I'm still here

Well, life has been busy, and has just gotten busier with school being over. I was looking forward to lazy days of summer, but my schedule has been intense. And school isn't really over, we do it year round here. Life round?

My children have grown a whole lot. In the fall I'll be tutoring for our local Classical Conversations where all 4 children will be attending in the fall. When we took Eldest out of the University-Model School in January we enrolled her in Classical Conversations (CC for short) and it was the perfect fit for what we needed. Classical education is based on the Trivium, or three paths of Grammar, Dialectic and Rhetoric. Young children can memorize tons of information, young teenagers start delving into the whys and hows and older teens and adults (should be able to) synthesize the information they understand to make points and persuasive arguments and draw conclusions. So all 4 will be memorizing facts, according to their ability about U.S. History with a class once a week.

Eldest son had his last day of public school (ever?) yesterday. Next week he starts homeschool again while Princess has Basketball camp. For most afternoons we plan to be at the pool. I have hopes to clean things out and organize and move where we do school work, but those jobs may be saved for rainy afternoons... I don't know. The week after Eldest Son has Baseball camp and then we go camping with our friends from Mount Oak.

So - we're doing pretty well. I've spent less time on the computer, and therefore less time thinking about blogging. I know people I love want to read updates however, so here is one.

-Mommy

Welcome to the Blog of horrible non-updatedness

Yeah, just haven't had much time to type. Life's pretty much as normal as anyone who knows what to expect would expect from a family with 4 kids including a 12 year old girl. The 12 year old girl adds lots of character. So does the 4 year old boy and the 7 year old boy, and the 9 year old girl (alternately sour and sweet) - it's a regular cast of characters here.

So what's up?

Trying to get a more fuel efficient car with a lower payment.
Hoping the value of our house will go back to what we paid for it so we can get into one that's laid out better.
Cleaning up our junk and throwing / giving most of it away, since we haven't really touched most of it since we moved 2+ years ago.
Trying to figure out how to live in the budget we need to (we've got a good pattern down, but staying there is tough).

That's the highlight's I suppose!

If you're on Facebook, add me as a friend using my cowbaka@gmail.com address. I'm hidden, but you should be able to get me via email.

Pictures, which I AM legally allowed to use!

You know, WalMart / Target will usually print any digital pictures you send them, but sometimes they get persnickety about "professional" prints. Anyway, this picture WAS purchased in digital format from Sears by my mother!

Merry Christmas! (not "Happy Holidays")

Merry Christmas everyone! Not "happy holidays" - as Brad Stein says, "there are a bunch of holidays in February too, but no one says 'happy holidays' - they call it what it is! 2000 years later, Jesus is still intimidating people". :)

I'm really on an acapella (Firefox doesn't seem to know that word) Christmas music kick this year. I've been listening a lot to some slightly older stuff from

Manhattan Transfer who also has a new CD out (well it came out last year, but I just got it this year) and Rockapella (another Rockapella CD)

There are a few new Christmas CDs out which I've enjoyed a good bit. Christmas music is about the only music I buy any more. When I buy it from ITunes or import it into my music library, I always make it a point to change the genre to "Christmas" since it seems to always come in as "holiday" :)

OK, I don't know why, but Blogger has an "Edit Html" pane, but it hijacks anything you do (sort of like Microsoft but much worse). If you want to not allow HTML editing, don't. Offering this half-baked solution is completely bogus.

Anyway, scroll waaaaayyyy down for the rest of this post.

	This is my favorite new CD this year - it's also where the Brad Stein quote above comes from.
	This is the best of the "various artists" offerings of 2007 IMO.
	There's a really awesome song on here "Quiet Christmas Night" - probably my favorite new Christmas song of the year. The other 2 tracks are all right, but not as good as Jaci's Christmas CD from a couple years back.
	This band's pretty good for a Disney band. They are Christians, but the songs on their other CDs is not written from a Christian world-view. This CD's quite good, though.
	I enjoyed this CD, but there's really not much Michael W Smith on it - it's more orchestra and choir.
	I am actually a little ashamed of Relient K for releasing this CD - since almost all of it is exactly the same tracks as their "Deck the Halls Bruise Your Hand" CD. I should have just bought the tracks that were different - but if you don't have the other CD, buy this one.
	This CD has some awesome tracks, although there was 1 I really didn't like at all because it was a bit raunchy. Maybe they think they made up for it by reading from Luke 2 on another track?

This One's For Bernie

If you were at MO 5 or more years ago, and involved in Children's Ministry, you knew Bernie. Why I'm talking about him today involves one of his controversial practices...

Breaking news to the 5th graders

that

there

was

no

Santa Claus.

Why am I remembering Bernie today?
Yesterday Mr. Clean came home from school and told me I had to mail a letter to the fictitious man. I told him I wasn't going to do it. He told me that it was an assignment and was very, very distressed that I said there was no Santa Claus when his teacher had told them all about seeing a reindeer with a red nose in the sky and that it was Santa practicing.
So it was a parents vs. teacher evening, and quite frankly, in his eyes, the teacher wins. I don't blame him really, because he is on his best behavior at school (he received the responsibility award 1st semester) and he is not at home - so he gets consistently good feedback from her and both kinds from me.
I got emotionally involved because it drives me INSANE how the public school system says that they can not teach anything about Jesus, or the reason why Christmas STARTED or even really why it's called CHRISTmas without the ACLU closing in. But their employee can work on instilling a faith in a fat man who breaks into your house while you're sleeping.
I really have nothing against St. Nick himself. I enjoyed the fantasy as a kid, but I'm a literalist and always have been. Tell me the whole truth and nothing but the truth or I'll feel betrayed. I promised myself that my kids would always know the truth about Santa Claus, negative numbers and ellipses. (Yes, I remember finding out that what I had been taught to believe was wrong about each of these things and wondered why the adults couldn't have just told me the truth from the beginning). There's a magic to the Santa Claus story.

