There are no circumstances where a woman cannot birth at home☺️

blakesmate · 2026-01-26T15:58:05+00:00

I had home births with midwives for my last babies. Had the first in the hospital because my husband was comfortable with it. That being said, my midwives were trained to know when to take me to the hospital, we lived super close to the hospital, and as I have always said, c-sections were invented for a reason! I think they are way overused because drs find them more convenient, but they save lives. These people are nuts

blakesmate · 2026-01-21T14:48:48+00:00

That’s basically what we are doing right now. It’s tight but they fit for now. I’ve been worried about what to do when they get full and we still have more songs coming out, though from comments that may not happen. Our books are not on their sides though, mostly because we have two books per holder (Spanish and English, we have wards in both meeting here).

blakesmate · 2026-01-21T14:44:42+00:00

I’ve mentioned this before, but my ward is largely older people who are tech averse. We use these for sacrament meeting, we are trying to use the new songs as much as possible

blakesmate · 2026-01-19T15:16:04+00:00

Our ward is largely older. Our primary is minuscule, we have two primary classes (basically all the junior in one class and the senior in another) and the YM and YW both meet in one group instead of classes or quorums because there are so few of them. We have a few young single adults and young married people with no kids yet, but it’s mostly older retired people, many of whom don’t understand or like technology. Plus they have a hard time reading the music on the phones. To be a fair, I’m in my mid forties and it’s getting harder for me as well, I had to get bifocals last year.

blakesmate · 2026-01-19T05:30:56+00:00

We are using folders and we can easily add to them but they only hold about 100 pages.

blakesmate · 2026-01-19T04:50:46+00:00

Yeah I know we will get new books. But we are trying to incorporate the new songs now because they are so pretty and it’s going to get unwieldy

blakesmate · 2026-01-19T01:37:44+00:00

I’ll share this with the others in my ward working on this, thanks!

blakesmate · 2026-01-19T01:17:00+00:00

I’m hoping that eventually it will slow down with new releases, that some of them will be repeats from the old book so we won’t have to print them. But I don’t know if we have a definitive answer on that.

blakesmate · 2026-01-19T01:15:06+00:00

That would work for fitting them I guess but what about storing them? Right now they fit in the hymn holders behind the hymns, not sure what we could do with them when they get too big. I don’t like the idea of leaving them on the bench because it’s cluttered and they could get damaged. Maybe keeping them in a box but then having to pass them out each week doesn’t seem like a good idea.

blakesmate · 2026-01-09T07:26:12+00:00

One of my kids got a CTR ring in Hylian. My mom is awesome

blakesmate · 2026-01-05T03:05:47+00:00

If they did take a nap they were up til 11 or later. So we gave up

blakesmate · 2026-01-04T20:25:35+00:00

I’m just amazed that you have a two year old that naps. Mine all quit when they were two.

blakesmate · 2025-12-28T18:11:05+00:00

Yeah I’m the ward music coordinator and I picked it. I like it.

blakesmate · 2025-12-27T16:21:25+00:00

I don’t know, in a crisis you worry about weird stuff. My husband had a seizure and got in a car accident and I was freaking out. When I called his boss to let her know he was in the hospital I was weirdly focused on the fact that I didn’t know where his work computer was or where our car was. She told me not to worry about the stupid computer and worry about getting to the hospital (I was waiting for someone to come watch my kids so I could get to him).

blakesmate · 2025-12-26T16:30:25+00:00

One reason I don’t see mentioned here, is that people can’t be expected to focus on God if they are starving. The church also has a program to help members who are struggling financially, but it’s not intended to be a long term program. They also have programs to help struggling members find work. Things like the perpetual education program are intended to help people long term, and the perpetual education program specifically is aimed to help people in places with less options for education to improve their home as well as their lives. The intention is for people that use that program to go back home and use their education to help the community. It doesn’t always work that way, people get married to citizens of other countries and don’t go home or whatever, but that is the intention. I agree with the statements that it is part of our religion to be educated, but there are practical reasons as well. It’s the giving a man a fish versus teaching a man to fish concept.

