My Daily Domestic Clips 09/01/2010 (a.m.)

• Zac Bissonnette: How Student Debt Will Ruin Your Life

  tags: debt college

• Adam Daniels: Debt Sexy: Zac Bissonnette Makes Paying for College Look Good - Annotated

  tags: debt college

  • "I think there's a problem in thinking that college has to be the best four
    years of your life," Bissonnette said. "Well, if the best four years of your
    life puts you in so much debt that you can't pursue the career that you want,
    you can't have a family, you can't buy a house, then that's the worst four years
    of your life."

    
    

    While you definitely won't be able to follow every single piece of advice and
    save the more than $100,000 the back cover touts, the numerous take-aways make
    this book a worthwhile read. Whether you're a B-average junior in high school
    trying to figure out where to apply or a junior in college with nothing in
    savings, wondering how to finance the second half of your undergrad degree, it'd
    sure be nice if you sent Bissonnette a muffin basket with all that extra money
    you'll have.
    

• Genetic Marker Linked to Ovarian Cancer Risk - Annotated

  tags: cancer ovariancancer

  • July 22, 2010 -- A newly identified genetic marker may help predict ovarian
    cancer risk, Yale University researchers report online in Cancer
    Research. Variations in the KRAS gene occur in one-quarter of women with
    ovarian cancer, and 61% of women with ovarian cancer who have a family history
    of breast and ovarian cancer.

    
    

    "For many women out there with a
    strong family history of ovarian cancer who previously have had no identified
    genetic cause for their family's disease, this might be it for them," says study
    researcher Joanne B. Weidhaas, MD, PhD, an associate professor of therapeutic
    radiology and researcher for the Yale Cancer Center in New Haven, Conn., in a
    news release. "Our findings support that the KRAS-variant is a new genetic
    marker of ovarian cancer risk."

    
    

    While BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are known markers for breast and ovarian cancer
    risk, only half of the women with a family history of these cancers tested
    positive for these genes. Fully 60% of these women did test positive for the
    KRAS genetic mutation, the new study shows.

    
    

    Women with BRCA genetic mutations tend to develop ovarian cancer at younger
    ages, but those with the new genetic marker tend to develop ovarian cancer after
    menopause, the researchers report.

  • Ovarian cancer is known as a particularly lethal cancer because symptoms can
    be vague and many women are not diagnosed until the cancer has already started
    to spread.

    
    

    "People are blindsided when they get ovarian cancer; they really had no
    idea," Weidhaas tells WebMD. "This is a cancer where there are not a lot of
    known risks so there is probably more of an inherited component and it's really
    important to identify ways for us to know who is really at risk."

    
    

    What's more, the new KRAS mutation "might predict ovarian cancer in the
    general population as well," she says. "This will require a large study and
    needs additional validation."

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My Daily Domestic Clips 08/31/2010 (a.m.)

• Glenn Beck crowd: racially diverse - Annotated

  tags: currentevents politics

  • The crowd itself included veterans, parents, disabled Americans, people of all ages and – contrary to some criticism leveled against the rally – attendees of many races and ethnicities.
    
    
    
    

    Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union based in Washington, D.C., for example, stood on the platform with Alveda King as she recalled her uncle Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic "I Have a Dream" speech.
    
    

    Before the multitudes assembled Alveda King proclaimed, "If Uncle Martin could be here today … he would surely remind us that as brothers and sisters, united by one blood in one single race, the human race, we are called to honor God and to love each other."
    
    

    Praising the entire rally, Gardner exclaimed, "It was phenomenal!
    
    

    "It felt great to be up there with all these wonderful leaders, the black pro-life leaders from all over the country," Gardner said. "I was extremely proud of my sister in Christ and my dear friend, Dr. Alveda King. … Seeing her walk out where her uncle and her father were 47 years ago – my eyes welled up, and I had a lump in my throat, because we have come a really long way."
    
    

  • "I think it's made about 90 percent of the politicians in this city very nervous," Roever said. "Some of them are tremblin' in their offices right now because this is a statement – not only to D.C., but to the whole country – that we're not going to be satisfied with the status quo."
    
    

    Roever said he wants all politicians – from the president to lawmakers to activist judges – to know that many people are fed up like him:
    
    

• Intimate Issues: The Making of a Marriage Bed ~ Holy Experience - Annotated

  What a charming idea!

  tags: marriage

  • Last weekend, we celebrated my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. This morning, they left on a long-awaited trip to Hawaii. They were as excited as if it were their honeymoon.
    
    When my parents married, they had only enough money for a three-day trip 50 miles from home. They made a pact that each time they made love, they would put a dollar in a special metal box and save it for a honeymoon in Hawaii for their 50th anniversary.
  • 
    
    My parents were always very much in love. I can remember Dad coming home and telling Mom, "I have a dollar in my pocket," and she would smile at him and reply, "I know how to spend it."

