love hurts, but it's worth it.

it sounds strange, but it is true.

there should be a class to teach about the feelings of love!

When i was in 6th grade i was "in love" with a boy named Bradley. He was so dreamy!

When i was in 7th grade, his name was Chad. Chad broke my heart.

In 8th grade his name was Andy, oh i was so young for Andy!

in 10th Grade i was once again "in deep love" with a boy... he turned out to be a stalker, but my heart didn't see it.

My mom wasn't really the best at explaining love and relationships to me. And my older sister would rather steal from me or beat me up than share her wisdom. So i was pretty much lost in the land of love and how to love and what it meant to love and be loved.

I think there are probably more kids than we realize who are unaware of LOVE. i don't mean the "i love you mommy and daddy" kind of love, but the "i want to spend the rest of my life with you (or at least the next few months of our relationship)" kind of love. To tell a person that you love them with those feelings is a very big deal. Then there is the love you create by bonding with a close friend. i never fully grasped love as a kid - i loved everyone! I told everyone that i loved them and didn't think much about it. i was a free spirit with my love and just gave it away all of the time. Now i am very guarded of my love and the use of the word love. Almost to a point where i do not share it enough.

Love hurts! and through the years i have come to understand that be it a friend or a family member or even in the past a boyfriend - when you put love out there and it gets beat up a bit, you lose part of that love and it is hard to get it back. i spent several years holding in my love and only sharing it with those that i truly felt deserved it (mostly hubby and my kid). But slowly i have been trying to put myself back out there by telling people that i care about - that they are loved by me, that they mean something to me as a friend or a family member. I've been hurt bunches in this adventure of putting myself back out there. But i am learning!

If only they had a class in school about love. How to love. How to be loved. What love is exactly... maybe there would be less pain in the world?

age limit for kids online?

We live in an online world these days. I could see this back in 1995 when i got my first Window's based computer and went online and started my first website (it was cheesy!). But the world that we live in is quickly moving to a world where kids NEED to know about the online world at a much younger age.

Claire was playing online at Playhouse Disney when she was 3. She could turn on the computer, she could open the Internet, and she could type in enough of the web URL that the rest would pop up and she would then click on the link to take her to Playhouse Disney.com. She had and used her own e-mail account starting at age 3. She had her own website (still does, its just not up at the moment) at the age of 2 and by the age of 4 she was helping me design it and work it. She had her own twitter at the age of 8. She had her own Facebook by the age of 9 and the list continues to grow.

i have many friends who shelter their kids from the online world thinking that it will protect their kids. My wonder in their thinking is this, Protect them from what? It is true that the world is a big place and the internet brings it right to your doorstep. But it is also true that if you are a good parent you can still shelter them from the world online by being a positive influence and by keeping tabs on what they are doing. I have not had any issues to date with Claire being online. she is 10 and still growing in her love of the internet.

For me it was the simple fact that the internet is the wave of the future. Heck, it is the wave of the NOW! If your kid doesn't get small doses of it during their youth, when they do get the ability to be online they will go over-board and perhaps feel lost. I'm not saying let your kid loose online and find their way to a porn website! but giving them their own e-mail account to connect with friends and family near and far,

Columbus Day.

Do you know who did what and when they did it back in 1492?

Can you say exactly at what moment in history they threw someone off the boat for mutiny, or if they even did it?
Do you know for certain that Columbus held a knife to an innocent person and then killed them in cold blood?

As a history lover, once again i am mystified by the way people trash history and either glorify or damn someone for something we have no proof of in the past. i keep seeing people tweeting things like, "why do we celebrate a person who slaughtered millions of natives? it's wrong!" Perhaps there was blood shed by Columbus himself, but do we have a bloody knife with his fingerprints on it saying, see here is our proof? No, there is no hard evidence. We know that his group did indeed kill natives on their journeys. But we do not know if it was done because of fighting (an attack brought on by either side), or killing of innocent people for no reason other than to just kill them.

Perhaps his crew was killing in his name or the name of the King or perhaps the name of someone else. But if you are going to damn someone in history for having blood spilled in his name, then your biggest person to look at for that would be Jesus. The crusades alone would have millions killed all in the name of Jesus and spreading his name, forcing people to believe that he was their savior and their God. We still have people killing in the name of God, but that doesn't stop us from celebrating the good that came from these beliefs. The past was full of murderous killings, all in the name of someone else.

