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Allison turned 9 today, and we’ve been so busy that the traditional happy birthday post almost didn’t get written until after midnight. Allison had dance pictures all morning, then we had to get groceries for her chosen birthday dinner (homemade Chinese food). This was followed by opening presents, a visit from her cousins, making a giant birthday cookie (Allie even made the frosting and decorated it herself). Then it was cooking and eating, and cleaning up and more eating. I think she had a good day.

Our littlest munchkin is now officially halfway to adulthood. The fact that she is growing up is all too apparent in that none of her gifts this year were toys (except for two more Webkinz). The girl who used to reliably ask for Barbies or Littlest Pet Shop is now happy with clothes, jewelry, and gift cards. But as much as I want her to stay my little girl forever, I’m very proud of the young lady she is becoming.

Happy Birthday Allison!

As Christine mentioned, we recently watched a documentary about the Dover trial, in which a school district in Dover, PA tried to mandate the teaching of Intelligent Design in science classes. The show was actually an episode of NOVA called Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial.

Although it starts out by framing the situation that ocurred in Dover, as the show progresses it not only explains the theory of evolution in a clear, easily understandable way, but it actually address the fundamentals of how the scientific method works and what a scientific theory is (as opposed to the lay use of the word). Then they get into the actual evidence for evolution. There is so much evidence that supports the theory, they can’t possibly touch on it all, so they rely on a recreation of the testimony of Ken Miller, which provides a nice overview. Finally, toward the end, they briefly address the misconception that evolution and religion are incompatible. My only criticism is that I thought the constitutional issues with the separation of church and state were sort of glossed over.

The show was really excellent, though. We didn’t even make the kids watch it; they just pulled up a seat and were transfixed for the entire two hours. It’s really worth the time to watch it. If you don’t catch it on PBS, you can watch it online.

The most joyous day of the year is upon us. It’s Christinemas Day! Christinemas is the annual celebration of Christine’s 29th birthday. This year is the 11th annual Christinemas celebration*.

This year’s celebration will include: The Spending of Time with Family Members; The Visitation of Fine Dining Establishments, The Lighting and Subsequent Extinguishment of Waxy Fire Sticks; The Consumption of Sugary Confections; The Opening and Possible Mangling of Hastily Wrapped Boxes of Consumer Items; and The Off-Key Singing of the Traditional Birthday Hymn.**

Let the festivities begin.

* To determine Christine’s actual age, don’t add 11 to 29; consider that the first year she was 29 is one of the 11. Or use radiocarbon dating.

**All Christinemas celebration activities are trademarked and copyrighted. Any rebroadcast, reproduction, or other use without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is prohibited.

Although Daryl and Chris already posted this, it’s too good not to pass along. A great story on homeschooling from CBS Sunday Morning:

Our dear Mr. Guinea died of a respiratory infection Sunday night.

It amazed me how much we grew to love him over the past year and a half, as well as how each guinea pig has its own “personality”, just like any of us.

He will be greatly missed.

At the 4th of July parade we went to this morning, I made an interesting observation. The folks with the Obama for President float were throwing candy to all the kids along the parade route. The McCain people weren’t. I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions from that.

We’ve been going to this same parade for the last 12 or 13 years. An elderly lady who is a friend of the family (Christine’s mom’s boyfriend’s mom) has a house right on the parade route and every year we go over and watch the parade from there. The crowds are too big for everyone to fit on the city-owned right-of-way so they kind of overflow into her yard, which is not a big deal. But all these people also leave behind a bunch of trash. Empty bottles, candy wrappers, flyers, etc. all over the place. How frickin’ rude is that? So as usual, we grabbed a garbage sack and had the kids help in picking it all up afterward.

Later we went over to Heather and George’s for a cookout with some of our weirdo homeschooling friends. There was plenty of time for swimming and playing for the kids while us adults socialized. We had a good time, but I ate too much, and I got a killer headache in the evening. I was hoping for one of George’s famous bonfires, but we had to settle for a small fire in the fire pit that just got used for the first time in three years. Later, I dozed on the couch and I think the women were plotting some evil-doing against me that involved shaving cream or sticking my left hand in a pan of warm water. Thanks for having us over, guys. We’ll return the favor soon, I swear!

Now it’s 11:30, my headache is gone, and I’m wide awake from the caffeinated soda I had at 10 p.m.

My little sister has a blog now. She only has one post up, so we need to encourage her to keep writing. She’s a photographer too and has a nice gallery of her work, so head over and check it out:

Denise’s blog.

I think I had my first crisis of non-theism last week, and I’d like to report that I came through fine.

Over the weekend I ventured into the normally off-limits area of our house known as “Jessica’s room”. There is usually some sort of reverse black-hole around her room that forcefully expels any (parental) matter, but due to some unknown anomaly in the space-time continuum, I found myself in there trying to calmly talk her out of her own minor crisis which involved the dreaded subject of “math”.

It was then that I noticed two books on her desk that made me pause. Now I should point out that Jessica goes through books like most kids go through candy. That is to say, she reads a lot of books. But these books were not her normal fare. One was “The Prayer of Jabez for Teens” and the other was “Piercing Proverbs“. I stood there thinking “why is she reading religious books?” This gnawed at me for a little while, but I soon forgot about it and went on with my day. (I should add as a side note that the irony was not lost on me that most parents would be happy finding religious books in their child’s room, but would be alarmed if they found something like “the God Delusion” or “God is Not Great“.)

