Not tooooo bad

This afternoon I had to go to our local IRS office for an audit. We received notification back in May or June that we had been "selected" for an "evaluation." Doesn't that make a person feel special? What was especially interesting was all the paperwork they wanted us to bring. Did they want to see pay check stubs, bank records, etc.? No.

The wanted to see our kids' birth certificates. They wanted to see medical or school or other records that had our kids' names and our address on them as documentation that they lived with us. They wanted to see records of other income we had to support these kids, like alimony, child support, welfare, VA benefits, or anything else. They wanted to know how we spent this money. They wanted to know how much these dependents made and how much they contributed to the household budget. (I got a gooood laugh out of that one). Oh, and of course, our returns for the audit year (2008) as well as the year before and the year after.

So they only things we could gather of all that were the birth certificates, some insurance records that showed our kids received mail at our address, and the returns. Unfortunately, Kelly was unable to get out of the class he's in for work so I had to go BY MYSELF.

Fortunately it wasn't as bad as I thought. I was thrown for a loop though when he told me that he had already pulled a lot of financial background on us. He was telling this to me reassuringly, because everything looked fine - in other words, we don't spend more than we make or live above our means. (Duh!) But I had, naively, not expected that. I wanted to start calling the guy "Big Brother" though I doubt he would have appreciated it. This bothered me more than anything else, though it shouldn't have surprised me.

The whole meeting took 30 minutes. He made copies of the documents he needed to, and didn't even look at the other 2 returns. They only discrepancy we had was our bank sent us a document reporting one amount of earned interest for the year but reported a different amount to the IRS. Lovely. I showed him the documentation they sent us, and he was a little perplexed as well. However, the difference was a small amount and would have made no impact on the amount of tax owed or return received so he said it would be pointless to pursue it at this point. As relatively painless as it was, I hope not to have to do that again.

Ridiculous

Over the weekend, I received a letter from a company I had bought a doll dress ensemble from. The dress was a doll belonging to Aubrey who is 10 years old. This letter informed the reader that the Consumer Product Safety Commission recently enacted new safety guidelines, requiring stricter testing for products sold for children. Yeah, I think I heard of that one. Oh yeah, in fact I wrote both my senators about that one. It might go down as the dumbest piece of legislation this century.

Sheesh.

Anyway, The letter was sent to inform me that the soles of the shoes from the dress ensemble failed to meet the new lead requirements. It went on to say:

Therefore, we request that you please take these shoes away from children and dispose of them. The primary safety concern is that IF THESE SHOES WERE SWALLOWED, THE LEAD IN THE SOLE OF THE SHOES COULD BE ABSORBED BY THE BODY and cause adverse health effects. (emphasis most definitely mine)

The company generously offered a $20 credit to compensate for the inconvenience. Grrrr. So not only is Big Brother making these companies do this impossibly strict testing, they now have to compensate us for it?

I'm sorry, but I am not the least bit concern that my TEN YEAR OLD will accidentally swallow these doll shoes. And frankly, if I were, I'd have bigger problems to deal with than lead poisoning.

Oh, and BTW, I do NOT intend to throw away any shoes, and I do not intend to take the company up on the $20 credit, tightwad though I am. This is my way of tossing the tea overboard.

Making it Realistic

Is saving oneself for marriage unrealistic? According to Sarah Palin's daughter, it is. And you know what? I agree with her, and so does Al Mohler. His blog post today puts it most succinctly.

Is sexual abstinence realistic for teenagers and young adults? Well, abstinence is certainly not realistic when teenagers put themselves - or they are put there by others - into a situation where sexual activity is likely. At some point, sexual abstinence becomes very unrealistic indeed.

The real issue for Christian teenagers and their parents is not to debate whether sexual abstinence before marriage is realistic or not. The larger and more important issue is that sexual abstinence until marriage is the biblical expectation and command. Once this is realized, the responsibility for everyone concerned is to ensure that expectations and structures are in place so that abstinence is realistic.

The debate over whether abstinence is realistic or not misses the more important issue -- abstinence must be made realistic. [Emphasis mine.]

Parents and teenagers must make certain that adequate protections and expectations are in place so that sexual abstinence is very realistic indeed. Far too many Christian parents allow their teenagers to be part of the "hooking up" scene of teenage culture. In that highly sexualized context, sexual abstinence would appear unrealistic in the extreme.

Read the whole post here. He makes the point here that the way modern dating practices are exercised, even by Christians, set up a situation where abstinence is nearly impossible. "Premature pair dating and unsupervised liaisons," as Mohler describes them, are not set in place to maintain purity. This is the reason that Kelly and I long ago decided that our family will not be taking part in modern teenage dating practices. Hopefully, Bristol Palin's comments will serve as a wake up call to Christian parents.

Delightfully Politically IN-correct

Kelly and I are NOT bumper sticker people. However, I saw one today that might be the only bumper sticker Kelly might ever consider putting on one of his vehicles.

GUN CONTROL
MEANS
USING BOTH HANDS

Stimulating

If you are easily offended, don't watch. But this is the biggest laugh I have gotten out of current events in a long while.

