Glasgow Highland Games 2008

Here we are, in the car on our way to the Games. (notice I've given you the curly-hair version of my look, just to balance out recent photos) We took 7 kids (including my son's girlfriend, who has previously not allowed him to even wear his kilt in her presence. You've come a long way, baby!) + 2 adults. Par-tay!










The next photo is of my oldest son, demonstrating How Not To Sit While Wearing a Kilt. His girlfriend tried to give him some skirt-wearing pointers, but as you can see, he didn't take her advice.

The first thing I did when we got to the Games was to fall and hurt myself, thanks to a sharp difference between the pavement height and the grass next to it. Somehow, I was so skillful as to have my right foot get half on the pavement and half off of it. So my foot kind of rolled downhill, and my left knee went crashing into the cement. So here is a picture of my scraped up knee, just to prove it. (thankfully, I was wearing cropped pants that covered my knees. I am so thankful that I didn't hit the concrete with bare skin. And, extra bonus!, my new cropped pants *did not rip* which I thought was pretty great)

I got right up and kept walking. My husband has been ahead of me, as had most of the kids, so they hadn't seen what happened, although they heard me say ouch. They checked in with me and I thought I was fine, so we kept on truckin' for another few feet, and then I decided that maybe I should get some ice.

We found an ambulance so walked over to it, only to find not a single emergency services type person in sight. What a crock. We couldn't find any ice near where we were, and then we saw a pipes and drums band starting, so we just went to watch that. I toughed it out.

After that we had to go to the farthest reaches of the grounds to find The Old Man, who is the vendor with the cheapest array of wooden swords, knives, and muskets. THIS is what our boys were looking forward to more than anything.

As you can see from the next photo, they had fun selecting their weaponry just in time to take the closest hill in a battle.

The thing that I was most looking forward to was seeing NeedFire play again. We just loved this group last year and have listened to their CDs since then. Well, they did not disappoint! Such a fun group to watch on stage, and super nice to their fans off the stage. Four of our kids had t-shirts that they got signed by the band members, plus my daughter was lucky enough to get her photo taken with "Dreamy Dylan" as we like to call him. :) This kid is 18 years old and is amazing on the fiddle, as well as several other instruments. (and he sings and writes some of the music also) Cool people. Very fun to see them again.

The one and only down side to the concert was that as I sat there, I noticed my foot starting to hurt. It had hurt just a little bit after it twisted as I fell off the pavement.

I don't know if it was sitting for so long, or the amount that we walked, or just the amount of time since I fell, but the pain started intensifying and then extending all the way up my leg, almost to my hip. And that was just when I was sitting.

When I got up to walk...zowee! The pain was quite intense, and all I can say is that having birthed six babies, I do know how to breathe through pain. However, constant pain is quite a bit different than intermittent contractions with a cute baby to show for it at the end.

My husband stopped at a store on the way home to get me souvenir meds. Neosporin for the scrape, Blue goo to make my foot feel cold, and Aleve, which ended up saving the day. I could walk on my foot without too much misery by the time we got home. Yay! Thankfully, today my foot is feeling quite a bit better, although I took a lazy day to mostly stay off of it, seeing as how *tomorrow* we will be helping my husband's sister's family move into their new house, near us! They are moving here from 14 hours away.

Overall, it took a lot of energy and patience to take the kids to the Games, particularly when speaking through teeth clenched in pain. They had fun, though, and say they want to go back next year. :)

Pre-Games Fashion Show

So it's been a year since my husband and I first went to the Glasgow Highland Games, and the whole family has been looking forward to attending in 2008. Since we knew we'd be going back, we started accumulating some good Scottish garb for the children. Would you like to see...??

This first little Highlander is my 5 year old. It was kinda sunny that day, so he did a lot of squinting.

Pained squinting, to be exact....

And this is my 6 year old. Cute, eh?

My daughter was quite happy with her costume.

Wild clan of cute young men...

Here's one of all the kids together.

We had these kilts and my daughter's outfit made by some very sweet and talented young ladies. You can go to their web site here. I highly recommend them.

Tune in next time for actually photos from the Games!

The End of the Schoolyear, and the Start of Another

Tuesday was the last day of school here. I spent my morning at my son's kindergarten graduation, and then my afternoon at my first grade son's awards assembly. Lots of smiles and fun that day, although I was also a little emotional. I just love and appreciate the teachers my children have had. They have really been wonderful, and I can't help but get a little misty-eyed to say goodbye to them, knowing that we won't be back at school in the fall.



Here I am with my kindy son, and the next photo is my first grader is showing off one of the certificates he received.

The next day, guess what arrived? Our Sonlight order!

My kids were so excited and wanted to get right down to school. :) Well, I managed to put them off, but only until today.

My grand plan had been to take the rest of this week plus some of next week to cement our chore system. Having some kids at home and some kids at school has made it hard for me to get everybody consistently doing chores every day, and it is one thing that is important to me to get under control.

My three youngest boys are 5, 6, and 8, and haven't really had chore areas like the older kids have had. I've tried the buddy system for chores (pairing up an older and a younger child for an area) but it always ends up causing more trouble than it's worth. ("He isn't helping!" "I'm doing all the work and he's just sitting there!!") So I knew the younger boys needed areas of their own. And I finally figured out what those would be.

One son (my Power Ranger) will vacuum the stairs and landing every day.

The other two kiddos are my "Floor Men" which means that they will be cleaning the upstairs floors on hands and knees daily.

All the younger boys are excited about their new jobs and did them happily. In fact, they were so excited about both job options that they had a hard time choosing which one they wanted. The good news is that I might just have managed to work myself out of needing to mop, which would be absolutely wonderful, wouldn't it?!

Another thing we did today was to get out a large jar of coins that we have been adding to for years. We first started it as our "Disney fund" because the kids said they wanted to go to Disney World. Today I got the kids gathered around the table and we sorted, stacked, and counted all the money, and then put it into coin wrappers.

