Posted in Family Life

Sorry folks.  You won't find any christmas stuff on my blog.  Well actually...I'm not sorry...and I don't really apologise for it either. 

I've ummed and ahhed about whether to share why I've stopped celebrating this festival.  It's the kind of topic that can be fraught with high emotions.  Let me say at the start that I'm not trying to convince anyone to stop doing what they do but merely to explain why I do what I do.  What you do is your business, but since you are reading my blog I'm figuring that you're interested in reading about what I do.  Fair enough? 

Here goes then:

I've come out of a religion (which will remain nameless) where we were taught to do many things that are not scriptural and are in fact the sorts of things that God tells us not to do eg. bowing down to idols, praying to people other than God etc.

When I decided to part ways, I began reading the scriptures to seek what God wanted rather than what a man-made religion told me to believe and do.   I began to notice so many things that I had done or was doing that were not in line with God's Word.  One of those was the celebration of christmas.

Christmas has a decidedly pagan origin - the tree, the partying, the date, the gift giving. 

Did you know that many pagan gods celebrate their birth date on the 25th December?  It just doesn't seem right that God should have to share any day, let alone a special day with any of the following pagan gods: Tammuz, Osiris, Horus, Hercules, Dionysus, Adonis, and Mithra,  just to name a few.  This sounded alarm bells for me. 

We know that Jesus' birth date was not the 25th of December..well most will concede that this is the truth...so why did the Church select this date?  Perhaps we don't want to know the answer to that!

Putting the pagan gods aside, Jesus still has to compete with "Santa" for attention at christmas.  Is Santa harmless fun?  I had always thought so.  But wasn't I lying to my own children, breaking God's rule number 9, "Thou shalt not lie".  Whoops. 

But what if they knew he was just make believe.  Would it be okay then? 

People say that the Santa story started with the story of St Nicholas.  Hmmm perhaps.  But on reading into it further it seemed to me that the story of Santa has a lot more in common with the customs surrounding the pagan god Odin.  Both Santa and Odin are supposed to ride horses through the air.  Odin too apparently has "helpers" to inform him of what is going on, just as Santa has his "helpers" to keep tabs on all the naughty children.  Although Odin's bag was to capture the naughty children and the Santa tale has been sanitised a little.  And children who placed their boot near the chimney, filled with carrots, straw or sugar for Odin's flying horse, were rewarded for their kindness with gifts.  Hmmm...perhaps St Nicholas' idea was not an original one at all. 

This is just the beginning of the stuff you will uncover if you choose to go on the hunt yourself. 

For me it was the beginning of the end of celebrating christmas.  Santa was sent packing and the tree and all the pagan decorations have not seen the light of day since.   We haven't completely purged christmas from our lifes yet as it's not as easy as it might seem.  Children are attached to the gift giving and excitement and family is even more attached to having you join in the festivities that you have always participated in.  

This will be our third year of untangling ourselves from the paganism that has been allowed to creep steathily into our life.  Each year God has helped us detach ourselves a little more from christmas' stronghold.  I've left family and gift giving in His most capable hands.  It's an area where I currently can not see an easy way out of.  Perhaps the answer will be that it's not going to be easy.  But so far God has led me step by step through the process so I know He'll show me what to do next. 

I know the thought of replacing the pagan meanings behind christmas is burning in your mind.  Why can't we put angels and stars on the tree?  Why can't we just celebrate the birth of Jeuss?  Why can't the tinsel represent the spider who supposedly covered the cave entrance with web to protect the holy family hiding there?  I have asked myself these questions in a yearning kind of way to wrangle back the bits of christmas I have fond recollections of.  But I remind myself of Deueronomy 12: 29-32 (NIV).

Posted in Science

Well we're not a 100% certain but we believe it'll be a moth.

We started with a little caterpillar that attracted our attention as he crawled across the kitchen floor.

The boys captured him and gave him lettuce leaves in hopes that he'd like them. 

He did.  The next morning he'd munched through most of it. 

But he'd left behind a mystery...what looked like eggs.  But caterpillars don't lay eggs.  There was sooo much of this stuff. 