Then awhile later, Jess asked me to log into iTunes so she could download some music. She had some money left in our iTunes account from some gift cards from last year, and finally found something she wanted.

And what was she downloading? Christian music! So that got me all freaked out again. Was someone trying to influence my daughter’s religious beliefs? Was it her friends? I know that a couple of her friends come from families that are pretty religious-y (and they’re not home-schooled, btw) so I had to wonder.

I brought it up to Christine that night and she responded with the simple statement, “she’s finding her own way”. Of course I know in her mind she added something along the lines of “Duh. Just chill out, you neurotic dorkwad.” She was, of course, absolutely right.

What exactly was I thinking? It took me nearly 40 years to figure out that I’m an atheist (or more accurately, an agnostic atheist) and I was expecting Jessica to avoid the religious path that I myself started her on, simply because I’ve let her know that I no longer believe in God? That’s either pretty arrogant of me or pretty disrespectful towards her as a thinking individual, or maybe both.

I may periodically need to remind myself to relax and trust in the intelligence of my children. Whether they end up Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Deist, or nonreligious really doesn’t matter. It’s about being who they are and about how they treat others that counts. I was reminded of this once again this morning when I read the latest post from Dale McGowan, who says to let them find their own way more eloquently than I ever could.

I’m so proud of my little sister. Over the weekend, she bought this:

Charles will be along for company and protection. Certain people worry about a young single woman traveling alone but I don’t because of Charles:

He’s a good dog and very protective of my sis. I’m sure he’d do some serious damage to anyone he thought was a threat.

Sometime next fall she’ll be starting out on a little adventure before heading back to Iowa. What keeps us all coming back here?

I made him a, a, uh, picture to put on the blog for his birthday yesterday, but it didn’t come out like I wanted (much like everything else) but he thought it was good enough for you guys to see.

Steve Carrell’s head was too damn big to cover with Don’s so I had to make it bigger, because try as I might, I couldn’t get Fireworks to cooperate. It’s still funny, but I know I could do better.

We babysat my nephews, three wild boys ages 6, 3, and 2, Wednesday and Thursday evenings. It went amazingly well. They were so good! I don’t what to attribute it to, but they got along really well, played, tidied up, went to bed fairly easily, and were generally sweet. We usually babysit them every other Wednesday but when I had hurt my back I switched days around with my mom. They told her Tuesday that they were “in for a treat” since they got to spend two evenings at our house this week. (I love it. My house is a treat!)

Sam, the two-year-old talks up a storm, and you can understand 99% of what he says. We’re not just talking a few words strung together, but big, full, clear sentences. And I don’t have that parental bias going, thinking how good he is at speaking since I don’t listen to him daily. And is he ever funny! Trey, the oldest, is in kindergarten and is reading very well, possibly even better than Allison. (Bad homeschool mommy! Bad! Bad!) Elijah, well, what can I say? He has big brown eyes that make me think of Puss-n-Boots from Shrek that make you go “Awww”. Then he attacks you.

I’ll have to put up some pictures of them one of these days.

Christine did something to hurt her back and since yesterday afternoon she’s been in pain and really can’t do much of anything except lay around. Most of the time she needs help getting up to standing, and she can’t bend or reach for anything. I took the day off so I could help her get around, and will be taking her to the doctor this afternoon. She keeps saying how she appreciates me doing all this, but she’d do the same for me. In fact she did do the same when I broke my foot last year. However, I think she’s getting a little sick of me referring to her as an invalid.

So today I’ve taken on the task of getting the kids to attend to their studies. I think Christine is probably a lot nicer to them than I am, and if I were to do this all the time, I’d probably be a real hardass. But it is kind of fun too, and I think I could get into doing it everyday. At least until I got burned out and disgruntled anyway.

Feel free to leave your get well wishes in the comments. I’m sure it will help cheer Christine up.

Yes, believe it or not, Christine and I are now the proud owners parents of a teenager. Jessica turns 13 years old today.

As far as teenagers go, she’s a good one though. I think we’ll keep her.

Happy Birthday Jessica!

Our Festivus celebration for this year has come to an end. Like always, to start out the day, I put up the Festivus pole (see picture below). We spent pretty much the entire afternoon on the airing of grievances. I had a whole notebook full notes about the ways in which each family member has disappointed me over the past year, so it took a while to get through it all. Not to mention we had to take a break a couple of times because Allison was crying too hard to continue. I felt a little bad, but after all she is seven years old, so she should be able to take a little verbal confrontation shouldn’t she?

After some delicious frozen pizza and cheese sticks for the Festivus meal, we all participated in the feats of strength. I’m very traditional about this part of the day. I started us off by challenging Matthew to a wrestling match, which lasted a full half-hour before he tired out and needed help. It finally took all three kids (and an extra push from Christine) to pin me and bring the day to a close.

Don with the festivus pole. It’s a festivus for the rest of us!

In honor of Christine’s birthday today, I wrote her a few haikus:

Not just any day
Today is Christine’s birthday
Not a spring chicken

She’s my old lady
But not quite as old as me
As she reminds me

My OLD ball and chain
If I’m sleeping on the couch
She don’t like my jokes

She knows I love her
Thirty-eight is not that old
Happy Birthday, dear