Are their guns you can fire safely from the back from a bicycle? :tongue_smilie:

There's people who believe that about Mormons too. :glare: I heard it spouted a lot when Romney was running for president. Wouldn't want to give the Mormon church a "toe hold" in taking over the greatest nation on earth.

Resurrecting this thread, as I just finished watching episode 6 from Season 11, where they face off against their German counterparts. I love how they decided to have their "face off" in Beligum because it was "a country specifically invented so that Germany and Brittain would have a place to work out their differences." :lol: I just love this show. :D

My 6 year old has had a raspy cough for the last several days (at least a week and a half) it's not constant, she'll just have a few rough coughing spells (typically at night or when we've been outside, but sometimes inside during the day as well) and then be perfectly fine inbetween those coughing spells. Last night however (after the Dr's office closed of course :tongue_smilie:) she mentioned to me that one of her ears was "stuck" (couldn't hear through it) and that she had spots on her tongue! I have NO clue what this is! She's not complaining of any pain, she doesn't have a fever or runny nose, and is otherwise acting like absolutely nothing is wrong.

I don't doubt that your brother called you a "gentile" or "Not a real Christian". I do however, believe that he was very rude and wrong to do so. In all my years as a Mormon I've never been taught to call non-Mormons "gentiles" or say that persons of other Christian denominations are "not real Christians". It's not what we believe (speaking as an organization - obviously some individuals do, I've encountered at least one IRL myself, and I find the mindset incredibly sad and misguided and not in line with the teachings of the Church).

:iagree: Avoiding pedophiles doesn't mean avoiding all outside-the-family relationships (and in fact, since most pedophiles are relatives of the victim(s) it seems a wise idea to offer every kid an outside-the-family person to trust, so they can come forward). I refuse to let fear be the cause of cutting out positive opportunities for my children. I'll take reasonable precautions (like no one-on-one alone time with another adult, and things such as that),but it's important to me to let my children build relationships of trust with other adults, especially with ones who share our values. There will come a time where, in their eyes, I have everything all wrong, and I would like to have as many other people in my children's life who share my values there to step in and help guide them.

Or it could be building a support network for our kids within the church community. How many of us listened to our parents when we were teens? How many of us, as teens, gave more weight to other adults opinions and advice than we did to our parents'? I know I did. My church has a very active youth program. The church *does* very much also encourage parents to be active mentors to their kids, but that doesn't mean outside-the-family mentors are unnecessary or a bad idea. And more often than not it's other parents who are called upon to fill these leadership positions in the youth program. They are all established members of the congregation, so the parents know the leaders and vice-versa. They also always meet together with at least two leaders present. I greatly appreciated, as a teen, having these outside-the-family mentors to turn to. There were some things I was just too embarassed or too scared to talk to my family about, as I was afraid of disappointing them, so I would talk to one of my youth leaders about it, and they always helped me out greatly. I knew they would offer me advice that fit in with my beliefs (as my school councilor wouldn't have without me going into a lengthy explanation of my beliefs). It was a wonderful resource.

There are exactly 2 homeschooling groups that I've been able to find in my town of ~30k. There's probably more, but they don't advertise (or don't advertise well). One of the groups is actually LDS (but inclusive, there's some non-LDS members, and they don't require a SOF), but the students are all middle school/high school age. My oldest is 6. Not exactly a fit for us. The other group is a SOF group, which does *awesome* field trips and art classes and such that we can't participate in because agreeing with the SOF is required (and we don't agree with it). I can relate to the OP's frustrations. I don't expect the SOF group to bend to accomodate me, but I don't feel it's wrong for me to feel frustrated with our lack of options when it comes to associating with other homeschoolers, especially when it's something unrelated to homeschooling (for our family at least) that's limiting our options.

Actually, no. We believe that Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God. We believe that we are all spirit children of the Father, but only Jesus Christ can claim to have been a Begotton Son of the Father in the flesh. (so son of the Father in spirit AND body.)

The Hiccupotamus

1. Unloading the dishwasher (I love loading it and getting the dishes arranged as efficiently as possible, but I haaaaaaaate putting them away!) 2. Cleaning the bathroom 3. Salmon (*blech*) 4. Chick flicks/lit 5. Talking on the phone. I do it as little as possible. 6. Brie 7. Liver I'm sure there's more I just can't think of right now. :lol:

I'm really sorry that was your experience. :( I hope to raise my kids to be a bit more tactful in addressing our disagreements with mainstream Christianity (not using "less than" or "better than" or "gentile" or anything like that). I have had many many non-LDS friends in my life that I have been able to have honest and insightful religious conversations with. Often my faith in the Lord has been boulstered by their Testimonies of their experiences with the Him via Scripture study and service in their various churches. I have learned much (and my kids can learn much) from members of other denominations when we've approached eachother from a place of love, even with our theological differences.

I hadn't even thought of having her narrate just a paragraph or two. (insert sheepish looking smilie here) I think I'll give that a try next week! I love this board. :D

The part where it says that God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are one person. We believe they are three, seperate personages, who are completely united in purpose.

Wow, you had some rude LDS friends at your school! :001_huh: The LDS church accepts the validity of anyone's claim to Christianity regardless of whether we believe with their doctrine or not. It's not up to us to judge who's claim to a relationship with Christ is "valid" or not.

