Our American Heritage

Today I learned that although we covered some of the basic American history and the flag over the 4th of July I obviously need to brush up on it again for the kids, I don't think they caught it all or remember much.

We were driving home from swimming and as we passed a car deal J noticed that they had a row of flags hanging across the edge of the lot. She immediate got excited and said "Mom! Look! they have the American Idol flag hanging there!" Um, what's wrong w/ this picture? We've obviously gone wrong somewhere when our 6yo associates the American flag w/ American Idol.

So, tomorrows lesson agenda now includes a refresher of the flag and what it stands for for our country. I think we will also be avoiding American Idol for a bit too.

Texting and Manners

Sounds kind of like an oxymoron doesn't it? Those 2 terms just don't seem to go hand in hand and it really gets to me.

When you're standing there talking to someone or out visiting a friend and your phone rings common courtesy says either don't answer it or if you need to to keep it brief and then usually apologize to the other person. Right?

Why then is it ok to be talking to one person but carrying on a separate conversation with another through texting? When you do that your talking pauses because you can't literally do both at the same time, most of the time anyhow.

I'm sorry but if you do this you're RUDE! If the person you're talking to in person isn't the one you want to talk to the most then finish your conversation and move on so you can carry on your virtual conversation with the other person or make that person wait until your done with the one you're with.

Then you've got the people, mostly teens it seems, who are so anti-social it's scary because they'd rather have their faces glued to a phone screen testing w/ their friends instead of getting out and talking to them in person. What kind of society will this lead to in 20-30 years? that thought scares me. Yes you can say things you may not have said otherwise to some one's face but expression can not be read and anything you type can be misinterpreted. And, well, if you can't say it to their face then it's should be said you coward.

So, if you text at all, please keep these basic rules and guidelines in mind in the future:
1-talk to one person at a time, if one of them is not there with you
2-if you'd rather talk to the person who's not there with you then excuse yourself from the other person, make up an excuse if you have to
3-look up once in awhile, you might see someone you'd have otherwise missed
4-that place where food goes, sound can come out too and those things on the sides of your head that you like to hang things from and stick things in to, you can use those to hear and listen with. Combined you can come up with an amazing way to communicate that does not require paying extra on a bill to use.
5-if you must text excessively, wait until you're in the privacy of your own home/room, I prefer my kids not bear witness to your social short comings, I prefer they communicate the cheap and more effective way.

Read them, remember them, memorize them and live by them. You too can help to save our society from a social dilema.

sewing projects...

Well, I've managed to complete 1 tag blanket, 1 pair of baby legs, 4 shopping bags (maybe 5, I need to go and recount) and tonight I'm about to see if I can finish a purse. Know what the funny part is? yep, no pics of any of it. I can probably still get pics of the shopping bags as they were for my family and once I get the purse done I can include that too but the others have already been given to someone else. Tomorrow I'm going to challenge myself to at least start sewing the dress I'm making for myself, if I can finish is then maybe I'll treat myself to a necklace to match.

So hard letting go.

So this weekend my oldest daughter J is travelling to Montana w/ my parents and youngest siblings for a wedding. She's spent a couple of nights away at a time before so i know how to manage but she's never travelled away w/out me before. She's growing up so much!

We went yesterday to get an outfit for her to wear to the actual wedding and I couldn't get over the amount of fashion opinion she's really developed. I mean, all of my girls have their own sense of style but she's really learning what styles she likes and all the things and colors she doesn't like.

Today before my mom stopped by to get her she decided to pack her own bag and informed me that I didn't need to do it for her because she'd remembered to pack 2 outfits and clean underwear but I did need to get her some pajamas since there were none in her dresser drawer. Then the things I did she stood by and supervised to make sure they were what she wanted. She's just getting so darn independent.

I love her and her new found sense of self but it's just so hard letting go of the little girl and embracing the 'big girl' that she is truly becoming. She's only 6yo! I'm just so darn proud of her though and the little lady she is.

Yesterday evening when we were shopping I allowed her to get a cup of popcorn chicken from the deli counter and since we really hadn't had dinner I gave her 2 pieces to eat on our way up to the check out lanes. After eating them she looked at me and informed me that I was not being good, that she knew I didn't pay for them first. She was right. I told her just that too as the cashier (yes, this was a discussion that continued as we were putting things on the belt) told her that it was ok, she doesn't care if you eat all of it so long as you bring the cup up to pay for it. J gave her and I a funny look and I knew it was my turn to step up. I told the cashier that I knew they didn't really care so long as it was paid for in the end but that we were trying to really instill values in our kids and working on teaching them that until it's paid for it's not ours and if it's not ours and we take it then that is stealing, no way around it. The cashier said that that was good but she didn't mind, I just said that I did, praised J for reminding me on the rules and then changed the topic. After that she just beamed until we were done.

Sewing projects

Oh my, I'm going to have a ton of things to show everyone very soon, I've got so many projects in the work and will be cracking out as much as I possibly can in the next month or 2 and and going to do my best to take pictures of everything to show off.

I'm also going to be making trick-or-treating bags too if anyone is interested in getting any, i can do them in any theme/pattern/color so long as i can find the fabric for it. They'll be $7 for licensed and $5 for anything else. I just got an embroidery machine too so I can put initials on things now too, just have to figure out how to run it first. The only other catch w/ the embroidery machine is that it's a small scale one and the hoop I have for it is only 4"x4" so the name, initials or what ever would have to fit in that space.

