30 November 2015

Your Drunk Neighbour, Donald Trump.

Please don't make me choose between this clown and Bernie Sanders on Election Day, America.  Please. 

29 November 2015

This Is. The. Coolest Thing.

Sometime I have to figure out how to download pictures and print them somewhere that does colour copies.  Isn't this cute?  You can make your own Pokemon cards at this website


28 November 2015

McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader

Rose embellished her reader and workbook with stickers.
Did you know that Reading is a required subject in the state of Missouri?  Rose uses the McGuffey Third Eclectic Reader.  McGuffey Readers are generically Christian and often teach little moral lessons in the text.  They used to be used in public schools and are still popular amongst homeschoolers.

We have Landmark's Freedom Baptist Literature curriculum to go with it.  It's relatively inexpensive and comes with two workbooks (first and second semester, if you will), an answer key, tests, and a cheap copy of the reader.  We find ourselves using our own hardback version instead.

You can find McGuffey readers for free on Amazon Prime and they are also available for viewing on several websites.  I wouldn't let the cheap book they include with the course dissuade me from buying from them again.  The curriculum itself is solid and Rose is learning many new vocabulary words. 

Rose looks up words in the provided glossary and has learnt quite a bit.

27 November 2015

#BlackFriday Bargains!

Do you shop Black Friday sales in person at the store?  Have you gotten into any good brawls there?  Apparently, you can be a youtube star if you snatch a product away from a little kid, choke a nearby customer and/or act obnoxiously or dangerously.  Some of these "Black Friday" videos show security being entirely overwhelmed by stampeding hordes of customers.

It's crazy.

I don't go out of my way to watch the videos, but occasionally a friend or a news source will post a picture and a link about them.  What little I've seen makes me glad I just stay home.  Maybe a little Amazon.  My computer email inbox goes just nuts.  There is enough stuff "out there" that one could probably find a decent bargain, if not a ridiculous bargain.

Do we all need ridiculous bargains? 

Washington Post says that these videos are nothing but wealthy people being entertained at the expense of the poor.  I disagree.  I think it's just like any other news video.  You need to keep it in context and remember not everyone is like that.  Though I have no doubt Black Friday is just a crazy time.  No bargain is worth losing your cool over like that.  We're not starving and snatching food packets here.  Actually? I've seen news clips of starving people grabbing for food packets and they're more orderly. 

The paper also states that plenty of people like to make racist comments about the videos, comparing shoppers to animals and that sort of thing.  I'm sure many comments are, in fact, racist, what with the internet being what it is and all.  But animals come in all colours and sizes judging from what little I've seen.

At the same time, what you don't see on these videos are the people who hop into the store, find a bargain or don't find a bargain, and exit the store without causing a commotion.  Yeah, videos like that just don't go viral.  Could you imagine my making a video titled, "Buying Frozen Peas at the Grocery" and getting over 50 million views? 

26 November 2015

My Imperfect Homeschool.

Sonlight Blog Party
 The folks at Sonlight are hosting a blog party!  I thought perhaps I shouldn't participate, because the theme this month is, "share your best homeschool organization tips."  And I just don't organize all that terribly well.  I can find everything I need (important skill to have!) but I just don't have a dedicated school-room, storage cubes from IKEA, and cute colour-coded themes for the room, posters on the wall, that sort of thing.

But I decided to go ahead, make the jump, and blog what I'm really up to here anyway.  And the reason for that is simple:  I know myself.  And I know people like me.  If I'd've seen the expensive get-ups "everyone else" has for home-educating their children, I might've been a bit put off the whole idea.  So I want to encourage you if you're thinking about homeschooling, that you really don't need that much stuff.  Some books and worksheets, yeah.  But nothing super-elaborate in terms of organizing and filing things away.

I've been homeschooling for over nine years now, so if I were ever going to get my act together and splurge on something like that, I'd have done it by now.  Instead, I use a bookshelf for our "daily" things.  Because I've homeschooled for quite some time and my older children are done with expensive materials, stuff for future years is stored in Rubbermaid containers.  Ever see Hoarders?  Not that bad.  But just imagine several of these in my basement.