We did a lot of research that led us to wonder whether the caterpillar had been infested by parasitic fly or wasp larvae...although he didn't look like an unwell caterpillar.

Of course we also spent a lot of time observing every part of him under the microscope. 

The next morning there was MORE of this stuff and it was at this point that we decided that it had to be caterpillar poo...more politely known as "frass". 

This little creature pooed mountains more than its body mass several times a day.  It was quite a job to keep its enclosure clean.  (For new homeschoolers, please note that "scooping up frass and other unmentionables" is an unwritten part of your new job description.  Just thought you ought to know ).

For several days we fed and cleaned up after our caterpillar wondering whether it might make a cocoon and do all those cool things we've only read about in butterfly books. 

One night he scared me half to death by leaving behind this big pile of black stuff.  Not his usual light greeny frass colour.  I thought the little fellow was in its dying moments.  

Under the microscope the black mass looked a lot like our caterpillar, right down to little hairs. 

I wondered whether it was its old skin which it had moulted.  But I didn't get long to ponder it.  Mr Catty as we have come to know him as (we apologise profusely Mr Catty if in fact you are a Mrs Catty) turned around and ate his old skin.  Hmmm...now I never learned about that gross fact in school. 

Sadly the boys missed this exciting moment.  It happened at midnight.  I was so tempted to wake both of the boys but thankfully I didn't as the "meal" only lasted a minute or so.

After this milestone, our caterpillar went right back to pigging out on lettuce.  He became obviously large.  Easily as large as his appetite.  I was wondering if I might need to take our shares in the lettuce industry.  Mr Catty had consumed nearly an entire lettuce head in his short stay.  Glad we weren't hosting a whole family!!

And then last week he stopped eating.  I was wondering where I failed in my insect parenting.  The boys of course were going to hold me solely responsible for his death.  (New homeschoolers please note:  You will take the blame for many critter deaths, and rightfully so in the case of putting critters in the freezer to slow them down for microscopic purposes, so fine tune your grave digging skills...yes, another rarely mentioned role of the homeschooling mum).

He continued on his starvation diet for several days and just acted odd.  He roamed up and down his enclosure almost like he was looking for something.  We added a twig or two wondering whether he needed something to attach to to make his cocoon.  But no, he didn't seem to like our twig at all and just kept on roaming aimlessly.

I figured the end was really close when he started rolling over on his back.   I had his little grave site pre-selected and then one night on my way to bed I saw it.  A pupa...lying on the bottom of the enclosure, next to a moulted skin.  Wow!  Oh yes, I wanted to wake the boys again.  Why does the exciting stuff happen around midnight?!  But I thought better of it since he would still be a pupa the next day.


And he was.  What surprised us was that he continues to move around in his cocoon.  He responds to movement and wriggles around when you open his enclosure.  He also just rolls around happily during the day.  We're wondering whether it's a necessary part of being a cocoon on the ground.


We think he may turn into a moth if we manage to provide the necessary things for this change to happen and don't harm the process in some unknowing way.   After a little research it seems that butterflies more commonly make their cocoon on a branch or twig whereas moth are more likely to lie under leaves or soil on the ground.  At least that's the information we've uncovered at this point.  Do share more if you can enlighten us further.

So we're in a holding pattern waiting to see what our intriguing visitor will or won't do next. 

We'll keep you informed of Mr Catty's progress. 

Posted in Family Life

Note to self:

Posted in Science

...I believe it's Mr Figbird watching over the little eggs until Mrs Figbird returns home..at least I think I'm right.  There have been occasions when I was wrong.  .

He was nesting right above where we were relaxing by the water this afternoon...rather low down too. 

Now see what homeschoolers get to see when they aren't confined inside a classroom...  real animals!!  I've never seen a bird sitting on their nest before ...only ones from books or documentaries.  There's something really special about seeing it for yourself. 

This little bird has sparked a real interest in learning more about birds and nesting.  I suspect we'll be setting aside our current books on Columbus and Magellan and reading through a selection of bird books tomorrow. 

There is no better way to homeschool than following the curriculum God sets before us.

Posted in Bits and Pieces