No Surgery - Yea!

We finally got the results on Chris' MRI of his foot...the ligaments are all attached! Yea! There was a concern that a ligament was not attached and would need surgery. Thank goodness that it is just broken. But, he did get this cool "robot boot".

Temple Trip

We had a fabulous day at the St. Louis Temple yesterday with 24 of our 50 youth attending for Baptisms for the Dead. They did approximately 240 names. I heard several people talk about various temples they have attended and about past Youth Temple Trips. My youth was rather boring since we traveled 30 minutes for our temple trips. I heard of people traveling 8 hours to go to Dallas or Chicago once a year. Our ward had the added blessing this year of going twice to St. Louis.

As a leader, those trips to Dallas or Chicago would take a lot of commitment to take two days away from your family, spend a night in a motel keeping track of all your youth, and the 16 hours of driving round trip. Kudos to these dedicated youth leaders who sacrificed so much to fulfill their callings. A one day trip to St. Louis and back seems such a small comparison, not that I'm complaining, just comparing the differences that members face around the globe.

We had planned for all of us to attend, but because of Chris' broken foot, Mike stayed home and took care of our boy. I was sad about that because I wanted all of us to be in the temple together. But, I came home to a sparkling clean house and the laundry all done. I have the best husband! Even though our men couldn't attend the temple with Nayna and I, we can be comforted with the knowledge that our family is eternal, no matter where we go or what happens to us in this life.

I remembered a talk that touched me deeply called "Steadfast and Immovable" by Silvia Alred at the last Relief Society General Broadcast where she related this story:

Soon after my husband was called to preside over the Paraguay Asunción Mission in 1992, we attended a branch conference in an isolated community in the Paraguayan Chaco. We traveled four hours on a paved road and then seven more hours on a primitive road. The perils and discomfort of the long trip were soon forgotten when we greeted the happy and welcoming members of Mistolar.

Julio Yegros was the young branch president, and he and his wife, Margarita, were one of the few families who had been sealed in the temple. I asked them to share their experience of their trip to the temple.

At the time, the closest temple was the Buenos Aires Temple in Argentina. The trip from Mistolar required 27 hours one way to reach the temple, and they had gone with their two small children. It was in the middle of a very cold winter, but with much sacrifice they made it to the temple and were sealed together as an eternal family. On the way back, the two babies got very sick and died. They buried them along the way and returned home empty-handed. They were sad and lonely but amazingly felt comforted and peaceful. They said of the experience: “Our children were sealed to us in the house of the Lord. We know we will have them back with us for all eternity. This knowledge has given us peace and comfort. We have to remain worthy and faithful to the covenants we made in the temple, and then we will be reunited with them.”

Giving Thanks

Every year I usually list all the things I am thankful for in an effort to recognize my blessings, more, recognize Heavenly Father's hand in my life, and have a more positive attitude. While I love doing that each year, this year felt like something else was needed...a change...in my thinking, attitude, and behavior.

I prepared two Young Women lessons this month, one on Attitude and one on Giving Thanks. Both lessons were profoundly personal for me as I recognized areas I need to improve...still! After years of working on myself, especially my attitude, I can still see so much room for improvement that it sometimes gets very discouraging. So discouraging that I feel overwhelmed and dissatisfied with myself as a person.

The Challenge
I decided to challenge myself with a new Thanksgiving tradition...to be thankful for people and not just a list of things (which often included people). The list of things is a great starting point, but I felt that my focus was on little things sometimes, which are important to recognize as well, but I think for me, I needed to focus on the people I am thankful for and the relationships in my life.

So, I embarked on a plan to give thanks for various people in my life. This has worked so-so...it has been more challenging than I thought. It is easy to be thankful for things, they are easy to list, but how do I show gratitude for people? I realized I needed to be more vocally thankful for individuals in my life.

So, thanks peeps! I am so thankful for my core family (pictured above), my extended family, all of our friends, our ward family, and our homeschooling friends. We have so many friends from former wards that we love and miss!

This year as we embarked on the Missouri Adventure, it has been very apparent to me that what I miss the most from Arizona is the people we love that we left behind. I do not miss the desert, but we very much miss our family and friends.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Acquiring Food - Part 4

Now that I have chosen a menu, calculated the ingredients and taken an inventory of what I already have it is time to calculate what I need to acquire. This seems VERY overwhelming, especially if you are like me and start running totals in your head...48 lbs. of chicken at $1.70 per lb. (if I get it on sale) equals $81.60...yikes! That's just one ingredient on this big list. (I will be talking about canning meats in a later post...you don't need to buy another freezer!)

