Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Who Bears the Burden for Our Modern Society?

We have two basic groups of women in our country: those who work outside the home and those who see the home as their career. These two groups are not clear cut and individuals who would love to be in one sometimes find themselves in the other for a season.

However, we find that one group is living off of the other. You see every working woman with two or fewer children is planning to retire off the social security paid by the three plus, well raised children of the stay at home mom. This article does a good job of framing the situation from a traditional family point of view. I must say that it irritates me when working women (almost all of whom I know live a higher standard of living than I do) claim the government should pay for their daycare. they think my hubby, who is working himself to death to try to provide our bare necessities, should pay for THEIR daycare so they can, what, buy a newer car? Go on a cruise? Have fancier clothes or an even bigger house? Greed. Pure and simple greed.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Hey, Guess What!

The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality


The Husxtables (Cosby) are....


FICTIONAL!

That's right, the family with the lawyer mom and doctor dad and five mentally balanced and scholastically achieving children living in the big, clean house...


Don't exist.

At all.

Anywhere on planet earth.




The feminists lied; you can't have it all. When you choose to work, your family will suffer. families with working mom's suffer more divorce (due to increased stress on everyone), higher rates of mental illness, especially among the children. The house suffers, the diet suffers, everything suffers.

and what do you get in exchange? Money. Filthy Lucre. How sad to trade your family for money and a higher standard of living. Better to live poor and be an influence on your children than to exhaust yourself trying to keep up with the Joneses while your children's precious baby years are wasted.

You just can't be a woman and a man at the same time. It just doesn't work.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

What's a mother to do?

Here is another excellent post by Anna about the importance of motherhood and the insanity of the modern lifestyle. All I can say is "Amen."

Christmas 2009-Our pictures


We have had the biggest snow in the entire time we have lived here this year. big enough for some interesting snowmen.


Making Christmas cookies.


My Jessie with her harmonica. She played "Go Tell it on the Mountain" while her three younger sisters sang.


Our Christian brother talking about God's blessings.


Our pastor (my dad) discussing what it would have been like to be Joseph and parent Jesus. (My, it must have been quite a task from the look on his face!)


Some of our congregation.


We talked my neice into playing us a special.



My Joseph telling the Christmas story.

My Joy playing Joy to the World.
Sister Nancy read a funny poem.


Hubby and I sang "All Hail the Power of Jesus Name" (I am just learning the piano. I highly recommend "Piano for Quitters" and "Piano for Life.")


Jon on his way to the piano for his duet of "The Drummer Boy."


Jim playing his part of "The Drummer Boy."

Sis Leigh read a poem and sang a song.




My boys posing for the camera.

My whole family.


My girls.


Jane- 2


Jackie- 5


Jennifer- 6


Jessie- 8


Joseph- 10


Jonathon- 11


Jim- 14 (and 6'2"!!!!)


Joy- 17





























Saturday, December 19, 2009

Thanksgiving

Every year for my mom's birthday my hubby buys her all sorts of, ummm, interesting things to taste test (we usually wait until Thanksgiving to do the tasting even if her birthday doesn't fall on the holiday that year). These can be different flavors of soda (sweat one year. Turkey another), bar-b-q sauces, salsas, and some things that are simply unidentifyable. This year I wrote down some of the comments (easier for me to do since i am too chicken to taste most of the things. The comments are mostly from Andy, John and Mom). Next year I will try to put the name of the item with the comment.

We used taco chips to taste things on.

Real suttle
That's actually pretty good.
Some places say that's food.
You might could get used to it.
Boy, that's a winner right there (a black cherry bbq sauce).
Not as bad as the other one.
Not even lettuce could help it (some sort of dressing).
I'm not sure that's better than the tuber.
That needs more pork (one of the bbq sauces).
ooooohhhhh
Ice cream would improve that.
Yep, that's bubble gum (flavored soda).
It reminds me of my mouthwash.
wwd40 stirred with a licorice stick.
OK, I'm brave.
Tastes like concrete (never did figure out what that one was).

And my all time favorite responses (Thi Mayo I think):
NASTY!!!! (by my mom who eats anything as she was wiping it out of her mouth)
HORRID!!!

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Does God Play Favorites?

This is a good question.

The Bible clearly tells men to support their families and the women to care for the home and raise the children.

Feminists tell us that this is not fair. That women can do any job men can and should not be "forced" to stay out of the workforce.

This presumes that men have the better assignment. This assumes that my hubby who had to go to work this morning in a foot of snow, in the dark, to an understaffed warehouse got the better end of the deal than I did when God told me to stay in my warm home making cookies with the children and teaching them to read, do math and the toddler to recognize her colors. Uhhhh, yeah.