• Roman Catholic Vocations: "23 Reasons Why A Priest Should Wear His Collar"

  tags: Catholic priesthood

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My Daily Domestic Clips 08/30/2010 (a.m.)

• Glenn Beck rally signals election trouble for Dems - BostonHerald.com - Annotated

  tags: currentevents

  • The tea party is essentially a loosely organized band of anti-tax,
    libertarian-leaning political newcomers who are fed up with Washington and take
    some of their cues from Beck. While the movement drew early skepticism from
    establishment Republicans, these same GOP powerbrokers now watch it with a wary
    eye as activists have mounted successful primary campaigns against
    incumbents.

    
    

    The Beck rally further demonstrated the tea party activists’ growing
    political clout.

    
    

    If the GOP is able to contain and cooperate with the tea party, and recharge
    its evangelical wing with Beck-style talk of faith, it spells the kind of change
    Ratliff and others like him are searching for.

    
    

    The promise of change helped President Barack Obama win the White House in
    2008, but could turn against his fellow Democrats this year. Americans’ dim view
    of the economy has grown even more pessimistic this summer as the nation’s
    unemployment rate stubbornly hovered near 10 percent and other troubling
    economic statistics have emerged on everything from housing to the economy’s
    growth.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My Daily Domestic Clips 08/28/2010 (a.m.)

• Hilltop Farm: Feast Day: St. Monica (mother of St. Augustine)

  tags: Catholic feast saints stmonica

• Tales of the Schoolyard: Confession -- I Was a Bully | BlogHer

  another reason to be grateful for homeschooling.

  tags: homeschooling

• Op-Ed Columnist - This Is Not a Recovery - NYTimes.com - Annotated

  • But we can safely predict what he and other officials will say about where we
    are right now: that the economy is continuing to recover, albeit more slowly
    than they would like. Unfortunately, that’s not true: this isn’t a recovery, in
    any sense that matters. And policy makers should be doing everything they can to
    change that fact

  • The important question is whether growth is fast enough to bring down
    sky-high unemployment. We need about 2.5 percent growth just to keep
    unemployment from rising, and much faster growth to bring it significantly down.
    Yet growth is currently running somewhere between 1 and 2 percent, with a good
    chance that it will slow even further in the months ahead. Will the economy
    actually enter a double dip, with G.D.P. shrinking? Who cares? If unemployment
    rises for the rest of this year, which seems likely, it won’t matter whether the
    G.D.P. numbers are slightly positive or slightly negative.

    
    

    All of this is obvious. Yet policy makers are in denial.

• Waltzing Matilda: St. Monica's Feast Day

  tags: Catholic feast saints stmonica

• Catholic Culture : Liturgical Year

  tags: Catholic feast saints stmonica

• St. Monica - Saints & Angels - Saints & Angels - Catholic Online

  tags: Catholic feast saints stmonica

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

St. Monica

Today is the feast of one of my favorite saints, St. Monica. St. Monica a tenacious prayer warrior when it came to her children, particularly Augustine who later became one of the great doctors of the church. She prayed, followed and encouraged him with all of her strength. She never gave up.

Today I suppose we would call such a woman a nag. It certainly isn't the fashion to follow grown children around and encourage them on their Christian walk. But that's what Monica did and it paid off.  I take a lot of heart in that. It seems that in our culture the emphasis is on pushing the kids out of the nest as soon as they graduate from high school.  We pretend that somehow magically getting that high school diploma or moving to a college campus transforms automatically teens into wise adults who are totally self-sufficient and don't need much from their parents any more (other than regular checks and use of the laundry).

The transition from teen to adult is a tricky one in our culture. It's hard to make that jump gracefully. Even harder for many to make it and keep their Catholic faith intact. And surprisingly for me, it seems to be just as hard if not harder for kids who have been homeschooled most or all of their lives than for kids who attended public or parochial schools. Some of the stuff I've been seeing on Facebook the last few years from young people I watched growing up in our Catholic homeschool community is concerning. Especially in the young women.

In the interest of full disclosure I have to say that I am not entirely pleased with the way my oldest adult child is living his life either. Mr. Pete and I had a lukewarm faith in our early 20s and we had hoped to spare our children from those years in the desert, but it hasn't turned out that way for our first born. What we see as barren desert, he sees as Vegas. I guess he'll have to work it out of his system the way we did.

As hurtful as turning his back on his faith has also been the way he has ignored his family.  I want him to make his own friends and live his own life, but not at the expense of missing important family milestones. And when he went on vacation with another family but totally missed the small weekends we had as a family, it's sometimes a little hard to take.