Woodjie and Rose's folder.  Emperor's folder is above it.
The one thing I did get from IKEA are the magazine holders you see in the top picture.  That's it.  I use them to hold the textbooks and things we use on a daily basis.  I spent maybe $10 on those.  We work through workbooks and I pop loose sheets into a binder so I can prove I wasn't just sitting around all day with the kids watching Wild Kratts on TV.

Yeah.  A tote basket in the corner holds little crafty things, and I pop dry-erase boards behind it.  It looks a little messy but it works for us.

Games!  And assorted educational "manipulatives" and stuff.  (And unburnt candles.  My system for figuring out where everything is is probably different from the one you'd use in your home...)

My dining room table without schoolwork.  But you can see Woodjie's soft "woobie" cloth and his weighted vest.  (He's autistic and these things help him concentrate/ not pull his hair sometimes.)

Happy Thanksgiving!


Here's hoping all your cooking and other preparations are working out well.  Enjoy your family and your holiday!  God bless.  :)

25 November 2015

Teachin' the 'Tarded



NEA President Lile Eskelsen Garcia wants you to know that they are able to deal with 'tarded people and those children who are "medically annoying" in public schools.  God forbid more children homeschool where people love them and treat them with respect and stuff.  Better leave teaching to the professionals.

Oh.  She also wants you to shut up about that "one thing" you don't think schools do well.  And cough up more money for public schools while you're at it.  People who criticise public schools have grown children or are somehow otherwise out of touch with what goes on in schools.  She also seems to think that feeding kids and teaching them about fairness and "saying sorry and meaning it" is up to the schools because parents just can't be bothered.  Hat tip:  walkersvillemom

My Name is Mahtob

Frequently, little Mahtob and her parents visited and dined with neighbours and friends in their multicultural Texas community during the early 1980's.  But just before her fifth birthday, the Iranian Revolution changed her father from a mild-mannered and doting man to a fundamentalist who would stop at nothing to ensure his family lived in his idea of the traditional Muslim way.  He tricked his wife into taking a two-week "vacation" to Iran with their daughter.  Local laws and customs essentially then made them prisoners.  Mahtob and her mother had to endure frequent beatings and find the courage to keep trying to escape. After they arrived in America, though, could they ever forgive?

My Name is Mahtob leaves the reader with a real flavour of author Mahtob Mahmoody's childhood memories - the sweetness and the bitter - as well as the difficult process of forgiving her father.  There was a real danger that this little girl could be kidnapped again or that her father and his comrades could do violence to the family.  This isn't a little, "I prayed a prayer and Jesus made it all better" book.  This girl lived crisis by crisis,  but a happy event during college pushed her to embrace happiness.  Mahtob was able to do this over time without losing sight of the fact that her father wronged her family.

Her mother published Not Without My Daughter, which later became a movie starring Sally Field, so if you know this story, you'll want to pick this book up as a companion reader.  I have to tell you, it's a bit hard to get through.  Reading about what this little girl remembers from her childhood and then to think that there are millions of other little girls living in similar circumstances is sobering.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

23 November 2015

Magnetic Mosaics

Rose is finally old enough (and has the patience) to use the magnetic mosaics set I bought awhile back.  There are several different varieties out there if you're interested in purchasing your own.  It comes with little clear templates you can place on the bottom lid and then pop the mosaics on top as you see here.  The only thing I'd do differently is to put each different colour magnet into a different ziploc baggie.  It's very difficult once you've allowed them all to jumble up, to find what you're looking for. 


16 November 2015

Southern Cooking Without a Tub of Lard

Describe Whitney Miller's New Southern Table cookbook in one word?  Normal.  As in, these are recipes actual, real normal non-professional chef families might get round to trying.  I can't tell you how often I've picked up a cookbook and wound up never using it because of the extraordinary number of ingredients that would require a special trip, or some painstaking preparation.

In this book, she'll throw in some weird ingredient occasionally, but from the look of the quality and "do-ability" of the recipes, it may become something you'll like enough to justify a special purchase. 

Miller travelled the world after winning MasterChef, so she was able to add international flavours to her great-grandmothers' Depression-era cooking recipes for this book.  It's not what you'd likely expect.  Would you pop some pickles into your potatoes for a new dill-y and delicious flavour?  There's a recipe for it that and it's remarkably similar to what we tried in Lindsborg, Kansas, at the Swedish Crown restaurant.