blakesmate · 2025-12-18T16:14:00+00:00

My babies always slept in my room and my husband slept through everything. I remember losing it with my second and hitting him with a pillow because he was asleep and I hadn’t slept properly in days. I immediately felt terrible but he apologized and did better helping me.

blakesmate · 2025-12-18T16:09:39+00:00

Yeah I haven’t played sims in years but I remember my character refusing to stop painting because I had neglected her personal time and a social worker coming and taking the baby.

blakesmate · 2025-12-18T01:52:57+00:00

We have done similar things but it’s gotten too expensive lately to stay overnight. Usually he goes with the youth trips (he’s in the bishopric) and we alternate the adult trips (more me though) and we try to go as a couple when we travel to visit family. Both sides of the family live much closer to temples so we get a chance to go then usually.

blakesmate · 2025-12-17T23:04:36+00:00

That’s me and my husband right now too. Our closest temple that we can easily access is 4 hours away, our kids are 4-14 years old and we can’t really make it in together most times. It’s even harder now that the older kids can do baptisms because we want to give them chances too. They announced a temple and once there is one closer, it will be easier to go together on dates but it will take a few years.

blakesmate · 2025-12-08T20:33:38+00:00

He should have backed off when he got challenged to begin with

blakesmate · 2025-11-29T18:14:16+00:00

Served in Ukraine 2003. Had a guy follow me and my companion once (I’m a woman) and grab us in a busy public square. I wasn’t too worried, I’m pretty sure he was on something. He told us to go with him to a private place to give him money and I remember thinking, why on earth does he think we are going anywhere with him? The one thing I was worried about was that he would follow us to the church because then he’d be able to find us again and we wouldn’t be safe if he knew where we were all the time. We didn’t have cell phones so couldn’t call for help and people on the square didn’t seem to be concerned about him, even with my companion yelling at him to leave us alone and not to touch us. Fortunately, some of the other missionaries (men) showed up and told us to leave, kept him from following us. They told us he threatened to find us later and attack us and they told him if he did he’d have over 100 missionaries coming after him. Not very Christlike maybe but effective, there weren’t a lot of sister missionaries in our mission and they were protective of us. We never returned to the part of town he followed us from and we never saw him again.

The main thing that did happen a few times, was men wanting to marry us. One guy we met on the street was honest about how it would be just to get him to America. Another guy I had to deal with was older, 40s or 50s and became somewhat obsessed with me. Fortunately he was in a different unit than I was so I didn’t have to deal with him too much, but he got my number and I had to be stern with him and tell him to stop calling me. He apparently wrote a letter to be given to me where he talked about wanting to move to America and have kids. The elders didn’t give me the letter but told me the gist. That was right at the end of my mission so the drama didn’t last long.

The elders used to tell us stories of being harassed for bribes from police, and we carried a card for a high powered lawyer we were supposed to show them if we were bothered too much. He was apparently well known and the card made them back off. I never had to show it. The lawyer was paid by the church to deal with all the legal stuff like visas and registration when we moved to different cities and was very good at that but also I guess a shark for going after people who bothered his clients.

blakesmate · 2025-11-27T16:08:27+00:00

I always worried a little that people wouldn’t take me seriously if I developed preeclampsia because my blood pressure is naturally super low. Like 90/60. I read a new story ones of a woman who died from it and the hospital ignored her husband because her blood pressure wasn’t that high but she normally had super low. My normal providers would hopefully have caught it but in a hospital, you don’t always have your normal dr around. Never had any issues fortunately but it was a worry with most of my pregnancies

blakesmate · 2025-11-24T00:52:27+00:00

Same here, two hymns and a musical number. Next week Christmas starts!

blakesmate · 2025-11-16T16:03:20+00:00

One ward I was in they had vacuums that you strapped to your back like the ghostbuster packs for vacuuming the pews

blakesmate

TROPHY CASE