I remember being 18, 19 and 20 years old and although I though I knew a lot I realize that I realize in retrospect that I didn't know very much.  My mom was a very steady presence in my early adult years but even more so in my late 30s and 40s when she helped with the homeschooling, gave her help and opinion on our home school, or even when she just called me everyday to see how I was or to share some chit chat.  Dear Lord, how I really miss those calls now.

Sometimes I get chastised myself for being a clingy mom, so it gives me a lot of satisfaction on this feast day to see that the church really does see a place for moms who take that vocation seriously right on up through adulthood, for the sake of the souls of her children. It reiterates that motherhood is a lifelong commitment, one that doesn't end on the 18th or 21st birthday.  You're never too old to take advice and love from your mom either!  And I am grateful to my own mom who embodied that, although I couldn't always see it at the time.


St. Monica - Catholic Online


Catholic Culture : Liturgical Year

for further reading:


Life of Saint Monica

Saint Monica: C. 332-387 : Model of Christian Mothers


Charlotte at Waltzing Matilda has created these coloring pages: St Monica.
Charlotte also has a link to a tasty Algerian dish to celebrate the feast with!






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Ohio Homeschoolers are trying to get their notifications in before the start of the public school year. I wrote about this a little bit here and also here and I'm adding a bit more information.

The notification form for Ohio Homeschoolers is available here.   This is the standard form for the state. Some school districts (like mine) send their own form.  Just ignore it.  The standard form is compliant with the Ohio law and that's all the school district is really entitled to.  YOU ARE ONLY REQUIRED TO GIVE THE INFORMATION ON THE FORM.  Do not give any additional information like social security numbers.

The first five items on the form are pretty easty to comply with. I also make a list of the books and courses that I am going to useas required in item #7.  This year's book list is here. However, I always ran into a little trouble with the #6 in the list of required documents.

(6) Brief           outline of the intended curriculum for the current year. Such outline is for           informational purposes only

I wasn't sure what a "brief"outline was exactly?  Wouldn't my list of books and resources pretty much suffice as an outline of what I hoped to cover?  No.  Because when I sent I sent in just the book list with the forms, I got a letter back that they needed an outline. For years, I took every textbook with me down to Kinkos and copied all of the tables of content.  It was a lot of work, a lot of money and a lot of paper! Plus, I'm pretty sure they never even looked at them as I totally forgot to put Calvin's math book contents in with the packet one year and no one ever questioned it!

So a few years ago I tried putting the list on line on one of my blogs with links to each book.  In my cover letter I mentioned that this was to be my "brief outline."  That's the year I learned they don't read the cover letters either.  I got a form letter in the mail a few days later asking for my outline.

What to do?    I wanted something I wasn't going to slave over, something that wouldn't require LOTS of copying and would satisfy the regulations.  That's when I found the Typical Course of Study Site by the folks at the World Book Encyclopedia!

They have all of the grades through 12th grade and they are easily copied and pasted into a word document where they can be easily adjusted and changed to meet your needs.  They met the requirement of a "brief outline" for my school district!  If you're a newbie in Ohio, or if your state requires an outline, maybe this will work for you too.

There are other options too. The Ohio Department of Education Standard Guides.  This isn't as easy to use for a quick cut and paste, but for parents that want to come up with a goo doutline, this is a useful tool. 

This year I also purchased Cindy Down's Check list.  Here's a summary:

The Checklist contains 194 pages and includes:

step-by-step directions


a checklist (scope and sequence) of topics that students study from K - 12th grade. Unlike other scope and sequences, The Checklist is not organized by grade level. Instead, the topics are listed sequentially or by subject matter so that you can teach the subjects you want, when you want. For example, the history topics are listed by time period from creation through modern times; the math topics are listed by skill development; and the science topics are listed within subtopics such as oceanography, astronomy and meteorology.



lists of major events, important people, important places, discoveries and accomplishments, and/or terms to know for each history topic.



lists of important people related to each topic along with their country of birth, date of birth and death, and a brief description of their contribution.


lists of explorers of the world, countries of the world, U.S. symbols, U.S. States and capitols with their abbreviations and the dates they entered the Union.

lists of well-known authors, artists, musicians, and missionaries



recommended books for primary and secondary students (both American and world literature)



lists of reading, math skills, writing skills, grammar skills, art skills, and MUCH MUCH MORE!


There is no need to purchase more than one copy. There is room on The Checklist to keep records for two or three children. Purchaser is granted permission to make copies of The Checklist for additional children, if needed. (This permission is restricted to purchaser's immediate family.)

I have this on my computer and can print out any pages we are working on at the time.  This too is a good resource for coming up with the required Ohio outline.

Speaking of lists - this book is helpful.  I saw it at the CHEO convention and it is on my wish list!







