Thursday, June 21, 2007

School Pictures

Happy First Day of Summer!

It's time again for School Pictures for the coming 2007-2008 school year! I take them in the summer every year (as opposed to the fall) so that the pictures can be used to make our school photo IDs. We get them made from Homeschool ID.com. It's been a great thing for us to have.


Here are the pictures for this year, taken this morning, what cute kids!:

Alexander
age 7.5
entering 2nd Grade

Samuel
age 5.5
entering Kindergarten

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Homeschooling Bumper Stickers

Today, I brought up to Brian that I thought it'd be fun to have some sort of homeschooling bumper sticker on my car. Coincidentally, he said he was thinking the same thing. Well, not that he wants bumper stickers on his car, but that he was recently thinking of wording for such a sticker: "Proud Parent of my Homeschoolers". I love it, it's exactly what I was hoping for!

So, I'm looking online now to maybe find one like that. While looking, I found many other good sayings about homeschooling from Cafepress.com that I really enjoyed. I copied them so that I could share them with you below. Note: I didn't write any of these.


I’m not talking to myself, I’m having a Parent–Teacher conference.

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” -- Frederick Douglass

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” --Aristotle

Get thee to a library!

Home is where the school is.

The book is better than the movie.

Change the world one childhood at a time.

I homeschool because I’ve seen the village and I don’t want it raising my children!

Say no to age segregation.

I survived public school… that’s why I homeschool.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

My Ear is Mostly Better

Hey there. Just wanted everyone to know that my ear doesn't hurt anymore. So, I'm mostly all better. I'm still more tired than usual, though, and my ear is still "clogged", meaning it feels clogged and the sound is muffled in that ear. So, that's really annoying, but I think the area is still a little swollen, so hopefully it will get better with more time.

This week, I've been enjoying myself by watching movie clips and sound recording clips of "The Producers" on YouTube. So, here are some of the highlights. Enjoy!




Monday, June 04, 2007

News Sources

I don't get my news from the news. Not the regular TV or newspaper news, at least. My news comes from listening to Rush Limbaugh and from visiting the online news websites of Drudge Report.com and FoxNews.com.

I bring this up because now I have a new source of (fake) news: a satire news show. There is a new comedic news show out there that Brian and I have found, and I'm really enjoying it. I used to love the SNL news and the Daily Show, but the Daily Show has gotten too liberal and SNL is just not funny anymore, so I've missed my news humor. Now we have the Half Hour News Hour.

The Half Hour News Hour is the new Republican/Conservative version of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It's a news satire show that on on Sunday nights. This show is great, with LOL jokes every minute. Brian and I are hooked on it, and there have only been 4 episodes so far.

So, looks like great new sources of entertainment are on the horizon. Looks like it will be a fun week!

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Why Fred Thompson?

Why Fred Thompson?
by Robert Novak (More by this author)
Posted: 05/31/2007
from HumanEvents.com: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=20936

"Fred Thompson sat at the end of a long table in The Monocle restaurant on Capitol Hill Tuesday night for dinner with some 20 fellow conservatives, mostly journalists. He sent two signals. First, he sounded like a man who has decided to run for president. Second, his candidacy will be something different from other Republicans, in both substance and style.This was one of the irregular sessions of the Saturday Evening Club, which is not a club and never meets on Saturday. The name was purloined from H.L. Mencken's Baltimore discussion club by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., editor-in-chief of The American Spectator. Tyrrell arranges and presides over these events, always featuring a guest newsmaker -- usually a Republican presidential hopeful over the past two years. Former Sen. Thompson was the most intriguing of them because he has become a leading prospect for president even though he has not announced his candidacy and has no real campaign.

"Thompson's performance Tuesday night, with his remarks off the record, helped show why many Republican insiders are ready to support him. Thompson is winning straw polls at Republican conferences and running well in polls mainly because of dissatisfaction, for varying reasons, with the three leading GOP candidates -- Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney. But Thompson at the dinner table confirmed the widespread perception inside the party of his potential to be an extraordinary candidate.

"Thompson disappointed in his first speech as a prospective candidate, addressing the Lincoln Club of Orange County, Calif., on May 4. Discarding a speech he had written himself, Thompson ad-libbed from handwritten notes, a performance that placed him in the usual run of Republican after-dinner speakers. This was not the second coming of Reagan that Californians envisioned. Was all the excitement about Thompson merely engendered by his television role as the formidable Manhattan district attorney on "Law and Order"?

"He stuck to his prepared cards for his second speech, at a Republican state party function in Stamford, Conn., last week, and it was a considerable improvement. It sounded more like an off-the-record conversation he had with me in Orange County, Calif., before his speech there, and his Saturday Evening Club conversation.

"The Connecticut Republicans, down to one seat in Congress after 2006 election losses, cheered when Thompson told them: "I think the biggest problem we have today is what I believe is the disconnect between Washington, D.C., and the people of the United States. People are looking around at the pork barrel spending and the petty politics, the backbiting. The fighting over all things, large or small, is creating a cynicism among our people." That cynicism, Thompson contends, mandates a different kind of campaign for 2008.

"Thompson implied at Stamford that Republicans, along with Democrats, are responsible for making Americans cynical. While so far not spelling this out publicly, he deplores ethical abuses, profligate spending and incompetent management of the Iraq war. He becomes incandescent when considering abysmal CIA and Justice Department performance under the Bush administration. He is enraged by Justice's actions in decisions leading to Scooter Libby's prison sentence.

"In his Senate voting record and his public utterances, Thompson is more conservative than Giuliani, McCain or Romney. He takes a hard line on the war against terror (referring in Connecticut to the danger of "suicidal maniacs" crossing open borders) and worries about immigration policy creating a permanent American underclass. His one deviation from the conservative line has been support for the McCain-Feingold campaign reform, much of which he now considers overtaken by current fundraising practices and perhaps irrelevant. Overall, his tone, in a soft Tennessee drawl, is less harsh than that of other Republican candidates -- a real-life version of the avuncular fictional D.A. he plays on TV.

"Beyond ideology, Thompson envisions a 21st-century campaign, utilizing the Internet more and spending less money than his opponents. When speaking to a friendly audience or ruminating off the record, the 6-foot-7 actor-politician does not look or sound like the GOP's announced candidates for president. His challenge will be to convey that impression when he appears with opponents on the same stage in the immediate future."