Step #4 - Acquiring Food

Now we need to determine how much we need by subtracting the total we need from what we have. I fill in my third column in my list that I created when I took an inventory which is "What We Need". Because I have a list of what I need, I can now watch for sales and buy what I need when it is priced decently. I often take my food storage spiral notebook with me when I shop so that I can remember how many I need of the items I might want to buy.

Take a deep breath! You can do this over time. I decided to take $10 a week...that's just $40 a month...and in the last month I was able to buy...

• 36 small cans of tomato sauce = $7.50 (25 cents each)
• 12 cans of diced tomatoes = $7.08 (59 cents each)
• 8 cans of cream of mushroom soup = $5.52 (69 cents each)
• 8 cans of cream of chicken soup = $5.52 (69 cents each)
• 8 cans of cream of celery soup = $5.52 (69 cents each)
• 12 16oz boxes of rigatoni noodles = $10.68 (89 cents each)

Total = $41.82

Money? What is that?
Finding the money to acquire our food storage is overwhelming to me. Since Mike was laid-off almost 2 years ago, money has been...shall we say...more than just "tight". We make a little bit more than half what we made 2 years ago. That is a big difference! Some things we have had to do to make ends meet, pay down our debt, and buy food storage.

• Downsize our home - we actually live in a larger home in Missouri than our Queen Creek home for less money...because it is a Duplex. A bit of a sacrifice for us, but it saves us over $150 a month. I would love to live in a regular home again, but this has made life quite a bit easier.
• Got rid of paid TV (it's free on the Internet anyway - hulu.com, channelsurfing.net.)
• Got rid of a home phone (we paid $40 for one year of MagicJack)
• Reduce eating out - Mike and I pretty much eat out once every two months for a date and we try to use "buy one, get one" coupons.
• Reduce our heating/cooling costs - we have turned down/up our thermostats by one or two degrees. It took a couple weeks to adjust, but we are now comfortable at the changed temperature. We also keep our thermostat very low in the winter over night. We have plenty of blankets.
• Reduce classes, clubs, and sports - Our kids are very talented, but we decided that it is more important to feed them and be debt free than to participate in costly events. They have ONE thing each that they participate in and those are often chosen very carefully.
• Make homemade items as much as possible - we are having another homemade Christmas this year. Last year was a big success!
• Use cheap cleaning products - except for the dishwasher and clothes washer, we use bleach or vinegar for all of our cleaning. I do have some items I got for practically free with couponing. Also, I have learned we can use less than half of what the product recommends and still have clean dishes and clothes.
• Go without! - There are many things we had grown accustomed to that we have given up. I am careful how much I drive, we cut our own hair as much as possible, I stopped coloring my hair, etc.

Pantry Inventory - Food Storage - Part 3

Whew! All the brain power I used to tally my recipe ingredients wore me out! Don't worry if that part takes a week. It is a bit of work. Take the time you need to not feel overwhelmed and to make sure it is is right.

Step #3 - Pantry Inventory
I actually like this part even though it takes a bit of time. I stand in my pantry and just start recording everything that I have into my spiral food storage notebook. Many of the items in my pantry are not on my Week 1 ingredient list. That's OK! I still record it in my notebook.






I have three columns:

1. Item Name
2. How much we have
3. How much we need (don't do this part yet, just leave a column for it)

If you have a small house like we do, you have food storage located in several areas of the house...under beds, stacked in closets, in our garage storage room (in the Midwest you can do that, but in Arizona do not store anything in your garage!). I tally what we have on hand right now. This can take awhile if you have a lot or a depressingly small amount of time if you are just getting started. Don't worry! You are getting prepared and that is what counts.

Since we do have items scattered around the house, we made "maps" of what we have and where it is located. For example, we have boxes stacked in our closet and under our bed. The boxes are labeled from the top and the end so that we can see what is in each box. We have a diagram of what is under our bed so that I know which side and whether I should pull from the foot of the bed or the head of the bed if I need green beans for example. Mike is a great organizer and has helped me with this part a lot. We keep all the diagrams, "maps" and list of things together in a food storage binder that also has my spiral notebook in it. This way as we rotate it is easy to find what we need.

Broken Bones

Every now and then in the life of a family, a broken bone comes along...or maybe several broken bones come along. Chris is laid-up from breaking 4-5 bones in his foot, with one bone also being "buckled". We have not gotten into a specialist yet, so we do not have any idea how bad it really is or how long it will take yet. Hopefully we will get into someone early next week.