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End of summer wrap up at My Domestic Church

Since getting or portfolios reviewed last week, the kids and I have been slacking off this week and trying to get some household work done. With five kids from Kindergarten to 12th grade I am really going to have my hands full and am trying to just get the major household projects done.

One of the things I wanted to get done this week was get Sam his driver's license. This part of Ohio is a tricky thing. The big driver's license bureau where he took his test to get his learning license has kids booked ahead for two weeks to take their driving test. So I found an out of the way bureau about 45 minutes from here that made us only wait a week.

Unfortunately, we do not have a small car. I drive a 7 passenger van and Mr. Pete drives a smaller SUV type vehicle for work. But they are both considered to be bigger vehicles for a driving student to drive. Still, Sam doesn't have any problem with them. He drove us out to the test site yesterday in Mr. Pete's vehicle on the express way. Did pretty well too in my opinion.

But at the test site things didn't go too well. Sam had to do this maneuverability test in this, and although the examiner told him it shouldn't matter what he was driving, she was quick to take points off every time he stopped to check himself and when his mirror dinged one of the poles. So bottom line... we have to take the stupid test again next week.

We apparently are a two-test family.

Luckily Sam's kind aunt has given him the use of her smaller car to practice with this week and to take the test. He owes her... big time!

So since there will be little for Sam and Gabe to do this afternoon, I am going to have them scrape the back bathroom wall, the hallway and Sam's bedroom - we'll see if we can have those all patched and painted!

Soccer has started and Sam has been able to do some reffing. He has already made $70 and will make $70 more this weekend. He and Gabe also helped a friend from work do some heavy construction (moving drywall, demolishing and garage and removing rubble) so they feel as if they're rolling in money right now!

Cross country practice has been going on for a while now - that's the one end of summer activity I enjoy though so I don't mind so much. Rosie and I are running too. I run with Rosie. She runs full speed as fast as she can and then she stops dead and falls down on the ground. Probably not the best training method but for a five year old it works for her! She tells me that I cannot run.

"But Rosie, look at me, I'm running!"

"Yea," she concedes, "but you run like this," (insert her version of an old lady trying to move her butt in something that resembles effort), "and I run like this!" as she whizzes by me full out.

While it's not great for my ego at least I am getting in some cross training when I run with Rosie - go and stop.

The last big thing on my plate has been the property my sister and I inherited up in Michigan. The property taxes on it almost tripled. I guess in Michigan they passed some sort of law back in the 90s to keep the property taxes "capped" as long as the owner ownes the land. But when that property transfers, even to descendents, the cap comes off and the state tries to make up for all those years of uncollected revenue in one fell swoop! My first instinct when I figured this out was to place some nice big For Sale signs on the property and be done with it. I even talked to a realtor and we discovered that the quickest sale of undeveloped land in the area took 73 days. The longest took two years. Still we were going to do it but we started to feel some resistance from family members.

By family members I'm talking first cousins once removed and second cousins, some of whom I wouldn't know if I passed them on the street! This particular piece of property was once part of the farm that my great-grandparents had. It passed to my grandfather and then to my uncle, and then back to my grandfather and then to my mom and now to my sister and I.

One cousin wanted to buy it but at considerably less than what the realtor was going to list it for. Wanted it on a land contract too. But as I want less paper work and stress in my life and not more, I took pass on that. Another cousin told me to hold out for six months or a year and he might be interested.

Another cousin suggested that we harvest some of the lumber and use that to pay the taxes! That sounded like a great idea but a lot of cousins had ideas about that too. Go with this company, get a forester, don't rut up the property with big rigs, get the highest price... and for a girl who knows nothing about the timber business, it was enough to make me want to take a second look at the realtor.

Instead I've put on my big girl pants and am trying to figure it all out. I guess if my grandpa, uncle and mom felt this was something to hold on to, I'd like to try, but it has to pay for itself. It can't drain sparce resources away from my family. And since you can only cut and sell a big tree once, I've got to try and get the best price I can for it. I'm sensing this might make a good homeschool project for this year - learning about forests, trees and the timber business.




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My Daily Domestic Clips 08/26/2010 (a.m.)

• YouTube - Maneuverability Test

  tags: highschool driving ohio

• Maneuverability Test

  Sounds easier than it actually is.

  tags: highschool driving ohio

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Wordless Wednesday

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My Daily Domestic Clips 08/25/2010 (a.m.)

