March 26, 2011 7:13 a.m.

I guess that tax refund check we’ve got coming has made us giddy or something.  Because when we did our weekly MalWart grocery shopping yesterday, we decided to blow ten buckaroos on the Bark Off humane bark training device.

Yup – this would do the trick; stop our sweet doggie from waking us up in the middle of the night from barking, instead of using a painful shock collar. 

Yup.  Every time he barks now, it will emit a high frequency sound that will annoy him and train him in not barking anymore.  What a deal!  Imagine, peace and quiet for just $10.

Self-Reliant Man and I pondered this for about five minutes in the store, wondering whether it would really work.  Was it as good as it sounded?  Could it be too good to be true?  Since we cannot hear the sound, there would be no way we could verify if it was actually working, etc.  All these thoughts were bounced between the two of us as we processed this grave decision together. 

Okay, we did it.  It was tossed into our buggy.  We had finally found the barking solution.

But as soon as we got the package open at home, and the fresh new 9-volt battery installed, Chips snapped us back to reality with a simple exclamation:


Hmm.  Didn’t think about that.  Did you, Self-Reliant Man, think about that before tearing open the package?

Nope.

Neither did I.

February 20, 2011 9:37 p.m.

If you buy a boy a package of freeze-dried Ramen noodle soup
When you get home from evening service,
pretty soon he’ll put it inside the microwave oven and press the button.
If he presses the button, he’ll go off to play and forget that he didn’t add water.
While you are sitting in the kitchen, you’ll begin to hear a hissing and crackling sound,
Whereupon you will open the door of the microwave --  just in time..
..To allow stiflingly rank smoke to fill the kitchen.
Entirely.
And when it fills the kitchen, pretty soon the smoke will fill the entire house,
And your family will run around opening windows and doors
And turning on exhaust fans.
After that, everybody will be driven outside, eyes watering and gasping for fresh air
to the breezeway to enjoy a leisurely Sunday evening supper, what’s left of it.
Even the dog will not want to be in the house.
And the rest of the evening you will want to spend outdoors;
The night, too. 
And your boy will end up practicing his violin for all the neighbors to hear
Outside underneath the stars, amidst a chorus of barking neighborly dogs,
And he will soon work up another appetite,
And after his practice is over, pretty soon,
He will request another Ramen soup.
                                                   -- Anonymous

October 27, 2010  11:09 p.m.

Sweet Girl is very close to the end of Calvert School Second Grade.  Only a few lessons left to go.  Yesterday, she had to do a science composition.  She was supposed to write about the digestive process, from the point of view of the food that had been eaten.  She was to utilize science terms that she learned for the digestive system.  She really got into this assignment!  She even chose to provide several illustrations.  Anyway, here are the composition and illustrations.

I'm sure you can see where this is going.  My only comment is "Calvert, you asked for it!"


     I am an apple.  One day someone took me off the shelf.  It was a girl.  She bit into me and swallowed. I went down her esophagus.  I fell down into her stomach.  There some acid poured on me.  I did not like that.  Then I saw a cave opening and was pushed in.  I felt myself going in a maze of the small intestines.  Afterwards I didn't feel quite the same.  All the energy I had before was gone.  Suddenly I was moved into the large intestines.  All of a sudden I was covered in brown muck.  The next day I was pushed out of the body and into the toilet.

October 21, 2010 1:54 p.m.


Chips and I had a discussion about political cartoons.  It was part of a recent Calvert Fifth Grade American History lesson to help students to understand, and appreciate, political cartoons.  As a regular reader of God's World News, Chips has been exposed to several political cartoons, so he has the idea down in his mind.

Therefore, he decided to try his hand at creating his own political cartoons, just for fun.

Chips pokes fun at some of the issues of the times.  Here are the results:

Here is the first cartoon, using an airplane as a symbol.  Chips loves airplanes.

And here is his commentary on the economy.  A very simple message.

Just goes to show the impact, upon children, of the Information Age.  There is no way that I would have understood the concept of political cartoons at Chips' age!

September 28, 2010 4:36 p.m.

We are used to evidence of political correctness in our children's textbooks.  Minorities are portrayed in a disproportionately large number, and that's cool with us.  There is also gender bias, and we see this when girls are shown achieving something better than boys nine out of ten times.  The girl is often jumping higher, scoring more goals, winning more trophies, you get the idea.

But we found one yesterday that was worth sharing here.  A problem in Sweet Girl's Math book, which read as follows:

Mrs. Rodriguez knitted 126 baby hats.  Mr. Lake knitted 291 hats.  How many hats did they knit in all?

