I’ve been seeing billboards and advertisements all over Dallas for this website; I Am Second. Being the curious type I checked it out last night and well, it was pretty cool. It is a collection of video testimonials about Christ and God done by both famous and not famous people. Some of them talk about overcoming addiction or abuse, but several are just simple testimonials. It is sponsored by bible churches – so non-denominational. This one by Jason Castro (American Idol fame – and still an absolute cutie) is my favorite.

At 11:30 PM a small thunderstorm blew into Dallas as I snuggled into bed. If it wasn’t for the lightening, I probably wouldn’t have known that a thunderstorm was even going on it was so quiet and relaxed. I was the last one into bed and the soft sound of rain was peaceful as I drifted off to sleep. However, at 1:30 AM…

Me: (shaking David in bed) Babe! Babe! Is that the tornado sirens?
David: (mainly still asleep) Huh? Uh, I don’t know what that is
Me: Yeah, it totally sounds like the tornado sirens. That can’t be right, it barely even rained.
David: (getting shorts and t-shirt on) Hang on, I’ll go check.

I hear the door open, shut and then nothing. I sat in bed for a minute but the sirens stopped and I was sleepy so I fell back to sleep. At 2:30 AM David comes back to bed.

David: You awake?
Me: sort of
David: Um, we almost died.
Me: WHAT?!
David: Yeah a tornado was close by, but see how I keep us all safe?
Me: Yeah, totally. Good job!

Even in Dallas it gets cold. Now granted cold in Dallas means a brisk 35 degrees at the lowest. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t look forward to these precious cold months to break out my favorite things to keep me and my family warm. Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to feature a “Bit of Warmness”. Today it is soup. There is nothing like a good soup recipe during cold months. My favorite recipe is for Taco Soup. Trust me on this one – it sounded weird when I first moved here but has become a favorite. It is like a chili only better.

1 lb ground beef
1 small onion diced
2 cans of tomato sauce
1 can of diced tomatoes undrained (I use Rotel with onions and peppers but you don’t have to)
1 package of ranch dressing mix
1 package of taco seasoning mix
1 1/2 c water
1 can of corn undrained (you can use frozen if you prefer)
1 can of black beans drained and rinsed
1 can of pinto beans drained and rinsed

Saute onions in large soup pot. Add ground beef and brown. Add all remaining ingredients and simmer. (If you want the soup to be thicker like chili you can add some tomato paste – just keep alternating with water until you have the consistency you like).

I like to serve it with sour cream on top, shredded cheddar cheese, guacamole and some crumbled taco chips. Oh my goodness!! Even my kids will eat this one.

Please feel free to blame Jane from “What About Mom” for the following post. She is truly the one that started it all and therefore all critical comments can be addressed to her. See Jane MADE me go look at this site called Christmas Wrapped. It is a site sponsored by Target put together by Federated Media that highlights all the “top tier” mommy bloggers. I went to the site and I saw the glory of blogging, advertising and free market right there before my eyes. But is it wrong? Is it ethically improper? Are they sell outs? Or are we just jealous?

Why Do We Blog?
It has been my observation that female blogger fall into several different categories:

1.) The Purist: This is the blogger who is truly just documenting their day-to-day life for family and friends. They don’t expect anybody else to read and when it comes down to it they really don’t WANT anybody else to read it.

2.) The Writer: These are bloggers who have a novel inside of them. These are women who either wrote in college or have dreamed of writing professionally and have just never been given the chance. These women write for the art, for the beauty, for the dream of people actually reading something they wrote. They live for comments.

3.) The Specialist: These are women who have an interest, a talent, or a gift and they are quite skilled. These are the craft sites, cooking sites, shopping sites. These are women who have really developed an expertise that should be shared.

4.) The Successful: These are the precious few who have hit that magical combination of good writing, good timing, and good subject matter that propels them into a tier of blogging that allows them to call blogging a job. These women are asked to speak on panels, talk shows, contribute to books, local conversations, etc. They are considered experts.