The good news is that nothing was sticking out of the skin or even looked broken. I truly thought it was sprained and was in complete shock when they showed me the x-rays with all those little fractures near the joints. All he did was slip on the basketball court. His own weight and the way that he fell snapped the foot too far towards his shin and broke the bones all the way across his foot. Ouch!

A Brief History of Time

A Brief History of Time is a fascinating book. I am truly surprised at how detailed a "brief history" can be. I was very overwhelmed by the subject in the first few chapters, then I realized, this was going to take more study and more time than what I had originally prepared myself for. Thus, it took me several more weeks than anticipated to finish.

Do I understand everything in this book? Absolutely not! I have a basic overview, or outline as Hawkings would put it, of the string theory of the universe. I have a limited understanding of relativity and the workings of gravity, but I am happy that at least I know more than what I did before. It can be so easy to get discouraged by an overwhelming subject of study, but I have learned that everything takes time to digest, especially subjects that are not my easiest subjects, like science and math.

I took several pages of notes to help me remember what I studied on this book. Towards the end I was genuinely intrigued by the idea that the universe can have one mathematical theory to explain how everything works. Hawkings does a good job of touching on the existence of God while still maintaining his scientific findings, something rarely seen in a published scientific work.

Another thought I had while reading this book was that I feel outraged and cheated that so much of what is in our current textbooks is so outdated. Hawkings does his fair share of discussing how you need to be an expert to understand it all. It was another glaring example of the dumbing down of society....the general public is too dumb to understand. Will I ever fully understand string theory? Probably not, but exposure will lead to higher understanding over time.

Mockingjay

When I first began The Hunger Games I was pretty shocked with the violence and that this book was geared towards teens. A couple of my children had read the book so I decided to finish the book and make sure I knew what the whole thing was about. In the end, I allowed my children to read the subsequent books Catching Fire and Mockingjay.
I have two reasons for allowing my children to read these books and for finding them fascinating myself.

1. The society depicted in this series has completely lost their freedoms. It is a very Communist type of society with no ability to change their circumstances. I felt this was similar to 1984 without some of the adult themes. After reading all three, I still agree with this reason and feel it is important to read this with my children and discuss how they could have gotten that way, and as the story progresses, why the characters make the choices that they do.
2. This story rightly depicts a revolution with all of its gore, tragedy, heart-ache, and deception. In times of crisis, many people are stirred up to a revolution rather than seeing what will happen and pulling together as a people to reinvent themselves without all the bloodshed. I wanted my children to see the patterns and how each character's choices played into the revolution. The author seems to make it all rush along as inevitable rather than a set of choices.

In the end, I do recommend these books for older teens. There is some talk of kissing and teen relationships, but nothing terribly graphic.

Ingredient Calculations - Food Storage - Part 2

ProvidentLiving.org

Our Heavenly Father created this beautiful earth, with all its abundance, for our benefit and use. His purpose is to provide for our needs as we walk in faith and obedience. He has lovingly commanded us to “prepare every needful thing” (see D&C 109:8) so that, should adversity come, we can care for ourselves and our neighbors and support bishops as they care for others.

Step #2 - Ingredient Calculations
After I have chosen a menu for the week, I make a list of all the ingredients and how much I need of each item for 1 week of meals. This takes a bit of brain power. I add up the water needed to cook items like oatmeal and boil noodles into consideration as well. I hope to not need to ration our water, but we may need to do that, so I make sure I know how much water is needed for cooking.

An item might look something like this:

Shepherd's Pie
1 jar canned ground meat
1 can green beans
1 pkg. brown gravy mix
1 cup of water (gravy mix)
6 servings of mashed potatoes

1 1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp. Butter (if we have it)
3/4 C. of milk (1/4 c. dry milk + 3/4 c. of water
2 cups of potato flakes

1 tsp. Seasoning Salt
1/2 tsp. pepper

This is what is written on the recipe card. I re-write the items into my spiral food storage notebook. I do this for each meal.

Next, I multiply each item by 12, which gives me the amount I need for 12 weeks (3 months) of each item. I then combine items onto another list so that I only have one entry for each item. (see pictures)

Ingredient Conversions
If you need help figuring out how many tsp. of salt are in a container or how much wheat you will need to make your bread recipe, Everything Under the Sun has a table of conversions. I highly recommend you read all of Everything Under the Sun by Wendy DeWitt. She explains it so well.