I'm sorry, but the mental image of a grown man, Mr. Lake, knitting baby hats (and so many more than Mrs. R!) just pinned our Funny Meter.  We all had a big laugh over this one.

 Monday, April 26, 2010 12:27 p.m.

My children bring their friends home with them every day.  Sometimes physically, but most often in their imaginations.  It all began a few years ago when they would make references in their play to the friends they saw regularly at church small group, and then at AWANA, and then at Saints (PE class).  This practice continued on a daily basis, and grew to become more and more elaborate over time.

Eventually, it took on some of the structure they had learned from AWANA.  For instance, Chips had his group of friends, and Sweet Girl had hers; Chips became the Commander of his Group, and Sweet Girl was the Leader of her group.  Both children were in charge over their respective group of friends, but the Commander, of course, was in authority over the Leader.

Soon there were lists prepared on paper of each of the Groups.  Each child's group had membership of between ten and twenty children, identifiable by their real first names (although in the case where there were two children of the same first name, as in Madison, the first initial of the last name would be used).

Since then, the Groups have accompanied our children everywhere: in the car, to meals, to lessons, in the yard, and around the house, even to the bedrooms at night.  I am sure it became quite crowded when Chips had to share his bed with his entire group.  Good thing he has a double bed.

Then the Groups became "National Groups" because children were joining from all over the country.  They began to acquire special characteristics.  For instance, they travel in special vehicles called Sprint Cars, and Sprockets.  Yes, several drawings have been made of Sprint Cars and Sprockets, and each type of vehicle has a description and special uses to the Groups.

The Groups are very adventurous children.  They are able to leap tall buildings in a single bound...... when inside their Sprockets, of course.  The groups are extremely inventive, putting their collective brains together to invent many useful things.  For example, Moving Belts, which they put different things on to transport them, and Dual Rockets, motorcycles that fly with rockets.  One of the boys in the Group races against the space shuttle in a Sprocket and always wins a million dollars each time he wins.  He is up to seven million.  They have superhuman qualities in some ways, yet they, too, are members of our fallen human race as they struggle with their own weaknesses: poor judgment in managing their money, overeating (or eating too many sweets and getting stomach aches), reckless driving of the Sprint Cars, disagreements amongst themselves, failure to heed the warnings of their Commander or Leader, failure to floss their teeth regularly, reluctance to practice their instruments every day, or whatever.

We parents continue to marvel at the level of imagination that Chips and Sweet Girl exhibit when playing with their Groups.  I just when I am driving and I overhear Sweet Girl say to Chips: "Let's talk about our Groups." Self-Reliant Man and I cherish it, and we see that through the National Groups, our kids are able to safely and securely process the realities of life in the real world with the assistance of their friends ---- each other.

Well, I think it is high time to tell my faithful readers about all the changes that will be occurring around here. There are so many that I am going to give them numbers.

1. We decided to enroll both children in the local public school. We have had this nagging guilt about socialization and secret concerns about their academic prowess, so we decided that their needs could best be met by professionals in the field.

2. We also decided to discontinue their violin lessons at the same time. The reason for this is that we think they will be spending more time each day with school and homework, and requiring this activity on top of everything else will be too demanding. They will need some time for fun, you know? After all, you're only young once.

3. Since there will be several long hours to fill while they are away at school, I will fortunately be able to spend a lot more time shopping in the local malls. After all, we expect to save thousands every year not buying curriculum and paying for violin lessons. More $$ for me to spend, right?

4. We decided to sign up for cable television and we have an order in place for a brand new 55 inch LED high definition TV. This will better facilitate my being able to watch the Oprah show and more daytime TV on non-shopping days.

5. Chips' tenth birthday is coming up, and instead of a birthday party, we decided to buy him an XBox 360, his own laptop, and an Ipod. We have been concerned about his lack of technological skills, and figure these gifts will help. Also, the Xbox should continue to hone his fine motor skills since he won't be playing the violin anymore.

6. We decided that Sweet Girl's wardrobe needs some spicing up. After all she is 7, practically a teenager. So I ordered her some tube tops, short shorts, and bikinis for the upcoming summer. I am sure she will look great.

7. We're finally getting around to registering to vote in our county. I know, we've been here five years already, but didn't have the time. We're registering as Democrats.

8. I will be changing the name of this blog to "Free at Last!"

A lot of thought has gone into making these decisions. What do you all think? If you are still with me, scroll down some....







































APRIL FOOLS!!!!!

Now if you believe all that, I have some great oceanfront property for sale in Nebraska.

March 4, 2010 4:00 p.m.

Hey friends, I need help.