Before we got started we wrote down our estimation of how much money there would be in the jar. Guesses ranged from something around $8 on up to $60. We were all pretty excited to see that we ended up with $82 wrapped, plus a lot more that we had run out of wrappers for!

Now we plan to take a trip over to the bank to open a special savings account for our Disney trip. $82 down and thousands to go......

My daughter has been using Horizons math this year, and although she is able to do it, she does not enjoy it. When we found out about Teaching Textbooks this year, we were very interested. This math curriculum comes with computer CDs that feature a human voice speaking and teaching the lesson, with graphics and words to teach the student. All of the lesson problems can be entered right into the computer program (which is great because the consumable text is quite large), and the student gets immediate feedback about whether or not their answer was correct. The student can also choose to get an explanation of the problem if they did not understand it, and can get hints if they need help.

At the end of each lesson there is a cute little celebratory animation, such as penguins doing the limbo, or animal characters dancing in a conga line. Very cute and entertaining.

The best part of all was that my daughter LOVES the program. She was so excited about it, squealing "I just LOOOOVE this! It's so fun! I want to do math like this all the time!" She did 7 lessons in a row. :)

It was really easy to install, and best of all, it works on our older laptop, which is a major plus since she won't have to get onto one of the computers that is in use more often.

Somewhere along the way a few of my younger boys wanted to get into their new workbooks. Who cares if it's the second day of summer break? I let 'em.

Here is my now-kindergartener, and new second-grader, enjoying their books.

Who knew handwriting workbooks could be so much fun?

We also made a treat...

Went to the library to get a bunch of books....

And somewhere in there I managed to get dinner into the crock pot. Potato Corn Chowder..yummy and kid-pleasin'! (easy and cheap, too)

And now it's time to eat!

What did you do today?

This Teacher Takes the......

What would you think about a kindergarten teacher that encouraged her 5 year old students to "vote out" a peer with Asperberger's? I call her The Worst Teacher of 2008. Watch an interview about it here.

In Defense of Subway

There has been a whole lot of flap among homeschoolers about the Subway contest for kids the explicitly excludes homeschooled kids. This is one of those situations where I'm embarrassed to be in the homeschool group.

Listen up, folks: This is America. Any business can have a contest for anyone they want. It can be for people with brown eyes only, for women only, for men only, for kids in a certain age range, or whatever. If Subway wants to offer a contest just for kids that have a school to share the prize with (the prize is $5000 worth of exercise equipment for the winning child's school) then that is their right. For homeschoolers to put up a big fuss, boycott Subway, send a zillion letters, and stomp their feet is, to me, ridiculous.

You can find me at Subway, enjoying a 6 inch turkey sub on honey oat, with pepperjack, tomatoes, carrots, cukes, pickles, and lots of black olives......

Chickenless

Today our chickens are going to their new home. Although we've enjoyed them, the time has come to move them along. Fortunately, we were able to find a family that has 12 other chickens and a good spot for a few more. They promised not to eat 'em (my daughter's main requirement) so hopefully our girls will continue to live a long and happy egg-layin' life.

Bye, girls. We'll miss ya. (but not the poo...)

Camera Fun, and Odds and Ends

Since I have a camera now, I guess I owe you a recent picture of myself. There you go.

Also, I've been meaning to show a photo of the beautiful ring by husband bought me a few weeks ago. I've been wanting a sparkler for years, and am loving this one. Unfortunately, it's really hard to take a good picture of something as detailed as a ring (at least with my camera) so this is as good as I could do for you. Trust me--it's mighty pretty. :)


Tomorrow is the last day of school for three of my kids. We'll be enjoying the kindergarten graduation in the morning, an awards event in the afternoon, and being DONE after that! I have already ordered our Sonlight curriculum and it is on the way, so that is exciting. We'll be busy for the next couple weeks, but will probably dig in to homeschoolishness after that. I really like doing school year-round. Partially because it keeps the momentum going and the kids don't forget stuff while taking a long summer break. Partially because I like being able to take off a day of school any time. If we go year-round, there is plenty of time to drop everything and take a field trip or whatever strikes our fancy. Usually whatever we end up doing is educational as well, so it's not like we're completely off the wagon. It just helps me to have that flexibility.

Also....guess what's coming up on Saturday??

The Highland Games!

We have been looking forward to this since last year when my husband and I went for a little getaway for his birthday. (photo is of hubby at last year's event) This time we're taking all of the kids, complete with kilts for all the boys, and a coordinating dress for my daughter. (I'll be in regular clothes....not into plaid too much) Have no fear--photos will be shared. Unfortunately, the music lineup for this year is nowhere near as great as it was last year, but our favorite group (Need Fire) will be there, so that's a BIG plus.

In my travels around the internet today I found Caleb Chapman's web site. I hadn't known that he is a singer and songwriter himself. You can go to his site and hear some of his music. I found the lyrics to be quite ironic, considering the tragedy the Chapman family is going through right now. Caleb is obviously a very talented young man and it seems like he has a good foundation. Keep praying for these dear people.

Progress for FLDS Families

Finally today there is hope that the courts in Texas have still got some brains. Here is an informative link about the decisions by the court that the children were wrongfully removed from their homes. Of course, nobody has returned the children to their homes, so justice hasn't happened yet. But I have hope that it will be.

Frankly, once these children are home safe and sound, I hope that CPS is sued in behalf of every single child that was taken. They deserve millions for the damage that has been done and the scars that these families will carry with them for the rest of their lives.

Horrible News--Please pray for the Chapman Family

This morning I happened across this tragic news story. Steven Curtis Chapman's son accidentally hit his five year old sister with the car, and she died. I cannot imagine the deep, horrible level of pain this entire family is going through. Please join me in praying for them.

check this out

I don't know if I've mentioned it here before, but The Songwriter's Experiment is a neat place to visit once a week. This blog was set up by the wife of a songwriter with the purpose of sharing a song each week and getting honest feedback on it, without having the song attached to any famous person. So far there have been some I've loved and some I haven't, but it is fun to listen and know that they are actually interested in our input. Right now there is a neat song that is appropriate for Memorial Day, and one that is about women (belated for Mother's Day). Check it out!

