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I AM WOMAN! That’s right - I’m a domestic DIVA, completely taking charge of my household, strapping on my flour-coated apron and kickin’ bootie. I am Mom - with a capitol “M.” For the past couple of weeks I challenged myself to be all I can be in my own home. I made a vow to get up before everyone else and make breakfast. And I have kept my promise. My husband and children have had a real breakfast every single morning for the past two weeks. No marshmellow-y cereal, no rock-hard crusty Pop Tarts… we’re talking eggs and bacon, oatmeal, muffins and all that jazz. Today I went a step further than my normal grocery list and weekly menu. Today I composed a two-week, 3 meals planned for each day, menu and master grocery list. I’m the boss of my kitchen and I love it! Want to see what we’re having for the next two weeks? Wednesday August 13 Breakfast: Eggs and Bacon with Potato Pancakes and Breakfast Rice for the kids Lunch: Grilled cheese sandwiches and Noodles Snack: Crackers and peanut butter or cheese Dinner: Fish Sticks with Mac-n-Cheese and Peas Thursday August 14 Breakfast: Biscuits and Sausage Gravy Lunch: Sandwiches and Chips Snack: Vanilla Wafers Dinner: Broccoli and Chicken Stuffing Casserole with home-made Bread Rolls Friday August 15 Breakfast: Ham and Cheese Omelets Lunch: Macaroni and Cheese with Mixed Veggies Snack: Iced Banana Milk Dinner: Ravioli and Tomato Sauce with Salad Saturday August 16 Breakfast: Toast with Juice or Milk Lunch: Sandwiches and chips Snack: Juice Pops Dinner: Chicken Nuggets with Rice and Mixed Veggies Sunday August 17 Breakfast: Toast with Juice or Milk Lunch: Hot Dogs and Chips Snack: Fruit Cocktail Dinner: Chicken Stroganoff and Peas Monday August 18 Breakfast: Eggs and Bacon with Toast Lunch: Ramen Noodles Snack: Home-made Chocolate Chip Cookies Dinner: Sloppy Joes with Tator Tots Tuesday August 19 Breakfast: Pancakes with Juice or Milk Lunch: Hot Dogs with Veggie Dippers Snack: Home-made Chocolate Chip Cookies Dinner: Red Beans and Rice with Sausage and Cornbread Wednesday August 20 Breakfast: Pancakes with Juice or Milk Lunch: Ramen Noodles with Mixed Veggies Snack: Home-made Chocolate Chip Cookies Dinner: Barbeque Chicken with Potato Salad and Corn Thursday August 21 HAPPY BIRTHDAY DANIEL! Breakfast: Ham and Cheese Omelets Lunch: Tuna Noodles and Cheese Snack: BIRTHDAY CAKE! Dinner: Individual Pizzas for me and the girls - Daniel and Dad go out to dinner! Friday August 22 Breakfast: Eggs and Bacon and Oatmeal Lunch: Sandwiches and Chips Snack: Cake Dinner: Tator Tot Casserole with Green Beans Saturday August 23 Breakfast: Toast with Juice or Milk Lunch: Sandwiches with Veggie Dippers Snack: Juice Pops Dinner: Salmon with Twice Baked Potatoes and Brown rice with Peas Sunday August 24 Breakfast: Toast with Milk or Juice Lunch: Chicken Burgers with Chips Snack: Fruit Cocktail Dinner: Mom’s Chicken and Rice with Green Beans Monday August 25 Breakfast: Baked Cinnamon Puffs with Honey Lunch: Ramen Noodles Snack: Home-made Tortillas Dinner: Spaghetti and Meat Sauce with Green Beans Tuesday August 26 Breakfast: Breakfast Tacos Lunch: Cheese and Salsa Tostadas Snack: Juice Pops Dinner: Veggie Lasagna with Salad and Garlic Bread Wednesday August 27 Breakfast: Fried Egg Sandwiches Lunch: Ramen Noodles and Grilled Cheese Dinner: Bean Burritos with Chili Sauce and Mexican Rice |
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I'm afraid I need to share a terrible example of blatant discrimination from one of my favored restaurants. Subway has chosen to exclude all homeschoolers from a recent scholastic essay contest sponsored by the restaurant chain. When I first received an email informing me of the outrageous faux pas, I almost didn't believe it. But it's true. Subway has shunned homeschoolers across the nation.