It's a thick, hardbound book with glossy pages.  Breakfasts, party foods, sides, soups, sandwiches and suppers are all covered.  The illustrations are very helpful and I think fairly represent what the finished product will look like.  Not too fakey-perfect. 

The only criticism I have (and I suppose it is not even that) is that the pages don't lie flat during cooking.  Easily fixed with a heavy plastic ruler here, but if they come out with a second edition or an update?  I would suggest they spiral-bind it. 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

15 November 2015

Fall in Missouri

I recently got a very reasonable question from my lovely blog friend Chris, along the lines of:  why don't we just have the older boys pick up all the oak leaves?  Wouldn't the oak mite problem then be solved?  No leaves, no mites, right?  Well, I'm going to try to answer that.  It has to do with the massive quantities of leaves... and the wind.  Here you can see our house and some of our oak trees.  Most of the neighbours on our street have several oak trees as well. 
The people on the streets behind us had houses built well after 1964 and I think they wised up and decided during the building process that planting trees that can get over a hundred feet tall and shed incessantly are probably not the way to go.  If you make this picture larger, you'll see our neighbour also is trying to keep up with the leaf dump... but you can't quite ever keep up in the fall.  They're older people who hire out all their work, too... and it still isn't really ever done because as you work?  More leaves fall and/or blow over from other properties.
 

Well, here's our side yard.  The wind blows about and makes odd bare spots and piles.  In that corner it's about two feet deep and walking through the fence area, the leaves are  packed about a foot deep.

Keep in mind, D did all our leaves on Tuesday.  It's Sunday now. Given that, you can see where oak mites are a huge problem in this part of the country.

Our backyard neighbours like to do their leaves on the weekends.  So on Tuesday, we looked brilliant and they looked a mess.  Now the situation is reversed.

13 November 2015

Homeschool Happenings.

Woodjie and Rose helped make steak fries recently.  I cut potatoes and the children mixed in parmesan olive oil and laid the fries out on a tray.   Liberally sprinkled with salt and pepper.  (The girl shaker is pepper and the shaker with the "pants" is the salt.  They have little handles.) Next, I put it into the oven at 400 degrees F and flipped the fries once after they'd been cooking for a bit. 

Apparently they were rilly rilly delicious.

We have been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy. Almanzo had to churn butter on rainy days.  This is as close as we're going to get to that in the 'burbs.  Heavy whipping cream in an empty plastic candy jar with a lid.  Shake it up... keep shaking, keep shaking... for a very long time.

Then, you have butter! 

Tastyyy.

We spent today playing "Telling Time" bingo, doing magnetic mosaics, and doodling around on Chesskid.com.  Hope your day was great, too!

12 November 2015

Oak Mites!

If you live in the midwest and have been plagued by odd rashes and lumps that you can't explain, look around.  Are there any oak trees nearby? 

It used to be that you could just send your children outside to play in the leaves, no problem.  But now?  Microscopic bugs will attack, apparently.  Rose has other little welts on her back and stomach.  The doctor says they are "oak mites" and she has some over-the-counter cortisone cream.  It isn't poisonous or anything like that, but it hurts and itches, and I'd hate for the child to get scarred or get an infection from all the scratching.

We have three pin oaks that are at least 90 feet tall, and another 30 foot one in the back yard.  You betya we have a lot of oak leaves all around now that it's fall. I know soon the children will call me on that promise to let them outside to play with their pinwheels in the wind.  I'm going to have to take them to the park instead as there aren't as many leaves there.


The Asian Grading Scale

Picture from Distractify's facebook page.

11 November 2015

Want Some Bean Dip?

Unrelated baby Rose picture.
Have you ever played the "bean dip" game?  Let's say that your uncle is making underhanded comments about not finding anything in your messy house.  You'd ask him, "Would you like some bean dip?" as though he said nothing.  If he continued on that discussion, you'd just make a comment about how wonderful the bean dip is today, wouldn't he like some?

In this way, you are:

1.  Calling him out on his rudeness indirectly
2.  Changing the subject and giving him an "out"
3.  Making it clear that you are not engaging on the subject.

Of course, the "bean dip" game can be applied to any party food or random object/ activity nearby.

I've never done it.  I'm more the type that will lock horns with someone like that and/or burn bridges forever over some very small slight.  I know it.  Perhaps that loses me the ability to have a large circle of friends but it also ensures I don't have to deal with passive-aggressive people and that sort of thing. It seems to me that long-term, bean-dippers are enabling the behaviour by not making the person apologize directly, taking responsibility for "directing" the behaviour of others and/or situations and ultimately setting themselves up for another "bean dip" party. 