It baffles me that people neglect to recognize the history of our world because of the violence. In 1492, the world was full of disease, murder and rape. Do you know for a fact that your ancestors were not among those killing and raping and stealing? Do you have a time machine and a mind reader to know each and every person in your past to prove that nothing bad was done in the history of your family? No, no one does. No one knows the facts of history. Even the written word was biased by the person writing it. Just like today. people write what they see and what they feel. Perhaps facts were misconstrued back in 1492 just as they are today in 2009. No one can be 100% sure who did what in history. None of us were there.

The cold hard truth is that American history is filled with brutal stories of some fact and some exaggeration. We learn from history. We can not damn each person in history without glorifying someone else. If you were to start to pick apart every person from history, no one's hands would be clean. Children even carried guns and fought in the American revolution (and the civil war!). But we've taken some people and created them as "heros" in our history... but not all of them have clean hands. Most of those who are believed to have been strong leaders and the creators of our current America have blood on their hands. Each person who can trace back their life in America comes from that spilled blood. It isn't pretty, but it is who we were and where we come from.

For without people in our history thinking outside of the box and doing things that no one else wanted to do... we would still think the world was flat. We would still be living in caves. We would still be in the dark ages. We would still be living by candle light. We would still be living with disease and famine (oh wait, some of us still are - which is just sad!). We would not have running water, and therefor would still be dumping our pee/poop bowl into the streets, rivers, and oceans. We would be savages still killing in the name of religion (gee, thanks America for breaking off from England so that people could FREELY say how they feel and believe in whatever religion they want to). We would still be the horrible people living on one continent if it were not for people risking their life back then so that we could live here today. Sure he didn't discover America exactly, but without him - NO ONE would have even sailed this way to begin with. FEAR of the unknown could have kept us in the dark far longer than it did... and without all of which those who came before us did - you would NOT be reading this on a computer. You might not be speaking English. You might not even be alive today. So, enjoy the day for what it is - full of HISTORY, the good and the bad.

Happy Columbus Day everyone!

December 21, 2012.

As a major history lover... one story (or truth) that has always haunted me since i was a little kid was that of the Mayan civilization and their prophecies. We recently finished up the chapter of World History in our homeschooling, Incas and Mayans. And now they have a movie coming out soon staring the actor John Cusack (Claire is quite the fan of his work!) if you have not seen the clips from this movie, please check it out by visiting the website here: 2012

here is a website that talks in detail about the theory around the belief in this date being so important. If you are not a scholar and a history lover, it might be hard to get through! fair warning ;-)

To sum up that website:
1. the Earth has several phases, or cycles. 5 cycles to be exact.
2. we are at the end of the last phase that has been written down in the past by the Mayans.
3. there is no set answer as to what will come on December 21, 2012, but the speculation is two things:
a. the Earth as we know it ends or has major issues (as shown in the movie link above)
b. the Earth enters a great time of peace and harmony

The major theory is that we came into this phase long ago and it brought about a great change in who we are as humans. The introduction of time being thought of and broken down into 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours a day. Then the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582. The introduction of the clock with moving parts in 1600. And that advancement growing on up to every gadget that we now use having a clock and/or a calendar in it (computers, cars, phones, cameras, etc). We stopped relying on the human body as our clock and calendar and took the "power" of this knowledge away from nature.

We have been long since growing away from nature and moving into an age of technology. We do not sit down to paint or draw or read and explore that which is inside of us as much as we use to. We read books on kindles, we paint/draw on computers using photoshop and drawing programs, we create works of art on machines more than we do by hand. We can even get our church through the computer. We communicate more with a machine (be it a phone or a computer) than we do as just humans connecting with each other by being there for one another. This has become even more real to me recently than ever before in my life. I thought moving would connect me more with who i wanted to be, more laid back and out there in nature... what i didn't realize that human connections is a large part of HUMAN NATURE.... nature.

We have also lost connecting with the Earth, the place that was given to us to enjoy and live in peace with. We do not sit in awe of it's power like we use to. We have an overgrown plant, we cut it down. We tend to see nature as being in our way and not our friend. Let's tear down that mountain and build a road of convenience so people can get to the beach quicker (yes, this is being done here where we live, it is sad!)