Until the restaurant corrects the serious error, my family and hopefully my friends will join me in boycotting the restaurants. No Subway sandwiches - tasty though they may be - will be touching our lips. Instead we will trek over to Schlotzsky's or Quiznos as dutiful patrons. If Subway is not quick to compensate for their lack of judgement, I will become more and more vocal. Subway has stirred a sleeping beast - and homeschoolers across the nation will be heard! Read the story for yourself: Subway sandwich contest: Homeschoolers not wanted Spelling-challenged promotion offers gift 'bastket' to winners Posted: May 24, 2008 By Jay Baggett
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. Contest is open only to legal residents of the Untied (sic) States who are currently over the age of 18 and have children who attend elementary, private or parochial schools Subway's website promotion not only misspells "United" States, but offers the grand prize winner a "Scholastic Gift Bastket (sic) for your home." The 2007 winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee was Evan O'Dorney, a 13-year old homeschool Contestants are urged to write, in 500 words or less, a story that has a beginning, middle, and end using one of four provided story starters: The Mysterious Meatball Turkey Doesn't Live Here Anymore The Race to Red Onion Ranch Nothing Better The contest, launched in January, has a deadline of June 30, 2008. A grand prize winner and 6 runners-up will be selected on July 15 and announced approximately a week later. The company's website promotion encourages submitters to describe in their essays The exclusion of homeschoolers, presumably because the grand prize includes $5,000 worth of athletic equipment for the winning child's school, has caught the attention of bloggers who educate their children. Subway, the sandwich restaurant, wants to hear your child's story – unless he or she is homeschooled. The national chain's "Every Sandwich Tells a Story Contest" offers prizes and a chance to be published on the Subway website and in Scholastic's "Parent & Child" magazine but specifically excludes homeschoolers: that serve grades PreK-6. No home schools will be accepted.student from Danville, Calif. "random acts of fitness," such as eating right, exercising, playing sports and living a healthy lifestyle. Subway has marketed itself for several years as a healthy alternative to fast food, featuring spokesman Jared Fogle who went from 425 pounds to 190 pounds on a daily diet of the chain's lower-calorie sandwiches.
Moon notes Subway, with a bit of forethought, could have easily included homeschoolers: "One of the more obvious work-arounds that the developers of the Subway contest could have included for homeschooling parents who entered on their children's behalf, was for the equipment to be donated to a local park, or to a school of the winner's choice. Problem solved – good will all around. Too bad that it didn't play out that way. I look forward to seeing how the Subway wonks handle their self-inflicted wound."
The blogger at "Excuse me, but there are MILLIONS of homeschool students in this nation and this is just discrimination. A homeschool student could easily donate the athletic equipment to their homeschool athletic association, local park, athletic center, neighborhood center or the like. I realize they are doing this to have a mass-marketing effect, but they could have just as great a media response from a charitable homeschool student donating the prize. I believe this is a wonderful opportunity for us to make our voices heard that we as homeschool families are tired of being cast in a negative light." This is a link to view the article
This is a link to the actual contest website
This is a link to the homeschool boycott petition
Capturing Today, a homeschooling mother, isn't waiting for the self-inflicted wound, suggesting homeschool families "act now!"Valerie Bonham Moon, writing for HomeEdMag, referred to the exclusion as "Subway's P.R. gaffe: "By now, the Subway sandwich shop marketing division must know how bad of a decision it was on the part of whichever wonk who decided to expressly exclude homeschoolers from their latest contest. E-mail lists may not be utterly aflame over the exclusion, but there is more than one p---ed-off homeschool mom spreading the word. I've been reading their e-mails." |
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I was happy to stumble across this article. It seems to mirror my own viewpoint of how absurd it is to expect little boys to learn utilizing the same teaching methods for little girls.