Would somebody please inform the State of Flor*da that it is MARCH, for goodness sake, and that 55 degrees, in the windy sunshine, in the afternoon, in MARCH is simply unacceptable?

This is the weirdest, longest, coldest winter anybody here can remember in decades.

What's going on????

I think we should enter a bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics, what do you say?

February 24, 2010 10:12 p.m.

So our regular violin teacher, Miss S, has about 30 or more students who participated in the Federation competition this past Saturday.

One of them is her nine year old grandson.

So almost all of her students achieved "Superior" ratings....... all of them, except....

her grandson.

In this audition, it is understood that students are not permitted to speak to the judge; they may only speak if the judge asks them any questions.

So Miss S' grandson walks into the judging room to perform, except first he stops and says to the judge: "I just want you to know that I really don't like classical music!"

Oops!

Miss S. couldn't keep a straight face as she told this story to us. We thought it was hilarious. You'd have to know her grandson, I guess.

December 31, 2009 7:51 p.m.

Remember the Y2K "crisis"? A lot of people made an awful lot of money over that fear- mongering. And that night came and went -- nearly without a hitch -- all over the world. The lights stayed on. Not just in places like the US where billions of dollars were spent to prevent a catastrophe, but even in countries on the other side of the world, countries that had no money to spend on the "issue". I shall never forget it. Y2K has forever changed the way I view the world, the mass media, and the "crisis of the day". It has taught me that, if you get old enough, and hold on to memories of times past, pretty soon you won't believe anything they tell you. Did you notice how, beginning with the very next day, nobody on television or in the papers had anything to say about it all? It was all simply forgotten and never talked about again.

Back in those days, Yours Truly (Breezy Point Mom) was a Senior Electrical Engineer with responsible charge over design projects throughout the high voltage transmission and distribution systems at the House of Mouse (remember that place we camped a few weeks ago?). The property containing the House of Mouse is approximately twice the size of Manh*ttan Island, and consumes electrical power equivalent to a medium-sized city.

For eighteen months, one of my responsibilities was to test equipment related to electrical power distribution across the property, all to reassure upper management that everything was "Y2K Compliant", that is, it would continue to function normally after crossing that momentous time threshold into the year 2000.


Of course, this task came in addition to all my other project responsibilities. It was a sort of... uh .... added blessing in my professional life.


Most of the work associated with testing all the equipment required me to work through the night. Company policy forbade us engineers from testing equipment during theme park opening hours, when a mistake could take down power for thousands of visitors. So Y2K required me to continue working regular days, interspersed with many nights, as needed, at various times, over the course of 18 months. I was never able to get into a routine of either days or nights. It was often two nights followed by two days, etc.


To top it all off, all of the salaried employees where I worked were required to spend the big Y2K night on the property "manning" all of the high voltage substations serving all of the visitor venues, including four theme parks, many hotels, and a shopping mecca. If the power system came crashing down over the crowds, we were supposed to come to the rescue and restore power manually.

Oh, and did I mention that over a million visitors were expected to be on the property that night?


For you see, even thought the world was waiting with bated breath to see if the world would come to a crashing anarchic end, the House of Mouse was not concerned. They were not planning to be "closed" that night due of concern for public safety. In fact, they were throwing a really big party to ring in the new year. They had such confidence in us ... in little old me... just imagine.


So as I was saying, we salaried folks manned the stations, not just engineers and electricians, but all professionals and the operations departments for all systems - solid waste, waste water, reclaimed water, mechanical systems, as well as electrical. Also, administrative assistants and all office and business support personnel who were salaried were required to be on site, driving around the property, supplying foodstuffs to all us more technically-oriented folks. This included two of my best friends, who were able to visit me briefly that night before moving on to another substation.


What about Self-Reliant Man, you may ask? Where was he throughout all this excitement? Unfortunately, he was not permitted, due to legal (and insurance) reasons, to share this wonderful night with me at the substation, and he stayed home (50 miles away) and went to bed.


So while the world was ringing in the new year (decade? century? millennium?) I was sitting in a swivel chair beside a Formica topped table with a two way radio sitting atop it, shooting the breeze with three electricians. Yup. I'll never forget it.


And when midnight struck, we heard all the fireworks outside, but had to stay inside and wait for orders in case the end of the world as we knew it happened.


And then we had to stay there until 7 a.m., per planned procedure, in case all the equipment took time to recognize that it was supposed to fail. Only it didn't. And at 2 a.m., I received a cell phone call from the manager of electrical operations. His voice over the phone sounded so relieved that I could almost envision tears in his eyes. He said since all was well, I was permitted to go home, and Happy New Year. Poor guy. He must have aged ten years during that last quarter of 1999. All for a hoax.