The ones that are “successful” are usually some sort of combination of the Specialist and the Writer. The question then becomes do we all secretly aspire to be “successful”? Blogging is hard. Blogging well is even more difficult. Would we all grab the golden ring if presented? And what are we willing to sacrifice? Are we willing to change our voice, support products we don’t like? sacrifice our blog for other projects? If we are our own “brand” what would we be? What would it look like?

It all started with Dooce. As any regular reader of her blog knows, she’s pregnant again. She posted sonogram pictures this week and an early photo of her “baby bump”. I read the entire post and realized something shocking — I wasn’t sad. I didn’t even feel a twinge of jealousy, remorse, anger, bitterness or resentment. I was actually happy FOR HER. I looked at those little sonogram pictures and thought “cool” and that was it. No “what if blah, blah, blah” or “I wish it, blah, blah, blah”. Nope, just “cool”. I was amazed by this turn of events.

A couple of weeks ago while I was cleaning out closets it was as if I couldn’t stop crying. My friend Kym said I was “mourning” and that I needed to just roll with it. (She’s a trained therapist so I kind of HAVE to listen to her advice). I did. I accepted that it was okay to be sad, that I might be sad for awhile. That being sad about not having any more babies didn’t necessarily mean I WANTED any more babies.

Today I sold the crib. A very young mother with a 7 month old little girl and what looked like little else to her name, came to my house and bought our crib. I expected this day to be far more traumatic then it feels. I’m actually pretty excited about the $170 she gave me and the extra space in our garage. I’m saving money for a treadmill — working towards that pre-baby body. (Now, where did I leave it? And where did these extra 15lbs come from?)

I love being a mother. I love my children. There is no greater thing in my life than the beauty, fun, wonder, and work of raising my kids. I would want no other job, I would want no other life. But I’m okay with the two I have and it feels good. I’m ready now to move on and embrace the next phase of my life.

I don’t craft. I know that when you give birth you are supposed to magically receive the gift of craft, but for some reason it never happened to me. I like the idea of crafting. I like to think that I will craft, but alas I have no patience and even less creativity. I have no explanation why suddenly this Christmas I decided to MAKE MY OWN ADVENT CALENDAR. However, once the fabric was purchased I was driven with laser-pointed ambition to complete it.

Whenever David decides to do a home improvement project it usually requires a dozen trips to Home Depot and three times as much time as originally estimated. My advent calendar required the same ratios. I made at least 5 trips to Hobby Lobby and instead of taking me a week, it took me three weeks to complete the project. I did finish it, which is more than I can say about most of my craft projects. Overall I’m pleased with the outcome. It probably cost me as much as a store bought calendar and it definitely took me far more time, but I like to think that I’ve launched a new family tradition that my kids will look forward to. At least that is what I’m telling myself so don’t squelch the dream.

I’ve only been teaching for three years but during that time I’ve had more people ask me, “what is wrong with our education system?”. I read this article on MSNBC this morning and it got me all worked up. The challenges we face as a country and as parents fall simply into three categories, money, time and motivation.

What Is Important?
I find it ironic that for as much complaining as we do as parents how few of us are willing to shut up and make our kids do the work. Most students enter college ill-prepared for the rigors of true academic study. They lack discipline, and basic time management skills. Many (not all) come to school expecting the information to be spoon-fed or at the minimum easily spelled out for them in a way that requires the least amount of work from them. Now, I recognize that they are teenagers and that part of GOING to college is learning these skills but too many come without the slightest idea of how to do this. When I hear complaints like “but research takes soooo long to do” I want to run screaming from my classroom.

When you talk with High School teachers you hear that parents complain when too much homework is given because it conflicts with work or social/athletic activities. Public school teachers are under pressure by parents to decrease work load and to not make the classes so difficult as to discourage students. As parents we need to ask ourselves “what is important?” Parents should be demanding more challenging work for their children and allowing them to fail. YES, I SAID FAIL. Why? Because it is only in failing that most of these students will learn what it truly takes to succeed. We cannot hold their hand and baby them along and hope that they figure it out — they won’t, and by the time they do it will be too late.