• Project 2,996

  The 2996 project is a go for 2010

  tags: 911 blogging

• http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2010/08/bachelor-pad-abcs-survivor-spoilers-and-reality-steve/

• https://mail.google.com/mail/html/compose/static_files/blank_quirks.html - Annotated

  • Sun09/12/101:00pm113Springhill Complex1042G4C110401640a/r1 needed

• Homeschool MOMoirs: July 2010 - Annotated

  tags: homeschool

  • I have a garden that does very well when I take care of it. So much work goes
    into it at the beginning of each summer, but it has to continue. We can till,
    rake, plant and water to our hearts' content, but if we do not spend the hours
    weeding between the rows, we have a huge mess and sometimes, we lose what we've
    planted. I have to admit that some weeds are actually quite pretty. I like to
    call them "wildflowers", but let's face it. They are still weeds. They are not
    the plants I wanted in my garden. And, so it goes with our children. We can tell
    them about Jesus, read Bible stories, take them to church and try to keep them
    away from the evil influences of the world, but if we send them away from us the
    rest of the time, you know, the 900 plus hours they spend at school and the time
    they spend in Sunday school and youth groups later on, we are going to find that
    our children are overcome by weeds. And, I mean the kind of weeds that if pulled
    may uproot any "good" we have planted into them. No, we cannot keep them away
    from everything. We live in a very dark sinful world. There will be times they
    will make unwise choices as we all do, but home schooling or rather discipling
    our children will equip them for this life more effectively than any school
    could.

• Little-known fact: Obama's failed stimulus program cost more than the Iraq war | Washington Examiner - Annotated

  tags: obama areyousorryyet?

  • The meme is simple: The economy is in a shambles because of Bush's economic
    policies and his war in Iraq. As American Thinker's Randall Hoven points out,
    that's the message being peddled by lefties as diverse as former Clinton
    political strategist James Carville, economist Joseph Stiglitz

  • Obama's stimulus, passed in his first month in office, will cost more than
    the entire Iraq War -- more than $100 billion (15%) more.

    
    

    * Just the first two years of Obama's stimulus cost more than the entire cost
    of the Iraq War under President Bush, or six years of that war.

    
    

    * Iraq War spending accounted for just 3.2% of all federal spending while it
    lasted.

    
    

    * Iraq War spending was not even one quarter of what we spent on Medicare in
    the same time frame.

    
    

    * Iraq War spending was not even 15% of the total deficit spending in that
    time frame. The cumulative deficit, 2003-2010, would have been
    four-point-something trillion dollars with or without the Iraq War.

    
    

    * The Iraq War accounts for less than 8% of the federal debt held by the
    public at the end of 2010 ($9.031 trillion).

    
    

    * During Bush's Iraq years, 2003-2008, the federal government spent more on
    education that it did on the Iraq War. (State and local governments spent about
    ten times more.)

• With Birth Control Pills, New Isn't Always Better : NPR - Annotated

  I'd rather deal with "mild acne" with my children topically or via a dermatologist - not by putting unnecessary powerful hormones into their young bodies.What is wrong with us as a people that we consider taking medications to alter healthy body functions as normal?

  tags: birthcontrol contraception

  • After Yaz came out in 2006, it quickly became America's No. 1 birth control
    pill, bringing Bayer $800 million last year. But now thousands of women are
    suing Bayer because they say Yaz caused them serious harm. Sales have dropped 15
    percent in the past year.

    
    

    It's a good time to look at the Yaz saga and see if it has anything to teach
    women and their doctors when they choose a contraceptive.

    
    

    Yaz was something entirely new in the long history of birth control pills —
    and not just in its chemical formulation. It was the first pill to be marketed
    for multiple purposes. Bayer promoted it heavily as going "beyond birth
    control."

    
    

    A centerpiece TV ad
    noted that "all birth control pills are 99 percent effective and can give
    you shorter, lighter periods. But there's one pill that goes beyond the rest.
    It's Yaz."

  • Those ads caught the attention of a 16-year-old in Maryland named Katie
    Anderson.

    
    

    "I do remember going to the gynecologist and asking for Yaz because I had
    seen the commercials," says Anderson, who's now 19. "That was the one I
    wanted."

    
    

    Anderson hoped Yaz would even out her irregular periods. She liked the
    implication that Yaz could treat premenstrual syndrome. And, of course, the idea
    of clear skin appealed to her, too.

  • Katie Anderson learned that the hard way. She began having persistent leg
    pains within a month of starting on Yaz.

    
    

    "I started developing this kind of pinching, twinging, numbing kind of
    feeling in my left butt cheek," she recalls. She thought it was a pinched
    nerve.

    
    

    Then a couple of weeks later, she was awakened with terrible chest pain

  • She tells me she woke up about 5 o'clock in the morning," says Beth Anderson,
    Katie's mom. "She sat bolt upright in bed — couldn't move, couldn't talk, was
    trying to cry as silently as possible because it hurt to breathe."