Fast forward to now. I sure am glad that I am now a stay at home homeschooling violin mom of two, spending my New Year's Eve playing Jenga and Pay Day and watching the movie "Scrooge". I wouldn't trade my new life for anything.

Happy New Year to all my dear bloggy friends! We made it ten years past the end of the world.

We are most of the way through world history, and we just had a lesson on Christopher Columbus. So, after I finished reading the chapter to Little Son, I asked him a few comprehension questions. It went something like this..

ME: What were the names of Columbus' three ships?

LITTLE SON: The Nina, the Pinta, and the Pina Colada!

I am so glad Calvert School is preparing him so well...

A lot of things have been going on at Mighty Oak Country School lately, therefore partially explaining my relative quietness on this blog.

First of all, I put up a new header photo of our mighty oak. It looks better than the old one did, doesn't it?

Saturday, Little Son participated in a Bible Quiz team from our local AWANA club. We had to travel to the Big City for this event, and there were eight teams in all. Little Son's team came in sixth place, but I have to say that they had a good time. A bonus was the special Ch*ck Fil-A lunch afterward! My favorite memorable moment was when a question was asked such as: "Which scripture verse teaches that God is true?" followed by three possible references. A, B, or C. (multiple choice question). Well, our precious Bible Quiz team held up their agreed-upon answer and it read "false". We moms had a lot of smiles over that one.

One of my frustrations this winter/spring season has been the length of time it has been taking for Self-Reliant Man to rebuild our tractor's engine. Yes, I am sure you are shaking your head, saying "is she still complaining about that?" It is not so much that Self-Reliant Man is incapable; quite the opposite is true... he is, in fact, very resourceful and self-reliant (grin) but the truth is that we are not exactly the kind of folks that have a lot of time on our hands for working on such a large project. Anyway, Sunday evening seemed rather glum around here as we reflected on our failed attempt to press cylinder sleeves into the engine block by cool shrinking them with 14 pounds of dry ice. A lot of money was spent on this ice, and all for naught.

Or, maybe not?

We sure did get a lot of entertainment from a cooler full of dry ice! That is some pretty amazing stuff.


The wonder of carbon dioxide in solid form.













Self-Reliant Man stirring up the cauldron.












So much fun. This stuff just doesn't melt!














Little Son received Mouse Trap for his ninth birthday, and we had a good time playing it together. It is a game I had as a child.











Little Son loves God's creation, and one evening as we were practicing violin indoors, he remarked on the unearthly orange glow outside the windows from a striking sunset. We hurried outside to appreciate it better. It really was beautiful. Little Son and Baby Girl called it "the glory of God".





















We are always trying to capture photos of nature to send in to R*nger Rick magazine. Here is a close up of a lily outside our house.










One more thing. The children are really into writing notes... to their friends, to each other, to us parents. Here is a note I found in our school room just the other day, from Baby Girl to her big brother.

Little Son wrote notes on heart shaped paper for us, too. We found them on our bed, on each side, as we were going to sleep last night. One read: "Dear Mommy, I love you. Good mothers can get rare now! Love, Little Son". The other one said: "To Daddy. I love you. The Dad I love is you."


Definitely gives you a reason to smile as you drift off for the night. This is what being a parent is all about, right?

So we were doing our morning scripture discussion this week. I was sitting on my bed with pillows propped behind me, and Little Son and Baby Girl had picked their routine listening spots. We are talking about the Sermon on the Mount, chapter 6, and I reminded my children of the earlier discussion where Jesus taught that Christians are the salt of the earth.

To which Baby Girl replied: "and sinners [the non-Christian type] are the pepper of the earth!"

Guess I'll never read that passage the same way again.



note: My annotations in [brackets] above.

SCENE: Driving home from Malwart with the week's groceries in the car. The car windows are all rolled down to ventilate the stink from spilled chicken salad in the trunk.

BABY GIRL: Mommy! You've got your hand sticking out the window like some people do!

MOMMY: That's because I'm trying to get rid of a booger.

LITTLE SON and BABY GIRL (together): EWWWWWWWW!!!

(Ten minutes later and a couple of miles closer to home. Mommy hears giggling and looks in the rear view mirror).

MOMMY: Kids. Don't hang your hands outside the window. It isn't safe.

LITTLE SON: You were doing it.

MOMMY: Yes I was, but I was getting rid of a booger.

