Texas children roped into Islamic training

I cannot even begin to express my dismay at what happened at this school. While part of me is shocked, the other part is not. The whole purpose of the public school system is to indoctrinate kids with whatever the state wants. Don't believe me? Think I'm being a bit harsh? Spend some time reading articles and books written by some of the heads of the public school system. Trust me. They leave little room to doubt. But even with all of that, this is one of the more blatant steps to undermine everything that these parents would hope to teach at home:

Public school students at Friendswood Junior High in the Houston area have been roped into Islamic training by representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations during class time, prompting religious leaders to protest over Principal Robin Lowe's actions.

Pastor Dave Welch, spokesman for the Houston Area Pastor Council, confirmed the indoctrination had taken place and called it "unacceptable."

In the Texas case, a school e-mail to parents provided only a half-hearted acknowledgement that such mandatory religious indoctrination might not have been the best decision.

"In hindsight, a note should have been sent home to parents indicating the purpose and content of the presentation in time for parents to contact me with questions or concerns or requests to exempt their child," the school note from Lowe said. "This will be our practice in the future, should we ever have another presentation of a similar nature."

School officials also said the "Islamic Awareness" presentation was "to increase understanding of the Islamic culture in response to racially motivated comments that have been made to students on campus."

The pastors said in a statement: "According to students who were forced to attend these sessions, these Islamic evangelists taught them:

• Adam, Noah and Jesus are prophets
  
  
• There is one god, his name is Allah
  
  
• The 5 Pillars of Islam
  
  
• How to pray five times a day
  
  
• Islamic religious garb"

There also was no parental notification, and students were required to attend.

"The kids did not even know they were having an assembly or what topic it pertained to until they entered the gym," the parent wrote. "I send my kids to school for academics. … I teach them religion at home."

The sad thing is that we can no longer send our children to school for academics alone. They will be taught many other things. The question is, whose view point do we want them to hear from? I don't have a problem teaching my children about other religions. I took a "Living World Religion" class in college. I think it's good to know so we know how to defend our faith against theirs. But those are things that I will teach my children. Not the public schools.

What Kind of Chocolate Are You?

THE CHOCOLATE ROMANTIC

You’re a dreamer, who often retreats to your own world. You believe in true love and the healing power of beauty. You love sad books and movies, but then again, you love happy books and movies, too. You’re introspective, tender and caring. Face it, you love a chance to have a good cry. When it comes to chocolate, the packaging is just as important as what’s inside.

Find our your chocolate here

On Our Way (almost)

Our stuff is on our way to our destination. The truck will beat us there so it will be off loaded into storage while we wait for base housing to come available.

Can I admit that I'm starting to be a little excited about our move? I feel like a traitor saying that. I'll miss my friends so much. Saying that I'm excited about going makes me feel like I'm ignoring what I'm leaving behind. I'm not. But I am trying to focus on what is yet to come. A new assignment. A new part of the country. 6 hours from family. And I know that I'll keep in touch with my friends. They have meant so much to me. There is a large part of me that would love to come back here. I've told my friends that I have people praying that we'll move to their area after hubby gets out of the AF. So we'll just see who is the most spiritual by where we end up moving to :-)

Most of my more "natural" living goes out the window when it comes to moving. I use high powered chemicals to clean, disposable diapers on the baby, and I cook whatever is quick and simple. I tried to come up with ways to avoid frozen dinners but I don't think I was very successful. Any ideas? I'm hoping not to get sick this time while moving like I did last time. When we moved a year and a half ago I was pregnant and all those instant meals made me sick. So hopefully that won't happen this time.

I'm off to bed! We bought an air mattress to sleep on so it should be more comfortable than the floor anyway!