Warning: Missing Body Parts

A friend of mine that is in my book group was kind enough to alert me to this terrible situation. I thought that it was the least I could do to let you guys know about it too:

You've heard about people who have been abducted and had their kidneys
removed by black-market organ thieves.

My thighs were stolen from me during the night a few years ago. I went to
sleep and woke up with someone else's thighs. It was just that quick. The
replacements had the texture of cooked oatmeal. Whose thighs were these and
what happened to mine ? I spent the entire summer looking for my thighs.
Finally, hurt and angry, I resigned myself to living out my life in jeans.
And then the thieves struck again.

My butt was next. I knew it was the same gang, because they took pains to
match my new rear-end to the thighs they had stuck me with earlier. But my
new butt was attached at least three inches lower than my original !! I
realized I'd have to give up my jeans in favor of long skirts.

Two years ago I realized my arms had been switched. One morning I was
fixing my hair and was horrified to see the flesh of my upper arm swing to
and fro with the motion of the hairbrush. This was really getting scary-my
body was being replaced one section at a time. What could they do to me
next ?

When my poor neck suddenly disappeared and was replaced with a turkey
neck, I decided to tell my story. Women of the world, wake up and smell the
coffee !! Those "plastic" surgeons are using REAL replacement body
parts-stolen from you and me !! The next time someone you know has
something "lifted," look again...............was it lifted from you ??

THIS IS NOT A HOAX. This is happening to women everywhere every night.

WARN YOUR FRIENDS !!

P.S. Last year I thought some one had stolen my boobs. I was lying in bed
and they were gone !! But when I jumped out of bed, I was relieved to see
that they had just been hiding in my armpits as I slept. Now I keep them
hidden in my waistband......

Zoe Children's Homes

Here's a little article about one of my most favorite organizations--Zoe Children's Homes. You can learn a little more about how the founders got started in their quest to rescue children from human trafficking.

"I'm Claiming This Verse as God's Promise to Me"

I recently had a friend here whose husband is currently unemployed. They have seven children and are really struggling and praying for him to get a job.

In the course of the conversation she mentioned something from the Bible and told me that she was claiming this verse about God wanting men to work and to find satisfaction in their work as a promise to her about her husband's situation.

And I've been thinking about that. For quite some time now I've wondered if this way of approaching the Bible is maybe.....pretty screwed up.

If we are reading along in the Bible, which is basically an ancient book full of stories, does it make sense that we just start plucking out the parts that we like and then try to twist God's arm behind His back with "claiming this verse as a promise to me."

I'm a parent. If one day I took my child out on some errands and ended up buying him a treat, and later another one of my children finds out about this, can they get away with blackmailing me in order to get the same treat? Have I created a precedent that I am now obligated to? I don't think so.

It's not that I like one kid more than another. It's more like: maybe I had some extra money or extra time the day that I got the first kid a treat. Maybe the second kid isn't going to get a treat because we're in a hurry, or that kid is already going someplace later that night that will have some sort of treat. Whatever the reason might be--I don't think I have to do the same exact thing for each kid. I'm fair. But I don't always give equally.

I suspect it's the same with God.

I know I've heard dozens (or more) stories from people with cancer (or with loved ones with cancer) that were claiming God as their healer up one side and down the other. They can come up with verses ten miles long to support their belief that God is actually obligated to heal them because of supposed promises in the Bible. In almost every one of these cases the person with cancer dies. So it seems like we have a short multiple choice list of possibilities:

A. God doesn't keep His promises
B. God never promised us what we think He did
C. Other

I thought about asking my friend about her belief that she could just go claiming random stuff in the Bible as a specific promise that she could latch onto, but I quickly realized that this would just come across as a harsh challenge to a belief that is giving her some sort of comfort and strength. Even if I don't really agree with her, neither do I want to take that away from her.

So instead I toss this out into cyberspace. I was going to ask what you think. And you can tell me, if you want to. I think I've already come to my own conclusions, though.

Creative Kids #1: Save a pair of pants

My kids do so many cool, creative things that I've decided to start a little series about it. Today I'm featuring my daughter's pants. They had a little yellow marker stain on the leg, and I was leaning toward just getting rid of them, when she asked if it was ok if she used marker on them to see if she could work the stain into a design. Sure! Why not?

Out came the sharpies and this is what she came up with. (pretend you don't notice the *other* stain there on the leg....ok?)

She did this all by herself, and it came out absolutely adorable. And now she has fun, funky cropped pants to wear!

How does this make you feel about Texas foster care?

I happened across this interesting video that explores the situation in Texas foster care where something like 60% of the children were on psychotropic meds, even as young as 2 and 3 years old.

I do not know when this report came out, and I did check out the web site that put together this video and that looks mighty weird, but the information in the video certainly gives me concerns.

Response to a comment about the Texas FLDS situation

This comment was left here about a week ago and I thought it deserved a response. I've just today had the time to get to it. I have the comment in italics, and my responses in bold, just to make it easier to read.

Having been in Social Work, I can testify that almost every Mother loves her child-many for reasons other than ones the Court considers normal. I have seen Mothers allow their boyfriends to kill their child-and testify that they loved their child. I have seen children bruised and broken and had to sit through a Mother's lamantations of true, deep love and motherly feelings. Remember James Jones-those Mothers undoubedly would profess their love for the babies as they held them up to REVEREND Jones for the killer dose! I am somewhat familiar with the CULT (notice NOT "religion") in Texas.

First of all, I would be interested to know what your definition of a cult is.

Would you marry off your beloved fifteen daughter to a fifty-year-old man to be his seventh spiritual wife?

No, I would not.

Nor would I take my 14 year old daughter to get on birth control pills, as I have known some "normal" mothers to do.

Nor would I provide condoms for my teenage son, as many "normal" parents do.

Nor do I allow my children to go to friends' homes for overnights, as most "normal, good" parents do.

Nor do I think it acceptable to let my children become obese, as is very common in this country.

