Monday, January 24, 2011

The best little boxers ever

My son had been asking me for underwear like daddy has. I looked in the store but could not find straight boxers for him that had any prints on them so I ended up contacting Heather from FortheLove and seeing if she would be able to make them for me and boy oh boy did she deliver. Alex got three pair of the cutest little boxer shorts and he just loves them.

Here is Alex showing his fancy new boxers off:
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Friday, January 7, 2011

Editing history - History was never meant to be sugar and spice

I am a true lover of classic literature and history. I love buying antique books, reading classic literature and we have a lot of historical books. I noticed in high school that many history books were leaving out and even editing American and world history and for many years I have been taking part in the banned book week. I am sure that by this point you are wondering where this blog is coming from. I recently read a news article about editing Huckle Berry Fin, if you are like me you are probably wondering why on earth would we be editing a classic novel that was written almost 130 years ago? The reason is they are taking out the word Niger and Injun.

Personally I am shocked at the fact that they are going after a novel who was written by a man that can not even stand up for his works being as he has been dead for 101 years. I can not even begin to imagine the outcry that would be taking place if the author was still alive since this a clear violation of his write to free speech and completely unnecessary censorship. If they are going to start editing classic books because “Race matters in these books,” Gribben told PW. “It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.”, then how about going after the rap artist that use racial slurs in almost every single one of their songs, tell my why it is okay for them to use these words but not okay for it to be in a book even though it was part of the time era that the book was written?

I have read arguments on both sides of this debate, people that are for it are saying that removing the words will make the book less offensive to the African American society. My argument to this statement is that just because you remove the words for a book is not going to erase what happened during that time era. We can not erase our history to stop people from being offended. How do you expect our children to learn and grow from the mistakes of their forefathers if we do not allow them to learn about it.

There are many books out there that are being banned from schools because they are being deemed unfit for children to read because of their content. Yet have you walked into a book store lately, go look at the books that are being written for pre teens and teens. Personally I would rather have my children be reading classic literature and learning about their history then vampire romance novels.

There are so many amazing classic novels out there that contain racial slurs, it was part of the time they were written. If we remove these words from every book out there, it would be like trying to take an eraser to our History and that is something that simply should not and can not be done. Trying to sweep things under the rug is not going to make things any different, it is not going to change the things that happened in the past and it sure is not going to help make our future any better. How are we to better ourselves if we do not learn about and learn from the mistakes made in times before?

History is not pretty, it is full of violence, pain and brutality. The human race has done some really horrible things and they still do a lot of horrible things. We can not remove things from the history of our nations, we can not sugar coat the evil things that have been done in our world. What we can do is learn about it and what we can do to better ourselves.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Why I homeschool

My son will be five in the spring was of course I have had a lot of people asking me lately if he was excited to start kindergarten. I go on to answer that he will be home schooled and most people just leave it at that but I have had a few people that were surprised by it and tried to tell all the reasons why I should enroll my son in public school.

My husband and I decided we would home school our children before my first son was even born. My husband went to public/private school while I was in public until 6th grade when my mom pulled me out to home school me. I was not overly thrilled with the idea at first but it did not take me long to see how much better it was going to be for me. Not only was I able to have more control over what I studied, the extra classes I would take but I also was able to advance, something the public school system refused to let me do. I received a wonderful, hands on education and went on to graduate at sixteen.

Homeschooling just seemed like the natural choice, we both agreed that our children deserved to get the best education we could get them and we both agree that homeschooling was the best option for our family.

The top two reasons we are choosing to home school are the following:

1. We both believe that the current public school system is failing our children at an alarming rate. We have seen far to many children slip through the cracks, get pushed a long when they are not learning anything and other children who are very bright, get bored and not want to be in school anymore. We want to make sure that our children are able to learn in a way that best suits them. Every child learns in a different way and by homeschooling them we know that we will be able to make sure that happens.

2. We are raising our children in a certain way and want to make sure that the morals and values we are raising them with are not put down and they are not harassed for them. We believe that child hood is the most important and shortest time in your life. This said we want to make sure that our children are able to remain children for as long as possible and we want them to remain innocent to many aspects of today's world until their childhood is really over. We live in a very sex saturated world and I am choosing to protect my children from it in the ways I know I can.

I have had many people tell me that I need to place my children in the public school system so they are properly socialized and know how to interact with the outside world. I personally believe this could not be further from the truth. I believe that socialization starts at birth and I think to be truly socialized you need to be interacting with people of all ages, not just people that are the same age. Our children get plenty of interaction with other children and with other people. We attend church and they have classes there that they enjoy, we have play dates with friends, events we attend that our town and our church puts on, we will be joining a home school group and when they are old enough we will be taking part in sports. As they get older I will start having them volunteer at nursing homes and other places so they learn how to act around people of all ages, not just kids that are the same age as them.

These are just a few reasons why we are homeschooling our children. Education is a very personal choice. Whatever choice you make is the right choice for your family. Do not let anyone tell you that you are wrong as long as you are making the choice you feel is the right one for you.

Verychicbaby review

I had the pleasure of buying and trading with the mama from verychicbaby. She made me the cutest little owl dress for Kairi.

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It fits so well, is very well made and she was a pleasure to work with. I will be back for more items from her for sure.

I also have a problem with Kairi leaving her socks alone. She does not like to wear them but we have wood floors in the living room and they are kind of cold. Her feet were always cold so I wanted to get her some cute little soft soled shoes. I had heard amazing things about verychicbaby's shoes so I went ahead and got a pair of wool topped, leather bottomed shoes for Kairi. They are wonderful, keep her warm and she will even leave them on! I highly recommend everyone to check out her products.

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No longer updating

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