Tasty Tuesday

I love food. I really do. It's my downfall in life. It wouldn't be if I loved working out. But I don't. I will admit that cooking is one thing I will miss while we are in transition. There's just something about frozen dinners that just doesn't taste good as mine :-) Here is one of my favorite recipes:

Chicken Parmigiana

1 egg
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 Cup Italian bread crumbs
2-4 T butter or olive oil
14 oz jar pizza sauce
2 Cups shredded Mozzarella Cheese
Grated Parmesan

1. Beat egg, ealt, pepper together. Dip chicken into egg and coat with bread cumbs. Saute chicken in oil in skillet (you just want to brown the outside, not cook it thoroughly). Arrange chicken in slow cooker.
2. Pour pizza sauce over chicken
3. Cover. Cook on LOW 6-8 hours
4. Layer mozzarella cheese over top and sprinkle with Parmesan. Cook and additional 15 minutes.
5. Serve with Linguine & Salad!

HT-Tami

One Reason Why We Homeschool:

View it here

Moving Things

Our packers are coming 4 1/2 days. At Tech School hubby would call that 3 days and a wake up. In any case, it's coming up on us really soon. For those of you that have never done a military move, let me fill you in on how this works.

There are many preparations leading up to moving, some of which include briefings. Many briefings. After you have been briefed (did I mention many times?) they schedule your move for you. For the most part you can pick out the days that you want the movers to come, unless you are moving in a busy season. Then you take whatever you can get! Fortunately we're moving at the very beginning of the busy season so we got the dates that we asked for!

Apparently we have now accumulated enough junk property that we now qualify for 2 days of the packers being here. So, on Wednesday, the packers will show up and start boxing up our things. Now, to some of you, this may sound wonderful because we don't have to pack everything ourselves. And there is definitely that benefit. However, we also have to watch to be sure that they are not being careless and that they are labeling everything correctly on the outside of the box. While we have never had a problem with loosing a box, there are (of course) many horror stories out there. But I'm not concentrating on those stories right now, so let's move on.

Our packers will pack everything on Wednesday and Thursday. The older children will be at friends houses who were suckered into nice enough to watch them for us. We'll keep the baby with us since she would only scream for friends. As a bribe to be nice with our things we buy the packers lunch both days. We also provide drinks for them.

On Friday the movers will come and load everything into a truck. This is the part that can be nerve wracking at times. There are some items of furniture that I choose not to watch be carried out of the house. And with the new full replacement value insurance that the AF pays for I'm a little more relaxed about them breaking my things! We will also provide food and drinks for the movers. In general the movers have always been very nice. The thing to watch with this part is their notes on our things. For every piece of furniture that they move they put a numbered sticker on it for tracking purposes. Then next to that number they make notes on the inventory. These notes are hard to decipher (read:horrible handwriting) but have to be looked over to be sure that they didn't mark down something horrible for your furniture. They may mark "stained" or "soiled" on something that looks practically brand new. Again, we've never had any problems, but the horror stories are out there. You may be asking what the big deal is. If the inventory says that there is a gash or stain, but there wasn't, then it arrives with something wrong, then it'll be really hard to get that replaced because "it wasn't the movers who did it". Again, we've never had any problems....

After everything is out of here we'll start the cleaning process. We live in a base housing unit so it has to be very clean when we leave. White glove clean. The trick is that we'll also still be living here at the time (we'll be sleeping on air mattresses). We'll clean here on Friday, Saturday and Monday. We'll stay Monday night at a friends house then our final inspection is Tuesday morning. Whatever we didn't get clean or is broken will be deducted from our BAH (Basic Housing Allowance). So we'll be sure to do a good job of cleaning :-)

After that we'll be on our way! We check into our new base a week later (after visiting friends and family along the way) and will hopefully move into housing shortly thereafter. We'll buy pizza for our movers on that end too. It's only fair :-)

Frugal Friday

Today's topic is PaperbackSwap! I love PaperbackSwap and it's cousins SwapACD and SwapADVD! Here's how it works:

1. Sign up for an account
2. Post books/CDs/DVDs
3. Order items from other members
4. Mail media to others!

I have gotten rid of many books that I no longer read (i.e. I didn't like them) and I have received many good books! All for a fraction of what it would have cost me if I were buying them nre or used! My favorite portion is the wish lists. I'll put a book on the wish list and then it will automatically get sent to me when someone else posts it!

