Turkeyboy's Girl, 2006-2014 R.I.P.

It was time.

Turkeyboy's Girl has now moved, changed her name and got a face lift.

Check out my new blog Vitamin C at chelseadyreng.com.

Changes Are On The Way

Turkeyboy's Girl blog will be moving soon!

Stay tuned....

Strange Mormon Customs #11: How We Pray

First, we kneel.

fold our arms,

and close our eyes.

And then stay very still.

Then we thank our Father in Heaven for all of our blessings.

And then ask Him humbly for the things we need. 

It is not always easy to do all of this, especially when you are four years old, you don't want to go to sleep, and there are distractions. . . 

. . . in the room.

But we go through this ritual every night with our children. We do it because we know that beyond the tennis lessons, swimming lessons, and music lessons, learning to pray will be their most valuable life skill. 

Besides teaching them to kneel and close their eyes, we will teach them to ask God questions. Lots of questions. Questions about life, about love, about small decisions and great ones, too.

We want them to understand that He is the source of all Truth, and that all doubt and fear and regret can be resolved through Him.

We want them to know that God pays special attention to the prayers of children. 

We tell them that there was once a boy, not much older than they are now, who grew up in a small town where the all the adults were confused. Listening to people argue about what was true and what was false made the boy's head spin. He read in the scriptures that if you lack wisdom, you should ask God. When he read those words he realized that if he wanted to know what was true, asking God was the only way to really know.

So the boy went out into the forest one morning to be alone. He knelt on his knees and asked his question, and his prayer was answered. 

Read the full story here.

Adults are still confused. A lot of them are confused because they have forgotten how to pray, or were never taught. When they have a question the first place they go to is Google. Then they read articles written by other people who are more mixed-up than they are. 

We are trying to teach our children that there is a better place to go when life gets too complicated. 


We want them to know they can go to Him with any problem.

We want them to know that they don't always have to be kneeling to pray. They can pray while they run, too. Especially if they are being chased by. . . say. . . a bear.

We can't always pray to change someone else, but we can always pray to change ourselves.



We want them to know that their prayer does not end with "amen." That they can keep a prayer in their heart the entire day while they search for the answers to their prayer.

We want them to learn to recognize that the answers can come by way of promptings, dreams, visions, thoughts, ideas and the goodness of other people.

We want them to know that sometimes the answers don't always come easy. Sometimes they will have to wrestle with God to get an answer, not because He doesn't want to tell them, but because He wants them to become strong.

We will teach them that if their bedroom is too noisy they can go somewhere else. A closet. A bathroom. A car. A trail. A forest. Somewhere they can be free to speak what is on their mind without distraction.

We want them to know that even though we are the parents of their bodies, God is the parent of their spirit and His spirit will speak to their spirit in a soft, quiet language that they must learn to understand.

We want them to know that they are never alone.

We tell them to never let a day pass by that they don't check in with the Lord, and we make sure they understand that we are not telling them to do anything we are not already doing ourselves.

Well-meaning people sometimes whisper to me, "enjoy your children while they are young, before they are corrupted by the world." But my children cannot be corrupted if they learn from a young age that they have a Heavenly Father who loves them and is eager to help when they ask. If they continue to do pray every day for the rest of their lives they won't have struggles that will bring them to their knees because they will already be there.

They are destined for hard times, to be sure, and when they are in trouble we hope they come to us, their parents. But as long as they keep going to their Heavenly Parent it really doesn't matter. If we can teach them to pray on their own to their Heavenly Father, He can teach them everything else.

Let Me Tell You About Our Adventure

Dear You-Know-Who-You-Are, 

We took your advice and went to the campground you raved about. It was everything you promised and more. Since you couldn't come with us we took photos.

You'll never guess what we did . . .

We played baseball! 

I am constantly discovering the blessings of having lots of kids. 

We almost had enough for a whole team! 

Levi even did a pretty good job as first baseman. 

We could have used two more people, though. Hint.

 Watch closely: Sophie, looks, aims and...

incredibly changes her outfit!

Oh, I love having twins. 

Scott couldn't wait to try out the creek you told him about. Five fish in one hour. Not too shabby. 

Always, when things get slow everyone reverts to their favorite activity, as you well know. 

My favorite activity, soon to be yours: 

Then--dinner!

Hot dogs for kids,

Steaks for grown-ups.

(In case you were wondering, the steaks were so tender we ate them with plastic forks. Mmmm...)

And Dutch oven brownies for dessert. Now I bet you REALLY wish you had come! 

 While Scott set up my tent, cooked my steak, and whipped up brownies, I spent my evening napping in the hammock. 

You know I am lying.

Then, my favorite part of our trip.

I can't explain exactly what we talked about, I can only say that it involved a spider, a fly, and it was very, very funny. 

I have no photos of the many adventures we had from 10 pm to 5 am, but if I had had a good night sleep, what would I have to talk about at breakfast? 

Soon you, too, will know the joys of camping with a baby. But, mercifully, dawn finally arrived.

And so did the Easter bunny! What a surprise!

After the eggs were gathered we packed up camp and headed to our next adventure.

 This is when we really missed you because you didn't have a chance to get to Grayson Highlands. Good thing we went, to show you what you missed.

Open space,

A view of a hundred mountaintops,

Nutella tortillas,

The Appalachian Trail,

And of course, the ponies!

It was an Easter to remember, and one of the best camping trips we've had so far. 

The only thing that was missing was you. 

We wish you the best, and we are excited for your family's new beginning. You will never be the same.

Happy laboring,

Chelsea

Family History Game

I decided it was time for my kids to find out more about their roots. 

To do this I made two sets of cards. 

 The yellow cards have the name of the family member on one side and some interesting facts about them on the other.

The grey cards have the ancestor's picture on one side and their name on the other. If I had known I was going to post this on my blog I would have used better penmanship.

We went back three generations. It was really important to me to find a photo of each individual because just having a name to look at (in ugly handwriting) is not enough, especially for kids. At first I didn't think I'd be able to find photos for all of them, but luckily I found some family history books with photographs so even my most elusive ancestors could not escape my grasp. I took a photo of the photograph with my camera and then printed it out of my printer in black and white. Then snip-snip, paste-paste. Not perfect, and probably not worthy of Pintrest, but definitely worthy of the Dyreng family table.

Here is my dad. Wasn't he a hunk?

 I put heart stickers on the cards of all my favorite ancestors. Just kidding. The hearts are for the people who have died.

Luckily Scott and I don't have heart stickers on our cards.

There were lots of different games we could play with these cards.  First I split them into teams to see if they could get them into a family tree only by using their names.

It was interesting to see who they knew about and who seemed unfamiliar. Ironically the most perplexing card was their only living great grandparent whom they visit twice a year and we pray for every night. They didn't know who she was because we always call her "Grandma Great."

Great-grandmas have names, too, by golly.

 Then we matched the names and the photos together and we read the interesting facts about each individuals. Scott and I filled in with some stories that we knew about the ancestor. Brief stories.

 I also included cards with my kids' photos, names and interesting facts. They liked that the most, of course.

 With all the cards on the table like that they could see their namesakes, which is pretty cool since each of my kids share their first or middle name with an ancestor.

 Family night lasted only about 20-30 minutes. Any longer than that and the Holy Ghost starts banging his head against the wall.

It was a successful night, of course. I only tell you about the good ones. :)