    
    

    When she didn't leave for school on time, Beth went to check on her. "I found
    her sitting in a puddle of tears saying, 'Mommy, I can't breathe! Mommy, I can't
    breathe! I couldn't even reach my cell phone!' "

    
    

    Her doctor diagnosed pleurisy, an inflammation of the chest lining that isn't
    serious, and prescribed Motrin. That helped for a while, but over the next few
    days, Katie developed shortness of breath. And her left leg went totally numb
    and cold.

    
    

    "My left leg was completely purple," she says.

    
    

    It turns out an enormous blood clot had formed in her leg. A piece of it had
    broken off and lodged in her lung. Doctors call that a pulmonary embolism, and
    it can be deadly.

    
    

    At the emergency room, Beth recalls, "the doctor came in and he took one look
    at Katie's cold, blue leg, and he said, 'Wow! That's a big blood clot! You're on
    birth control, aren't you?' "

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My Daily Domestic Clips 08/24/2010 (p.m.)

• Judge Forces Obama Admin to Stop Funding Embryonic Stem Cell Research

  tags: abortion obama areyousorryyet?

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My Daily Domestic Clips 08/24/2010 (a.m.)

• Philly requiring bloggers to pay $300 for a business license | Washington Examiner - Annotated

  tags: blogging

  • Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few
    years she says she’s made about $50. To [Marilyn] Bess, her website is a hobby.
    To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its
    cut.

    
    

    In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of
    a business privilege license.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My Daily Domestic Clips 08/22/2010 (p.m.)

• Catholic Icing: Assumption of Mary Triptych Craft

  tags: mary Catholic feast quenshipofmary assumption

• 4Real Forums: Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary - Annotated

  • 40. Hence the revered Mother of God, from all eternity joined in a hidden way
    with Jesus Christ in one and the same decree of predestination,[47] immaculate
    in her conception, a most perfect virgin in her divine motherhood, the noble
    associate of the divine Redeemer who has won a complete triumph over sin and its
    consequences, finally obtained, as the supreme culmination of her privileges,
    that she should be preserved free from the corruption of the tomb and that, like
    her own Son, having overcome death, she might be taken up body and soul
    to the glory of heaven where, as Queen, she sits in splendor at the right hand
    of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Mary Queen of Heaven

Queenship of Mary Delicious Links.

40. Hence the revered Mother of God, from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ in one and the same decree of predestination,[47] immaculate in her conception, a most perfect virgin in her divine motherhood, the noble associate of the divine Redeemer who has won a complete triumph over sin and its consequences, finally obtained, as the supreme culmination of her privileges, that she should be preserved free from the corruption of the tomb and that, like her own Son, having overcome death, she might be taken up body and soul to the glory of heaven where, as Queen, she sits in splendor at the right hand of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages.

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My Daily Domestic Clips 08/22/2010 (a.m.)

• Parental Advisory: Explicit, Unladylike S**t — Feministe#comment-323689#comment-323689 - Annotated

  • So, again–if someone uses the same few non-swear words, do they seem limited and
    trite?

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

7-Quick Takes

 Join Jen and the other Quicktakers over at the Conversion Diary.

1. The kids and I traveled down to Columbus for our yearly homeschool portfolio assessment to see Dr. Holinga. Gosh I wish we could have all day with her. She was the reading professional that helped Calvin finally overcome his reading difficulties and we have seen her regularly since then. We spend about an hour catching up with our lives and then each child reads for her and she looks at their portfolios. I have made this a big deal for each child and they try to keep their portfolios in good order.She was happy with each child's progress and gave us the signature we needed to homeschool for another year in Ohio.

2.  So now I feel as if I can R E L A X!  For the next three weeks while kids are going back to school, my kids are going to be doing projects around the home and organizing ourselves for the next school year.  I firmly believe school shouldn't start until after Labor Day and I'm sticking with it!

3.  In the meantime, since Mr. Pete is swamped at work and doesn't have a full work force to help him, he has been training Sam and Gabe to repair string instruments and to take apart musical instruments.  In essence - they are apprenticing for their father! I think I should count that as school work too.

4.  I found this link coming into the blog claiming to be pictures of me. I want to publically state that the picture of the beautiful pregnant lady in labor about to give birth - is not me. Nor am I the sweet looking woman who appears to be attending this woman. The gentleman supporting the beautiful pregnant lady is not Mr. Pete! It's a very powerful  photograph though - it's just not us!

5.  There is a naked pregnant drawing of me in  The VBAC Companion: The Expectant Mother's Guide to Vaginal Birth After Cesarean.  The illustrator had been the doula at a number of my births and she drew my image  from memory.  I would say the face is mine - but the thin thighs and perky breasts belonged to someone else. 

6.  Sam and Gabe had another gig tonight, there second one of the summer.  They were much, much better and are becoming more at ease in front of an audience.

