I can sigh a nice sigh of relief now that the Liberty Girl Retreat is over for this year. Yesterday we held our 3rd annual Retreat with 135 girls. Our focus this year was on the Great Depression era. In preparation for this most of the chapters of Liberty Girls had one of their semesters focused on this time period with the Kit books from the American Girl series as the reading material.
The girls were split up into 5 groups and rotated through 5 activities. We focused on 4 different virtues that were important during that time period. The virtues were Cooperation, Thrift, Service, and Positive Attitude. They learned about Elinor Roosevelt, and listened to some stories from some families who pretended they were hobo families, had a hoe down, tied quilts for Primary Children’s Hospital, started making their own rag rugs, and helped make the soup for the family dinner in the evening while they were told the story of stone soup and played some cooperation themed games. They had a blast, as far as I could tell, and it all went over very well. Alena was thrilled with everything that she did, and told me in detail about her day, including her pride in helping make the soup by chopping carrots and not even “cutting myself with that very sharp knife!”
The girls all got a t-shirt and then the families went through a soup line for dinner. We had a lot of soup left over, but better too much than too little. And now I have quite a few bags of yummy soup in my freezer.
Next year we are focusing on the Pioneers by going on a trek at Martin’s Cove in Wyoming. I am very excited about this. It is going to mean a completely different Retreat than what we have done for the past 3 years, but I think it will make it a little easier all in all.
Meanwhile I know one thing for certain. the 2009 Liberty Girl Retreat is DONE and, in my opinion, a complete success. Hooray!
And I didn’t get pictures of it. I will have to try next time. Faith turned 7 months old on the 5th and started crawling today. She hadn’t even really been scooting around. She has been rolling around and then pushing herself up to a sitting position to get around. Then today she ups and crawls 1 -2, scoot 3, smile and rub her nose 4 -5. Then start it all over again. LOL. Oh, how I love her.
Speaking of pictures I am trying to figure out how to upload pictures taken on my phone to this new computer, and I am struggling with it. Hopefully my husband will decide to get a bee in his bonnet about it and figure it out for me. hehehe. Do men get bees in their bonnet? Perhaps some ants in his pants. Now that imagery is making me giggle. lol
rating: 5 of 5 stars I loved this book! I wish I could go around giving copies to all the parents I know. We hear all of the time about physical abstinence, this book addresses the need for emotional abstinence. I highly recommend this book.
My sweetheart had his birthday Monday. He is the love of my life, and I can’t imagine being this happy without him. He is a wonderful husband and father, and we have missed him like crazy for the past year. I know he is working hard to take care of us, and I appreciate the sacrifices he makes to do that. I hope you had a happy birthday, Sione. I love you more than I can say.
Tomorrow is Tevita’s 5th birthday. He is pretty excited about it. When I asked him what kind of cake he wanted, meaning chocolate, pumpkin spice, yellow, etc. he went into great detail. He wants a cake with three cars on it, and an Indiana Jones hat, satchel, and whip. He wants it black on the bottom and white on the top. I found out that means he wants a dark cake (Sione had a pumpkin spice cake with cream cheese frosting. He said he wanted it like that, but when I asked if he wanted pumpkin spice or chocolate he said chocolate. He does take after me in some things.) and white frosting. We picked up a couple of matchbox cars to go on the top of his cake, but I will be disappointing him regarding the Indiana Jones paraphernalia. Hopefully he will one day come to forgive me for my failings as a cake decorator.
Julie’s birthday is in a week. She will be 14 years old! Going to stake dances, Youth Conference, etc. She is handily taller than me already, and quite a beautiful young lady. She is really looking forward to what we will be working on for her schooling next year. I am excited about researching out the curriculum choices for the different subjects, and planning how we will be studying them. It is so fun to see her growing in so many ways.
My brother’s birthday is in 4 days. He just returned at the end of March from serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Detroit, Michigan area. Now he is in Texas selling pesticide services which he hopes will pay for his college tuition for the next year. We miss him, but I hope that everything turns out the way he wants it to. I am looking forward to seeing him again in the fall, and I hope he will be up to doing some fun physics experiments with my children….hint, hint.
