Essential Oils

A lot of my friends are getting into doTerra, which is a Multi Level Marketing company that sells essential oils at in home parties.  Their products are awesome!  I've been hearing the buzz about these oils for over a year now and even declined going to a party due to lack of interest and distance.

Recently a friend signed up as a distributor and started sharing with me the benefits of using essentials oils as part of day to day living.  This took place during a time period when many of us were sick, particularly Sara, who had pneumonia so bad that one of her lungs quit working.  Not that I wanted to replace modern medicine, but I would have liked to treat the problem before it got SO bad.  (A doctor who misdiagnosed didn't help anything.)  I asked for a catalog and started reading through what some of the oils do and how much they cost.  They are EXPENSIVE.  There's no way I can afford the collection of oils I would need to have on hand in order to put together recipes for whatever use we need to treat, so I began my research.

MLM companies mark up their products in order to pay bonuses to the uplines.  This gets seriously expensive.  Having sold Pampered Chef, Discovery Toys, Home Interiors, and having been a wholesale buyer with Avon and Mary Kay, I know very well how it all works.  Considering that essential oils is nothing new, there are lots of companies that sell essential oils.  doTerra teaches the importance of using good oils.  Are they FDA approved?  Were the plants originally grown and pressed in their natural environments around the world?  Has there been anything added to the natural oils?  With these questions in mind I began my research.

First I found essential oils on amazon.com for dirt cheap.  I was super excited until I researched the company and found that they don't tell you much about where they're getting their oils from.  This is a sure sign that the quality of the oils are not as good as they should be.  Exactly what I want to avoid.  Google provided me with a list of several other companies to research.  One of which was really cool.  They sell essential oils that are talked about in the Bible and they teach you how they were used in the Bible.  Really cool and still very expensive.

After researching a couple other companies, I found Rocky Mountain Oils.  They have a whole slew of information about their oils, where they come from, how they're pressed, and the many uses for each type of oil, as well as several blends to treat specific concerns.  Here I learned that just because an oil has been FDA approved, does not mean it is therapeutic grade.  FDA approved simply means the FDA thinks that oil is safe to ingest.  The FDA has not tested the oil for whether or not it will actually do what it claims to do.  Rocky Mountain Oils tests their oils to see how high the count is for the qualities that oil should contain.  If it's not good enough, they don't sell it!  This company purchases their oils from around the world so that the plants were grown in their natural habitat, providing the oils with the correct therapeutic qualities.  Rocky Mountain Oils has great prices considering they are a high quality oil seller.  A couple differences I have found between doTerra and Rocky Mountain Oils is that Rocky Mountain Oils offers 5 ml bottles for all their oils; whereas, doTerra sells most of their oils in 15 ml bottles.  So retail price comparison, this make doTerra about 50% more.  If you buy into doTerra's wholesale option, it's only 25% more.  I like the option of buying the 5 ml bottles so that I can afford more initially and see what we'll use regularly before I buy the larger bottles.

After writing down my family's typical medical needs, I researched all their products and decided on a handful of oils to begin our journey using essential oils.  We started using them right away!  Sara has been using German Chamomile on her eczema and it helps reduce the inflamation.  We haven't used it long enough to see if we can get it healed, but I am hopeful, even to find something that actually works to reduce the eczema and relieve the pain.  Sara is also using the immune booster (blend) to help her recover from pneumonia.  I also bought oils to treat headaches, warts, boils, and other things.  I plan to keep a journal on what we used it for and how it worked.  I will say that I am going to put together a recipe to treat the eczema since German Chamomile is so expensive.  Plus, the combination of several oils that treat the same thing can increase the desired outcome.

Initially I was skeptical about how essential oils work.  Afterall, they just have you breathe them in or massage a couple drops into a part of your body.  Why do they work?  I've purchased a couple books and have learned that the oils are easily soaked into the body and absorbed by the nervous system, which can carry them to the needed parts to do their job.  For this to work well, one has to learn about where to massage the oils.  At Sara's last doctor visit we discussed essential oils and the doctor explained that essential oils can break the cell barrier to treat the problem at the cell and that modern medicine can only treat whatever is in the blood stream.  WOW!  That is exciting stuff.  Of course there's a whole lot more information about that, but if you want to know it, you should get a book and do the research yourself so that I don't bore everyone reading my blog!  I did see a book on amazon.com about the science behind essential oils.  Or there's always a supply of great books at the library.