Why Johnny Can't Read: Schools Favor Girls By Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Managing Editor 18 July 2006 Studies have long shown that boys in the
But a new study finds that the problem cuts across socioeconomic lines and pins part of the blame squarely on schools, whose techniques cater to the strengths of girls and leave boys utterly disinterested. Can't read a newspaper: The research, by psychology professor Judith Kleinfeld at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, finds that nearly one-quarter of high school seniors across the United States who are sons of white, college-educated parents have woeful reading skills, ranking "below basic" on a national standardized test. "These boys cannot read a newspaper and get the main point," Kleinfeld told LiveScience. "These boys cannot read directions for how to use equipment and follow them." And the problem is getting worse. The federal government's 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress reported that 26.3 percent of high school seniors scored below basic in reading skills. In a finer analysis of that data, Kleinfeld found that 23 percent of white sons of college-educated parents scored below basic, up from 13 percent in 1992. (Among girls with white, college-educated parents, only about 6 percent fall into the below-basic category.) Kleinfeld presented her results last month at the White House Conference on Helping America's Youth in Lack of motivation: The problem is partly developmental, Kleinfeld said. "Girls mature more quickly than boys," she said. "They enter school with bigger vocabularies and better fine motor skills, so it's easier for them to learn to write." And as boys enter junior high and high school, their motivation wanes. "Many boys are disengaging from school," Kleinfeld says. "The U.S. Department of Education’s surveys of student commitment show that boys are far less likely than girls to do homework or to come to school with the supplies they need." In an interview, one boy summed up the problem for Kleinfeld. He said: "Why would anyone want to read novels? They aren't even true!" What schools should learn: In separate research that Kleinfeld is also preparing for publication, she has possibly gotten to the root of the problem. "Here's a fascinating fact," she said. "There is no literacy gap in home-schooled boys and girls." "Why? In school, teachers emphasize reading literature and talking about character and feelings," she said. "This way of teaching reading does not turn boys on. Boys prefer reading nonfiction, such as history and adventure books. When they are taught at home, parents are more likely to let them follow their interests." Amen to that! Read the story here: http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/060718_illiterate_boys.html |
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A friend of mine directed me to the Chore Wars site. She absolutely hates doing even the simplest chores around her home and the game has helped her tackle everyday projects like doing dishes and taking out the trash. Enter Chore Wars! I sat down with the kids, showed them their characters and the adventures and they literally jumped up and ran off to complete their chosen tasks. I've never seen my 8 year old son make his bed! And my youngest actually completed an entire chore in under 20 minutes (usually it takes her over an hour for the simplest job). Our selected chores for our kiddos include: Adventurer Abodes (1.) Cleaning Bedroom = 50 XP (2.) making a bed = 20 XP *** SPECIAL QUEST *** The Academy (1.) cleaning up art supplies and crafts = 15 XP (2.) extra reading = 50 XP (3.) filing books and parchments = 20 XP The Bathroom (1.) cleaning the bathroom = 45 XP The Castle (1.) Castle Creature Care = 10 XP (2.) cleaning the ceiling fans = 50 XP (3.) doing the laundry = 40 XP (4.) dusting = 10 XP (5.) vacuuming = 15 XP The Kitchen (1.) attending to the dishwasher = 15 XP (2.) cleaning the microwave = 10 XP (3.) cleaning the toaster oven = 15 XP (4.) mopping and sweeping = 30 XP The Outside World (2.) gardening = 55 XP (3.) shopping - apprentice training = 10 XP (4.) taking out the trash = 25 XP |
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Just recently my nine-year-old daughter and I were shopping at a trendy store in our local mall. My daughter tugged at my sleeve and said, "There's Allison," pointing to a group of girls close to her own age. I smiled at her and told her to go over and say hello. I know my daughter can be shy at times and I try to encourage her to step out and make new friends. I turned back to the shoe rack, wondering if I was too old to wear fuchsia pumps. I didn't want to intrude on my daughter's time with her friends. Behind me I heard a short burst of girlish laughter and I smiled, thinking my daughter was having fun. She wandered over after a brief minute. Her back was turned to me and I asked, "Did you say hi'?" She shrugged and nodded slightly, keeping her back to me. My mom alarm began to beep warningly. I stepped over to her and turned her shoulder to see her face. She looked up at me, trying to smile but I could see her eyes brimming with tears. It was the empty smile that squeezed my heart. She was trying to hide her sadness.
