Just a head’s up for all you Veggie Tales fans…over at Veggie Tales Review, Peter Plum is having a contest giveaway for the newest Veggie Tales movie: Tomato Sawyer and Huckleberry Larry’s Big River Rescue!

All you have to do is comment on the post over there…among other things if you so wish! Sounds like a great DVD to own!

Hurry! You only have till Monday, July 14th at midnight!

Thanks go to my pastor for the head’s up on this latest offense against home educators. Check out the World Net Daily article, Subway sandwich contest: Homeschoolers not wanted.

Subway Sandwiches has teamed up with Scholastic Books in offering a writing contest open to all school aged students, grades preK-6, except for homeschooled children. One could assume that this exclusion is based on the $5,000 worth of athletic equipment being awarded to the contest winner’s school of choice. However, as noted at the blog, Capturing Today, this money prize could make a difference even in the hands of a homeschooled student.

“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.”

Exactly!

Here are some links that may be of help or interest:

Subway Contest Rules

For the scoop on the contest, their four story starters and an online entry submission form, check out the above link. My oldest loves to write and is working on a story to enter. We’ll let Subway sort it all out. I’m not suggesting that the millions of homeschoolers out there swamp their contest.  Really.

Contact Subway

And when you do, please don’t be rude. We don’t need to take the malicious road here, though they do need reminded that technically, every homeschooling family out there is a “private school” entity. And we do eat at their restaurants, and just might be among Scholastic’s biggest customer bases.

The link for the online submission form to boycott Subway

Whether or not you choose to take it to this level is up to you. Boycotts do effect change. As Christians, we can turn the other cheek and show them grace, but I can’t help but see this as a purposed dig at my choice on how to educate my children. Home education is already under fire in California and other places. Some issues are important, others aren’t. My freedom to view homeschooling as a viable choice for my children’s education is being challenged here.  So here’s what I think: If my children’s essays aren’t welcome in this contest, then as a home educator, I really don’t feel welcome in their restaurant.

Subway is perhaps our favorite fast food restaurant…and we have only three or four to choose from in our small hometown. Come on, Subway! What were you thinking?

Any thoughts on this?

Last fall we had a horse trader stop by our place and offer us a pittance for two of our horses. He proceeded to tell us how many people are being forced out of the horse business due to the doubling and tripling prices of hay, and the shortage of grains here in the USA. Of course we knew this already, but at the time we weren’t ready to give in and pare down our herd. This guy told us that he has people pull up to his place, unload a trailer full of horses and say, “Just send me whatever you think they’re worth, I can’t afford to keep them.”

This article at cbsnews.com says that people are dropping their horses off on government land and at city parks. And the higher hay prices couldn’t have come at a worse time. When you consider that hundreds of thousands of unwanted American horses were slaughtered every year…prior to April of 2007 when it became illegal in the USA…it’s no wonder that there’s a surplus of people with horses that no one wants, much less can afford to feed.

I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of selling horses for dog food or for human consumption (yes, it’s a delicacy in certain countries), please understand that. Yet there have been times in our married life when we dropped a horse off at a sale not knowing what it would sell for, but not really caring because the horse had proven itself to be a danger to my husband or just a downright mean horse. Plus, you can’t keep them all. Now there is absolutely no money in horses, there’s so many free for the taking. So what used to pay for itself has now become a huge drain on our family budget. I can hardly joke about it anymore, but for a couple years now I’ve maintained that our horses eat better than we do. It’s ridiculous.

Sobering stuff we heard from this horse trader, yet at the time, we couldn’t bear to let the two horses he was interested in go for the couple hundred he was wanting to offer. Hubby has always raised horses…he bought his first one with money earned weeding farm crops at age ten. We’ve had as many as twenty at one time in our married life. We’d keep a couple of colts each summer and sell the rest to pay for pasture rent. Now we’re down to owning two Shetland ponies (for our girls) and six mares and geldings.

Sunday morning my dh loaded up the paint mare* that my father-in-law gave me 14 years ago. He took her and her two year old to a sale, dropped them off and made it back in time for church. We’re just hoping they made enough at the auction to pay the sale barn’s commission. And before you blame him for taking my horses to a sale, let me assure you that I insisted. They are special, but sentimental doesn’t pay the bills. At least the other horses we still have are all great bloodlines, kid-friendly and assets at hubby’s job. My horse was always too high-spirited to trust very far.

