Jul. 3, 2009 Finished Week 4's workouts. Jul. 3, 2009 Our Brother in Israel
Yesterday we heard in the news how Israel is being accused of war crimes against the people in the Gaza strip last winter.
Today someone passed this along to me. I wanted to share it here.
History has a way of clearing/clouding present events.
Even those who aren't particularly sympathetic to Israel's Benjamin
Netanyahu, could get a good measure of satisfaction from this interview with
British Television during the retaliation against Hamas' shelling of Israel.
The interviewer asked him: "How come so many more Palestinians have been
killed in this conflict than Israelis?" (A nasty question if there ever was one!)
Netanyahu: "Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?"
Interviewer: (Falling into the trap) Why not?
Netanyahu: "Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British
and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the war
was caused by Germany's aggression. And in response to the German blitz on
London, the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden, burning to death
more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima.
Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the R.A.F. tried to bomb the
Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen, some of the bombs missed their target
and fell on a Danish children's hospital, killing 83 little children.
Perhaps you have another question?"
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Jul. 3, 2009 Tiny Tefillin Jul. 3, 2009 Field Trip to Motherwell Homestead National Park
I took Janney and Asher on their first field trip to Motherwell Homestead National Historic Park yesterday. This was with a fairly new homeschool group, with young kids. I've met some of the mums through the Babywearing group I joined this winter, and some of the mums I've met on Facebook, and some new ones too. I invited my friend Marie to join us with her kids too.
The tour guides - Shane and Sarah, first engaged the kids by getting them into costume, and then playing a little game about farm animals.
Asher behaved much like Myles used to - not wanting to participate, shying away from the crowd, hiding behind me etc. I let him be, not forcing him to participate... notice there aren't many boys in these photos, that's because most of the boys headed to the play park instead of participating.. I let Asher go play in the park too.
Elias hung out in my sling on my back, there were so many babies in slings on mommies backs or fronts, and two dads came, nice to see them carrying babies too.
After the warm up game, we headed to the buildings. First a storage shed that housed sleds and wagons.
Can you imagine riding 100 miles to Regina in this? It took the Regina families just over an hour to drive to Motherwell from the city in their modern vans, a trip to the city in this buggy must have been a 4-5 hour journey. From there Mr. Motherwell must have taken a train to Ottawa to sit in parliament.
Shane shared with me, that Mr. Motherwell quit politics because of the bilingual issue. He wanted Saskatchewan - or the whole country - to be bilingual. Had Saskatchewan had bilingual education, Saskatchewan would have been a much more powerful province in the country, as one needs to be bilingual to have power in Ottawa - to be Prime Minister definitely. But there are so few French speaking Saskatchewaners. Very interesting! Such vision in Mr. Motherwell, such lack of vision in the politics of the day.
Then Sarah, our other interpreter, took us to the house to show us around. When Mr. Motherwell arrived, he built himself a little log house, then built the stone part of the barn. Not until the barn was built did he build this house, and then the summer kitchen was added the following year. He married his first wife the year he built the house, she had two children and died young, of a respiratory disease. Mr. Motherwell later married his second wife, who ran the farm while he was away being a politician.
Washing up in the kitchen before entering the house with all those farm smells.
Summer kitchen equipped with all the tools of the day
 
The lovely dining room layed out to feed the family
Kids playing crokanole in the livingroom
3D Glasses in the study/piano room
The daughter's bedroom
The aunt's bedroom
Asher playing Crokanole
The we moved to the barn, where Asher was much more comfortable. Joshua caught a chicken (a maturing chick really, they were still quite small)
Janney got brave and went to collect her own chicken
Miss Suzy the pig is expecting a litter of piglets, apparently last year the pig had 14 piglets, I wonder how many Miss Suzy will have
The Jersey cow has a calf, but she shares her milk with the farm.
A pair of work horses. These two are the real farmers, they pull the plow to work all 20 acres of land.
Shane let everyone have a climb on the tractor before taking us upstairs to the hayloft, which he told us was built in 2 days, after which was a dance. Mr. Motherwell was away during this work, and was quite displeased to hear his neighbours took advantage and were consuming alcohol on his property. He took the time to let him know of his displeasure - a politician who was not afraid to speak his mind, and stick to his morals, even if they weren't popular.
After the tour of the barn, we went back to the park for lunch, which gave the kids lots of play time, and time for Elias to get down and walk around.. watermelon in hand!
 After lunch we participated in some hands on learning activities.
