Tabitha Bentz

Catholic Wife and Momma

[Tabitha Bentz @TabithaBentz]

@RosieHill425 This!! And just kids in general that are smiley and polite- I am always amazed at how many people engage with us when out and about and how happy the kids make them! Definitely a gift from God!!

[Roger Seheult, MD @RogerSeheult]

People talking about daylight saving time without understanding circadian biology are like people giving financial advice without knowing basic math.

And you can tell who they are because they believe that an hour of sunlight in the morning is equivalent to an hour of sunlight in the evening to the human body.

[Brigham's Burner @FiredUpCoug]

My thoughts in regards to permanent Daylight Savings Time:

Having grown up in Washington State and struggled with seasonal depression for decades, I can tell you that Utahns do not fully understand what they would be signing up for with permanent daylight saving time.

In northern Utah, permanent daylight saving time would push midwinter sunrise to around 9:00 a.m. That would mean children arriving at school in darkness, commuters spending much of the morning without sunlight, and many people beginning their entire workday before their brains receive one of the most important signals for regulating sleep, energy, and mood.

My grandfather was a pioneering sleep researcher who studied circadian rhythms and seasonal depression. He invented the Dawn Simulator, a light-control box that gradually turned on household lights to mimic a natural sunrise. His work helped provide the basis for the modern dawn-simulation systems used today.

The purpose of that invention was simple: morning light matters. Sunrise helps suppress melatonin, anchors the body’s internal clock, and tells the brain that the day has begun.

Permanent daylight saving time would delay that signal by an additional hour during the darkest part of the year. It would likely worsen symptoms for many people who already struggle with seasonal affective disorder, and it could potentially trigger clinically significant symptoms in others who are susceptible but have never experienced them before.

Yes, Utah would gain more evening light, but evening light is not biologically interchangeable with morning light.

An earlier sunset may be inconvenient. A 9:00 a.m. sunrise, repeated throughout the winter, could be genuinely damaging to sleep, energy, and mental health.

Utah should not trade essential morning light for an extra hour of recreation after work.

[Tabitha Bentz @TabithaBentz]

@emzanotti So now as my pennance for not putting goggles on my kids, and in gratitude for my son's miraculous hearing...I must spend all my days being a total fun killer every time I see a nerf gun and bring up blindness lol

[Tabitha Bentz @TabithaBentz]

@emzanotti It had never occurred to me, and we NEVER had eye protection as kids and it was just a lame gun lol, but every nurse and doctor in the ER kept saying "gotta have those eyes protected with nerf darts" like there were as many PSAs on nerf guns as there are on car seats 😅

[Rebeccah Heinrichs @RLHeinrichs]

“Little Town on the Prairie,” Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1935:

“The [Fourth of July celebration] crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock still. Suddenly she had a completely new thought. The Declaration and the Song came together in her mind, and she thought: God is America’s king. 1/X

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

Dont let go of the family at the center of yesterday's Supreme Court property tax ruling.

In 1991, Scott Pung bought a small three-bedroom home on half an acre for his wife and two children. It was their family home. When Scott died in 2004, his wife stayed there. When she died in 2008, their son and his family stayed. Same home, same family, more than two decades.

The whole time, it was their primary residence, taxed at the lower rate Michigan gives a family home. Then in 2010 an assessor decided, wrongly, that they should be taxed as if it were a second home. The family took it to court and won. The tribunal ruled they did not owe it.

The assessor's response, in her own words about the judge who ruled for the family: "I don't care what he says." She imposed the tax again. She left it off the original bill and added it later. When the family came in to pay, they brought a driver's license to prove it was their home, and paid what they actually owed.

It did not matter. Over roughly $2,242 that they did not owe and had already beaten in court, the county foreclosed. A trial court tried to give the home back over a notice failure. The county appealed to stop that. In 2018, after 27 years, the family permanently lost the home Scott Pung bought in 1991.

This is what the property tax can do. Not in theory. To a real family, over a bill that was never owed, because one official decided she did not care what the court said. And the Supreme Court said the Constitution will not make that family whole.

I reached out to the Pung family, and they gave me their blessing to share their story and this photo. My thanks to them, and my respect for the fight they carried all the way to the highest court in the land. It will help families they will never meet.

This is exactly why we are working to end the tax that made it possible.

Photo of Marc and Tia Pung at the U.S. Supreme Court, shared with their permission.

[Tabitha Bentz @TabithaBentz]

@devvidoo @quachelsey My husband and I were SO grateful when we got to move back close to them! It really was such a huge blessing!

[Tabitha Bentz @TabithaBentz]

@seekninefruit @quachelsey O yes! I do the meal planning, and grocery orders, and unpacking, help clean the house and do big projects, I do a lot of the holiday decorating and organizing and more-so we are mostly equally yoked and that's why it works! Both our burdens are lighter and life more fulfilling

[Tabitha Bentz @TabithaBentz]

@LaissezVoltaire @quachelsey And they feel blessed too-it really is a great thing, and I wish more families had this! It lightens the burden on everyone to have a village approach to family

[Tabitha Bentz @TabithaBentz]

@LaissezVoltaire @quachelsey I am SO sorry this happened to you! My parents have a nursery set up with beds/clothes/diapers-everything they need, carseats and boosters in all their vehicles, high chairs and bottles and kids plates, and more toys than our house. We do know we are truly blessed

[Tabitha Bentz @TabithaBentz]

@AscensionPress Yes!!

[Tabitha Bentz @TabithaBentz]

@owroot Should definitely get them some trash grabbers (there are great kids ones on Amazon) and carry a little 2 or 3 gallon bucket from a hardware store! We take these on most of our walks and the kids have collected SO much trash

[Tabitha Bentz @TabithaBentz]

As this week moves forward....I am only further entrenched into my opinion that Springing Forward is absolutely unnecessary and cruel.

[Tabitha Bentz @TabithaBentz]

@Alicia_Bittle_ Pregnant with our fifth (4th boy), and our boys keep saying, "after this baby, when we get our boy triplets" 😅 and our one son told me "sorry Mom, you dont get a choice because I have been talking to God about more brothers A LOT, and maybe another girl baby"

[Tabitha Bentz @TabithaBentz]

@emzanotti @MrsCathComedy This is how my parents dealt with this too. Group punishment, and honestly there are still incidents that we all talk about 😅 there was one time where it took a week of lost privileges before someone fessed up, but it was all good character building

[Tabitha Bentz @TabithaBentz]

@HannahWardEdu I had STRANGERS shame me when they saw one of our boys get a bottle 😅 Once it was literally pumped breastmilk, and the woman told me I was still denying him full benefit! A stranger! Breastmilk alone wouldnt have allowed them to thrive or recover!

[Tabitha Bentz @TabithaBentz]

@HannahWardEdu It also drives me nuts because guess what? Sometimes formula is actually best! Our twins were born premature and with some serious complications- breastmilk was necessary for them (it reduces NEC), but so was formula due to the calorie count, iron and a few other factors.