Example:
WHEAT........................... # 10 can=5.8 # =12 c=18 c flour when ground
1 c wheat = 1 ½ c flour, 1#=2 ¼ c wheat=3.37 c flour

If my whole wheat bread recipe requires 8 cups of wheat flour and a #10 can of wheat kernels gives 18 cups of flour, then one #10 can gives me 2 1/4 of my bread recipe (18 cups of flour per can / 8 cups for my recipe = 2.25 recipes). Since I plan on making one recipe of bread each day (which gives me two 5x9 loaves), that means for a 90-day supply I need 40 #10 cans of wheat kernels to fulfill that ingredient requirement (90 days / 2.25 recipes per can = 40 cans of wheat kernels).

17th Anniversary

We celebrated our 17th anniversary by going sightseeing to Branson, which is a very touristy place in Missouri. We were not able see any shows, but we had a great time just looking around. I had hoped the leaves would still be on the trees, but that was a little too much to ask for. It was a bit chilly, but we had a fabulous day!

At Table Rock Lake, someone caught us making out. Oh, well!

Nearing Sunset.

Busy Branson traffic. But, we got to look at all the pretty trees.

One of the interesting museums around.

Crazy outdoor exhibits.

A Titanic museum in the Midwest...hmm!

Working on Food Storage - Part 1

This post is a long time coming. I have not worked on food storage much in the past two years. Mainly because we have been eating what we had. I am SOOO thankful for the food storage we had because we never had to go on any type of assistance for food during Mike's layoff, subsequent lower paying job (which we are thankful for!) and move to the Midwest.

I wanted to share what we have done. We are back to trying to build our food storage back up. I have gotten a ton of great information from Everything Under the Sun by Wendy DeWitt. She inspired me to have a Sun Oven and prepare and store the foods that we really eat.

I have to say that Glenn Beck's emphasis on what is happening with the economy has heightened my awareness of how short we are on time in order to be prepared.

The U.S. government is currently printing money just to survive. The Federal Reserve has held the Fed Funds Rate at 0-0.25% for nearly two years and just announced that it will be printing an additional $600 billion in new U.S. dollars by the end of June 2011. Since the beginning of September until now, just in anticipation of the Fed's upcoming quantitative easing, we have experienced the largest ever short-term increase in the history of agricultural commodity prices with corn rising by 32%, soybeans rising by 32%, orange juice rising by 12%, coffee rising by 19%, and sugar rising by 66%. These agricultural commodity price increases will begin to work their way into grocery stores nationwide in the weeks and months ahead, as food manufacturers and retailers are forced to raise their prices. - inflation.us - Nov. 10, 2010

Our financial situation, like many others, has been a bit on the shaky side. That said, I hope that Heavenly Father will continue to bless us with the ability to become debt free and have our food storage.

This will be a series of posts, so I hope you will tune in for all of the steps. (Don't get overwhelmed! it is not rocket science, but it does take some time.)

Step #1 - Menu Planning
Decide on a set of meals for one week - 7 breakfasts, 7 lunches, and 7 dinners. Because I want to cook with my Sun Oven we decided the "big meal" will be lunch and dinner will be sandwiches so that we have time to cook bread and the big meal in the midday.

Here is what we planned:

Sunday

• Oatmeal
• Spaghetti
• Tuna Sandwiches

Monday

• Wheat Muffins
• Shepherd's Pie
• Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches

Tuesday

• Oatmeal
• BBQ Beans
• Tuna Sandwiches

Wednesday

• Wheat Muffins
• Chicken and Rice Dinner
• Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches

Thursday

• Oatmeal
• Posse Stew or Vegetable Soup (Alternate)
• Tuna Sandwiches

Friday

• Wheat Muffins
• Chicken Dinner
• Peanut Butter & Jelly

Saturday

• Oatmeal
• Creamy Chicken on Rice
• Tuna Sandwiches

Not a ton of variety, but it will keep us fairly healthy and from starving. I wrote out each recipe and put them in a little index card book (see pictures). I have the menu for each week separated by Breakfasts, Lunches, and Dinners, with an additional section of substitutes for eggs, how to cook wheat for extending meat, and other food storage tips including alternatives for shampoo and other hygiene needs. Each recipe has instructions for how to cook it using various methods - stove top, sun oven, crock pot, etc. That way we can use whichever method we have available.