If we owned our own pasture, or had a way to raise our own hay crop, things would be different.

A “chicken in every pot” and a “horse in every yard”. Not for the majority in America. Maybe not for long at our place either.

*Topaz, pictured above on a drizzly afternoon last week, picture credit goes to my friend Amy

Here are some pictures I took yesterday of our glittering ice encased yard…

This first one is out the back porch door, looking up toward our horse barn…

This one is also taken from near my back porch door, with me standing behind our Suburban…beyond the hay bale you’ll see our horses.

Down our driveway, which by the way, is awesome for sledding when icy…

Out across our front yard, note the hydrant icicle…

And last, a picture taken out behind our property…can’t believe that ice!

So many families in our community are without power that a temporary shelter has been made available for their use. Just the other night my husband and I took our generator out to my older sister’s. Otherwise, they’d be without power till at least December 22! And when you’re reliant on well water, that means no water either!

Counting our blessings!

MInTheGap is having a contest! He is giving the winner a free DVD called The League of Grateful Sons. This movie, put out by Vision Forum, details the legacy left by the fathers of World War 2…follow the movie title link to find out more…

And go to MInTheGap’s site for a chance at winning! This contest begins today, and ends on December 20, 2007!

Every mom has been there.

We had chiropractor appointments at 11:45 A.M. today. Before that, we picked up my oldest daughter’s reading glasses and rushed through several errands. No time for lunch at home. And the Donna Reed in me (snort-cough) didn’t have the foresight to get a picnic packed…

After the appointments we stopped at the nearby library and then finished our errand running with a trip to Wal-Mart. Of course, the whole time I’m eying my watch and realizing that lunch is going to be after 3 P.M. if we don’t pick it up in town.

Then I reasoned, the cheapest place to pick up lunch is McDonalds…but who wants to eat hormone filled and pesticide affected meat raised by unregulated South American beef producers?

Sheesh, what a dilemma. The kids were great though, I’d promised them something to tide them over, just wasn’t sure what that something would be. See, we rarely eat out. When we do, it’s because we have something to celebrate (as in: We have some money!!! Let’s eat out!!!). Taking the girls out to lunch without dear husband just almost seems mean, in our little world of hardly-ever-eating-out.

And I know I’m not the only one that can count on one hand how many times she’s skipped McDonalds in favor of a loaf of bread and cheese for hastily assembled sandwiches while caught in town over the lunch hour…so don’t feel bad for me, I don’t!

So after consulting the girlies, we steered the shopping cart over to the dairy section and picked up cheese sticks, then to the fruit/veggie department for bananas and carrot sticks which we ate on the way home.

Pretty cheap and no complaints. Three year old fell asleep on the way home, tummy full and transferred into bed like a champ.

(While the rest of us skedaddled into the kitchen and made quesadillas! Don’t worry, we saved her one…)

So here’s my questions for you guys:

1. Do you eat at McDonalds?
2. In an average month, how many times do you eat fast food?
3. What’s your grocery-lunch-fix for those days when you’re away from home and eating out isn’t in the budget?

Answer any or all! Looking forward to your comments…

Yes, January is “Get Organized Month”.

I love being organized. I’m all for organization. It makes life so much easier…doesn’t it? Disclaimer: I don’t struggle with organization, I struggle with maintaining the organization!

The NY Times “Saying Yes to Mess” is a feel-good article for those of us that occasionally find ourselves with a case of the “Messies”. Though I did cringe at some of the jabs taken at Type A personalities.

“An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat “office landscapes”) and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts. It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.

Ouch to that last statement.

Yet it does relieve my guilt over the fact that the only closet in my house with any order is the linen/game closet in the hallway.

Here’s a question for you. When you visit friends do you feel more comfortable in a home that is pristine-clean, or one that has the lived-in feel? Do you think any less of your friends whose homes are on the cluttered side? (My answer: No way!)