I am not suggesting we all become hippies and live in a Tepee in the jungles of Africa... but the wonders of the world use to be just that, something to sit in awe and wonder about. Now people go, take their families to say they've seen it and move on. And i admit to being guilty of not being in the moment as much as i should. I live through my camera and then i live again on my computer when i get home to go through and edit my photos... but i tend to take myself OUT of the moments because i am behind the buffer of my camera lens. I have been trying to put the camera down more and just be in the moment... i admit it is a work in progress!

i think we all are a work in progress. i do not know many people that aren't tied to their phone, their computer, their ipod, their car, their self. I have no idea if the story (or truth) of the Mayans will prove as fact in the year 2012, on December 21, but there is something to be said for the way that people live their lives today... we all should be more aware and more in the moments of our own lives. It is in fact the moments of OUR life, one day we might just give anything to get these moments back to relive, so LIVE them while you are in them and not be unfocused.

beauty of the day + lessons in learning the truth about myths

budding beauties

in that which is the beauty of another day, we tend to re-think our transgressions of the days before. We ponder our choices, we glance into the past... viewing with questions, as so bold to wonder, "what if i...?"

So today is one of these days. i sit and i wonder. i wonder and i sit. (all between teaching homeschooling lessons of course!)

Today's lessons were full of history. In our house, we love us some History! Knights and princesses to be exact! We have been studying the time of True Kings and Queens; medieval times and on up to the Renaissance time. Where people were beheaded almost daily, and the crusades were slaughtering every man, woman, and child who didn't accept Jesus as their savior (thank God we've moved past these days!) But it is amazing how much the movies make these times out to be so magical and full of romance... when in reality, it was full of murder and bloodshed. We teach our little girls about the romance of fairy tales and then they dream about a knight so valiant to ride up on his beautiful white horse to save her from the perils of the horrid dragon. But in true history, Knights often "took" women as their own, and very (very) rarely did the beautiful lady find herself living like a magnificent Queen in a big castle. Knights were never a King or even a Prince. They were noblemen from time to time, but we tend to think of the Knight as this wonderful hero. i suppose we can all define a hero in our own ways, but the reality is less romantic than the fairy tale.

It is kind of sad to see the disappointment on a 10 year olds face, when they really start to understand what the world use to be like. It is hard to sugar coat History. No more fairy tales and legends of dragons and knights slaying them to free the beautiful maiden. Although it is good to still bring those stories in to tell during the lessons.

Which brings me back to my sitting and thinking today. Why do we teach the stories that we teach? Why do we tell a young, very impressionable, child about fairy tales and things that are not real. Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny. The tooth Fairy. Etc. We fill their heads up so full of things that are not real, and then one day we just expect them to wake up and understand that all the while... nothing we said was true.

I'm sure this will start a controversy of backlash, but from day 1 we never told Claire that any of that was true. She knew that we were Santa, the Easter bunny, and the whole bunches of other things. She still to this day is full of imagination and she chose to "believe" in it all on her own. Something deep down inside of me felt betrayal (the first of many i am afraid) towards my parents for telling such stories... such lies to me when i was a child. i can still remember the day my older sister told me the truth. i cried. i was more upset and angry at my parents for the lie than i was in finding out that these mythical creatures did not exist. i never wanted my child to feel that sting of truth when she learned that her entire childhood of fantasy was a bold faced lie from those who she trusted the most.

But i too believe in the fairy tale of adventure and spirit of those things which can not be seen. i have been blessed with such an amazing child. She believed without fail in the adventure of fairies, Mermaids, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and all of the rest of them. Without even thinking twice about the truth, she felt that even though she knew the truth - there must be something more to the belief than that which is fact. And i totally love that about her. She has a spirit beyond science, beyond fact and her adventure... is sure to take her places in her life!

lack of world knowledge...

a conversation at our house tonight:

Claire: Daddy, check out my new webkinz... it's an elephant... a velveteen elephant!

Michael: that's pretty cool.

Claire: guess what i named it? c'mon guess!

Michael: velve... ele... i don't know what?

Claire: think of a country where you'd find them...

Michael: Africa

Claire: Daddy, Africa isn't a country - it's a continent!

Michael: South Africa?

Claire: why would i name my elephant "South Africa"?

Michael: i don't know... what did you name it?

Claire: INDIA!

Michael: i would never guess India! why would you pick India for an elephant name?

Claire: Hello... it's like their car over there!

OK, perhaps more WORLD culture is needed in our schools?  My 9 year old child thinks that elephants are the major means of transportation in India and that they have very few cars on the road.  Thank you public school system.