People like that have more friends, though.  I see so often on social media that everyone else who is a Christian is modest and kind in all situations.  I mean... look at this article about shutting down homeschool "quizmasters."  Instead of telling Uncle Joe to go nick off, this family is going through a long and convoluted quiz prep before the party.  I just don't have the energy to play that.  Sorry.  I just don't.  If I did?  I think I'd spend it somewhere else anyway.  Just being honest here.
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09 November 2015

Cross My Fingers, Hope to Die, Stick a Needle in My Eye...

You know the old childhood rhyme you had to recite (complete with hand gestures) when you were making a serious promise to a friend.  But now?  You can do it fer reals and emerge with purple or blue eyeballs.  Or maybe you just want a super bloody red colour all over.  Let EMTs think you're bleeding out or already dead next time you need emergency help after a car wreck.

"If you want to amuse yourself by decorating your eyeball, why not do it?"

Well, kids at home, want to help them out?  Why on earth would you not do this?  

07 November 2015

Joy Wok in Kansas City, Missouri

 Joy Wok opened in the old Golden Corral building just outside Liberty in Kansas City, Missouri.  All the children and I ran over to check it out! 

They have an area where you can get octopus or whatever cooked up for ya.  We didn't take any chances on that one.  Buffet instead!  We spent $85 with a decent tip, so it is pretty expensive.  They do have a great variety of foods including the usual egg rolls, sweet and sour chicken and fried rice. 

If you remember the old Golden Corral, you remember why you stopped going to that place and avoided it like the plague.  Hey, we go to the Golden Corral over in Gladstone or whatever, but nope, you couldn't get us to go to this one since... hmm... quite some time ago.  They had a rampant fly problem, they didn't clean well and it was just horrifically disgusting that such a place would even be open.  Seriously.  It wasn't that awful 10 years ago but I guess they went downhill.  (bleh)

Anyway, the Joy Wok folks didn't just slap a coat of paint on, clean up the bugs and call it good.  It truly was clean and completely remodelled.  It is an entirely different place.  We'll be back again and if you're in the area, I'd encourage you to give it a try as well.

After we ate, we spent several quarters and fed these koi fish.  I tried to get an action shot but they moved too quickly for me to get a clear picture:


06 November 2015

Are You a Total Bigot?

I guess I am.  I'm going to go ahead and say that if you don't have a very fluid and understandable-to-the-natives grasp of the English language, you oughtn't be teaching or working in customer service. Just pass me my hood here, it's obvious I'm a total bigot.

Recently I got some "excellent customer service" with Amazon, or so I thought at first.
I got an order of finish dishwasher cleaner that somehow exploded in transit.  See how one of the bottles is empty and the box is ruint?  Yeah, so was the other stuff in the order.  Of course, the computer in charge of returns wants you to mail it back to them.  No way postal regulations would allow such a thing as it was drippy and I don't know that it was even safe to touch.

No worries, when I finally found an actual human to speak with, "Jack" took care of that.  I thought I had clarified that 1. I needed all the items in that shipment sent out again; and 2. I could not return the items as they were fit for nothing but the trash.

A day later, I got good news!  A bunch of stuff in another order was on its way to me!  Fer free!  They're sorry about the mixup.  I browsed through the list and yeah, I was getting a bunch of expensive stuff but not the stuff I was missing and really, it wouldn't be right to accept even if it did mean a fair bit of my time would be wasted playing "find the human" with Amazon.  Again.

Back with customer service.  Yay!  Someone who sounds like she's from Minnesota or somewhere.  She sent the stuff I ordered over and cancelled the expensive item order, no problem!  What I forgot to do was to clarify that look, the previous guy didn't speak English, do check to be sure they aren't expecting a return of this original shipment.  (But I shouldn't have had to have done that, right?  I didn't even think on it at the time.) 

Sure enough, two weeks later I got a "bad customer" letter, demanding the return of the finish dishwashing stuff and the other things ordered that were ruint.  More calls to customer service. 

I think I've finally gotten it sorted, but what a mess!  Wouldn't it have saved everyone some time, trouble and aggravation to just hire native English-speakers for the customer center job in the first place?