Gardening
Playing games
All-in-all, a successful trip. We can't wait to join this group on their next adventure. |
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Jun. 28, 2009 Fire Slinging
I was trying to think of something for Myles to do as a research project, you know the kind of thing where he'd have to look things up, read something, and then put it into practice.
I suggested fire twirling. Silly me, little did I know that the boys already had some knowledge on the subject. The next night there was chain and rag and gasoline and FIRE... and away they went. My heart was in my throat as I watched that chain get tangled around him and the fireball come careening towards him.. but he got himself out of the snag and kept the fireball spinning...
That first one wasn't captured on video, but here is the second and subsequent efforts.
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Jun. 28, 2009 The Next Step Workout
I have just done the first workout in week 4.. the next challenge to my heart and lungs and muscles - WOO HOO.. No knee pain though. And I have a new tag-along. Janney came on her bike. It was hot though, it's 1130 am, I missed my early morning run in the cooler air. And the traffic was bad - early mornings are much better, there's usually only one or two cars, today there were dozens - hard to manage with a little girly on a wiggly bike.
Today's workout
| Speed |
Duration |
Actual |
| Walk |
5 min |
5:03 |
| run |
3 min |
3:19 |
| walk |
1:30 min |
1:19 |
| run |
5 min |
4:58 |
| walk |
2:30 min |
2:45 |
| run |
3 min |
3:01 |
| walk |
1:30 min |
1:33 |
| run |
5 min |
4:58 |
| cool down walk |
5 min |
2:19 |
Nothing really hurt much, until the last 3 minutes of the last 5 minute run, the rest was pretty smooth. In the first 5 min run, I didn't even look at my watch until I'd already run 3 minutes. How cool is that! I remember 4 short weeks ago I thought running 60 seconds was going to blow my lungs out!
I wonder how my mum is doing, she's doing this too. I'll have to call today!
Oh, and on a prayer request note.. my BP is up again. I won't shock you with the numbers, just know that it's HIGH. I've started taking my cal mag and potassium again, I guess I'll have to realize that I'll have to take them forever, not just during pregnancy.
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A bag full of hand me down jeans is fuel for creative energy. The boys decided that some of these jeans needed some re-styling... they're calling them torched jeans
Imagine using the back of your pickup truck to make artwork out of your jeans.. simply rad man! Can you say REDNECK? (Oh My, I just realized, I'm producing Redneck offspring!)
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After 3 weeks of doing my program.. I fell off the wagon. Well, it was you know THAT week and so I went 10 days without working out. I was slapping my wrist for such bad behaviour - but you know what, the rest was good.
Today i went out, got a good stretch, set two timers, my watch to tell me how long the whole workout was (25.5 minutes) and the IPOD to tell me my laps. I started walking my brisk walk to get my heart rate up, and when I started my first run - it was so good, no aching, I felt strong and able to take good strides, full of energy, heart and lungs working well.... Here's the workout I did
| Warmup |
Run |
Recovery Walk |
| 5 minutes |
2 min |
180 seconds |
| |
3 min |
3 min |
| |
2 min |
180 seconds |
| |
3 min |
3 min |
| |
2 min |
2 min |
I then did another stretching cool down, shower and then joined the family for prayer.
All of the runs were energetic and I felt strong. I ran hard... only taking it easy on the last 2 minute run. I haven't had a workout like this before, I guess this is the beginning of feeling fit and getting healthier. I don't think I've lost pounds, but I have noticed my stomach doesn't stick out as far, I think my muscles are getting stronger. I think I'll do another week and then take new photos- to compare with those I took at the beginning of the workouts.
I've also been eating more raw vegetables, and other salads/veggies. I'm trying to make an effort to eat more veggies and fruits as a greater proportion of my diet.
However, I slacked off on the drinking of water and I noticed the negative effects on my milk supply. We had to get a different source of water to drink, and so the bottles weren't there to be taken as I needed. We've gone back to the old source, and my water consumption is back up.
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Jun. 24, 2009 Kitchen Cabinets
Ipsco is a big steel company in the city, and they have built a park for their employees to use, which is also open to the public. Roxanne invited me to go, and invited Tracy too, but then Roxanne got sick .. so Tracy and I went.
I don't have photos or video of us at the pool, but we went swimming first, then after getting dried off and re-dressed, we went to the park.
The whole event was exhausting, but the kids sure had fun. Tracy said, this isn't for WIMPS! it sure isn't.. parenting means you do things that just aren't fun.. for mama... even though it's fun for the kids.
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