What I would do or what you would do isn't the point.


Read yesterdays news-there are many, many cases found-even if the Colorado person is a publicity-seeker who made a false call, nothing justifies child rape...not the religious belief of the Mother or the sperm donor that they need seven wives and fifty-seven children to get into Heaven-NOTHING.

Cases of what? I'm not sure which cases you refer to. I have not heard of a single proven case of child rape with this FLDS situation yet.


To "new to the game" I can't imagine the pain that those girls went/will go through. Conceived by a Mother who KNEW she was raising a daughter to be married as a very young person to an old man-denied schooling at an early age and instead groomed to be raped, no choices in life-and that doesn't even start to include the nine other polyg colonies that these young girls are traded with. "I LOVE you, darling, but tomorrow is your fourteenth birthday and you are menustrating now, pack your bags, your Daddy needs a new wife so you are going to live with Winston Blackmore in Canada as his thirty-first wife. We LOVE you and want only the best for you and Winston is the best, your Daddy's life will be enhanced by the relationship. Go, have sixteen children, you have a fifth-grade education, you have never had anything that daughter's in the outside world have, be happy.

As I have stated before, I am not in favor of young teens getting married. I am not a proponent of polygamy. However, what I think is worth considering is that we ALL have our own "brainwashing" in our lives and in our society. We all have ideas about what is good and true and normal, about what our expectations can or should be. Through all of civilization and through all cultures there is a huge, wide range of standards for what is good and normal. 150 years ago 14 and 15 year old girls commonly married and had children in this country. It is not automatically evil for this to happen.

About polygamy, yes, it is illegal. However, polygamy has a long history in this world and I do not believe it to be automatically evil either. Whether or not you or I would prefer, accept, or recommend it is beside the point.

My understanding of this type of plural marriage is that only one wife is legally married to the husband, and the rest of the relationships are by an alegal agreement. Which is none of the business of the government or yours or mine, in my opinion. There are so many men with multiple women and families and kids hither, tither, and yon in our society and nobody is bothered by that I guess. But people that live together in a peaceful community and mind their own business are a big problem....why? That doesn't make sense to me.

Listen closely to the escapees and read their books. It is really true. And what say you about the "Lost Boys" who were kicked out because they represented competition for the girls-oh, I forgot-they were "bad boys"-listened to music on a contraband radio, did they? Assure me that it isn't a game of numbers-one man gets eleven women, do you see ANY young married couple there? ANY courting? Must be there aren't enough girls for boys AND men!

Again, my posts are not trying to defend the FLDS practices. I barely know what they are. (though I have watched two seasons of Big Love. Does that count for anything? ha ha) And I do not know any of the people involved. I do not doubt that I would find some, if not many, of the FLDS beliefs and practices to be ones that I would not agree with or might even find alarming.

What I am concerned about is that one anonymous phone call that has since been proven false has opened the door to the government completely overstepping reasonable bounds. If children can be removed from their parents because the government does not like what they are teaching them, something is very, very wrong.

What if the government decided that families that go to conservative Baptist churches are too dangerous because their kids might not realize that it's ok to not wear a dress to church?

Or maybe Catholic children suffer too much from all that Catholic guilt. Psychological damage!

Then there are the Orthodox children being forced to attend church services that go too late and start too early, and they have to stand a lot. And sometimes they have to fast from certain kinds of food. Oh no!

And if we went after them, we might have to think about the Muslim families that also do a lot of fasting, and who knows what kind of can of worms that would open up.

And of course the Muslim women dress too modestly. What if their girls mistakenly think that modesty is a good thing, and they do not realize that normal girls get to wear low rider jeans with their bellies showing, and words across their rear ends?

We should definitely take away all the kids that have racist parents. Who knows what those people are teaching their kids.

What about stupid people? Maybe their kids would be better off elsewhere.

What about people that lack common sense? Or empathy? How about the kids with emotionally distant parents?

We already have governments that have laws against spanking. Which is interesting, since spankings seemed to work just fine when I was growing up.

The Amish are a pretty weird lot. Don't even allow buttons on their clothes. All those straight pins sure could cause some damage to those little children. Maybe CPS should head out to buggy country and start rounding up those kids until their parents agree to sew buttons on their clothes.

They also have a lot of kids, and get married young. And only go to school until 8th grade. So maybe this is a bad thing as well.

Also, although Amish teens are technically given a choice about whether or not to stay Amish, it's done in such a way as to make it nearly impossible for them to be able to go out on their own away from their Amish community. Conservative Mennonites do this to. Should we snatch all of their children away so that they can have a "normal" life?

Homeschoolers--their kids are in real danger. Right? Who knows what those kids are being taught. And the government doesn't get to filter and approve and control that. Maybe we should round all those kids up too. (plenty of efforts happen every year with attempted legislation to "crack down" on homeschoolers)

Families with lots of kids...not only have they already damaged the earth by "overpopulating" but maybe they will teach their kids that it's good to have more than the "normal" amount of kids. If those kids grow up and have lots of kids, and those kids grow up to have lots of kids....just think how bad it could be for society as a whole! Tons and tons of procreators......dangerous!

The point is--it is none of our business what those kids are taught. If the girls grow up to think that it is normal to get married fairly young and to hold motherhood and homemaking in high esteem, then that is what the vast majority of them are going to be ok with. So leave 'em alone and mind your own business.

IF there is actual domestic abuse and rape going on, then YES, certainly that should be dealt with through the justice system.

BUT....

The hundreds of babies and young children that have been removed from their parents--there is just no possible way that this is justified in this case. These are not mothers with crack addict boyfriends that are going to harm and kill their children. These are sincere people with some different beliefs. Last I checked, this is America. It's not just for YOUR beliefs or MY beliefs to be respected. Religious freedom is supposed to extend even to groups you may consider to be a cult. Why? Because without that, there is no reasonable stopping point. And that can turn into a threat for anybody. Or everybody.