I asked what was wrong and again she shrugged and in the tiniest voice, she said, "Allison doesn't like me." And tears began to race down her cheeks. She rubbed at them stubbornly with her sleeve breaking my heart as she did so. I dropped to my knees in front of her and cupped her face in my hand, forcing her to look straight into my eyes and I said, "It's because she doesn't know how great you are." And I cried with her. I grabbed her and pulled her into my arms, just holding her and telling her how wonderful I thought she was and how stupid those girls were not to notice. We left the store and it was a quiet ride home. I knew her pain. I too had been the victim of public humiliation at the hands of the more popular girls in school. I knew how miserable it felt to be the one who was laughed at and teased. I knew how awful it was to feel so small. At home that night, I went in her room and laid on the bed next to her and asked her gently to tell me what was going on with this girl. My daughter, in her sweet little voice with tears of frustration welling up told me that this Allison had taken away some of my daughter's friends, and was telling everyone that my daughter was weird and too short, that she was a nerd. My heart ached with misery and anger as I cried right along with her. I told her about when I was in school and how some girls had chosen to tease me. I told her it hurts because we have tender hearts. I told her not to be ashamed of crying it was a sign that she had a beautiful and tender heart. I assured her that she was not only beautiful on the outside, but also on the inside. I held her and our tears mingled on our shirts. I poured all my love into her and told her that true friends don't leave, and those are the only friends that mattered. As we hiccupped through our tears, I explained that all girls are unsure of themselves and feel awkward and ugly. But some girls try to make themselves look cool and important by making fun of other girls. I told my daughter that she had to fight to keep those negative comments from hurting her precious tender heart. It wounded me to go through this with her. It hurt so deeply to see my young daughter experience such an ugly aspect of our world. She's so sweet, so trusting and this moment is a brick in a wall that is slowly built around her soul. I don't want her to build a wall. I want her to keep her bubbly sense of humor. I want her to love freely and openly. I don't want to see that empty smile again. My heart just can't take it. I cried myself to sleep that night and I know she did, too. My resolve is a thousand times stronger now. My children are simply too young to expose them to the hurtful playground teasing - the soul-crushing name-calling and social banishment. As a mother, it is my duty to protect them. It is taking all my strength not to yank them out of school this very second to keep them home and properly educate them, with emphasis on their character and inner beauty. Only a couple more months... |
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A few months ago, during worship service at church, I cried out to God to change me. I begged Him to use me, show me where to go, show me how to conduct my life. I wept as I cried out for His guidance.
And I felt His peace wash over me.
I should have known that peace was sent to help me through the changes ahead of me.
God set out that very moment to radically change me. A few weeks after I cried out for His guidance, I became very sick with pneumonia. So sick, in fact, that my husband was forced to take me to the hospital. I was admitted for almost a week. Initially, as the doctors were working on the correct diagnosis, they were concerned about a large mass in my lungs.
Apparently the infection was so condensed, the doctors initially thought it could be a tumor. My heart stopped when they told me this.
I immediately quit smoking.
You need to know, I have smoked a pack a day for the last six years. I've tried every different way to quit, without success. But the day I cried out for my Father to change me into the woman He wants me to be – He set the process in motion. He knew what it would take to free me from my addiction.
And still He continued to work on me. Shortly after I recovered an opportunity to serve in my church's children's ministry presented itself. My conviction to serve in this manner didn't clinch my stomach or shake me to the core as previous convictions had – instead as I considered working in this ministry a warm peace, much like the one I experienced during that special moment of worship – washed over me and I simply knew that this was a step in the right direction.
Over the next few weeks, He continued to work on me. He opened my eyes to healthy changes in my lifestyle, our budget, our household. My Father has redirected my interest in raising my children in a simple, loving and Godly manner.
Most recently, he has laid it upon my heart to take a leap of pure faith and homeschool my children.
Now, if you can understand – mere months ago, I was not this person. I was busy at my job, I had my own interests. Sure, I love my children - very, very much, I attended church, I loved my Father – but I was nowhere near where He wanted me to be.
I was NOT the type of mom to get up early, make sure everyone had a nice, home-cooked breakfast. I didn't pull myself out of bed to spend a little time in prayer. I rarely cracked open my Bible unless I was at church. I wasn't a bad Christian – I was simply inactive, with plenty of secular baggage. I had not chosen to realize my full potential working under His grace.
Today I've discovered just how far God has brought me in such a very short time. He's used circumstances to teach me. He's led my heart to a new realization of just how wonderful my life could be when I decide to truly serve Him. I can see now that serving in the church children's ministry will help me as I homeschool my children. The organizational skills I've used at work will benefit me as I struggle to keep us on task. The new things I'm learning everyday will help me to become the woman I need to be.
I still have a long way to go. I'm not a saint, by any stretch of the imagination. And I'm still a little unsure of myself in this new role. I don't know if I can be "that type" of mom. Can I be a true help mate for my husband? Can I be the way God wants me to be?
Not on my own.
But I'm not alone. I'm being led every step of the way. And I'm so very thankful that God has invested such an interest in a wayward servant. |