Amy at Amy’s Humble Musings posted some thoughts a couple weeks back in an article she titled, Obvious Correlations. She said,

“I think you can tell a lot about a lady by how long she takes to get ready, what the inside of her microwave looks like, and if she regifts.”

Interesting.  My microwave isn’t always clean, for instance, but it’s never gross. Does that count? I paint my toenails in the summertime (sandals), and apply makeup before going anywhere…so I guess being presentable to me, means 10-15 minutes in the bathroom.

And what exactly does this tell you about me?

That I take better care of myself than I do my microwave?

Ha. Thanks to Gina, I’m onto him. Dr. Phil, that is.

For those of you that wonder what the big deal is, go read “The Homeschool Scuttle”…or save yourself an hour and read the highlights of the article here.

Dr. Phil is airing today, November 24, a taping titled: “The Great School Debate”. In a nutshell, he’s lumping all homeschoolers into the “unschooling”category. Yeah, take the most radical and controversial approach out there and bingo, sensationalize it.

Taken from the article:

Dr. Phil opens the “Great Debate,” episode with news-media coverage of the recent school shootings, and in a grand flourish of the “Great Debate,” he states that more and more families are turning to homeschooling. This episode could very well be mainstream America’s first exposure to a “typical,” homeschooling family.Perhaps, a very new “Newbie,” is thinking of homeschooling as they watch this show, interested in the wise Dr. Phil’s assessment of homeschooling. While it’s true that the Unschooling family did hold her own very well against Dr. Phil who relentlessly kept quizzing her with questions such as, “Yes, but don’t you want your child to be prepared to compete in America’s competitive Market?” His choice to use a “Radical Homeschooling Family,” was exploitive, deliberately calculated and controversial.If he truly wanted to have a “Great Debate,” why not begin the show by first having a knowledgeable, reputable homeschooling advocate explain the many different styles and ways to homeschool, and the theories and benefits of each style, so that the mainstream general audience could develop informed opinions and be appreciative of what they were debating in the first place?He never, ever, once said, “Teach us about homeschooling.” Or, “Explain to me the different styles of homeschooling.” Instead, he right off, used this extreme, self-proclaimed, “Radical Unschooling Family,” and never explained the basic concepts of homeschooling and all the choices that homeschoolers can make in how they choose to teach their children.What I found most fascinating was how Dr. Phil enticed homeschoolers to be a part of this program. You’ll have to read the “Bait and Switch” part of the article, if you decide it’s worth your time. I had to laugh at the fact that the homeschoolers invited to the program were asked not to bring along any children under 18. Weird, huh. Even stranger when the homeschool families standing in line outside the studio realized that busloads of public school children were arriving to take places in the audience.

Hmm. What’s up with that? Deliberately rigging the audience?

The viewing audience will not be able to see the audience as being high school children. To the television viewer, they will just be arms in the air opposing homeschooling. This is when I realized why we had been brought in as, “Special Guest Audience.” The Dr. Phil Show took no chances. They wanted to make sure that they had an audience of 10-15% that would passionately raise their hands in favor of homeschooling, and a guarantee that the entire rest of the audience would be strongly in favor of traditional schooling. They did not want an audience of people who did not care one way or the other, as they might have had with a random, mainstream audience. They needed to have a handpicked audience that would unilaterally, overwhelmingly opposed the homeschooling, *ON* a homeschooling show in which the homeschoolers had been invited, and had come to express their love of homeschooling!

You’ll have to watch it and fill me in. Or read the article. According to people who’ve been to his tapings, this isn’t the first time he’s exploited lifestyle choices by pretended praise.

For those of you able to tune in, I’m really interested in hearing your thoughts.

Earlier this month, I posted at the Weekend Kindness site: Kindness to Kids. In it I shared several ideas on a way to reach out this Christmas. Whether you take on this project as an individual, as a family, a 4H community service project, or as a church, I think it has the capacity to bless many. Yourself included!

I hope you stop in over there and read it, and while there, sign up for this weekend’s mission: Send a love letter listing the reasons, “Why I love you so much!”

If you’re interested, MInTheGap has posted Let It Rain on his website…written by yours truly!

He adds new articles several times a day, all current event types with a Christian bent. Worth checking out!