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Archive for July, 2008

Tragedy in my hometown.

27 Jul

I grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee. I loved it there, and I’d give just about anything to have the opportunity to move back. It is my home. It will always be my home.

So when I saw an RSS feed article about a church shooting in Tennessee, I clicked on it, holding my breath, knowing that it’s a big state and there are literally thousands of churches across the state. And when the article came up, and the first thing I saw was that it was a church in West Knoxville, my heart stopped. I attended a great church there and I’ve often said I wish I could transplant it every time I move, because we’ve found nothing that even compares.

I read further and was relieved to find out that it wasn’t “my” church. But it was a church I knew well…one I drove past every day on my way to work, one that my friends attended, and one that I could see myself attending if “my” church wasn’t so awesome. I am absolutely heartbroken for the congregation there. The gunman walked in and opened fire during a children’s theatrical production during the regular service, so there were a lot of kids there who witnessed everything. Over 200 people in the sanctuary at the time. When he stopped to reload, he was tackled by several parishioners and the police department was able to arrest him 4 minutes after they got the initial report of the shooting. Thank God for those quick thinking men who managed to stop him from doing more damage.

One person is confirmed dead right now. Several more are in critical condition. Please, if you believe in prayer, pray for the victims of this tragedy. There is a lot of speculation as to why he did this…the most likely reason seems to be the ambiguous term “hate” crime. This was a very accepting church and it sounds like they’ve recently had a sign up letting homosexuals know that they were welcome there. Regardless of the reasons, it’s a terrible tragedy and there’s a lot of confusion and grief in my hometown today. People should feel safe in their places of worship, no matter their beliefs.

Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church

Local newspaper’s coverage

Edited to add this info: It seems that the church’s policy of acceptance was not the reason this man targeted the church. Instead, one of his neighbors says he has a hatred for Christianity.   Ironically, I’d say that Unitarians are not generally considered a Christian denomination. Regardless, it was a senseless tragedy and now 2 people have passed away. So unnecessary.

 
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Posted in Faith/Religion, News/Current Events, Sites to See

 

How do I handle this one?

25 Jul

I have a major parenting dilemma.  Way back in mid-May, we signed my oldest son up for teeball.  I was told that practices would start in June, with games to begin in July and finished by the first week or so of August.  I figured this would be fine with our school schedule beginning in mid-July.

As it turned out, practice didn’t start until mid-July, the week before school started for him.  I heard many reasons as to why this happened…equipment didn’t come in, coaches hadn’t picked up rosters, rosters weren’t finished yet, and a few others that I’ve forgotten.  I called several times trying to figure out what was going on because I was being asked daily by a little boy who just wanted to play teeball.  As it turns out, we’re practicing from 7PM to 8PM one night a week.  Which I could deal with, though the timing bothered me somewhat.  We’ve never been strict about bedtime, but with school starting we’ve spent most of the summer trying to get him used to going to bed around 8PM so he’d be able to get up and make it to school and not be tired all day.  So now, one night a week he’s got teeball practice that *ends* at 8:00, and then we have to get home, get him in the shower and then to bed.  It’s made for some late bedtimes and a couple of difficult mornings.  But I didn’t complain.

Last night we got news of our first game.  Make that games, plural.  Next week, he has 2 games.  Plus a practice.  All on school nights, all ending at 8PM, if not later.  This is NOT going to work.  I realize that we choose to make sacrifices when we enroll our children in a year round school.  But based on the info I was given when we signed up, it was not going to be but for the first few weeks of school.  And I had NO idea there would be 2 games a week, plus practice!  Even if he wasn’t in school, that’s a LOT of family time and evenings that are being interfered with.  Undoubtedly I should have asked more questions.  But since I was told it would be over in early August, I just didn’t think it would become such a big issue.  This whole teeball thing has been a mess and it seems very badly organized, so I’m sure that doesn’t help with the annoyance factor.  I had used Lee County Parks & Rec for activities before but I’m having second thoughts about using them for anything in the future…which is too bad, because you can’t beat the price!  We really wanted to do football this fall, but now I’m really doubting whether we should.