I did not realize how integrated internet had become in my life. Finally having it back after not having it for a couple of weeks is very nice indeed.
Well, here we are. Back in the Salt Lake valley. It is so nice to be close to our family and friends again, although we do miss our friends that we had made in Cedar. We are still working at getting unpacked and settled in. We really like our new home. It has had some work done on the inside just before we moved in. The kitchen was redone, some new carpeting and paint in the rest of the house as well. It looks great. The yard is also beautiful. There are a lot of fruit trees and grape vines. I love to walk around and look at the fruit growing on them. We have a little garden started as well, and I am hoping for some yummy returns from these in the fall. There are also a lot of rose bushes, which I love. They are so pretty, and they smell great.
I am starting to look at doing yoga, walking, etc. to get back in shape. I have gained 15 pounds with this move. lol. Being the emotional eater that I am, and having stress as my trigger, I have not been treating my body right lately. Now that things are settling down a little I am emotionally taking some deep breaths and letting go of the stress. Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh! Serenity Now! lol.
Faith is just growing leaps and bounds. She has had her first foods, now. She had banana as her official first food, although Losahina got a jump start on feeding her. I wait until my children are 6 months to feed them solids, and their first foods other than breast milk are bananas, sweet potatoes, avacados, things like that. The night before Losahina was officially 6 months old Losahina shared a chocolate chip cookie with her. Right in front of me, lol. Faith was sitting in my lap and I was talking to my brother and not really looking at what Losahina was doing. When I looked down Faith had her very own cookie that she was gumming! ROFL! I took it away and she looked at me as if she was saying “But I liked it! Why are taking it away?” The next day Losahina heard me say I was going to feed Faith a banana and while I was getting out the high chair and washing it down since it had been in storage she gave Faith a banana while she was on the floor. LOL. We cleaned that up and I did take pictures of Faith having her first Mom-approved solids. I will share them when I get a chance. Since then Faith has apparently decided she really likes to eat solids, and she has been starving all of the time. I feed her a couple of times a day and she is still nursing a LOT through the night and the day. Last night was a little better, so I think she is finishing with this growth spurt. She has also cut 2 teeth this week. My babies usually cut their first tooth closer to 9 months old. I am sad that she has already cut her first tooth. *sigh*
All in all it has been a very busy month for us, and I don’t see that June will be a whole lot different, other than the manner in which we are busy. I am working on putting together the Liberty Girl Retreat, which will be taking place on the 18th of June. I am praying that it will turn out the way I envision. I am so grateful for the help I am getting with this project. It is rather different this year than it has been in previous years. We’ll see how it turns out. I have decided that we are going to have our family vacation after the Retreat. We are going to vacation right here, and go see the sites around Salt Lake. We have been making our list of what tourist sites we want to see the most, and I am really looking forward to it.
I’ll try to do better with posting.
Stand for Something.
Today Tevita gave me a new idea for a children’s book. Usborne books has a series of touchy feely books that start out with That’s Not My….. and then it names something like a monster, a princess, a dog, a car, etc. So here is my idea from Tevita:
That’s not my mommy! Her hair is too soft.
That’s not my mommy! Her nails are so shiny.
That’s not my mommy! Her skin is so smooth.
That’s my mommy! Her tummy is so bumpy.
Yup. Today as Tevita was resting his head against my belly he stood up and started feeling my belly with his hand and said “Mommy, your belly is sooo bumpy.” I just started laughing. Along with my oldest 3 who could enjoy knowing how that probably would make me feel if I was in denial of the fact. LOL. Then I started in with the book idea and we all laughed. I would have left it at that, so you have Julie to thank for telling me I should post it. It has given me a second chuckle as I wrote this, so I am glad I did.
As I was reading this month’s Ensign I came across this quote from a talk given by President Romney in October 1982. I just had to share.
“The practice of coveting and receiving unearned benefits has now become so fixed in our society that even men of wealth, possessing the means to produce more wealth, are expecting the government to guarantee them a profit. Elections often turn on what the candidates promise to do for voters from government funds. This practice, if universally accepted and implemented in any society, will make slaves of its citizens.
