Our Last Post

Dear C. Jane Readers,

Thank you so much for supporting this blog these past few years! Unfortunately, we won't be updating this blog anymore. Fortunately, we will leave up our archives so you can search for gifts, ideas and treasures.

Wishing you happy hearts!

Love,
C. Jane

p.s. As always, you can find us at our main blog, cjanerun.com

February 2010 Motherlode Winner Is -

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Blogger Sims Family said...

I keep thinking of the Madonna line about satin sheets and just had the thought that I have never owned any satin sheets in 13 year of marriage! Weird! Thanks for the fun giveaway!

sims.whitney at gmail.com

March 1, 2011 9:05 AM



Big congratulations to Sims Family, and thanks to everyone else who entered.

Here's what Sims Family will be set up with:






This February Motherlode comes with all sorts of romance:

1. A ModBod Cami Kit, your choice of two colors! A lightweight fabric (90/10 Cotton and Spandex) keeps the tummy in place and can be worn alone or for layer. A girl's MUST HAVE (I am telling you, your life will never be the same again.)
2. A set of satin sheets from JC Penny. Your choice on size and color/print. Warning, these can be dangerous.
3. Basa Body Kiss Me package comes with pure coconut oil-infused lotion, lip butter, Basa Stick and your selection of natural soaps.
4. Meaghan Smith's The Cricket's Orchestra, you will love and repeat. We do, all day long.
5. The Sabre Rattlers, an album of Americana hymns--with a bluesy, folksy feel.




Sims Family:  look for an email.  With words like "Winner" and "Congratulations"  it may be be in your spam folder.  Just sayin'.

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Birch Creek Service Ranch

When I first heard about the Birch Creek Service Ranch I thought two things: one, I wish I could've gone as a teenager, and two, I want to let as many parents know about it as possible. We send our children off to sports camps, dance camps, scout camps (which are all important) but what about a camp where they learn about service? Isn't that a great idea?

I asked Adam Bateman, artist and co-founder of the Birch Creek Service Ranch to write a post about how attending a service camp as a youth impacted him and how parents can get their own children involved. 

Grain fields cut into puzzle pieces by the Teton River.  Snowy rocky peaks of Grand Teton National Park peeking over lower mountains, everything green and golden.  Its early summer, 1989, Teton Valley, Idaho, I’m 14 years old and a good kid and I’m in a vast garden with Lowell L Bennion, already with Parkinson’s and over 80, and Mateo, another 14-year-old boy. Mateo stole my pocketknife two days ago and then gave it back yesterday.  Lowell is a legend.  I’ve heard his name a dozen times a day since I’ve been three weeks at Bennion Teton Boys Ranch—a ranch he started to teach kids how to work.  We are weeding the garden.  The weeds look cultivated.  They are a deep green and a uniform eight inches tall. When we pull them by the roots like Lowell shows us the soil is dark and damp.  Nothing has been planted so we need to clear the entire garden.  We’re on our knees and using our hands. 

Lowell tells me he started the ranch because three decades earlier, he sent his then teenage boy, Steve, to Teton Valley to work on a friend’s ranch and Steve returned a man.

In those three decades Lowell, a teacher, found a way to purchase land and farm it with a bunch of boys from the city each summer.  He also founded the Utah Food Bank and became a well-known humanitarian in Utah.  He was famous for wearing the same sweater everyday because he only needed one.  He was famous for visiting the sick and the elderly.  He taught that people need companionship as much as they need shelter and food.  He provided all three for hundreds of people.

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It’s 2010 and I’m at a service event sponsored by the Lowell Bennion Community Service Center and the Utah Food Bank.  I’m here because I’m helping take some food to the poor in my car and because I run a camp just like the one Lowell started, his now closed. 

A board member for both organizations is talking.  He’s talking about how Lowell was able to reach people across generations and across cultural differences.  He’s talking about how Lowell worked hard until his death.  He is telling a story about a time when Lowell was gardening with two campers at Bennion Ranch who didn’t know how to work.  About how he didn’t talk to the boys—he just outworked them and by his example got them to work hard and connected with them.  That board member had no idea that one of those boys was in the audience. 

It wasn’t working with Lowell that changed my life.  It was the two years I spent as a camper at Bennion Ranch and the several years I spent working as a counselor there getting indoctrinated by the principals of community, service, and hard work taught by Lowell. 

Birch Creek Service Ranch, in Central Utah, is the ranch I co-founded and based on the program at Bennion Ranch. Now in our ninth summer, we teach good kids—boys and girls—the value of community service and hard work.  They spend four hours each morning doing authentic farm work for our needy neighbors. They provide 5000 hours of service each summer.  They have fun too. They ride horses and play soccer and make ceramic pots and go backpacking in Utah’s wilderness.  They learn to do difficult and worthwhile things and be proud of themselves for doing so. They learn to be better, stronger, less self-centered.  Their grades improve in school.  They go home less picky eaters.  They learn to value community.  They learn to serve. They learn about Lowell L Bennion.  They learn to garden.


2011 dates are:
Boys Session 1 (JUN 13– JUL 6) 12-15 year old boys

BoysSession 2 (JUL 11– AUG 3) 12-15 year old boys

Girls Session 3* (AUG 5 – AUG 19) 12-15 year old girls 


birch creek service ranch (rough cut #1 march 23, 2010) from 

Please see here for more information.

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Review: Readeo (and a free book!)

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Have a wee one into reading books or being read to?

Check out my friend Coby's little spot on the web: Readeo.

Readeo is a service you and your kids can use to read books or stories with each other no matter how far apart you are.

Think Skype, but with a library. A children's library with over 130 books, and they're adding new books every week.

It's pretty simple: With a decent internet connection and webcam, the audio/visual is seamless (like Skype, Live Messenger etc.) but the cool part is that the books are shared on both screens, so when the page turns on one end, it turns on the other.

Example video of a bookchat here.

Here's the thing: I was totally skeptical. I thought: "There's no WAY the Chief is going to sit down at my computer with me (or anyone else) and read a book." Especially when he knows there's "wocketship" videos on youtube and that motorcycle videogame I may or may not play too much of.

So I spent a few minutes one day browsing the library, and creating a "bookshelf" for him. I found a book I thought he would like: The Racecar Alphabet.

He LOVED it. Really. So did I actually. It's a great book. REAL cars, lively narrative and snappy prose; what's not to like?

We got done reading and he asked for it again. And then again.

Awesome point: with Skype, he's always making faces at the camera or trying to touch Grandma and Grandpa on the screen or getting bored and generally acting like he's got bees in his head. With Readeo, the book becomes the center of attention.

Brilliant.

Head on over to Readeo and take a look around.


SPECIAL OFFER:
Coby has been kind enough to put together a special deal for C. Jane readers: With membership, you get a free hard copy of the Caldecott Honored book Interrupting Chicken and Readeo will donate a book to a child in need through First Book!

Thanks Coby!

All the info you need is here: http://readeo.com/l/cjane.html


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Seeing the Good in the Jacksons

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Here's a bit of warmth for today. There is good in grief, I learned this from Molly Jackson.



p.s. If you live in Utah (or around these parts) The Good Grief foundation is putting on a fundraising concert to help families buy headstones for their children. Click on the poster for more details.



Thanks Jed Wells, and BYUtv for the short.