WFMW

This month's theme for Works for Me Wednesday is What-DOESN'T-Work For Me. So here we go:

1. Coupons-I know this goes against most everything frugal, but I have never found cutting coupons to be a money saving thing for me. If I use them heavily then I buy stuff I don't need and actually spend more money then if I hadn't used them. If I only use what I would have bought anyway then I barely save enough to make buying the paper worth it.
2. Cry it out-Doesn't work for me and my babies. If I'm upset, do I want to be left alone to cry?
3. Sewing-I wish it worked for me. Maybe it will one day. But for now the patterns are just plain confusing
4. MySpace-I much prefer blogspot
5. Hospitals for giving birth-Home is what I love!
6. Haggling-I'm no good at it
7. South Texas Heat-Nuff said

For more, visit RocksInMyDryer!

Breast-fed children found smarter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new study provides some of the best evidence to date that breast-feeding can make children smarter, an international team of researchers said on Monday.

Children whose mothers breast-fed them longer and did not mix in baby formula scored higher on intelligence tests, the researchers in Canada and Belarus reported.

The children were monitored for about 6 1/2 years.

The children in the group where breast-feeding was encouraged scored about 5 percent higher in IQ tests and did better academically, the researchers found.

Previous studies had indicated brain development and intelligence benefits for breast-fed children.

"Mothers who breast-feed or those who breast-feed longer or most exclusively are different from the mothers who don't," Dr. Michael Kramer of McGill University in Montreal and the Montreal Children's Hospital said in a telephone interview.

"They tend to be smarter. They tend to be more invested in their babies. They tend to interact with them more closely. They may be the kind of mothers who read to their kids more, who spend more time with their kids, who play with them more," added Kramer, who led the study published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

The researchers measured the differences between the two groups using IQ tests administered by the children's pediatricians and by ratings by their teachers of their school performance in reading, writing, math and other subjects.

Both sets of scores were significantly higher in the children from the breast-feeding promotion group.

Read the whole article here

Had to Share

I was looking on CafePress today and found this! Thought I'd share in case anyone is hesitant about homebirths because of the mess:

Gestapo Raid on Raw Milk?

I have read many stories like this before, so it is really no different than the others. What is frustrating to me is how the government barges in the "protect the consumer" when it should really be the consumer that is researching and knowing our options. If you, after researching, decide to drink pasteurized/homogenized milk, then that's your decision. If you, after researching, decide to fully vaccinate your children, then go for it! But these are all areas where the "Nanny State" is taking over and telling us what is best for us and that we shouldn't question what the almighty government has decided for us. Many times they look at those of us that are doing things different than mainstream and call us irresponsible. I beg your pardon, but isn't doing the research for ourselves and making informed decisions make us responsible?

Here's part of the article. You can read the whole article here. After you do, please go and vote on the poll!

A rally has been set for tomorrow in front of the magistrate's office in Mt. Holly, Pa., in support of a Mennonite farmer who has brought the wrath of the government on himself for selling raw milk and other products – an act government prosecutors say violates a number of regulations.

That's when the next court hearing is scheduled for Mark Nolt, a Pennsylvania farmer who turned in his state permit to sell raw milk because it didn't allow for the sale of the other products he offered.

"They swooped in ... like a bunch of Vikings, handcuffed me and stole $30,000 worth of my milk, cheese and butter," he told the New York Daily News.

His case is just an example of what the government is trying to do to those who believe – based on medical results – that raw milk is better for them than the processed milk available in most grocery stores, according to Nolt's supporters.

Processed milk, many believe, leads to clogged arteries, strokes and heart attacks.

Jonas Stoltzfus, a fellow farmer and member of the Church of the Brethren, was asked to be a spokesman for Nolt, and confirmed, "Six state troopers and Bill Chirdon of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture trespassed onto his property, and stole $20,000-$250,000 of his product and equipment."

Stoltzfus reported Nolt turned in his state permit to sell raw milk "because it did not cover all the products he was selling. he felt he was being dishonest selling stuff that was not covered by the permit."

Stoltzfus said authorities told Nolt people had gotten sick from eating his food, "but no one ever came forward and no proof was ever offered."

"This is a Gestapo raid," Stoltzfus told the blog report, "complete with state troopers, raiding a hard-working farmer selling milk to friends and customers."

The Daily News reported the farmer's customers were enraged.