Glimpse of a Hope Come to Life

These days when I look at my children, particularly the littler ones that go to school right now, I get this warm, happy feeling and I think to myself how lucky I am that I will get to have this adorable, beautiful, spectacular child home with me once we get beyond this month.

I know it probably sounds nuts to a lot of people. You may not be able to identify. But, for as much as I try to keep it real with the downs of homeschooling, I thought it was only fitting that I also keep it real about the moments of inspiration that pop up every here and there, propelling me forward into the adventure of homeschooling my five youngest children.

Those hugs. Those smiles. Those wonderful, interesting, hilarious things they say and do. I'm the luckiest mom in the world.

I remember feeling this way when my oldest child was a little guy. Being the person that taught him to read and add and everything else was just so special. I reveled in all of it.

In the years that I've taken off from homeschooling, and dug myself out from the Great Baby Avalanche of 2000-2003, there were times that I wondered if I would ever enjoy my children like that again. I feared that maybe something inside of me was broken beyond repair. A mother stretched too far and can't snap back.

There were times when I thought that I would never homeschool again. That it was too hard; too miserable a fate for me to consider for me or the kids.

And last year at this time I was feeling pushed, shoved, and cajoled into homeschooling by two of my children, and I didn't feel ready. When my curriculum arrived, I was just about in tears, asking myself, "Can I really do this? Is it going to be ok?"

And it has been ok. Better than ok. Yes, we've had some tears (mostly theirs, not mine. math can sure be upsetting!). Yes, they have asked and begged to go back to school every now and then. But, you know what? I've been pleasantly surprised. Never once this year did I regret homeschooling these two kids. Never once did I think that maybe they would have been better off in school this year. Never once did I doubt that we were doing the right thing.

In spite of all of the work, expense, time, tears, and everything else---I have loved having my kids home this year.

Last year when I felt like I was being pushed back into homeschooling one year too early, I had this little hope that maybe one day I could homeschool some of the other kids just because my heart was open and ready and eager (if I could wish so boldly!) to take it on again.

And you know what? My little hope has come to life.

PS. The other day my daughter told me that she was so glad that I had stuck with it and homeschooled her this year. Go figure!

Pushing the weight down a little more....

My husband and I have decided to try to lose 10 pounds (each) during the month of May. My personal plan to try to make this happen includes:

Doing at least a one mile walk with Leslie Sansone every day (which I think are better as far as calories and muscle use than a walk outside).

Having salad for lunch every day. (I already do this a lot of the time, but will try to make it happen daily)

Avoid obvious junk food and sugary treats.

Avoid drinks that have calories. (I generally only drink water or my healthy lemonade, which has about 25 calories in two quarts, so I don't expect this to change anything, but it's still good to keep in mind.)

No eating after 8pm. (only exception: veggies)

I may throw in some other random good-for-you/low-calorie/extra exercise things as well, but I'm trying to keep my rules fairly simple.

Since we decided this yesterday we did a one mile walk, and this morning I did the two mile walk. Woot!

The Complete Lazy Slob: A Manual for Slovenly Disrepute

This is the book that my family could write. It seems there is no task too simple to do sloppily, lazily, or messily. Stay tuned for various chapter topics so that you, too, can become a Complete Lazy Slob.

(**Hat tip to my father, who accused his own children of 'Slovenly Disrepute' way back in the 1980s. We were just following his fine example, and now I guess my children are doing the same.)

New Life

We're fortunate to have a bird nest in a tree close to our house where robins come back every year to lay their eggs. (Last year we got extra lucky to have two rounds of new babies in that spot!) Here are the latest birdies in our back yard. Their nest is just a little too high for me to get a close look at them, so lifting my camera up above them worked well to give me this peek.

It has been very interesting to see that the mother and father birds have taken turns feeding and protecting their babies. We do not remember observing this in past years, so it is very interesting to see this almost equal share in the workload of raising young birdies. :)

Chickens

In all the time I've been without a camera I've wished I could show you our beautiful, big, white chickens. So today is my chance. Sadly, yesterday one of our four chickens died. :( We have no idea why. All four came out of their coop just fine in the morning, but later in the day I heard some suspicious flapping noises and several of the chickens were making a lot of noise. I went out to investigate and found one chicken making her final few flaps before dying. She didn't have any wounds, no blood. So we don't know why she died. She was only a year old. (thankfully, my husband was home, so I didn't have to bury the poor gal)

Although our chickens can be quite messy, they are entertaining and fun pets. They are very social, and will follow their "mother" (my 12 year old daughter) all around the back yard and cluck away in their chickenish conversations. Lots of character and personality in chickens. Which makes it hard when one dies.

True Confessions #1: Laundry Room

Every now and then I have a little flare up where I realize that it is really not ok for me to let so many things slide around the house. Yes, I have six kids. Yes, I homeschool some of them. Yes, I run some businesses. But, you know, so many things that need to be done only take a short period of time, and yet I seem to regularly lack the ability to overcome inertia to get this stuff done.

Now that I have my camera, I have been thinking about starting my True Confessions series, where I will take a painfully honest photo of some area of my home as a "before" photo, and then force myself (and at least a few kids) to clean it up and then take an "after" picture.

Every time I have walked past my laundry room since I got my camera I have told myself that THIS room needs my True Confessions treatment right away. So today, we made it happen.

My friend Alana once came over to my house (several years ago) and commented on how much she would like to have a laundry room of her own, but then she saw the condition mine was in, and promptly changed her mind. :) So, all of that to say that I do not exactly have a good track record with my laundry room.

It had been doing fine until I changed seasonal clothing back in the fall. The thing is, in Kentucky, when the seasons change, you really need about half winter and half summer clothes at any given time. It's so gradual and back-and-forth that you can't get away with a clean sweep. So that meant that as the months went on, I started a pile on a clear surface for clothes that needed to get put away in our out-of-season/to-grow-into clothing closet. The pile grew, but I didn't get around to taking it to the closet.

Then someone gave us a bunch of hand-me-downs and I didn't have time to go through them. So they joined the pile.