BUT

If you can't teach faith in the public school -
DON'T teach my children faith in a myth that is currently about getting more stuff when our world is consumerist enough already.

I guess I should use my soapbox to dismount from my high horse. Daddy had to help me with what to write for the teacher.

Mr. Clean - there IS NO Santa Claus. There WAS a Christian Saint where this all started - but no fat man will be bringing you Thomas trains this Christmas. There are grown ups who love to give presents in secret - and that's a good memorial to Saint Nicolas. I wish you could believe me instead of her.

Maybe Daddy will chime in with his moderated thoughts about my emotions so you can get his side.

In the Middle

I opened the can of worms.
I have no idea if anyone is reading, and if so who - I don't know my audience. 4 people have talked about the blog in recent history, one of them being Daddy, so I may just be talking to myself. I don't know how to check. If there is a wider audience, I've been ruminating.

I don't want to defend myself. I believe my children needed a parent and I desperately wanted to be their parent. I do want to be introspective, because I can't afford to not try to understand the issue of race better.

My last post could alienate me to both sides. To the people who have lived their whole lives on the island of Caucasia, where travelers from other ethnicities visit but don't live, I'm almost a traitor to acknowledge that racism still exists.

To the people who live on some other islands - by trying to say "I've shared that experience." I've only proved that I don't understand part of the nitty-gritty of their life.

I'm never going to be African American. I'm never going to be Ethiopian. I can't even "pass" for having a gene tie to my children to people of African descent - if he or she says "mom" they say "So, you adopted" and not in the form of a question.

But as their mom I need to work on this gap between white privilege and racism. The disparity between the experiences and treatment. There is no guarantee what types of experiences my children will have, but the world is far from perfect. While I hope the balance is tipped towards the times they feel loved, accepted and included, I know there will be times when they feel left out, different and outside. I need to learn how to help them deal with the things that are unfair.

I don't know where to go with this one. Racism exists, my children will experience it in their lives in ways that I can't. I hope that some of my experiences can help them, but I also need the experiences of people who have experienced "walking in their skin" to help them. I'm a light-skinned woman who has a vested interest in race issues, who is aware of the color of my "world" and who spends time trying to understand race in dialogue and study. I'm also the mother of children with skin of deeper hues but I don't have the generations of knowledge of how to cope with and fight racism without being broken by it.

In the middle.

Racism

I feel like I may have just put my foot in my mouth again. I was reading Tracey's blog, a fellow adoptive mom that I've met in Real Life and I felt compelled to reply to a post.

But did I just sound like an ignorant white?

There are experiences that people of color have because of the systemic racism in society. Things where people act out of wrongly held assumptions, pigheadedness, ignorance and bigotry. Sometimes I feel compelled to say "Me too." I've been mistaken for the store employee: "Do you work here?" irregardless of the color shirt I'm wearing or lack of smock. I don't know what the visual clues are, but I've come across the people who aren't looking for dark skin or textured hair.

Likewise, I've been trailed in stores as a potential shoplifter. Not so much with kids, I like the pretty knick-knack stores. I don't go in them anymore, because they don't work well with a toddler. But I regularly had an employee shadow "Can I HELP you?" while eying where I might have pockets. So I guess it was discrimination against people under 30 who like coats with lots of pockets.

I've been ignored and overlooked because I've been "too young". I've been discredited and discriminated against because of the color of my skin "My mom told me I don't have to listen to a white teacher." And I've been told that a stranger might be a better parent for the child I've cared for because he isn't the same race as me.

I guess what I want to say is that discrimination and mistaken identity - I've been asked if I'm the sponsor for my children - since it was the best explanation for the worker at the international market. She took what she saw and tried to make sense of it. A late twenties light girl with straight hair and an adolescent Ethiopian girl doesn't automatically read as "mother-daughter" for the majority of the population.

We all need to be stretched. We try to understand the world based on what we've known to be true of it in the past. Some people have a lot of mistaken untrue beliefs that they use to filter the world - wrong beliefs about women, people who look different, people who speak with an accent, people who are too young to have the same life experiences or those who have had so much life experience that we think we can discount them because they are outdated.

In addition, so much is misunderstandings. There is overt calculated devaluing of people, there are the subconscious decisions that we make based on what we believe is true. Then there are the accidents, the misinterpretations. Tracey wasn't talking about them in her post, but I live in a life of blunders. Some people of diversity believe it's discrimination when a white person won't look them in the eye in a public place. Then there's me. I don't always have the self-esteem to look strangers in the eye, and I'm just as likely to "snub" the person who looks like my grandmother the same way I just snubbed you. And I've had enough classes and read enough articles and books (WHY do they think it would be in his best interests to be in a different family?) that I know there are people who don't think that I should be their mom... and I don't want to invite a confrontation in case they are a member of the National Association of Black Social Workers.

I know, I'm a wimp. I'd rather not have a negative social interaction so often I choose to avoid social interactions with strangers. Sometimes I force myself into them, I join groups and attend meetings... Very often I do not know what to say to people. Like "Please tell me what I don't know about locks."

I don't have a way to wrap this up, so I'll just leave my ending hanging.