August American Mothers Meeting

We had an inspiring presentation on the value, importance and spirituality of motherhood by Jenet Jacobson.  She inspired us all!  Thanks Jenet!!

June American Mothers Chapter Meeting

Congratulations to Shauna Dunn, who has been nominated by our Utah County Chapter to be our Young Mother of the Year Nominee for 2010!

We heard from Jenny Ahlstrom of moms2moms.com on her Legacy Project.   A really exciting website based on mom’s videotaped stories.   Here’s her presentation.

Ingrid Sorensen led our Power of Positive Parenting Discussion.  Here’s the youtube video of that discussion.

I also shared some information on the White Ribbon Campaign and we discussed our topic of financial preparedness.  My favorite part of the meeting was chatting with those who stayed afterwards.  Always so great to share ideas with wonderful women!

We don’t hold meetings in July or December, so mark your calandar for August 13th at the Provo Library at 7:30, with a pre-meeting social at 7pm.  That will be the same night as the PTA White Ribbon Week Informational meeting to be held from 6-7pm in the same room!  So come for both!

Honoring Motherhood Event at White Willow

This was the most wonderful celebration of Motherhood I have ever attended!  I’m so grateful for such inspiring women whose friendship daily blesses my life!  It was a privilege to be able to share my platform at this great event!

done

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A better Mother’s Day gift than flowers!

American Mothers of Utah Valley is hosting Honoring Motherhood this Saturday, May 9th from 8:30-11:00 am at the White Willow Reception Center in Provo.   Treat your wife, mother, daughter to a catered breakfast and a tribute to honor her as a mother.  Speakers will include Utah’s Mother and Young Mother of the year.

For complete details, visit www.americanmothers.wordpress.com

April American Mothers Meeting

Utah Mother of the Year visited our group

Dixie Clifford, the Utah Mother of the Year, visited our group and gave her speech that she will be presenting at the National Convention.

Dixie grew up in Paradise, Utah in a loving family where spiritual and moral values were taught. While a student at Utah State, she met and married Lincoln Clifford, her husband of 52 years. She has been blessed with four children and seven grandchildren. Born with a positive mental attitude and boundless energy, she has focused her life on homemaking and mothering with “spare” time spent in youth leadership and volunteer work in the schools, communities and churches of the six states where she has lived. A prolific writer and musician, she inspires young people to achievement and patriotism through her work in PTA, Scouting, 4-H Club work, school and church programs. She is a published author of essays, poems, newspaper feature stories and photos, with a novel, The Dictionary, slated for Christmas 2009. As a re-entry woman earning a Communications degree, she was named Student of the Year by her professors. In 1992, she was named Commissioner of the Year by the Los Angeles Area Parks & Recreation Commission for 123 cities.Click here to read a copy of her speech.

Utah Valley AMI Chapter President, Karmel Larson with Utah Mother of the Year 2009, Dixie Clifford

April Meeting on Educating our Children

As usual, we had a great discussion last night.  Our Glenn Latham parenting lesson was on toilet training, Chapter 18, p. 249. Consistent with all of  Dr. Latham’s approach to parenting, he says to ignore the negative behavior (going to the bathroom in the diaper or having an accident in underwear) by not talking, tickling, singing or scolding when changing diaper or underwear.  When the child is dry (diaper or underwear), praise child, give high fives, dance, sing, etc.  Ingrid suggested starting out by checking child’s diaper every 30 minutes and praising when dry, saying nothing when wet.  Everyone’s general consensus was to not force toilet training. Watch for signs of readiness of child. When child is ready, he will most often make the transition himself  or herself.

Education at home- Use every day moments to teach children.  For example, Ingrid put up an alphabet chart by the changing table when her daughter was one, and taught her the alphabet every time she changed diapers.  Danielle likes to have her daughter count apples while they put them in the bag, and make up addition and subtraction problems with every day opportunities.  Dixie said that when her children were young, she and her husband vowed to use correct grammar and speech around their children.  Karmel shared a scripture binder strategy that has helped improve scripture study around their home.  We all agreed fathers are important in using everyday moments to teach children.

Shauna Dunn gave a wonderful presentation on teaching children to love reading at the Thomas Jefferson Leadership Conference in March. She has graciously agreed to share her presentation with us,  “The E’s and Ease of Teaching your Child to Love Reading”

Chapter members, Shauna, Danielle & Ingrid

New President-Elect Kristin Collins

We are excited to welcome Kristin Collins as our President-Elect of our Utah Valley American Mothers chapter.  She will start her term as President in July.  At this time, we will also form a board for our Utah Valley chapter.  If you are interested in being on the board, contact Kristin.

Karmel and Kristin

Next meeting will be our Honoring Motherhood Event, May 9, 2009.

American Mothers January Meeting

What a wonderful night of friendship and idea sharing!  I love that the events coordinator at the Library had to come and shoo us out!  Once a month is never enough!  So happy to have you all as my friends and mentors.  Great ideas everyone.  Thanks Emily for joining us.

AMI & PTC Same Night!

Since I have the opportunity to lead both the Utah Valley American Mothers and the Utah County Parents Television Council.  I’ve arranged to have both meetings on the same night at the same place.  January will be our trial run for the double whammy!  Hopefully, this will make it easier for others as well who want to support both organizations.  Every second Thursday- PTC 6-7pm and AMI from 7:30-8:30.  Both at the Provo Library.  Following is the plan for January for both organizations.  Mrs. Utah 2008, Emily Nelson will be joining us for both meetings!