Anyway, order number two went in for more oils and I discovered that Rocky Mountain Oils is running a Mother's Day special.  They have three different gift sets, the big one being 20% off!  That set has a couple of the oils I had on my list to get so by golly, I got it!  Happy Mother's Day to me!

So when you're invited to a doTerra party, remember that there are options equivalent to their high quality product for much less money.  If you can afford doTerra, more power to ya!  But when they tell you that no other company makes oils as good as theirs, remember that they have not researched all the companies.  They want you to buy their products, which is okay, just not in my budget.  For the record, Rocky Mountain Oils offers a lot more single oils and a lot more blends than doTerra.  Even so, as I have researched recipes for my oils, I have found oils that even Rocky Mountain Oils does not carry.

If you decide to get into essential oils, let me know and I'll give you the name of the company that sells containers for half the price as doTerra.  I don't have that information handy right now, but you'll need tiny bottles to keep your mixed recipes in.

Getting old(er).

Today is my birthday.  I am celebrating the 9th Anniversary of my 29th birthday.  It is the day every year that reminds me I am, actually, getting older.  Except for my birthday, I tell myself that it is my children that are getting older, not me.  I will always be young at heart and how odd it is to be 29 (again) while my oldest is 16 and my baby is 8.

Up 'til this year my vision has been amazing!  Just last month Matt was telling me how awesome it is that the girls in the family don't wear glasses since all the boys in the family do.  I think he jinxed me!  A couple weeks later I went to my eye doctor because my eyes have been seriously dry in the morning, which is a side effect of my allergy meds I started taking a couple months ago.  Regular eye drops wasn't doing a blessed thing, thus the doctor visit.  Of course the eye doctor insisted on doing an eye exam since I haven't had one done in years.  Much to my chagrin, she informed me that while my vision isn't bad, per se, it isn't as good as it used to be and I would probably like some glasses to see things far away, particularly when driving.  Please note, that I have not noticed anything different up to this point.  But after this point in time, all of a sudden I'm noticing that I need to be closer to read the street signs.  And in church, while practicing with the choir, I looked across the chapel past my music folder to discover that everybody at the back of the room was quite blurry.  It took much longer than usual to focus in.  UGH.

So, needless to say, I am getting glasses.  Choosing the glasses was quite the experience.  I was hoping to go for something cute, blingy, or sassy but discovered that I had to choose my glasses according to size.  Yes ladies and gentlemen, I have a big head.  Not the arrogant type of big head, I have the largeness type of big head.  So all the cute stuff was ruled out and I had to go for practicality.  I still had to be careful.  Some of the glasses were too dramatic looking.  Others were "librarian" style glasses.  You know the type, square on the top, but rounded on the bottom.  If I still had my long hair wrapped up in a huge bun sitting on the top of my head, you could have stereotyped me as a librarian in a heart beat.

Just about every type of frame made me look older.  Therein lies the decision.  Frames make me look older; therefore, we buy glasses without frames.  It took forever to reach this point and the sales lady wasn't helping any.  She wanted me to try everything on whether I liked it or not.  But once this decision was made, I had to try on all the frameless glasses to see which shape of lense I wanted.  Holy Cow!  This was worse than I expected.  In case that was not enough decision making, I then had to decide what color wires I wanted to connect my lenses onto my ears.  Purple it is, that decision wasn't too difficult.

I'm also getting old lady hands.  Don't worry, I won't take three paragraphs to tell you about it.  But I have noticed that without regular hydration, they are getting wrinkly.