Today I wrote to the people at Walmart.com about being unable to find any mens' shoe size 13 socks on their website, and the difficulty I found navigating it so that it didn't redirect me to boys' socks.  Here's the response I got.  Read it and let me know if 1. You feel it adequately answers the "where are these socks?" question; and 2. if it doesn't sort of make it sound like I'm some crazy psycho who cares a little too much about socks:

 "We always appreciate customers who take the time to give us their feedback. Please be assure we will work on our webiste in order to solve this type of issues you are having. I know this socks are important for you, and you are having trouble to find them, please accept my apologies for this issue." 

 








03 November 2015

The Best Hair Book Ever!

The editors of Faithgirlz and Girls' Life teamed up to produce this glitzy, glamourous book of how-to hair care and styling for teens.  It's basically a magazine in small book form without the sexy cleavage-y ads and perfume samples, with a target audience of perhaps ten and up.

It does get into how to find the best haircut for your face shape, some basic "how to braid" and select the correct hairbands for your hair texture type, but most of the book is about how to style longer hair and pop accessories in.  Rose has very short hair, and it's very, very thin.  Even with longer hair, none of these styles would work without so much hairspray that I'd have to be concerned about stray sparks from candles 20 feet away. 

I certainly don't think it's worth the $14.99 list price unless your daughter looks like the girl from Brave and has no idea what to do with all that fluffy hair. 

Side note:  I appreciate that the social life of the girls depicted in the book revolve around wholesome pursuits like sports, church-going and get-togethers at home, but not appreciated is the thought that girls must have "a glam elastic hairband, a hair tie and hairspray" on them at all times in case their hair gets mussed.  "Crisis averted!"  Um, no.  It's not a "crisis" when your hair's a mess.  Let's teach our girls to be beautiful people inside and out without prescribing that they cart about glam- anything.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Huckabee: No Coverage for Useless, Burnt-Out People

No, really.  Huckabee compared people with pre-existing medical conditions to houses that have burnt down. 

"While Huckabee’s statement is troubling on many levels, what seems to bother me the most is that someone who spent much of his life preaching the Word of God would express such a dispassionate and hurtful point of view," Rick Ungar wrote in Forbes.  He's right.  It harms our Christian testimony when we're so unkind to the unfortunate.

Not to mention, people who live in glass houses shouldn't be lobbing boulders about.  I'm no doctor, but this man's weight yo-yo's faster than his political opinions. 

Hey.  If you want to say that private insurers shouldn't have to take on these cases, but government should have an insurance pool for the disabled?  Fine.  If you want to say that you believe in a single-payer system?  Fine.  Make an argument, lay out your points (financial and otherwise) and let the voters decide.

Here's hoping that someone interviews Rick Santorum for a response.  Santorum would wipe his clock and use a bunch of kind words while doing it.  He is a conservative Christian who is (coincidentally) also running for president and stands no chance of winning.  Good guy, though.

01 November 2015

Do Homeschooled Children Have to Learn Anything?

Should parents get to decide what their children learn if they're homeschooled?  Should the state be able to test children and force them to attend school if they don't learn quite enough?  Could there be truancy charges filed against parents for not teaching their children adequately? 

A Texas court case may have a huge impact on homeschoolers nationwide.  To hear the Washington Post tell it, a couple of wackadoodle fundies just hung out in a vacant motorcycle dealership and didn't do a blessed thing to teach their kids because the rapture was gonna happen soon anyway.  The eldest kid eventually ran away at 17 and had to be placed in school as a freshman because her level of learning was so crapful that school officials didn't think she could handle senior classes.

"The El Paso school district eventually asked the McIntyres to provide proof that their children were being properly educated and even filed truancy charges that were later dropped. The family sued and had an appeals court rule against them, but now the case goes Monday to the all-Republican state Supreme Court.  In court filings, the McIntyres say the district is biased against Christians and accuse its officials of mounting a 'startling assertion of sweeping governmental power.'"

So far as I can tell, "proof that children are being properly educated" is not required under Texas homeschooling law, but parents are required to teach certain subjects in a "bona fide" manner and it doesn't sound like that's been done here. 



Bringing Garbage Home

Some people up the street were throwing this table away. It was in pretty bad shape and one of the legs was off. I've glued the leg back...