Nie Nie on Oprah

I stumbled onto CJane Enjoy its blog during the time she was caring for her sister's children while she was in a burn unit in Arizona. CJane was rejoicing that her sister was waking up.

Nie Nie is her sister, and survived a small plane accident with her husband. They were both enjoyable, creative, well-spoken bloggers before, it's the after that I stumbled upon that just captured and humbled me by their grace and fortitude.

Nie Nie was on Oprah Wendnesday, here is a short link. I dare you to not be moved.

Stephanie Nielson on Oprah

double-dog dare you

I know this will be in my heart in the everyday mornings of my mommylife, and I know it will be a good thing.

amen

short thoughts and linky-links

First, for some eye-candy, go over to Red Letter Words and drool a little. It's an Etsy store, and I'm in love.

School answer machine message. Sometimes you just have to say what you really want to say...

I think fall may have finally arrived in So. Ca! I hope, I hope. -we were just at the beach 3 days ago and it was hot there...so maybe I'm jumping the gun here.. Fall is my favorite season, blink and you miss it here, but while it is here I love it so!

This means pumpkin cheesecake, people!! oh yeah!

okay, he's having a bad day- me, not so much

I stepped outside my house this morning for my daily walk with Emma, the wonder-labradoodle. Frankly, I was already having a bad day...feeling bad about something from the night before.

Still in my doorway, I heard a bunch of screeching and squawking- I looked and saw one of our resident hawks...

Chasing one of these guys.......


and he was very, very close. I don't think the parrot escaped. But I hope he did.

They flew over the house across the street.

Suddenly, my complaints didn't seem so large.

I guess it's all about perspective, sometimes.

excessive field-tripping

Just a public service announcement to say that I have been absent from blog-land due to an excessive, (tho very fun) amount of field-tripping. I arrived home from Singapore, was home for a few days, and then we packed up the kids and flew to Boston. We arrived back late Wednesday night, and now I am very busy doing some catch-up homeschooling. Our puppy is also arriving this Sunday! Busy, busy, busy.

I've got lots of pics, I'll be back to share!

I love exploring, but I love being home even more. It is so good to be home!

Spring Break!

It's spring break here at Home!

So, what does that look like? A bit of exciting mixed with just hanging out...

Here is part of the crew on Monday, having lunch at Rubios. Hey, when
you have to buy for 5 kids...eating out is exciting!
(long gone are the days when 2 kids would share a small burger...now they all desire their very own kid's meal...sigh.)

We went bowling at the super-swank, uber-expensive bowling alley near us. I weighed the cost vs. going farther to an unknown alley, and the weird smells/icky shoes...and caved and went to the cool alley.

Surprise bonus, they are running a special this week, lunch and bowling, for much less than usual. Very cool. We already had lunch. Not cool. They gave us dessert instead, very cool!

My new i phone takes great photos, unfortunately they are small... live and learn!

Happy Spring, Everyone!!

Bonus links for today:

*Susan Boyle- I loove an under-dog! Click over to watch a roomful of patronizing young things drop their jaws, it's a sweet moment.

*When jumping-jacks fail...what happens when your kids are deprived of group P.E. classes... (click over, you will have a good laugh!)

Twitter as a school subject?

I happened upon this very interesting article:

Brit kids learn to Twitter in School over at Strollerderby.
Here's a short quote from the article...

But it's not all about technology. The proposal also calls for less usage of calculators and more of a focus on life skills, including learning to handle peer pressure and develop relationships.

So, what do you think? If your local school district made a move in this direction, would you be up-in-arms?

My thoughts- (cuz it's my blog, and this is where I get to go on and on with my thoughts, ha!..)

Well, in our state, the school districts are doing a dismal job educating the kids...In many areas, less than half of the students typically test lower than proficient in the basic subject areas- the high schools have been struggling for years to get more than half the seniors to pass exit exams that are not even 12th grade exams...

Sooo, I would be up in arms over this. I would rather the schools work on the basics first.

Something interesting I've noticed about new technology and kids; they seem to pick it up amazingly quick. It's like magic. Can't use your new iphone?...hand it over to your kindergartner and he'll figure it out in 10 minutes.

I'm thinking the kids will learn to text, twitter and Facebook just fine, outside of school.

What do you think? Should I count my kid's time on Club Penguin as school? Maybe hand out some High School credit to Meg for getting a Facebook page? hmmm, I'll have to tweet on that...