Then we must have had some "oh no! People are coming over! Here! Quick! Throw all that junk into this laundry basket and we'll hide it in the laundry room!" moments, because we had a whole basket of miscellaneous junk in there.

And on and on it goes.

So, for quite some time now, my laundry room was looking like this:





















And this:



















So I motivated three of my kids to join me on *not only* folding and putting away all of the current laundry in process, but also switching out some seasonal clothes, and sifting through all of the junk on the surfaces and putting every bit of it away.

We went through all of the hand-me-down clothes, and I even managed to be ruthless is sending 90% of it on to the local thrift store because I just don't want to deal with any more clothing right now. Much of it was in sizes that are big enough that they are too big for 5 of my kids, and into the range where most kids do not want to wear hand me downs at all. Gone, gone, gone!

And now, here are the AFTER pictures:





















(notice the top of my washer is now all clear of all the sticky, gloopy drips of laundry detergent, too!)

I took my little workers out to lunch to celebrate our victory. :)




















Tune in next time for True Confessions #2. (I have so many areas to choose from, it will be hard to decide which one should be next....)

New Art

I've been a fan of Sweet Juniper for years, and have often enjoyed the photography that Dutch shares. Just recently he opened an etsy shop since people were often asking him if they could buy prints. Tonite I wandered over there to see what he had, and found this cool shot of some discarded paint cans.

What can I say? I love it. I bought it. And I got the last one!

Project Complete!

In a breathtaking display of accomplishment, I actually finished all five of the chairs today! (If you knew how rare it is that a project get all the way completed at my house, you would better appreciate my comment.) Like I said, I'm not in love with the fabric. It looked so fun at the fabric store, but once I got it home it looked kind of old fashioned, in a dowdy kind of way. And adding that plastic over it just totally smacks of grandma's houses that still have the plastic covers over the couches and chairs. But, hey--that's the price you pay for having no less than six mess-makers at your dinner table at any given meal.

In another exciting news story, I bought myself a new digital camera tonite. My mom got me my first one quite a few years ago, but it died somewhere along the line. Then my husband bought a digital video camera which supposedly takes photos, but so far I find it less than user friendly, and the photo quality totally stinks. So now I have a handy dandy pink Kodak Easy Share, which is by no means a fancy camera, but at least I can make it go without any trouble at all. Yay me!

(now that I have a camera handy, maybe I will start taking horrible, embarrassing photos of the worst parts of my house, and then maybe motivate myself to clean those up so that I can take a great AFTER picture..... You know--if I even got marginally inspired to do some of that, it would be well worth the price of the camera.....)

Today: Getting a Project Done

Our dining chairs have been in need of being recovered for quite awhile, and about a week ago I purchased some new fabric for that. I also got some clear plastic to go over the fabric so that it's kid-proof and can be wiped off. After some ado this morning trying to get set up, I've now completed two of the seats, with three to go. I don't like the fabric as much as I did in the store, but at least it's clean and fresh. That counts for a lot around here. :)

I Made Cheese

If you want to read about my recent adventure in cheesemaking, you can go read about it here.

More on the FLDS Children, and a few thoughts on our rights...or lack thereof

My mom sent me the URL for this site which offers a timeline of what has happened with the FLDS children in Texas, as well as photos and videos--including videos of the children being herded into buses to take them away from their home, and the conditions that these children and some mothers were held in. Tonite the news is that the children have been moved to foster care. The article I read made it sound like they would be in state "care" until at least early June. I just pray for these children and families. It must be a very painful situation for all of them.

I am still just shocked and outraged at how this situation is being handled. Swat teams with guns coming into this community to take away children. Armored vehicles. If the concern was that underage girls were being forced into marriages, THAT should have been handled. Nursing babies and little toddlers and school aged children were not included in that group of concern. Removing these children from their parents IS abuse, and placing them in state care is to place them in a situation that certainly has the potential for abuse. This type of huge influx of children into the state foster care system cannot be handled wisely or safely, I fear.

I hate to think what kinds of questions and tests these poor children have had to endure. No doubt what they have gone through IS abuse and is extremely tragic and will have long term consequences in the lives of these families. So, while there may be a problem with underage girls being married off, which many people would consider abuse, now 100% of these children have been abused and traumatized, courtesy of the state of Texas and all of the taxpaying citizens of Texas.

It is easy to think that this sort of thing could only happen to other people. Unusual people with lifestyles that are outside the mainstream in America. Yes, people in those categories are more easily mistreated, but it could certainly happen to any of us.

Back in October 2007 a woman on one of my egroups, Mary Anaya, has police burst into their home and snatch away her newborn baby for a state mandated blood test that the Anayas objected to because of their religious beliefs. These people came into their home with guns, scared all of the family including their many children. Not only were the Anaya's sincere religious beliefs ignored and violated, but their baby was taken into foster care, Mary was prevented from easy access to her son to be able to breastfeed him as she normally would, and I believe that the baby was not released from foster care for over a week. You can read more about this case here, here, and here, as well as google Mary Anaya for more information.

You may not agree with the relgious beliefs of the Anaya family. You may not have made the same choice that they made. That's fine. What you need to understand is that at some point in the future it might be MY beliefs or YOUR beliefs that become an issue big enough for the police to come barging into our homes with guns. I don't know what the answers are, but I think that sitting up and taking notice and asking questions and expressing our opinions about situations like this one in Texas is a place to begin.

It Wouldn't Be The Weekend Without Some Music, Right??

I've got this player shuffling at random, so who knows what fun Classic Rock Fave you will get next! (the anticipation! It's killing me!!)

YFZ Ranch Video Interviews

You can go here to see several interviews with men and women whose families have been torn apart in this situation.

Go, Me.

I would just like to say that I have not been watching the current season of The Bachelor. The past two seasons were enough befuddlement for me.

Thank you. And, good night.

Texas Polygamy Situation

Am I the only person looking at this polygamist situation and feeling truly grieved for these children and mothers?

I watched an interview with some of the moms, and although I do not wear prairie dresses or wear my hair in a bun, I could see that these are women are just as I would be---truly heartbroken and concerned about their children.