American Mothers & Parents Television Council

 

Tonight would have been our monthly AMI night-but no meetings in December.  More time to work on being the moms we talk about wanting to be.  I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday traditions.  In my efforts to simplify and do more by doing less… I’ve come up with a plan to lead both AMI and the PTC more effectively by holding both group meetings on the same night.  So beginning on the second Thursday in January of 2009, we’ll be meeting at the Provo Library for both American Mothers and Parents Television Council.  I am hoping that doing both in the same night might help to build both organizations as many who participate in one or the other are interested in both.  We’ll have the PTC meetings from 6-7pm and the AMI meetings from 7:30-8:30 with our usual pre-meeting socials starting right at 7:00.  Mrs. Utah 2008, Emily Nelson, will be joining us for our January meetings.  So mark your calendars for the 8th and be a part of two organizations that are working to improve families and our communities.

Above is a photo of our last PTC leadership meeting led by Gavin McKiernen, the national grassroots director, who flew in from LA to provide training. 

Below is one of our recent AMI meetings where we finished up our patient dolls service project for Primary Children’s Hospital.  We are going to be delivering those on Christmas Eve to the Hospital.  Thanks Rachelle for the great service idea!

Family work day… fall leaves!

After our November American Mothers meeting, one of our presenters, Tamara, posted to our AMI blog a fantastic article on family work and it’s importance.  Here’s a link so you can have a look-it is sooooo worth your time to stop and read for a few minutes!  FAMILY WORK (read it-read it-read it)

Here’s the family raking a few leaves yesterday.  Brigham saw a professional leaf removal crew using this method of dumping the leaves into buckets and stomping them down prior to dumping into leaf bags.  We tried it and it is an amazing trick-and lots of fun too!  We love our family work time! 

November American Mothers Meeting

Here are some things that we talked about at our November meeting: (thanks Danielle for the great post to our AMI BLOG!)

-Rachelle is starting a White Ribon Week at her school. Yeah! She got a standing ovation from all of us there.

-We had three new members come and receive orientation binders.  Welcome!

Plan to come to Nov. AMI Meeting

My wonderful friends at our October AMI Meeting!

Plan to attend our November American Mothers, Inc. meeting at the Provo Library this coming Thursday, November 13th at 7:30-8:30 with a pre-meeting social at 7:00 to mingle and make new friends.

Thanks Ingrid (Utah Young Mother of the Year) for posting the following

White Ribbon

Today I attended the Utah State AMI White Ribbon Committee Meeting.  We discussed ideas on how to help families in Utah to promote decency in their own homes.  I sat next to a woman who had come to learn more about speaking out against pornography because she had just separated from her husband due to pornography problems.  I’ve been thinking of her non-stop.  She and so many women like her are the reason this effort is so important.  I’ve decided to put together a website to bring together all of the Utah resources into one site.  I’m meeting with the Utah Coalition Against Pornography on Thursday.  After this meeting, I’m going to start work on this needful resource.

Believe It, Become It

Last week I hosted the yearly reunion for American Mothers, Inc. of Utah County.  We had nearly 50 women gathered in my backyard enjoying a bonfire, s’mores, friendship and self-improvement.  Our sponsor and guest speaker was nationally acclaimed, Paula Fellingham.  She was gracious enough to share, with all who attended, her notes on her amazing presentation!  Her three main points came from her book, BELIEVE IT BECOME IT.

Three powerful beliefs that can change your life:

 

1. BELIEF: I CAN CREATE POSITIVE CHANGE IN MY LIFE

 

2. BELIEF: I AM JOYFUL AND CONFIDENT

 

3. BELIEF: I BECOME MY IDEAL SELF BY ACTING “AS IF”

Here I am with Paula.

 

Here is a link to Paula’s presentation given to AMI of Utah County.  She encouraged us to share the message everywhere and with everyone… so I thought I would blog her message to the world!  Enjoy, -Karmel

Expo Report:Raging Success… Except for My Forehead Wrinkles

The expo was a raging success with over 180 sign ups for American Mothers and Parents Television Council. I had 1 woman cry with gratitude that our booth was present amid the commercial booths. She said, “With an expo title like-WHAT WOMEN WANT-I’m glad that there is at least one booth promoting good rather than handbags, lipo and trendy clothes.” I got that response from many women (minus the tears of course). It was a wonderful event and I met so many great women!

An interesting part of my first day was introducing myself to the botox booth across the isle. They quickly let me know that my forehead wrinkles would use a little “work” or shall I say “injections”. “My forehead,” I replied? Prior to that moment I had been 100% completely and naively unaware that I even had forehead wrinkles. But… sure enough, next potty break I check out my forehead and indeed I’m am lined like school paper up there on my forehead. I wonder what other physical faults and failings I could have discovered had I gone to every booth! What do you think… time to cut bangs and hide my lined and wrinkled, botox needing forehead? Or just go back to joyful oblivion of not even noticing the new wrinkles that come each new year from an over abundance of smiling and enjoying life’s many blessings? Comments?

American Mothers August Meeting

We had 4 new women attend our August Chapter meeting.  Here are some of them with Utah Young Mother of the Year, Ingrid Sorensen, and her new baby Julia.  That’s me in the middle with National Vice President Deanne Taylor on my right.  We had a great meeting discussing the white ribbon campaign, positive parenting, this months value of courage and an introduction to the new Mothers Achievement Program.  We also stuffed patient dolls for Primary Children’s Hospital and made some good progress doing that!

Our next meeting will be held at my house in Mapleton on September 11th at 7:30pm.  RSVP to karmel.larson@gmail.com.  This will be our yearly county wide AMI reunion for all members past and present as well as combining with any other Utah County chapters.  So if you love AMI but only have time to come once a year… this is it!  Keep those friendships alive and join us for a bonfire night of bonding!  We’ll be discussing spirituality for our Mothers Achievement Program, Peacability for our monthly value and a discussion on the book The Soft Spoken Parent.

Call me with any questions 427-9293!  You can learn more about AMI at www.americanmothers.org.