Money, Money, Money
I work at a community college so most of my students can barely afford college to begin with. However this is the most frustrating part of my job. Good students, excellent students are forced to drop out of school every semester because they can’t afford to go. Our financial aid system makes absolutely no sense. A student’s aid elgibility is based solely on their parents income, regardless if that parent is helping to pay for their education. EVERY semester I have MANY students who are denied aid because their parents make a combined income of $85,000 a year but perhaps they are one of three siblings. This means ALL of that 85K has to go to continue to support the other two siblings at home. This may seem like a large income, but trust me this isn’t even near enough money to support a family of five with one person being in college.

This puts these students in a no-win situation. They aren’t elgible for aid which means they need to take a job. They take a job (many full-time). If they are lucky enough to have won a scholarship (which usually only pays for part of their education) they also must go to school full-time in order to qualify. This results in an 18 or 19 yr old young adult trying to juggle a full-time school load with a full-time work load with none of the time management skills of an adult. The result is that many good students are forced to quit school.

College-Bound
Not every student is ready for college at 18 years of age, or is destined to be a college graduate. Our public school system is designed for only one purpose — send kids to college. This is a problem because not everybody should be or wants to be in college. College is a CHOICE. Every semester I see kids come into my classroom because they don’t know where else to go. They don’t want to be in school but what else are they supposed to do? Nobody has given them any other options. Some of them are not mature enough to start school and others are just not interested. Starting college is like joining a gym. There is really only a small percentage that will continue to go to the gym and get their bodies in shape. The rest will go to the gym for about a month and then never go again, but will continue to pay the membership fees. This semester alone I will be failing close to 12 students because after three weeks of school they stopped coming but never dropped the class. It is idealistic to think that every student leaving high school is destined for college. If we can accept that as a society/culture then we should start allowing our public school system to focus on providing options. Let’s stop creating a college-prep system and start focusing on educating our children so they can succeed at whatever it is they strive for.

I recognize that this is only MY opinion formed from MY experiences and if I worked in a different state with different students I might see different problems. However, I think that these issues are felt in a lot of places and one of the easy things for us to fix is the aid system. If nothing else, I wish our government would reexamine our college aid system and update it. Thank you for letting me rant this morning. I promise to have more fun things to talk about tomorrow.

Since the holiday shopping season has officially begun I thought I would share some of my favorite ideas for gift-giving. These are my old stand-bys that I go back to again and again when I’m desperate.

Personalized Is Always Best
I love doing photo books for family – especially grandparents. In the end, this is what they really want, pictures of their grandchildren. There are so many web sites that do this for you but I use Shutterfly. Another variation on this is a personalized cookbook or even a family heritage book. A heritage book is great for parents where you can scan and include old pictures of family that usually get shoved into a shoe box somewhere. The best part about this is that you can create one photo book and then order as many copies as you want to give as gifts.

Subscriptions
I love reading magazines but I hate buying them and I find most people feel the same way. There is a magazine that fits everybody’s interests. The best part about this idea is that it is the gift that keeps on giving and it is easy to wrap. This is also a great last minute gift suggestion since you can always run down to the grocery store and buy a magazine on your way to your Christmas celebration and then mail the subscription card later.

Feed The Soul
I find as my parents get older that there just isn’t anything they NEED and since they are trying to lighten their possessions I hate buying them things at Christmas. BUT, everybody needs to eat. Here are some of my favorite places to order from:

Dale & Thomas Popcorn
These guys take popcorn to a new level. I’m pretty confident that I’ve featured them here before, but you really need to try these guys. They are awesome!

Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream
They will send a 6 pack of pints shipped in dry ice to anywhere in the country. For a little extra they will include an ice cream scoop. This is such a fun gift to give and receive.

See’s Candy
I grew up with my grandmother mailing us See’s Candy from California every holiday and I still consider it a Christmas treat. I love their chocolate. You can go to Godiva, but See’s is just classic and delicious. I recommend the molasses chips.

If you are a family member you will probably be receiving one or all of these over the holiday season. So pretend you didn’t read this. Happy Holidays y’all!!