month but I lost the article I read that it is based on and therefore lost all motivation to write anything, sorry! I read this article a few months ago and found it really interesting. It is in the Food and Nutrition Magazine, Jan/Feb 2014 edition and is called "Telomeres - Insights into Aging".

So you are probably wondering what in the heck telomeres are, unless you are real good at remembering your human biology (microbiology?). Telomeres are kind of like the plastic tips on shoelaces, except for they are on your chromosomes, protecting their integrity. Each time the cell replicates the telomeres shorten until they reach a critical point where the chromosomes become unstable and the cell dies and thus your body ages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere

Research has looked at telomeres as an indicator of a person's true age to see the effects of not only time (age) but also lifestyle, genetics, disease, and drugs. What they've found is shortened telomeres are related to a number of diseases (like Alzheimer's, heart disease, diabetes, obesity and dementia), as well as tobacco and drug use, physiological and psychological stress and some nutrient deficiencies.  Shortened telomeres are also associated with some cancers but not all, and the relationship is not entirely clear.

Okay, so enough with the background, here is the part that I thought was interesting. The article details some of the things they are discovering about actually lengthening your telomeres through changes in your lifestyle. A small study took a group of men with low risk prostate cancer (one of the cancers not associated with shortened telomeres) and studied them for five years. They had them on a low-fat plant-based diet, they meditated and some stress relief measures, they had moderate daily exercise and spent time with family and friends (yay for family and friends!). The control group (who did not have the above interventions) had a 3 percent decrease in the size of their telomeres after five years. The experimental group however, had an increased telomere length by 10 percent!

Moral of the story: find stress relief and spend time with loved ones! Oh, and eat plants and exercise and all that jazz that people know already.

In looking at other studies the following were associated with longer telomere length:

-Folate
-Vitamin C, Vitamin E and selenium
-omega-3's from seafood
-Higher vit D levels
-Taking a multivitamin
-Physical activity (especially during leisure time, as opposed to those who have strenuous work)
-Stress management and meditation

Anyways, I found the article super interesting and I even started giving Zeke a multivitamin a couple times a week just to cover my bases. I'm not one that is a big fan of taking a lot of supplements as I prefer getting the nutrients from the actual food but who am I to keep Zeke from lengthening his telomeres?

We're working on balancing life like everyone else and right now our goal is family exercise time a couple times a week. We've done walks/runs at the park and indoor obstacle courses with running, diving through tunnels and stairs. Zeke absolutely loves it when we do it and it is a great way to have family time, stress relief and exercise all at the same time! Lengthen those telomeres!!!

P.S. Happy Birthday Michelle!!!! Welcome to 30 years! It is pretty awesome as far as I can tell :)

It's OK to be clean

This morning, for my YW calling, I attended a beehive conference with the cute little beehives from my ward. The speakers did a wonderful job, and gave me everything I needed for my lesson tomorrow to the mia maids. :) They told a story called,

"It's OK to be clean"
     This story is about a young man on a high school football team. Most football teams in the summer have "two-a-days" where they practice in the morning, then have lunch, and come back in the afternoon for another practice. Most of the team would practice in the morning, get all muddy and sweaty and dirty and go to lunch together at fast food restaurants looking all grubby, then go back and practice again. One particular young man on the team would practice in the morning, then go home where he would shower and his mom would make him lunch and launder his uniform before he went back out to practice that afternoon. He started getting made fun of. The other guys would call him a "momma's boy" and tease him for having to go home every day to see his mom and clean his uniform. He soon told his mom that he didn't want to come home anymore for lunch and that he would just stay with the team. She insisted that he come home each day and she told him, "I do these things for you because that is how I show my love to you. And, it's OK to be clean." It's OK to be clean because that is how we show our love to Heavenly Father.

Relating this to being clean in thought, word, deed, and speech, I feel that it is very important to teach our children and remind ourselves that it is ok to be clean. The world will tell us otherwise. The world will teach our children that being clean (morally) is not exciting, or worth it, or cool, or popular.

Here is a poem I like:

It's ok to be clean,
It's ok to be You.
Pray unto the Lord,
And you'll know it too.

Rats in the Cellar

I cannot believe it's my turn again. I totally have motherhood-induced ADHD--I can't keep track of time anymore!

This past month was a crazy one for me at church. I started two callings (VT supervisor, primary teacher), was released from both of those callings and got a different one (primary president--say wha??), and was asked to speak in Sacrament meeting. My topic was the talk by Elder Zwick at the last General Conference, "What Are You Thinking?"

In preparing for the talk, I remembered a quote I heard a while back by C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity:

"When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected: I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. 

"Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? 

"If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.”

I love the analogy at the end: "If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. "

I have days where my poor children see a lot of my "rats in the cellar." Yet ever since I heard that quote, I have tried very hard to remind myself that no one can "make me feel" a certain way. Another person's actions do not create my feelings or make me respond in a certain way--I always have a choice. Those rats are kind of like our natural man tendencies that each of us can overcome.

And next time you feel like your cellar rats might be revealed, try picturing a totally ridiculous picture like this (the internet is a strange place, full of bizarre pictures!). You never know what might help you calm down!

Source

Book Review: These is my Words

I recently read These is my Words by Nancy E. Turner.  This was a book that I thought about for days afterwards, something that's a sign to me that I read a good book.

The story is told in diary format which I don't usually like.  The author, however, did a good job with the narrative and I never felt like I was reading...well, what my journal entries are like.  It tells the story of Sarah Agnes Prine, a pioneer who lived in the Arizona Territories in the late nineteenth century.  I gained a greater appreciation for how scary it was to be one of those first settlers, especially during a time of Indian wars.  Sarah is a brave young woman who helps hold her family together.

Throughout the story Sarah works on her education.  It made me appreciate the education I have and also realize how much I take it for granted.  Throughout the twenty years covered in the journal  Sarah talks about how she wishes she'd gone to school.  She reads voraciously, though, and teaches herself about so many subjects.  It made me want to do a better job of improving myself.

The story also shares the sweet love story between Sarah and her second husband.  It also talks about her relationship with her children, which was rather poignant.  One thing I also enjoyed was watching the frequency of journal entries.  They dwindled over the years, which I think we can all relate to as we become busier and busier with our families.

I recommend this book.  It was an entertaining read that also helped me appreciate blessings I have and encouraged me to be more grateful and appreciative for the things I have.

Q&A

Sorry I didn't get this question up before the summer was over Shelley but hopefully people's answers are still helpful for fall structure as well:

Where do you find free worksheets(math/ABC's)/writing or coloring activities for your pre-schoolers? I am learning that McKay thrives on structure, and I think this summer I need to intermix play time with some more structured learning time.