I have to tell you this funny though. A few days ago I was making some reusable shopping bags, I sewed the right sides together and then went to flip it right side out (fyi- you do that to hide the seams and to keep the edges from fraying all over) but somewhere something went very wrong. Inside out it looked great, it had a rounded bottom like I'd planned and it was all together, I flipped it and suddenly I had a bottomless bag. Yep, it was nothing but a tube w/ handles. I turned it in and out several times and finally decided that it was never going to work at that rate so I ripped the seams and started over and that time it worked. It didn't look just as I'd wanted but it works still, the next one was perfect though.

Lessons on Wild Animals

If you want to learn about wild life and their habbits just listen to lunch time conversations between a 4yo and a 3yo, they know it all.

Were you aware that under every deck/porch there are towels for rabbits to sleep on? Oh yes, they're there, even if you can't see them. Wild rabbits do not sleep with their heads on a table and snoring though, that was a theory that was quickly shot down. The resounding fact of the day though is that the reason rabbits are always seen running out from under decks is because they were napping on their towels there and you woke them up and it scared them.

Did you know that all birds grow to be large? There is no such thing as a small breed. Any birds that look small are all babies and they're so noisy and running around because they can't find their mommies and there is no one to tell them to settle down or slow down.

Monkeys love water slides. You didn't know that? Well, the local water slide park has a picture of a monkey/ape riding an inter tube down a slide there for those slides are for the monkeys but they let people slide too. You can't see the monkey's though, no explanation, you just can't.

How ever did I learn anything before I had kids? I wonder if the worlds scientists and animal experts are aware of our findings?

Fears of a mother

My last post made me think of something that weighs somewhat heavily on my mind so I figured I'd put it out here for others so if you have any of the same thoughts you'll know you're not alone.

Some may wonder why we have 4 kids and I have an answer but I can't promise it's a sane one so here it is anyhow. When I grew up there were always mass numbers of kids through our home since my parents (well, technically my mom but my dad was in and out of the house for food, reading, coffee and sleep) did foster care for about 16 years. One thing was always constant in our house though regardless if there were any other kids there or not and that would be myself and my 2 biological brothers. I'm the oldest of the 3. We also grew up in the middle of no where so there weren't many other options of people to play with.

How is any of that relevant? Well, I knew from early on that if I had kids I could never have just 1 because I knew the joy of having siblings around to play with so 2 sounded like the perfect number, nice and rounded. I also knew that I could not have 3 kids, especially if we had 2 of one gender and 1 of the other because growing up it seemed like someone was always the odd man out and that defeats the purpose of having siblings to play with IMO. When my husband and I were talking about kids before we got married he was fine w/ none but I had to have that 2. After talking more the question came about what we would do if we had 3 somehow and my response was that then we'd have 4 because it had to be an even number so there were no odd man out times, just nice and rounded. Well, as you can imagine that led to asking what would happen if a 5th one came along and, to be honest, my response was that odds are fine at that point because there would always be enough around to not have to worry about it as much and I was not guaranteeing any more. We were done at 4 though.

Back to my original thought. I have to say that I wonder how the teenage years will go because there will be a point where all 4 of them are teenagers at the same time. There's a scary thought for you, 4 teenage girls living under the same small roof together. We work very hard already to talk to our kids, make sure they know they can talk to us and we're already working on (at their level of course) expressing to them that they don't need to worry about having boyfriends and that some things just shouldn't be done until they're married. They're too young yet to understand the concept of a committed relationship so for now just saying married works best.

I'm not blind though, I know the statistics these days about teenage pregnancies and all that. I know that by having 4 girls our chances of having that be even one of them skyrocketed. That thought scares me. I really hope that we can work hard enough to prevent it and I don't have to worry about my family being yet another statistic but I won't be naive about it in thinking that it will never happen to us.

Those are the moments I think it would be easier to have boys. Don't get me wrong, I love my girls, but in reality, if you have a son and he gets a girl pregnant you don't usually have anything directly to worry about. The boy should be responsible and help out financially and be there emotionally but the girl's parents are the ones housing a pregnant teen (usually, I could never imagine kicking out my child though especially at that point in their lives), there for the morning sickness, helping to pay or figuring out how to pay the medical bills, there for all of the ups and downs, usually rearranging their house to accommodate a new baby, etc..

I don't think I would worry near as much if it wasn't for my little sister, as sad as that may be. She's a good kid but at 9yo she's already very worried about looking good for the boys, looking sexy and cool enough to catch the eye of the popular guys and just not a little girl anymore. My mother doesn't help much, she buys and allows her to wear clothes that I won't even allow in my house and got tired of toys being scattered so she has gotten rid of almost all toys or anything of the like. My mother and I have already talked though that we could easily see her being a statistic and that led to her saying how both of them (her and my dad) are getting too old for babies and they just could not handle taking on a baby this late in life. As is my dad will be almost 70 when my sis graduates from high school. So it has already been discussed about my husband and I taking any baby in so that it stayed w/ family. Is it just me or does any one else see a problem with this picture?

When did it become 'the norm' to plan years in advance for your kid to get knocked up as a teen and then plan on doling the baby out to family because you just don't have it in you to do it and you know your child won't be able to handle it at that point yet? I just don't know what to think of it most of the time, then again, I don't know what to think of my mom most days anymore in general either. All I know is that if we can try to be enough of an influence then hopefully we can help prevent that scenario from happening but if it does I hope that it is a minimum of 5 years from now (that'd make her 14) and then we'd go from there.

So there you have it, one of my greatest fears as a mom is one of my daughters becoming a teen pregnancy statistic.