So what do we do to compensate for all this oldness?  Well, I'm hoping for your gentle suggestions.  In the meantime, I bought myself a hat covered in bling!  It's my favorite color with a fleur de lei (I have no idea how to spell that), which is covered with black sparkly crystal beads!  I also bought myself a big flashy purse.  I have resigned myself to big purses anyway, after spending much of last year moving up from small purses to medium purses to big purses.  My new purse is light lime green with a huge zebra striped flower on the front of it and zebra striped handles.  I've been wanting one of these for some time now, and finally found a color I liked with a decent price tag on it.  So...Happy Birthday to me!  My kids tease me mercilessly about my purse collection.  I switch purses about every six weeks.  I don't necessarily buy a new purse every six weeks, but I'll go through my collection and find one that suits my mood, or the season, or at least all the stuff I plan to carry.

My memory has also gotten old.  I've been living in the hereafter more than usual.  Yes, that when I get up to go get something, get to where that something is and can't figure out what I'm here after.  Often times if I go back to what I was doing, the thought process will return and I'll get up again to go get it.  Luckily there are some OTC supplements that help with this, so I've started taking them again.  Seriously, brain food is necessary!

My hair is also getting old.  It's coming in white!  Yes, exclamation point.  Why?  Because I like white hair better than gray hair.  My grandma has a head of white hair and it is beautiful.  Someday I hope my hair will be as pretty as hers as I reach those tender old ages.  In the meantime, I have been dying my hair blonde so the white doesn't stand out as much as it did with the browns and reds.  Funny thing is my hair fades to a shade of red no matter what color I dye it...except for those white ones.  So right now I have blondish red hair, a light strawberry blonde, I guess.

When I wake up in the mornings, it takes me a few steps to be able to stand up straight.  I would like to blame it on soreness from exercise; however, lets be honest here people.  It doesn't matter if I'm not sore.  My joints could use some oil.  I'm betting my hearing is going to because it would make perfect sense that my joints creek.  Heaven knows they crack all the time.

So if you see me at church Sunday with a cane, some old lady glasses sitting at the bottom of my nose, white hair, and me crouched over having troubles standing up straight, it's only because I've had another birthday and I'm feeling old.

Easter colors scripture chase

I found this cute handout idea on Pinterest and used it with a bag of jelly beans for the ladies I visit teach. Then I realized this would be a simple family home evening for my children. Please note that my children range from age 8-16, so they are able to help look up scriptures.

Now learn about the colors,

and know what each one means...

the story of our Father's love,

told by some jelly beans.

And then every morning,

take a bean so yummy...

something for the soul and

something for the tummy!

Orange is for Heaven so Bright.

(2 Samuel 22:13-14)

Yellow is for God's perfect Light.

(Revelation 21:23)

Black is for the Sins we've made.

(Romans 3:23)

Red is for the Blood He gave.

(Romans 5:8)

White is for our Cleansing from sin.

(Psalm 51:1-2)

Green is for our New Life in Him.

(Colossians 1:10)

Pink is for His Free Gift to share.

(Matthew 28:19-20)

Purple is for the Crowns we'll wear!

(2 Timothy 4:8)

I know this is not the Easter story, but it is a great little scripture chase to learn of our Heavenly Father's love for us and it ties into the Easter story very well! We sat around the table with our scriptures and a bag of yummy jelly beans to eat as we discussed what each color represents.

Leap Day Blizzard 2012

This winter has been more of a non-winter. We've had several storms that have come through as rain or simply passed us by. The couple of times we've had snow it melted within a few short hours. So when this series of storms was forecast, I'm not sure we believed the weather man. The winds began to blow like crazy from the south, and a huge mass of clouds rolled underneath the existing storm from the north.

A week earlier I had called and schedule our tax appointment for this day. We drive all the way to Grantsville to do our taxes. Yes, that's an hour drive each way. Our tax lady is amazing and she gets us good returns every year. It is well worth my sanity to pay her to do our taxes. As we left the house it began to snow, just little flurries. But the farther north we went, the snow storm got worse and worse. I'm sure lake effect didn't help anything. Magna was pretty yucky and of course the plows weren't out yet. At one point, I had to take the "suicide lane" in the middle of the road to keep from hitting the guy in front of me. Reaching the point of the mountain by the great Salt Lake proved to be harry as well, the I-80 was practically a parking lot. We called our tax lady to warn her we might be a little late. She was willing to reschedule and have us turn around and go home, but we were very determined to get our taxes done.