Certainly I am also concerned about the alleged forced marriages and sexual abuse, and in no way do I support such a thing. However, it seems to me to be a very complicated situation. Children who have been raised in as insulated a way as these children seem to have been are not likely to do well in foster homes or regular school. Even if placed in a foster home as compassionate and sensitive as my own home might be, I am sure that probably much of how we live here would be considered wrong, sinful, or frightening to children who have been sheltered so much. Regardless of our opinions about whether or not it is wise or necessary to raise children under such sheltered conditions, it is surely a scary and confusing situation for these children right now. And even if we think it odd or overkill, it is not against the law to wear prairie dresses, never watch TV, go to church a lot, or in general close out the rest of "normal" society.

I do not understand why the mothers have been separated from their children. Why couldn't they set up a way for mothers to care for their own children while being supervised in some way, if they felt that the mothers were a danger to the children (which I do not think is the concern). I cannot imagine that keeping these children in an already overburdened foster care system is necessarily safe or wise. I am not so optimistic as to believe that no harm will come to these children while in state care.

Yes, certainly the anonymous phone call needed to be checked out. Yes, we do not want young girls forced into marriages and turned into baby-making vessels. Yes, we want to protect the innocent. I am just not convinced that this is a good way to go about doing that.

I Stomped Last Night!

After hoping that my husband would get my Stomp tickets to the point where I doubted any decent seats were left, and once I learned that the show was probably the very same one I saw 9 years ago, I decided to switch my birthday request to something else. As it turned out, I didn't get my new request either. You know, I am about to just swear off any gift-giving occasions in my future, because although I am not a materialistic person, nor do I care that much about what I GET, I do care about feeling loved and cared for. I thought I already had low expectations, but alas, they are now going lower. (**Alternate plan: Purchase gifts for myself for Mother's Day. Give a box full of gifts, wrapping, etc. to one of the older children and let them help the younger ones wrap and decide who gets to give what. Pretend to be surprised when they make their presentations.)

AnyHOOO, yesterday evening as I was still feeling down from the unBirthday, I got a phone call from my son's girlfriend's mother. She had an extra ticket to see Stomp and wondered if I would like to come with them.

Yes! I would. Definitely. Just let me get out of my PJs (that I've been wearing all day even though I had to drive to the school three times today) and try to find some clean, unwrinkled clothing, and do something with my hair.....and...how much time do I have to get there?!

We had fourth row center seats, which were awesome. And the show, while having many of the same elements as I remembered, still was very fresh and fun. I had forgotten how much comedy is woven throughout the show. There is a lot of laughter and SO much energy--if I could find out what vitamins those people take I would definitely be taking them myself. :)

It was a redeeming two hours. I will not hesitate to see Stomp again. And it put a smile on my face for awhile, which was needed.

A Little Meme

I got this from Morning Coffee. Want to play? Copy and Paste your answers to these questions onto your blog.

Four Things about Me (or Three, if I couldn't think of a fourth)

A) FOUR PLACES I GO OVER AND OVER: My children's schools, the grocery store, to the computer, to sleep.

B) FOUR PEOPLE WHO ENCOURAGED MY FAITH ALONG THE WAY: The environment and people at my Christian school (Faith Heritage School in Syracuse, NY--Woot!). More than four there for sure.

C) FOUR OF MY FAVORITE FOODS: pizza, Chocolate Mint Jocalat bars, fruit smoothies, Italian chicken and rice.

D) FOUR PLACES I WOULD RATHER BE RIGHT NOW: Sleeping, someplace quiet and alone, visiting my mom, on a beach.

E) FOUR MOVIES I WOULD WATCH OVER AND OVER: Sweet Home Alabama, Meet the Parents, The Patriot, Dan in Real Life.

F)FOUR THINGS I LIKE ABOUT MY CHURCH: The mindfulness to not burn people out on attending church constantly, people that know how to both love Jesus and have a lot of fun, being at a place that's not afraid to ask questions instead of give pat answers, the people.

G) FOUR OF MY FAVORITE HOBBIES/INTERESTS: reading, having meaningful conversations, doing any project that is likely to improve my life or stay put for awhile, and....??not sure.

New Blog Design for the Hubby

My husband is very excited because I bought him a design for his firefighting blog. You can check it out here. Quite manly, eh? We hired Heather from Goofy Girl designs, and she did a great job in a very short amount of time, at a rock-bottom price. I highly recommend her!

Conundrum

I've had a conflict with my oldest child tonite. He had done wrong to someone and I told him that he needed to apologize for it. He felt justified in his wrongdoing and does not want to apologize. "It would be lying to say I'm sorry." I suggested that he could honestly say, "I want to apologize for my behavior. It was wrong, and I will not do that again."

On and on the conversation went. I calmly expressed to him multiple times that feeling justified does not make our wrongdoings less wrong. He is a fine young man and I am not going to just let things like this slide by. I believe that by requiring him to make an apology it will make an impression on him, and hopefully in time he will appreciate something meaningful from the experience.

He was quick to tell me that by requiring him to apologize for this thing he has done, he would avoid telling me stuff in the future. I realize that he can certainly do that. Of course, I do not want to do anything to get him to talk to me less. But, I'm not going to let his threat intimidate me out of doing what I can to help him do right and be a good man.

At this age, nearly 16, I realize that the bulk of my ability to teach and guide him is done. I cannot control his thoughts or beliefs, nor would I truly want to. But there is something quite difficult on days like today when you see your child resisting doing right. Although you can require right behavior, you do not have the ability to make their heart or mind embrace it. These days are just a huge faith walk--I hope I've done enough. I hope he has a good enough foundation. I hope that his spirit is tender enough to be open to the humility required to be teachable and make changes.

The wild love I have for my children seems both amazing, and completely inadequate.

Guess What Day It Is?

One year closer to middle age. Wowza.

Join the party and make a donation over at one of my very favorite organizations, Zoe Children's Homes. This wonderful group rescues children from the horrendous practice of human trafficking and gives them a life with safety, love, an education, health care, and everything they need--until adulthood and beyond. Zoe is committed to their kids for the long haul. They are amazing.

