Sticking My Neck Out

I took a rather large leap last night. 

My local homschooling group has been in formation for over 17 years.  I have lately seen discontent and heard from various folks about the lack of community and issues with not having enough activities for children of various ages particpate in.  All this has been spoken in small groups, not able to make a formed desicion for any group that consists of 200 poeple.  I finally had heard enough to understand that we need to gather our community together as a whole and do some problem solving.  So last night I wrote a lengthy email to the group and breifly described issues that I have been hearing from a variety of scources and encouraged folks to join in on a discussion.

So far, I have had some responses.  All positive!  I am waiting for much more and the windfall of sniping to possibly occur.  We will see.  Me!  Making Waves!  Well, if that is what it takes to get some participation, then I am all fot it.

I will keep posting about this as it evolves.

Quickies.

New Edition!

I haven’t done anything really invovled or indepth in many years with my own artistic endeavors so I thought I would post a couple of the 5 five minute jobbies that I have played with in the past year.  As you will see they are really far from art, but I don’t have time to delve into projects that require my inspiration and attention for maintained amounts of energy due to interupting life. LOL

I hope to put aside a little more aside for me time, but we’ll see. 

T. Piano

Today T. sat down and played a little section of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the Piano.

I was so happy for him as this is his first musical endevor.  We videotaped it so everyone could here it!

http://www.ringo.com/videos/videos.html?videoId=264496641

Swim Playdate

Quiet fun at the Pool!

Splish Splash

On Saturday we found a great local resource for Swimming all year round.  Greene Community Pool.  If only folks actual were told about this and encouraged to go.  That little rant there is another story, but we found our way to this lovely little spot and enjoyed ourselves for two hours swimming with our good friends the Rayne family.  T. pushed himself to float a few times and did lots of jumping into the water.  He called one in particular his Pencil Dive!  He even did a few under water back flips with me.  If only I can get him to stop holding his nose all the time.  I know he can do without it, but he seems to forget all the time he has practiced this in the tun in the last year.  B. had a good time playing ball and having races.  I even got to swim a little which was nice and something I really miss doing.

Building a Town

T. has been fascinate by the wonderful books we have full of ideas for homeschoolers and games.  He found one that involved taking our house and turning it upside down and creating his own community of stores.

These pictures show the beginning of his process.  This is T.’s Post Office.  Later he adds a Giant grocery store.  He also changes his Post office to a Library at one point.  This was continually added to throughout the week and he had all sorts of fun with it. 

We are family!

Mama Goat

These beautiful girls are the newest addition to our farm.  We found them in Newark Valley from a nice farming family who is changing from Boer/saanen to nubians.  I am still in the process of settng up their new home.  They still need a hay rack and grain feeder for the stall and run-in. I have to build the run-in in our back pasture.  I need to run three lines of electrical wire in the pasture all along the inside of our fence.

So we have lots to do yet, but they seem happy in their new home so far.

Mother’s Day

Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamaition of 1870

The first North American Mother’s Day was conceptualized with Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870. Despite having penned The Battle Hymn of the Republic 12 years earlier, Howe had become so distraught by the death and carnage of the Civil War that she called on Mother’s to come together and protest what she saw as the futility of their Sons killing the Sons of other Mothers. With the following, she called for an international Mother’s Day celebrating peace and motherhood:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
 
“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of
charity, mercy and patience.
 
“We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
  
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, “Disarm, Disarm!”
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have of ten forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
 
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
 
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
 
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
 
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace.

The Rise & Fall of Howe’s Mother’s Day

At one point Howe even proposed converting July 4th into Mother’s Day, in order to dedicate the nation’s anniversary to peace. Eventually, however, June 2nd was designated for the celebration. In 1873 women’s groups in 18 North American cities observed this new Mother’s holiday. Howe initially funded many of these celebrations, but most of them died out once she stopped footing the bill. The city of Boston, however, would continue celebrating Howe’s holiday for 10 more years.

Despite the decided failure of her holiday, Howe had nevertheless planted the seed that would blossom into what we know as Mother’s Day today. A West Virginia women’s group led by Anna Reeves Jarvis began to celebrate an adaptation of Howe’s holiday. In order to re-unite families and neighbors that had been divided between the Union and Confederate sides of the Civil War, the group held a Mother’s Friendship Day.

excerpted from http://www.mothersdaycentral.com/about-mothersday/history/

Inspiration!

http://www.sabinekrummel.com/index.htm

If Sabine’s vibrant watercolors don’t inspire you, I just don’t know what could!

Enjoy!

Pleasant Day

This may sound odd but I have not said those words in years, until yesterday.  I have had pleasant times and hours and half hours, but a whole day is rare indeed.  I took my time writing up my blogs in the morning and the boys played gently till I was through.  Then I remembered I had wanted to attend a Fiber gathering that occurs at Sharon H.’s farms every Monday.  It started an hour before I realized this.  I called and was graciously invited over with my children.  Of course, I immediately had confrontation between the boys so I left one behind and took T. with me.  I arrived at her lovely relaxing farm and sat down and chatted and showed her alpaca roving I had been working on with the drop spindle.  I learned about tringle looms while there, too.  T. played with the goats and dogs and cats outside and roamed around the farm and played with some building toys and board games.  He was relaxed.  Regina M. and H. and J. joined us and spun on the wheels for a while and we all chatted and just relaxed.  It was warm outside when we left at 3:00pm!  I felt happy!  Comfortable!  Relaxed!  These are not normal conditions from me.  Even my Small Group Ministry meeting was successful for T. and myself.  Our topic was Overcommittment.  What interesting aspects come with such a loaded topic.  I have found that I am much less overcommitted this year than last year and was forced into that position by T.’s crisis’.  This is a very postive thing for me, as I was queen of overcommitment but now I can say “no” much more easily now, though it still comes with some flavor of guilt some times.  That will be recified some day.

Chicken Hatching Developments

Well, we have successes but we also have a few sad failures.  I won’t go into gorry details but it looks like we are going to lose at least one hatched chick and have had three in process of hatching mysteriously die.

But!  We do have serveral that have hatched and may still hatch.  The black one in the picture is the chick more than likely going to pass away in the next few days.  The two large chicks in the incubator are the suspected cuase of some of the deaths in process.  Enjoy the pictures!