After scary roads and crazy traffic, we arrived on time! We finished our taxes in less than an hour, record time, I think, and headed to Tooele to have dinner at our favorite Tooele restaurant, then pick up our oranges from a friend whose kids were doing a fundraiser. With the blizzard still raging, we ascended into Tooele. We reached a point in the elevation change that changed the roads from driveable to, maybe we shouldn't be here. With a continued prayer in my heart we slowly made it to the restaurant where we ate a scrumptious meal at Hunan Village.

Matt and I both left the house in our Vibrams, so when we get out of the van to go eat and then left the restaurant to get back into the van, our feet got soaked. When we arrived at the home where we needed to pick up the oranges, I called my friend and asked her if she could send someone out with the oranges so I didn't have to get my feet wet again. After all, that's what teenagers are for, right? Tall teenage boy comes outside with no shoes and no coat, tromping through several inches of snow to deliver a huge case of oranges! Okay, he did have flip flops on, but a lot of good those did him!

I texted Sara to let her know we were in a blizzard and to pray for us and go ahead and put the kids to bed. I figured since we took the time to eat the plows should have had time to get through the major roads and Matt's suggestion was to take freeways all the way home. Of course it was several miles before we hit the freeway. One of my headlights was out and the snow was turning to ice on the car. Eventually the build up of ice on the wipers was enough that I couldn't see well, so we stopped at the truck stop to clear the car. After smacking the ice off the wipers, we discovered half an inch of ice built up on the headlights. Have you ever scraped your headlights before? It's kinda funny! Once we reached the freeway, the roads were much safer to drive on and we were able to make progress in our journey; although it was still slower than usual. I-80 to beltway 215 to I-15, which is the long way home. Better safe than sorry! When we reached our exit, the roads were yucky again, but nowhere near as bad as the Tooele roads.

We got home at about 9:30 pm. Prayers had been said and little boys were in bed, but when they heard us come in they came running up the stairs to give us big hugs. Elijah, 9, said, "Mom, we made plans in case you both died. Sara helped us." I couldn't help but laugh. It was a distinct possibility we could get stuck somewhere, but I had not felt that my life was on the line. Anyway, the kids gave us huge hugs. Zack's hug was much tighter than usual which is a reminder that he loves me! All of my kids love me!

It is now March 1st and we finally have snow on the ground. So crazy! Next week we'll reach a high of 55 and it'll feel like spring. I'm thinking mother nature is a little pschizophrenic. Oh well. My boys finally get to use the cool new sledding hill at the park before spring settles in.

Ornery Old Women

As I run my errands around town I watch people. Yes, I am a people watcher. I have recently noticed that older women seem very unhappy. Now I'm not talking about OLD ladies. I'm talking about women in their fifties. I try to smile at strangers to see if they'll smile back and this age group of women tend not to. In fact, it looks as though their face is permanently shaped into a scowl or a frown. Only occasionally do I find a woman in this age group that will smile back at me.

In the process of observing this phenomenon, I began to ponder the reasons for why these women are not happy. Many thoughts have come to mind. Maybe they're widowed or divorced and alone. Maybe they're husbands are recently retired and they're suddenly spending more time with their life long companion than they want to. Maybe their children are having children and are stressing out these women as they try to figure out how to deal with their posterity's problems. Maybe their children wore them down beyond repair. Maybe their bodies are beginning to age to the point that they are in constant pain and so they aren't enjoying life anymore. Maybe I should stop using the word maybe, it's bugging me.

In the meantime, I've got to figure out why these women are ornery so that I can prevent this from happening to me. I want to be a happy and fulfilled older woman. If you have any insights on how not to be an ornery older woman, I'd love to hear about it!

Cream of Mushroom & Bow Ties

Sara has spent the last few years learning how to cook. This past year Sara watched cooking shows and tried A LOT of new recipes. Hurray! She will not starve when she leaves home and anyone who hangs out with her will be thrilled to have her as a roommate/missionary companion/date/friend/wife!

