TJ Hirst

I zoomed in to take a picture of my children in front this stone monument in a sacred place. Between my children’s heads I read these words, “Build A House Unto Me.” The moment impressed upon me my charge as a mother.

My 9-year-old daughter’s story of the fish—or something—that got away:

I was fishing on my grandparent’s pond, off the dock. I swung my fishing pull into the pond. I was pulling it back in very slowly. Suddenly I felt a very strong tug, and it kept going all over the place. I was going to let go of my rod. My sister tried to help me, but she couldn’t. It was too strong. My grandma came to help me, too. It felt really heavy, and we saw a creature swimming at the end under the water. When finally we pulled it in, the hook and the bait had been taken off!

Try-It With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

I am busy reading and writing toward better eating habits, even while I am away visiting at my parent’s family farm. How are you doing on the June Reading Challenge to be more aware of what and how much you eat?

Now that I recognize and record what I am eating, I need a little push to change what I eat. At lunch I read the serving size for baby carrots and realized I would need to eat 10 carrots. While that would only equal 40 calories, in my mind that was a lot of chewing. I put five on my plate. So, now, I introduce the third challenge in my healthy eating plan for June:

Eat at least 5 fruits and vegetables per day for one week.

This challenge is inspired by my children’s participation in the Dole 5 A Day Live show in Mrs. Vanvickle’s 3rd-grade class at Lowell Elementary School. Each of my three children starred in this eat your fruits and vegetables skit as Bobby Banana, a salad sister or an announcer. The catchy songs (we even sing them together at home) and presentation motivate me every time I see it to really try to eat my five fruits and vegetables.

You can listen to the Salad Sisters singing from the salad factory here.

Eating 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day provides a variety of health benefits. Fruits and vegetable are rich in vitamin C, vitamin A, fiber and other nutrients and contain hundreds of phytochemicals. Along with physical activity and maintaining a healthy weight, eating 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day promotes good health and reduces the risk of cancer, heart disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, and other chronic diseases.
Dole 5 A Day Facts

The Dole Food Company is a founding member of the National “5 A Day for Better Health Program” and its 5 A Day website has some great printable resources for families, including a 5 A Day Challenge Chart, which I am going to use to track my progress.

Do you want to Try It With Me?

Join in by trying the challenges with me, commenting, linking, or suggesting a challenge. If you want to write a post on your blog about what happened when you took the challenge, I will publish your link. Just link to my website in your post and send me your link. Feel free to use the TIWMT image in your post.

Our neighbors borrowed our three children and took them
for the Minnesota version of an after-dinner drive.
And here’s what they saw:

Loons, the Minnesota state bird

Inchworms that blow off when the boat goes fast

And another loon.

Summer 2008 is the summer of unstructured time. Up to this point in my child-raising, I scheduled enough summer activities, at home and away from it, to keep everyone involved, active, and happy. Or in other words, to avoid hearing “I’m bored” or “I don’t know what to do.”

Their individual summer activities this year consist of four days of camp for my oldest daughter, a week of Boy Scout camp for my son and swimming lessons for the youngest. That’s it.

Either I plan to be a crazy referee every day or I am taking a big leap of faith, right? Probably both.

Recently, several general leaders in my church counseled parents to not overschedule children and youth and to allow for unstructured time in families. (See these talks: Good, Better, Best; Mothers Who Know). One said:

Don’t overschedule yourselves or your children. We live in a world that is filled with options. If we are not careful, we will find every minute jammed with social events, classes, exercise time, book clubs, scrapbooking, Church callings, music, sports, the Internet, and our favorite TV shows . . . Families need unstructured time when relationships can deepen and real parenting can take place. Take time to listen, to laugh, and to play together.

Elder M. Russell Ballard, Daughters of God

One scheduled activity we are doing this summer is to read a chapter of Watership Down every day after lunch. In reading about rabbits, I think I am coming to understand one reason why “unstructured time” is so important.

The “main character” rabbits, who are setting out on their own, come across two sets of rabbits who are fed by humans. The wild rabbits said, “They did not know how to make up their minds. It was not within their capacity to take a decision and act on it. These rabbits had never had to act to save their lives or even find a meal.”

Feeding young people a constant schedule of things “to do” may be like breeding “hutch” rabbits. In our culture we put great emphasis on providing opportunities for our children to develop their abilities and talents and potential. But, perhaps, in the process we are creating generations with diminished ability to act according to their own initiative.

For the moment, my summer experiment is tiring everyone out, especially me as referee mother. But I plan to persevere through this painful period when they move from everything being structured to unstructured. Because I just don’t want to raise hutch rabbits.