So now what do I do?  Do I pull him out of teeball completely?  He really enjoys it, so that doesn’t seem the right thing to do…I don’t want to punish him for something that’s not his fault.  But I just don’t see him being able to handle having so much to do in the evenings and still getting the sleep he needs to do well in school.  So what options do I have?  I talked to my mom and her suggestion was to limit him to one game and one practice per week.  I think this would be a good compromise, but again I am concerned that he will feel punished either by us or the fact that he’s in school.  I don’t want him to hate school for interfering with the fun of teeball, and I don’t want him to resent us or feel punished, either.  So wise blog readers, what are your suggestions?  I’m completely at a loss here and all of the parenting success I felt at my ingenious method of teaching him his b and d has completely evaporated.

 
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Posted in Family, Parenting, Sanford

 

Mind your Bs and Ds.

24 Jul

My son’s kindergarten class has been learning the 1st 5 letters of the alphabet, in both upper and lower case.  Which I thought he already knew, but apparently he is getting his lower case b and d mixed up.  (Why did the preschool teacher NEVER correct him when he got letters backwards???)  Fine, I think…isn’t this common in dyslexic children?  Not that I think he’s dyslexic, but surely somewhere out there I can learn some tricks to help him remember which letter is which.  Only I couldn’t find *anything* on the internet!  I tried googling all sorts of things but nothing came up that would help him.

So I turned on the mom brain and started thinking about things we could do to practice.  I thought about printing out letter pages and letting him color them, but I decided that wouldn’t really address the root of the problem.  And then I had a stroke of genius…I would print out a whole bunch of pictures of objects that began with the letter b or d.  He’s got the phonetics figured out, so it was easy for him to determine whether it was a b or d word.  Then he had to glue either a printed b or d to the picture.  Once we ran out of the printed letters (I did a LOT of pictures!) I made him write the correct letter.  This little game was a huge hit, and he got them ALL right!

Since I had a hard time finding a good method to help him differentiate these letters, I thought I’d share the pages I made.  Basically, I just cut the letters up, then cut each image so it was on it’s own “card.”  Then I ran through the pictures with him to make sure he understood what they were all supposed to be, because I had to get a little creative!  They are ball, dog, books, drum, duck, bus, dinosaur, dollar, baby, bird, bananas, balloons, bed, desk, dancing, butterfly, bee (or bug), dolphin, dragon, doll, boots, bear, doctor, dad, bells, and door.  After that it was his job to choose either a b or d (they were all mixed up in a pile, so he had to figure out which was which for himself) and glue it to the picture card, or write the correct letter if there were none left to glue.  I did the first 10 with him, and he did the rest on his own.  I’m attaching the .pdf file to this post (I hope!) so feel free to use it if you think it might be helpful for you.  It’s certainly not the most professional thing out there, but it worked for us!

bdwords

 
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Posted in Family, Parenting

 

It rubs the lotion on it’s skin…

23 Jul

Or else it gets the hose again.

Does anyone else constantly think this while watching Erica Hahn’s character on Grey’s Anatomy. No? Just me?

And for those not getting the reference, Brooke Smith, who plays Dr. Hahn on Grey’s Anatomy was the Tennessee senator’s daughter who’d been kidnapped and kept in a pit by Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. How old is Brooke Smith, anyway? I swear she must be in her 40s because Silence of the Lambs is nearly 20 years old, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her! I think she looks better now than she did back then.

 
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Posted in Rambling, TV

 

If only I had $500k dollars.

22 Jul

A friend recently emailed me a link to this blog, which is a hilarious collection of real estate photos gone bad. What blows my mind is just how expensive some of these homes are…yes, half a million for places that look like they should be condemned! I know we’ve been lucky to live in places where we could get nice homes for less than $150k, but I am not sure I realized just HOW lucky we’ve been. Actually, this is the first place we’ve spent more than $110k on a house…we’ve even had 2 (very nice houses) that we bought for less than $100k. It just blows my mind sometimes.

Anyway, it prompted me to go looking for bad real estate photos for Sanford and I DID find them. I was actually going to post some, but I’m really trying not to be too snarky here or alienate anyone. I did find out that the house next door to us is listed for well over $200k. Really??? Maybe property values in this neighborhood are better than I thought!

And as an aside, if you’re a local Realtor and are having trouble getting good photos, (and by good, I mean *in focus* and attractive angles!) would you consider hiring me on a trial basis to see if we can get some good photos for you? I’m also willing to do websites for real estate agents. In fact, I may set up a sample site over the next few days…I was kind of shocked when I realized that most of the local Realtors didn’t even have their own sites, at least not that I could find. These can be a great source of info, especially if you have your website printed on your signs. I often drive by houses and wish there was an easy way to get info about them!

 
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Posted in Me Stuff, Sanford, Sites to See

 
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