On Sara's assigned dinner night many months ago, Sara decided to be creative and create her own recipe. I gave her a couple tips for seasonings that would work and this is what she came up with. I know there's an official name for it similar to other recipes, but I can't remember what it is, so we call it Cream of Mushroom & Bow Ties. Sara made it several times last year and it became a family favorite, so I decided to write down the ingredients as best I could considering everything Sara did was estimate. Here it is:

Cream of Mushroom & Bow Ties:

Prepare a pot of water to boil for the noodles. To feed six of us, I use 8 handfuls of bow tie noodles.

In a large skillet:

2 lbs. meat (sausage or meatballs work great)

1/2 onion, chopped

Brown the meat and the onions together, then drain the grease. If you're using premade meatballs, don't add them until the sauce is made. Then add:

1 tsp minced garlic

1 container sliced mushrooms

Let the mushrooms cook for a minute or two then add:

2 cans cream of mushroom soup

1 can water

1 Tbsp Italian Seasoning

1/4 tsp. pepper

Simmer the sauce until the noodles are done. Drain the noodles and combine them with the sauce and mix together gently. Enjoy!

This was such a hit tonight that I didn't even have to put away left overs! Which for me, is cause for celebration!

If you know the real name of this dish, please tell me!

New Allowance System for the Kids

Every once in awhile we have to change things up a bit to get the kids motivated to do their chores. In the past, the kids have received $1 per year of age each payday as their allowance. As they get older, their chores get harder and more involved. This has been how I'd done it for years.

Recently I have felt the kids only do a few of their chores and expect a full allowance. I started docking their allowance if it was particularly bad, but it didn't seem to re-motivate for very long before chores were being skipped again. So I started to brain storm. Matt and I are all about solutions rather than focusing on the problem, so the solution needed to be something that would be positive for the children.

After mulling it over in my head for a good month, I decided I liked the idea of paying the kids immediately per chore. The money would go as coins into their individual jars and they wouldn't be able to spend it until payday when I cashed out the coins for bills. This would help the kids see how much they were making and allow them to make more than usual if they're doing all their chores and less than usual if they're not completing their chores. In discussing these thoughts with Matt, he liked the basic idea, but wanted to find something else to use rather than coins so they don't get lost, which would in the end cost us extra. We decided to go with chips...poker chips was the only kind of game chips I could find, but any type of game chips would do in abundance. Raffle tickets could work but they'd wear out and I'd have to replace them regularly. Poker chips it is.

We got paid a couple days early because payday landed on a Sunday, but I figured that was fine, we'd close out the kids usual allowance and start a couple days early with the new plan! At first the kids were not enthusiastic until they figured out that if they do their chores, they'll be making more than before. Then the lights started turning on. Not only are they ready to do their usual chores, but they're asking what else they can do and how much can they earn. They're seeing big $$$ in their future; in fact, Joshua said he is going to be rich! Elijah is actually talking about saving his money instead of spending it as soon as he gets it! Zack has expensive hobbies he would like to support and Sara is thrilled that if the boys don't do their chores, she can do them and actually get paid for it!

This new method does require that I have chips in my pocket ready to be handed out to the diligent workers. It also means I have to check their work and make sure they are being thorough and not doing just half the job. While these take a little more effort on my part, I think it will work out fine!

The chore chart is the same as it has been for awhile. We have a large dry erase sticker on the wall with the days of the week across the top and children by age down the side. The kids look at what day it is to know what chores they need to do. As changes are needed I am able to erase one or two things and make a change without it being a big deal or a start over. We have a second large dry erase sticker below that one for extra chores that can be done or notes to each other.

Today is Sunday and I normally only ask the kids for help with the basics on Sunday: dinner, table, dishes, kitchen garbage. But the kids are amazed at how fast they can earn money and they're cleaning like crazy. Maybe I'm a bad mom for letting them work on Sunday, but it's a nice change for them to be asking, "What else can I do, mom?" Mentally I'm jumping for joy! I know the newness will wear off and there will be paydays in the future when the kids will ask why they didn't make very much money. The answer will be simple, "You didn't do your chores."