Hey, we might be related! :D Some of my family converted in England around the same time and traveled to Utah soon afterward. (not asking you to dig out a family tree for me or anything, I just always get excited when I find someone, LDS or not, with a similar family history to me)

I'm about to throw in the towel on doing narration with my DD for SOTW 1. She. just. doesn't. get it! I've tried taking the advice of the ladies here and being more dramatic in my reading of the chapters, pausing after each paragraph to talk about the important names/places/ideas discussed, but when it comes time to answer the questions and summarize the chapter I always, ALWAYS have to go back and re-read the paragraphs that contain the answers, which I really hate doing, because it reminds me of the old grade-school trick of reading the questions first, then only reading as much of the chapter as you absolutely have to to find the answers and get your grade. I've tried having my DD do P.E., or free-play time prior to History. We don't do History until she's had time to move around. I've tried letting her hold things, not letting her hold things, color the corresponding activity page/map while I read. I'm really just plain ol' out of ideas of how to get her to listen and retain the information. I have the audio CD's coming in the mail shortly, and it's going to be my last ditch effort at getting her to retain any information in regards to History. I'm not going to *drop* history, but we're going to finish out the year (we're almost done with the book), and then maybe trying an easier-to-comprehend curriculum. She rarely has trouble answering the questions that go with the reading selections from WWE, so maybe it's just the nature of what's being read to her (not a dramatic story) that's causing her to struggle? I don't know. I'm just frustrated with being frustrated about teaching my first grader history. And it was one of the biggest factors that drew me to Classical education. /Vent. :tongue_smilie:

:lol: :lol:

I come from a long line of LDS members, and we've always identified as Christian. :confused: I find it odd that the kids at your high school didn't. (not saying I don't believe you, just that I find it really odd that an LDS person could say they're not Christian, unless they meant they're not "traditional Christian")

UVU is in Orem. ;) (ya, I know they're right next to eachother, but still... :tongue_smilie: It's my Alma Mater and it is an *awesome* school!!!)

My now-4.5 year old had decay on the *backs* of his front teeth, that we didn't notice until it had gotten to the point where the front of the tooth looked translucent (grayish instead of white). Unfortunately, our dentist told us that when a toddler has decay that's *that* bad, they don't do fillings because there's too much of a risk of infection if they don't get absolutely *all* of the decay out, and there's no way of telling how far up into the tooth it went. They don't want the decay to spread up into the developing adult teeth, and also don't want to risk the child getting an infection, so they take the teeth out. It was terrifying for me as a parent, because it meant general anestesia (how can you expect a 2 year old to hold still for a procedure like that?) and he has now been 2 years without his two front teeth, and he's probably got another 2 years to go before his adult front teeth grow in. It's embarassing for me, because we always get asked what happened to his teeth, and I feel like such an awful parent for admitting they were too badly decayed to fix with a filling. (and we brush daily as well) The one "bright spot", is that because it was his two very front teeth, he won't need any special spacers or anything to make sure his teeth stay straight as he would need if it were one of the side teeth that had to be removed. Hopefully your DS's teeth aren't *that* bad, but be prepared to face the possibility of oral surgury. :(

I mainly workout first thing in the morning, but I loooooooove doing the occasional night workout! I find I actually sleep *better* because my muscles are all nice and warm and I just feel more... cozy, I guess, curling up in bed with warm muscles and nicely worn out from the workout. Doesn't matter if it's Yoga or Jillian Michael's. (although Yoga does make me *more* relaxed because of the focus on breathing and stretching) Any time you can workout is better than not working out at all. :)

As a fellow LDS'er, I'm going to disagree with how you interpreted the scripture I put in bold. ;) It's not "get as close as you can, and then Jesus makes up the rest. We're supposed to try, BUT we will never be able to accomplish much without Him. We are to *include Him* in our efforts to keep the commandments, not keep the commandments relying only on our own strength, and then have him pick up the rest. It's to be a partnership, not a relay. ;) When I read that scripture, to understand it better, I sometimes read it as "for it is by God that we are saved, after all the medical intervention we can do". When someone has a pneumonia or cancer, or any other illness, it is God who heals us. We still take medicines, do chemo, do whatever we can within our own power to facilitate healing, but God gets the credit for the success, because HE made those medical interventions possible. Because HE alone can heal us. /LDS Tanget. ;)

I don't know if all Targets everywhere are having this same deal, but my local Target has a deal on through Saturday where if you buy Just Dance 2 ($40) you get Just Dance Kids ($30) FOR FREE!!! Might be worth checking out your local Target!

You're right. I shouldn't say "new". But the knowledge of what those cultures was like is still fairly fledgling when compared to what we know about, say, ancient Mosopotamia or Egypt, am I correct? There isn't as much understanding (yet) as to what ancient American cultures were like because so much of what they had has been destroyed (by human hand or nature), and, to my knowledge, not many of them had written languages, and the ones who did have written language we haven't been able to translate (from the last PBS special I saw on ancient American ruins, but I don't know how old it was, has that perhaps changed?). There are SOME ancient American cultures that we know quiet a bit about, but there are also several that we know existed and built some things, but not much else. And we may be able to find evidence of buildings and agriculture and religious worship, but not be able to tell exactly *what* they worshipped. My DD and I studied the chapter in SOTW 1 this week that covers the ancient Americas. There was a good bit of detail given about the Mayans and Aztecs, but there was also a lot of "We don't know why these people did these things" (such as the giant heads around the temples, and the huge Nazca drawings). I'll be honest and say that I can't point to any definitive "Evidence" of the Book of Mormon, but it's not because there might not be some out there to point to. It's just because it doesn't really concern me. I only recently learned that the walls of Jericho is an actual archeological site (originally I only thought the city still existed and that the walls were loooong long gone). It didn't change my faith in the Bible either in the positive or the negative. It was just a "Oh that's nice" little discovery. What the acedemic world knows about ancient Bible lands or ancient American lands can be very interesting, but I don't concern myself with it that much because I don't see it as being necessary to my faith. If tomorrow archeologists were to uncover a site that said "Here Be Zerahemla!" I'd probably think "Oh, cool!" but it wouldn't have much baring on my faith.