Of Blog Awards and Carnivals

A little Homeschool Blogging news for a Tuesday evening.

The Carnival of Homeschooling is in it's 256th week. If I were hosting this week I would call it the four to the fourth edition. This is probably one of the main reasons I am not hosting it this week. Mrs. Mama Hen is doing the honors this week and she is calling it the Our Great Nation edition. She must be from Switzerland, because only those stinking Swiss would think they were the only country using the internet. Greatest nation, indeed; their cheese has holes in it. Alpine (or other) ethnocentricity aside, it is an excellent carnival.

The HSBA award winners were announced late last night. I don't think anyone I voted for won (including myself) but many excellent blogs were honored. I will be listing all the winners on a separate page laterin the week; you can check them all out here. Congratulations to them all. Special appreciation to the fine folks at the HSBA who spend so much time and energy on the awards each year.

Go Ask My Dad

HSD Rewind time again. Going back to March 2009 when I wrote this . . .

Some of you may know that I would someday like to write a book. I often say I am working on a book, but that does not do justice to my friends who are actually working on a book. I have ideas for a book on relationships. From time to time I may talk about some of those ideas here. Recently Mama Archer's post was about relationships. In the post she linked to something she wrote in a blog called Weekend Kindness. What she shared was actually from a paper her daughter had written about finding a spouse.

Many of the standards her daughter mentioned are those I am imparting in my daughters. Specifically, a courtship model, that involves the active role of the parents especially the father. When my 9 year old was younger, I taught her what to say if a boy ever wanted to marry her. The response is "go ask my Dad." She still remembers it, and has not fought with me about it, yet, but that day may come.

My youngest child, also a daughter, is 3. She is leaving what I call the "save them every day" stage. The part of their life when you seem to be keeping them from physical peril at every turn. We spend so much of their early child hood keeping them from physical harm, making rules to keep them safe. Before they use a tool that could hurt them, we instruct them, and give them careful supervision while learning new skills.

I am not sure why with all that care giving I would be willing to withdraw all that guidance when they become of dating age. Many parents seem to think they have no chance of asserting control in any of those areas, so they do not try. I was greatly encouraged to read that Mama Archer's daughter plans to allow her parents an active role in determining her future husband.

I will write more about these issues in the future.

Meanwhile back in 2010. My youngest is no longer in the save her every day stage. It's more like the save the house from her stage. I have still not gotten very far with the "book". I have written a few more posts about relationships.

Thanksgiving Cancelled

Today was a strange day. I spent several hours on errands that should have taken 1/3 of the time. We've all had days like that, I'm sure. What was the most frustrating was when I went into a craft supply store called Michael's this afternoon. I had to get a few pieces of card stock for Emma's scrapbooking class. That was easy. I then went to look for some orange frosting for some thanksgiving treats we are going to make for Thursday. I found the cooking section very easily but then I realized they only had Christmas colors. I then realized (I am not the most visually observant person in the world) That the whole store was filled with Christmas products. The store was packed with people. I have been at Michael's many Sunday afternoons this Fall and there is usually 1/5th of the people there. For a minute I thought I had time jumped from a week before Thanksgiving to a week before Christmas. (I have been watching some of Season 1 of Heroes this week and that may account for the time jump theory.)

I looked in vain for 5-10 minutes for Thanksgiving decor while I wandered through the crowded store, I finally asked a staff person where I could find it and He said they had taken down all the Thanksgiving merchandise in order to prepare for Christmas. I reconsidered the time jump theory for a split second and then inquired if Thanksgiving had been cancelled? I don't know if he knew for sure, so I just bought my card stock and left.



As I exited the store I read a sign on their window that they would be open 5 hours on Thanksgiving. So I'm thinking why would they be open on Thanksgiving? They don't have any Thanksgiving stuff! Then I read the sign further and it said that there would be door busters.

So that was it, with almost a week before Thanksgiving they had remove all traces of it from their store but are trying to lure us back there on Thursday afternoon when the triptifan is supposed to be kicking in just so we can buy Christmas stuff!

This was not an isolated situation. My SIL had the same experience yesterday, She went into Kohl's, TJ Maxx, and a dollar store looking for Thanksgiving decorations and came up empty.

I read a joke in a letter in the mid 1980's. It said that when you see all the Christmas decorations up you can tell that Thanksgiving is right around the corner. I remember reading it that it was an exaggeration of the truth. In the past 25 or so years, that joke has become the reality; and the reality is not very funny, especially when you need orange frosting.

Operation Christmas Child

Six Word Saturday: At least for another 90 minutes. You can go to show my face to check all the other 6 word Saturdays. Here are mine . . .



Our Family Loves Operation Christmas Child



To find out more about this excellent program by the Ministry Samaritan's Purse click here.



In the interim these pictures explain our involvement pretty well.

Keith Time

Fragments Of Libraries, Kefir ads and HSBA

It's Friday Fragment time at half past kissing time.



Here are my fragments . . .



I used to spend a lot of time using our local libraries computers. Now due to the miracle of wifi, and the fact that I have a laptop, I have been using my computer at the library. This Tuesday night I was at the library w/o my laptop and decided to write my blog from there. I was reminded of this annoying yet funny (to me) system issue they have. Each user has an hour to use their computer. When there are 15 minutes left a pop up comes up and tells you how much time is remaining. At 10 minuts es a new pop up comes up and asks if you want an additional 15 minutes (when there is not a que). You are warned again at 5 minutes and at 2 minutes you get a countdown clock. I know this because I have gone down to the last 10 seconds before.



What really gets me is when you finally click the log out button you get another pop-up that says are you sure you want to leave?



And I'm thinking aren't you the same computet r that's been kicking me out for the last 15 minutes, and now you want me to stay? It's crazy!



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Speaking of annoying. On the way home from the library I was listening to a radio commercial about Keat kefir. The ad said that a clinical study proved that kefir may improve digestive health.



You needed a clnical study for a maybe? Wasn't it a maybe before the study?

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The HSBA Awards voting ends very soon you can vote bt clicking here.

Here is what the first quarter of my ballot looks like

Best Home School Mom: Home Spun Juggling
Best Home School Dad: Home School Dad
Best Blog Design: Live The Adventure
Best Photos & Artistic Content Blog: 1+1+1=1
Best Crafts, Plans & Projects Blog: The Activity Mom
Best Family or Group Blog: The Homeschool Classroom
Best Encourager: Psalm 104:24
Best Current Events, Opinions or Politics Blog: Why Homeschool.
Best Homemaking or Recipe Blog: The Pioneer Woman.
Best Teen Blog: A Young Woman for God.

I have some errands to run but wilil fill in the rest of the ballot when I return. To return to Friday Fragments click here.

Keith Time: Memories of The Funeral Part II