A good article on the subject.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Pride and Prejudice

Has feminism really given us respect and freedom? No, not really. I, too, have read Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice. I did enjoy the book. The difference between the respect given to women then and today is astonishing. Today a woman is expected to provide her boyfriend with sexual release, her hubby with a higher standard of living, her boss with near-slave labor and still stay beautiful and keep a nice house and pay attention to her children. Puuuuu-leeeese! The feminist revolution did nothing more than buy slavery for the majority of women today.

Dr Laura's opinion of Pride and Prejudice (she says it better than I do:-)

Friday, December 11, 2009

Health Insurance

Here is an interesting article arguing that a big part of the problem with health insurance is that we are too rich. Really.

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Socialism

I've been stewing on socialism lately. I have heard many Christians say that socialism is more biblical than capitalism. I can't disagree more. I believe socialism is evil; an invention of Satan himself.

In Acts we have the story of the early church during their first persecution. The Bible says "they had all things in common." This is often used to justify socialism in our government. This is a very incomplete view of this passage of scripture.

When Ananias and Sapphira brought part of the money from the sale of their land to Peter and tried to tell him it was the whole amount, Peter said "It was your land to begin with and you didn't have to sell it or bring ANY or the money to us, much less all of it. Why did you lie to God?" Clearly, this sharing things in common was not by order of the apostles, but by voluntary action of the Christians. In fact, Peter's statement confirms A and S's private property rights, something socialism violates.

God did make provision for charitable giving to the poor in the old testament. Land owners were to leave the corners of their fields unharvested so the poor could gather food. They were also to leave their entire fields unharvested every seven years for the same reason. Clearly God wants us to give to the poor.

But

God just as clearly spells out the action the government was to take in the case of murder, kidnapping, adultery, parent abuse, stealing, etc. What was the penalty for not giving to the poor? What penalty was the human government allowed to levy on a land owner who harvested his corners?

There wasn't one.

This was an area that was between God and the land owners. God, not government, punished the greedy.

Socialism is the name for a government where those humans in power take by force or threat of force (through tax court) the property (hard earned money, et al) of the citizens of the country in order to give it to those who did not work for it.

Now, I believe in giving to charity. But it is between me and God to give my hard earned money to who I believe God wants me to give it. If I feel lead to give my money to the homeless, great. Socialism is when the humans in government force me to give my money to THEIR favorite charity. They force me to give to educate the fatherless, for example, when my heart might be to give to teenage mothers. They force me to give to bail out companies who have made bad business decisions when I want to give to the hungry. There is nowhere in scripture that condones forcing others to give their property to your favorite cause.

In fact, the Law was heavy on protecting private property rights.

Now, let's see what system would encourage others to meet the needs of the poor.

How about a system that rewards someone for meeting other people's needs? An example I have used before is in the area of food. With eight children, we have quite a grocery bill here. We actually pay more in groceries than our mortgage payment every month (which I find hilarious!) Now, at most grocery stores we simply can't afford to buy enough food. It costs too much (especially since hubby's pay was cut by 20% last spring due to the economy). What are we to do? No problem. Wal-mart (that "evil capitalist institution") offers groceries at close to half of what the same things would cost us at a normal grocery store. By meeting our need for cheap food, they are rewarded with our business and our money (except for produce. We don't like wal-marts produce and go to a local grocer for that). Everybody wins.

Is this a perfect system? No. As long as you have humans involved, you can't have a perfect system. But capitalism is the closest you can come this side of glory.

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Life

We are getting over a long bout of illness here. sniffles. coughs. a few fevers, though not many. general blahhs. Thankfully it seems to be about over.

We have gotten a good foot of snow over the weekend. This ties for the msot since we moved here nearly a decade ago. The rabbits think they have died and gone to heaven, being cold climate animals. The chickens not so much. They are complaining, though still laying (we are up to an average of five eggs a day now!). The dog appears to have som Norwegian elk hound in him and loves the cold, but doesn't like the snow. We have been keeping him in the house since the snow. We have to force him to go out to take care of business. Once he is out there, he enjoys it but wants back in the minute we will let him. The housecats, of course, don't care one way or another about the snow, but hate the dog, LOL.

The children enjoy playing outside for a few miutes but not for long. we are all getting more inside stuff done.

It always amazes me how different everything looks with a blanket of snow. God gives us a whole new scenery to look at so we don't get bored with the same ole' thing:-)

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

For years...

... groups such as gays, atheists, racial groups and animal rights activists have used threat of law suits and even true terrorist activities in order to cow this society into behaving and even talking the way they wish. This is somehow ok. But when Christians say they will simply take their business to places that will say a plain ole’ “Merry Christmas” (no other threats have been made) they are somehow evil, hateful, intolerant, militants. As far as I know, it is still legal to patronize any business you wish for what ever reasons you wish. Christians are within their rights as American citizens to spend their money where they want.

Oh, and to those making such a big deal about “Happy Holidays,” holiday comes from the term Holy day. Just what makes the day holy? The birth of our God!

Merry Christmas, all and Have a Happy Holy-day!