7.  SLO went to Vegas to see Tom Jones perform.  She has this little droid thing that told her the climate was "paradise" while the temperature showed 110 degrees F!  Which of course is not our idea of paradise!  Can't wait to hear about her trip!





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My Daily Domestic Clips 08/21/2010 (a.m.)

• CollegePlus! - Distance Learning Blog - New Free Practice CLEP Test: College Algebra CLEP

  tags: homeschool college math algebra collegeplus

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My Daily Domestic Clips 08/20/2010 (p.m.)

• 
  
  Layers of Learning: Monet's Water Lilies
  Beautiful art lesson on Monet!
  tags: homeschool art artsandcrafts

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

What's going on in My Domestic Church

It is just about my favorite time of the year - when the weather is still nice and the regular school kids are back in school!! Leaving me and my kids more time to be on our own, undistracted from little friends pounding on the backdoor, phones ringing and moms looking for their kids at my house!

We have our big portfolio review coming up and once again I am worried about it. Did we do enough? did we do too little? how come a whole year doesn't look so impressive when it's in a binder? Honest to goodness I felt rung out by last year and yet in retrospect it sort of seems as if we got nothing accomplished.

Then Mr. Pete reminded me that with mom dying in June and SLO starting down her path in November, and with executing mom's estate - something I had never done before - it was sort of a hard year!Nonetheless I think the kids did alright. Sam got Spanish 1 done, took the ACT test and an ACT writing course, almost finished Apologia Science, read a ton of literature - so I think we're good.

Izzy still struggles with reading but she is reading better than last year. Noah is soaring a head. Gabe, surprisingly has really improved his reading and spelling.

Here is the key to having your son improve his reading and writing skills- have him meet a nice girl some distance from your home and have them start e-mailing one another. It helps if the girl excels in writing and grammar. Then voila!! your son will suddenly care what his writing looks like! It's amazing!!

Let's see... on top of that I have been devoted to exercise and getting at least morning and/or night prayer done. Those are things I am doing for me and I consider it care and maintenance of Mom. If those things don't get done the rest of it will suffer. So instead of getting up and logging on to blog, read e-mail or work, I'm getting up and going into the basement to pick out my form of torture for the day in the form of one of The FIRM workouts.

But there have been some highlights this week. I hooked up on computer home network all by myself! I even figured out how to encrypt it. Pretty good for a novice. I also bought a printer for the kids' computer and I got that going as well! Rosie was happy with me because I got her a bunch of the Kindergarten Blaster computer games - and they have been keeping her busy every since. Maybe now when we go to the library she'll be willing to skip the computers because she can get on anytime she wants at home.

Mr. Pete is working very, very hard. He came home about midnight last night. It's unbelievable how hard someone can work for so little pay, yet the school systems continue to hang onto their money instead of paying their vendors for services rendered. It's a crime. Yet the bright spot is that Mr. Pete has brought Sam and Gabe in and has started training them. Sam, who already has done a lot of maintenance on his guitars, was a natural to teach violin and viola repair. Gabe is working on taking stuff apart - which he has always been very good at. So hopefully when they build up some speed that will help him out.

Soccer season starts this weekend and Sam has games to ref. Cross country is in full swing. Schools start next week.

I however, do not intend to start school until after Labor Day. Life is too short and the nice days too fleeting to think of doing anything else.

Ah summer... I will miss you.


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St. Tarcisius

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My Daily Domestic Clips 08/17/2010 (a.m.)

• On the path to over-the-counter abortions - Annotated

  tags: abortion

  • On June 17, the FDA's Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health will hold a public hearing to begin the approval process of a new abortion pill, Ulipristal acetate, to be marketed by the brand names ella® or ellaOne®.
    
    

    ellaOne can be taken up to five days after unprotected sex, as opposed to emergency contraception, which can be taken up to three days after unprotected sex.
    
    

    ellaOne has been marketed in the United Kingdom since September 2009 as an emergency contraceptive, but it does not chemically work the same in a woman's body as an EC.
    
    

    In fact, ellaOne works the same as mifepristone, or RU486, also known as the abortion pill, which can be taken up to 49 days after the first day of a woman's last period.
    
    

    While ellaOne and RU486 are composed of different chemical compounds, they are both progesterone blockers, while the EC is a progesterone.
    
    

  • ellaOne blocks progesterone from reaching the cushiony lining of a mother's uterus, the endometrium. ellaOne causes the endometrium to degrade and her days-old embryo to die.
    
    

    Since RU486 is taken later in pregnancy, it blocks progesterone from reaching a mother's placenta, thereby causing it to degrade and her weeks-old embryo to die.
    
    

• The Ecstasy of Empire - Annotated

  tags: obama finance areyousorryyet?