I keep these recipes separate from my other recipes. I feel that in times of crisis I don't want to be searching around for what to make. Also, this has given my children peace of mind because they know that they can pull this out and have food to eat for 3 months. I had planned to then do a "week 2" set of recipes and enlarge our food supply to 6 months, but I never got that far. :-)

The Compass - How to Set Goals

I've written about the Compass before, but I thought I would share our exact outline for how we use this important ingredient of Leadership Education. Personally, I think it is useful to all families anyway since it is about setting personal goals.

The Compass

The Compass is part of Ingredient #16 – The Binder, of “Core and Love of Learning: A Recipe for Success”. Also found on pages 101-102 of “Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning” by Oliver and Rachel DeMille. There is not a lot of detail about the Compass. Here is what we do in our family. Please adapt for your needs.

This should be done every six months. Keep it in the front of your binder and read it each week. If you have a mentor, going over this Compass and reporting back on the things that you have worked on or added will help you tremendously. Use a notebook, notebook paper or type it up on a computer document. Whatever works best for you.

Part 1 – Strengths

A . Things I Do Well – List all of the things that are your favorite things to do, things you excel at, and things that you feel confident about doing. This can include academics, hobbies, anything!

B. Top 30 Books I’ve Ever Read – This can be adapted for older Love of Learners to be 10, 15, 20…whatever number you feel fits. As people progress in their reading skills, this list can grow to 50! Do not list every book you have ever read. List those that really impacted your life.

Part 2 – Areas I Need to Strengthen

Include everything that you know need work – academics, life skills, self-improvements, etc. Don’t feel like this area is a “put down” of everything you have ever done wrong. It is simply a list of things that need work. We all have things on this list!

Part 3 – Objectives

A. Books I Want to Read – Strongly consider all of the classics, self-help, and especially your central canon, that you want to study over the next six months.

B. Skills and Things I Want to Learn – Life skills, social skills, academic skills…everyone needs skills in this life. Don’t forget to consider fun things that you love to do as well as things you know you need to do.

C. What is my mission? – This is hard to do the first time you write a Compass. But, still try to think about what you are created to do with your life. Over time, this step will get a little bit easier. However, don’t skip it! Write something even if it is a basic outline of what your mission might be. Children should not skip this step! My children have written profound things like “be a good dad” or “to help people”.

Memories and Blessings

Many of you may read this post and be quite amazed at what I'm about to write. I decided to share this story only because so many people suffer from broken marriages, falling "out of love" or even worse, serious sins that destroy peace and trust. Many people in our society feel broken or damaged. I share this story to say, "I know, I've been there..."

I've been struggling a bit personally and I discovered that many times when I am feeling down and don't know why, I can look back in my past and find an  "event" that brought great sadness happened at the same time of year, often even the same week of the year. A counselor I saw many years ago told me that the body stores "memories" much the same that our minds do, leaving us to sometimes have a "body memory" that our conscious does not always think about, especially if it was from a long time ago. (I have no scientific proof of this, you can look for it if you want.)

So, I realized that I was having a "body memory" issue lately rather than anything going on in my current life. The "memory" that has surfaced was when I left my first husband 18 years ago. I listened to this song as I drove away...



This song still brings the memories to surface. Has that ever happened to you? A song plays on the radio and you can remember listening to that song when something important happened...it doesn't matter if it was happy or sad...some things just impact us strongly. I have always reacted to this song ever since. I heard it on the radio a couple weeks ago and it has been running through my mind ever since.

That is not to say that I hate this song, it actually reminds me of how far I have come from that moment. I sometimes look back and think, "Who was that person who lived through such a horrible time?" It seems like another life to my conscious mind, but my subconscious must still be affected by it. I have such a different life now! I can only thank my Savior for bringing me through such a traumatic time, carrying me when I could not walk the path alone. I will never forget the great love that is given to me and the great blessings in my life. Thank you, Lord, for doing for me what I cannot do for myself.

Mike and I are about to celebrate our 17th Wedding Anniversary! I am truly thankful for him every day! I know that he is my Eternal Companion and that we are meant for each other. Is our marriage perfect? NO! But, we each make an effort to fulfill each other's needs, keep our relationship first, and treat each other like best friends.

Many people assumed that since I had one failed marriage that I would fail at everything else. If you know someone who is divorced, please don't treat them that way. Every marriage deserves the utmost effort by everyone to help it succeed, including encouragement to try again. Had I listened to all those naysayers, I would have missed out on the most wonderful person in my life. (I love you, Mike!)