LITTLE SON and BABY GIRL (together): Okay. So we're flicking boogers, then.

~~~ Children are a blessing from the Lord.~~~

First of all, you have to know that we have not watched actual television, broadcast or cable, in our house for over five years. We shut it off the week after our military entered Iraq, back in March of 2003. Never turned it on again, except for space shuttle launches and landings, and approaching hurricanes. Besides that, we just watch videos that we rent through the mail from N*tflix.

So we decided early this year that we would break our TV fast for the Olympics. We are not sports fans by any stretch, but we both enjoy watching the Olympics. I had a chance to visit the venues in Lake Placid shortly before the 1980 Winter Games, and caught the Olympic bug at that time. So, I am always enthusiastic about the Olympics (although we didn't watch them at all in 2004 or 2006).

Anyway, Friday we watched the awesome opening ceremony all the way through until midnight, and our kids stayed up for the spectacle. For them, the spectacle wasn't simply the ceremony, but the whole "TV experience", not the least of which is the commercials. Not being used to TV, the children were perturbed by the frequent cutting over to commercials at high interest critical moments of programming. Now, DH and I have grown used to this over our lifetimes, but the kids found it quite aggravating, and they vocalized their opinion over this.

"OH NO! Another commercial!"

"We just saw this one!" (for P*blix supermarkets)

"Not again!!"

and my personal favorite: "ARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!"

Well, the frequent reoccurrence of about 20 or so commercials since Friday evening has continued to be a continual joke amongst our family. The beginning of the commercials are now met by comments like

"Oh I know this one!", (they are such TV experts already, since Friday)

or

"This is funny!"

among cackles and shrieks of delight, especially for the commercial for Kr*ft Macaroni and Cheese Cr*ckers when the cheese geyser erupts under the unsuspecting child. Over and over again. Giggle, giggle, laugh, laugh.

It is kind of funny. Not the commercials, but my childrens' experience / reaction to them.

When the parade of athletes was going on, this was a neat review of the Geography Songs CD that we listened to last winter. Some of the Pacific island countries completely stumped us. It was very disturbing to see that Taiwan was not permitted to carry their own flag. The kids got excited to see athletes from the countries of their birth. My son eagerly awaited the contingent from Viet Nam. They sent about 15 athletes, and the commentator mentioned that although the Vietnamese hadn't really been winners of Olympic medals in the past, they were a force to be reckoned with in the Math Olympics! We were happy to jump all over that fact, as Math is not my DS' favorite subject.


My daughter was happy to see the athletes from South Korea, some 350 strong. She was full of grins, too, when the young Mr. Park won a swimming gold medal for South Korea.




An aside: what is it with beach volleyball, anyway? It seems that they spend half the time just showing that! (Don't answer that question, I think I can guess..)

So, my kids have gotten the idea to stick U.S. flags around the room on dowels, or to hold them and wave them when the USA is winning or getting a medal, and then they lower them to half mast when the USA isn't doing so good. Where do they get these ideas?
They are also being exposed to new terms, like vaulting, uneven parallel bars, balance beam, etc. 'Tis a shame; we non-athletic parents haven't exposed them to much of this stuff.

How great is the potential for us to become TV-holics? Take yesterday afternoon, for instance. Mid-afternoon found me sitting in the recliner feeling very lazy, watching swimming races. This is such an unusual scene in our house. DH got bored with this and disappeared outside to do something with the tractor. Turned out he sharpened the Bush Hog blades. My son got bored, too, and went outside to play. My daughter, who takes to TV more readily than her brother, hung around a little bit, and then decided to go outside to join her brother. This left me, sitting drowsily in the chair, feeling quite brain dead and extremely lazy. It reminded me far too much of days past when I was growing up with my parents. And part of me said - are you crazy? Don't you feel guilty? Look at you, sitting like a lazy lump in your chair while these incredible swimmers are slicing through water! What are you doing!!?? And at that point, I got up, got dressed in my swimsuit and did laps in my pool. It sure felt good to move. That led into dinner, violin practice, and the entire evening ritual. We didn't watch the Olympics again until 9 p.m.

I guess our family isn't cut out for daytime TV, not even on the weekends. Nevertheless, we have a lot of exciting evening viewing of the Olympics to look forward to, and it is double the fun with our kids.

NEWS FLASH: The UPS truck is here delivering our new homeschool room table. Gotta go!

So my son and I are having a discussion about Eleanor Roosevelt, and how she blazed new trails for the role of a First Lady. We talked about how she traveled on behalf of her husband, FDR, and met dignitaries and heads of state from many countries. Finally, I asked my son "Do you know who the First Lady is [now]?"

And his reply: "No, but I thought the first lady was Eve".

Guess I deserved that one!