  • The United States and the welfare of its 300 million people cannot be restored unless the neocons, Wall Street, the corporations, and their servile slaves in Congress and the White House can be defeated.

    
    

    Without a revolution, Americans are history.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Immaculate Virgin assumed

The Immaculate Virgin assumed
Originally uploaded by Lawrence OP

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Originally uploaded by Lawrence OP

Assumption of Mary

Our Lady fell asleep at last after the yeas of living with St. John and waiting for Heaven, and all the Apostles were gathered about her bed. Except St. Thomas. He was off in India preaching the Gospel and couldn't get back in time although an angel is supposed to have told him to hurry. The Apostles carried her body to the tomb and laid it there and some time afterward they discovered that it was gone. They naturally concluded that it had been taken to Heaven (as indeed it had). Then St. Thomas came home, and when they went out to meet him and to explain, he would not believe. He would not believe, the legend says, until he had seen for himself. So they took him to see where they had laid Our Lady's body and in its place were flowers. Looking up, St. Thomas saw her going up to Heaven; and to convince him at least, an angel brought the girdle she had fastened about her rob, and dropped it to Thomas.










From The Year and Our Children




Mary Reed Newland.
















For some ideas on how to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption, the Women of Faith Site had some great ideas!




Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary: "The day before the feast, gather or buy flowers to place before a picture or statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in your home, and tell (or read) the meaning of the feast to your child or children at bedtime on August 14th. (See Mary's Flowers)




Take flowers to Mass on the Feast of the Assumption, and, after Mass, place them near the altar, shrine or statue Blessed Virgin Mary in your church. (Children enjoy doing making the 'flower offering', so it would be a good idea to have enough flowers for each child to place one.)




If your church has a Mary shrine, have each child light a candle, kneel and say a prayer or a 'Hail Mary'. Even if it does not, you can do this at your home -- the 'domestic Church'.




Get a few votive candles and holders (one for each child), set a statue or picture of the Blessed Virgin on a table or shelf to make a little shrine. Place a rose or other flowers near the statue. Have each child light a votive candle. (Mother or an older child can light the baby's candle.) Kneel and say prayers together.




After Mass talk about the celebration with your child. Discuss the meaning of the feast, and why it is important to Catholics. This would be a good opportunity to talk about motherhood, death and heaven -- and to answer questions. (Take advantage of 'teaching moments'!)




My Del.icio.us Links on the Assumption of Mary










Mary-Assumption-stain-glass




Originally uploaded by bernardoh




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7 Quicktakes- the Saturday Edition

 Join Jen and the other Quicktakers over at the Conversion Diary.

1. Really enjoyed our trip to upper Michigan last weekend. I've been basking in it all week long! The beautiful beaches on Lake Michigan, the perfect sunsets, the cool breeze, the long country roads. I think I could actually live there... until I start thinking about the winters!!



2. We stayed in a little cabin. We usually camp, but I figure since I only see my up-north relatives once a year, I would prefer they see me fresh and showered instead of scruffy with a funny smell. The shower was clean, but hot and very few electrical outlets. The shower wasn't really a "shower;" more like a little stream coming from a pipe out of the wall with two temps- scalding and frigid. But it was an adventure and I think the kids will remember it.

3. My sister and I inherited a few acres up there when my mom died. It's been in my family for a very long time. There use to be a little cottage on it but that deteriorated and disappeared a long time ago. So now there is nothing on it - except a property tax bill that soared upon transfer of the title during probate. I just think it's ironic that in this country, land of the free, you never ever really get to own your land - not really. So as nice as it seems to have "inherited property" it's more the case that I inherited the responsibility of paying the property taxes.

4. While we were there we caught up with my sister-in-law and her family. Back in 2002 my SIL and I were pregnant at the same time. At the age of 46, she gave birth to a lovely little girl. My baby, Raphael, was stillborn. For a long time it was hard for me to even see my little niece; seeing her made my loss so much more painful. But as time has gone by it has gotten easier. She is a delightful child and she has taken a liking to Rosie, who was born three years later - ironically when I was 46! So these two little girls are the youngest grandchildren and fast friends as well!



5. My niece will be making her first holy communion this year - which means this would have been a sacramental year for Raphael too. I'm going to have to think of a special way to honor what could have been but wasn't.

6. While I was getting use to sleeping in the cabin, I listened to some of the talks from Cindy Rushton's Online Homeschool set.
The main theme I got from the convention was similar to what I had heard this year at the CHEO convention - don't do "school" at home - concentrate on natural learning and foster a love of learning and faith and family!  It was so much of what I really needed to hear! 

7. Yep - we go to church even on vacation. Here are the kids bright and early outside of Guardian Angels Catholic Church.



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