Happy Weekend!

Got anything fun lined up this weekend? My in-laws are coming to visit us, so from here on out I'll be working on my Hostess With The Mostest routine. :) They are getting ready to move to our area from 14 hours away. My kids will love having grandparents nearby.

I've got some fun music for you to jive to through your weekend. I just picked a few fun ones that always get me up and dancing. Or at the very least, laughing.

A short history of the songs on this playlist:

Love Shack: Came out right around my freshman year of college. I can still see my friend Ron Gardner singing along to this. He had the perfect voice for it too. Anytime I'm in the car and this comes on, I crank it up and SING. Loud.

Play That Funky Music: I know this isn't the original, but it's a fun one. My husband and I had a mighty good time dancing to this one (and Brick House) at our niece's wedding last summer. After we busted a move on the dance floor, I asked my incredulous oldest son (then 14 years old) how it felt to have the coolest parents in the joint. His response was, "Mom. There's a fine line between being the coolest people here, and making a fool of yourselves. You two are flirting with that line." I could live with that. I kicked off my shoes and we kept dancing.

Brick House: Another favorite of my husband's and mine for groovin on the dance floor. it's great especially if your dance moves involve a lot of hip. Which mine do. (in case you wanted to know) Our family loves when this song comes on because my son Jake the Great thought that "shake it down, shake it down, shake it down now" was actually, "shake a cow, shake a cow, shake a cow, now!" So we all make ourselves shake and moo at the same time and laugh our fool heads off. You should try a road trip with us sometime. We're hilarious.

Pump Up The Jam: What can I say? This was one of the main songs played in dance clubs back when I got to go to some when I went to college. Get yer booty on the floor tonite and make my day, yo!

U Can't Touch This: My college friends actually went to see MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice in concert. Not being a huge fan of either, I skipped it. Never have regretted that decision, either. This song is, however, excellent at weddings where you are looking for a grand opportunity to use all of your geeky dance moves like The Sprinkler. ("Break it down now. Stop! Hammer Time!")

Ice, Ice Baby: What can I say? How can this song fail to make you roll your eyes and laugh (While tapping your toes) ("Yo! Vanilla! Let's kick it!") I'd like to report that, by complete coincidence, I just saw that Vanilla Ice was just released from his quick stay in jail for pushing his wife. congrats, loser!

What songs have fun memories for you? Maybe I can make a playlist for you, so you'll feel more at home when you visit me here. :)

New Blog to Add to Your Daily Rounds

My dear from Sooz is FINALLY following my good example of the last four years by starting her own blog. She has five kiddos and homeschools, and has been on a wild ride decluttering her house to the MAX. You can check it out here.

Prepare to Laugh

This made me laugh so hard that my kids came running from all directions, thinking something was terribly, terribly wrong with me. I shrieked. I cackled. I screamed and cried. (disclaimer: I didn't think the clown car comment was funny)

Foiled Again

So last we night we set our alarms with a backup plan in place so that we didn't oversleep twice.

Ha.

Leave it to us to find a new way to screw things up.

This morning the alarm went off just fine. Instead of doing what he normally does, which is turn off my pocket pc and put it right back down next to my side of the bed, he took it with him to the bathroom.

and left it there.

And went away to work.

So I woke up on my own at 6:52am, and got to do the "Hurry-Hurry-Hurry Shuffle" with my three little guys to get them to school on time. Thankfully, I have them sleep in their school clothes, so all they have to do is roll out of bed, go pee, and put their shoes on. We even had time for breakfast before I drove them to school! Just think what I could accomplish if I was actually organized!!

Technology Failed Us

Last night I set my pocket pc alarm for 5am (and 5:30am......and 5:50am) as I do every "school night." My husband usually gets up at 5 or 5:30 to go to work. I sometimes get up at 5, but in cases where I had a late night (like last night) I might delay getting up until 5:50.

So this morning I hear my husband hurrying around and I wonder why, since the alarm hasn't gone off.

A few minutes later there's the alarm. I look at it. It's the 5am alarm. But it's 6am!

Never had that happen before!

So we were both running late thanks to failed technology.

I guess my pocket pc was out of practice since the kids were on spring break last week.

Must Visit This Blog

I recently discovered this very clever and funny blog, Stuff Christians Like. If you're open to laughing at yourself, go visit. It cracks me up.

12 years ago

12 years ago....

I started my day with a brand new baby girl in my arms.

She was my first home birth.

It took 36 hours of real, live, miserable labor to bring her into the world, thanks to her posterior position. Most people would have ended up with a c-section for that birth, because a lot of doctors think that it just isn't possible for women to birth posterior babies. Thanks to the quiet, calm support of my midwife I was able to preserve what little strength I had left for the job at hand. If I had been in a situation where I had to use any of that energy for anything else, I doubt that I could have done it. By the time my daughter was born, I had experienced fatigue so great that I literally didn't know that it was possible to be that tired and still be awake.

Just to show you how horrid the entire labor was, when I was maybe 2 or 3 hours away from the birth, I tried to pep myself up by looking at my firstborn and asking myself, "If you had to go through all of this in order to get him, you'd do it, wouldn't you?"

And the answer I came back with?

"Nope."

It was that. bad.

In natural childbirth books that tell you ways that birth can be almost painless, the one exception is always..posterior position! Yeah--it's a toughie.

Fortunately I lived through it, so did she, and now I have this special girl--just the two of us ladies in a household filled with boys. She gave up wishing for a sister 5 years ago after she got 4 little brothers in a row. Now she's just content with the way things are.

8 Years Ago

Eight years ago I was in the hospital with my belly feeling like someone had a blow torch going across it, and my fourth child was a 2-and-a-half-pound NICU resident. Today he is a bright and energetic little boy who was able to sound out "satisfaction" on the front of Walmart yesterday. You can read what I wrote about his birth and our experience here. I'll be making a Darth Vadar cake today. How about you?