“We cannot afford to become wards of the government, even if we have a legal right to do so. It requires too great a sacrifice of self-respect and political, temporal, and spiritual independence.”
Sione and I have been shopping the ads and coupon clipping to get some really good deals. One of the things we have been stocking up on is fruit snacks/roll ups and granola bars. I figure they will be great for 72 hour kits. I have kept think I need to get our 72 hour kits done for years now. Alas, I have not actually followed through with anything more than buying backpacks on sale after the school sales are over. I realized that I needed to just start working on them when I saw that we just kept eating the fruit snacks, etc. before they ever made into the kits. So I pulled all of the food and beverage stuffs out of the pantry and divided them all up into equal amounts. Then I put them in grocery bags and put those in my closet because we had company over. So yesterday I pulled the kiddies together and told them all to go get the backpack they wanted to use for their 72 hour kit. When they all came back we had a discussion about what a 72 hour kit was for. I wanted to make sure they understood that the yummy mom-never-buys-this-stuff-for-us treats in the 72 hour kits would still be there if there was an emergency. We talked about Hurricane Katrina and what happened since people were not prepared to take care of themselves. We talked about the possible dangers we face here, since we are not in hurricane area. And I let them know that we would be rotating those yummy treats twice a year at General Conference time. Starting in the fall we will have everyone grab their kits and they will get to have the items that will expire before the next General Conference as Conference treats, and then we will replace them. A couple of weeks ago I found some hand warmers on clearance at Smith’s and picked up all that they had, which equaled out to one per member of our family. I also went through all of our old kits that we had for the car (only enough for one person, really) and other items we had and we now have a small baggie of bandaids for everyone and 4 people have those shiny blankets that I always look at with much skepticism, among other things like one bottle of water purification tablets. Then I went to our bookshelves and found 6 of the little books we got out of our cereal boxes a few years back. They are perfect for the kits because they are mini versions of regular picture books and they are paper so they are lightweight and take up practically no room. I divided those up into 2 piles and put them in Tevita and Losahina’s packs. Other than that I have been figuring out what we need still and trying to get the items we have around the house gathered for it. I know we don’t have them complete yet, but they are started and that actually is a huge relief. I feel like instead of this thought that I need to do this huge costly project I now have kits for most of us started and and I can add to it bit by bit. Meanwhile if there is an emergency we need them for we will have more than just the shirts on our back. Something is better than nothing.
With 6 older siblings who love to hold her as much as her parents do I have been a little conserned with Faith having the “tummy time” on the floor to learn how to roll over. Every now and then I would try to remember to let her have the time on the floor, and would adamantly tell all of the children “No!” as they saw her lying there free from anyone else’s loving arms….for at least a couple of minutes. It never really lasted too long. I eased my worries with thoughts that Losahina had eventually learned how to roll over. I increased my worries with thoughts of chinese princesses who never learned to walk because they were carried everywhere.
This morning I decided to let her have some tummy time while we started devotional. I put her down on the blanket and started to get stuff ready. Collin asked to hold her and I told him no, she needed to learn how to roll over, so leave her on her tummy. He told me she was on her back. Now Losahina is a very loving big sister so I wasn’t sure if she had helped Faith over or not. We all ran over, I put her on her tummy again and we cheered and encouraged her to roll over. She smiled and laughed and then rolled over half way. While her head was looking up at the ceiling and her legs were still left behind she had the funniest look on her face. She stopped laughing and smiling and just looked confused. It didn’t take too long for her legs to catch up with the rest of her and then we all cheered and clapped and made a general ruckus over her, which she loved. I’m not sure she knew what we were trying to get her to do, or what we were clapping for at the end, but we are excited and she is happy.
I don’t remember when a baby is “supposed” to start rolling over, but our sweet little 4 month old baby girl has arrived!
Edited to say: She has been able to sit up on her own for a few seconds before tipping over for a few weeks now. I just forgot to share the news here.
I will have to try next time. Faith turned 7 months old on the 5th and started crawling today. She hadn’t even really been scooting around. She has been rolling around and then pushing herself up to a sitting position to get around. Then today she ups and crawls 1 -2, scoot 3, smile and rub her nose 4 -5. Then start it all over again. LOL. Oh, how I love her. 