Getting real

OK, so I like sports. I grew up watching sports with my dad. I watch more football than my husband does. I like baseball (our guest room is even decorated in a baseball motif). I am an Olympics junkie. If I'm vegging on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon, I'll watch anything from beach volleyball to golf.

However, can we get real?

I agree that when you take an oath to be truthful, you should do so, but Congress shouldn't even have been involved in the whole baseball/steroids deal. Of course, I don't think baseball should be federally subsidized, either.

And REALLY? He "insisted" ?!? And she had no say so in the matter?

And, just to be clear, I don't think that the players should be taking these substances. However, MLB has set up this culture of turning their heads to what was going on and now it is reaping the consequences. And this is a complete breach of privacy and blatant corruption by the government. Not only is this a stretch of the "in plain view" rules of search and seizure laws, but how come it is that there are 104 names on the list, and only one was leaked? Look for this one to end up in the Supreme Court. And also look for players (as well as non-sports employees in any career field) to either refuse these "confidential surveys" or to just outright lie on them. After all, confidential isn't really confidential anymore.

And finally, and not so seriously, how many think Brett Favre will actually stay retired this time?

Election

Well, I just got back from our local elementary school (the only times I've ever been in are on election days) and voted. I tell you, 9:30 am is the best time to vote in my precinct - I was behind 2 people. All the before work crowd had gone, and the lunch crowd had yet to appear.

Did anyone else catch the Saturday Night Live Presidential Bash last night? I am not a follower of SNL - I can't remember if I've ever watched an entire episode. But I was flipping channels last night and caught a good bit of it. I loved the fun it poked at the pro-Obama media bias. I don't know who the actress is who plays Sarah Palin, but she has her down pat. And I didn't watch the presidential debates this year, so can I assume from the parody that McCain's head kept popping into the shots, even when he wasn't speaking?

Oh, and I'm sure everyone saw the Cabbage Patch kids on eBay, right? They were one-of-a-kind reproductions of McCain, Palin, Obama, and Biden, auctioned off for some charity. Did everyone see the final bids for these dolls?

Joseph Biden - $3,550, 01
John McCain - $6,000.00
Barak Obama - $8,400.00

And...

Sarah Palin - $19,000.00

And yes, the Palin doll is wearing red lipstick.

Radical

Most of the people who know me now might not believe this, but I minored in Political Science in college (major in history). I took as many constitutional law classes as I could; I just ate that stuff up. I was also much more idealistic then.

As I've gotten older, I have to admit that I have grown much more cynical. Not that I consider that a good thing. I really don't. However, it seems justified. I think of it as a constant reminder that this world is not my home, lest I grow too attached to it. This has translated, unfortunately, into a tendency to bury my head in the sand. Some weeks, the only news I get is what my husband tells me or what I read on my friend Cathi's blog.

I say this because I don't comment on politics too much here. However, I am going to do something so radical - at least to me - that I felt compelled to post it. (My husband accuses me of blogging about our entire lives, but I think he exaggerates.)

I am not going to vote Republican in the presidential election this fall.

I've been voting for quite a few years now, and I have voted Republican 99% of the time. It is the party which most closely reflected my political ideology. However, I am very dissatisfied with the way the Republican party has drifted further and further away from its roots of limited government. As far as I can tell, the only real difference between most Democrats and Republicans is the fact that most Republicans are pro-life and more friendly towards the 2nd amendment and homeschooling than most Democrats. In other words, Republicans are for "big" government and Democrats for "bigger" government.

Now don't get me wrong, those are the top three concerns in my book. However, I don't believe John McCain is strong enough in these to offset my concerns about his other policies. I voted in the Republican primary, and McCain would have been the last or next to last on my list at that time (because of his pro-choice stance, Guiliani would have ranked lower than McCain).

Now, this does not mean I'm voting for Obama. No siree. The thought of him as president makes me glad I'm a Calvinist.

So I'm going to do something I never thought I would do. I'm voting for a third party candidate. Kelly has been talking to me for a few years about the Constitutional Party. In fact, he has this listed as his party affiliation on Facebook. (I also like the looks of the American Independent Party, with Alan Keyes as its candidate.) I have decided to vote for Chuck Baldwin who, unfortunately, in Texas is a write-in candidate. For those of you who supported Ron Paul during the primary, Paul has endorsed Baldwin.

May God have mercy on us.

P.A.P.A. - Yet Another Reason Not to Send your Kids to Government Schools

Texas has a new mandatory class that all high schoolers in public school must take, called P.A.P.A. - Parenting and Paternity Awareness.

“They talk about buying ‘x’ number of diapers -- over how many months and years and the cost,” explains Beverly Linkneyer, administrator of the Northside ISD health curriculum. *

The Texas Attorney General - who asked for the class to be taught (since when does the attorney general set curriculum policy?)- says that:

Key themes in the curriculum focus on the importance of father involvement, the value of paternity establishment, the legal realities of child support, the financial and emotional challenges of single parenting, the benefits of both parents being involved in a child's life, healthy relationship skills, and relationship violence prevention.**

Did you catch that?

The value of paternity establishment.

The legal realities of child support.

Now the government is wanting to teach your children how to be parents. Not only that, they are preparing your child for a life of single parenthood. No morality, just this will cost too much money - look at all the diapers you'll have to buy, the child support you'll have to pay, and how it will ruin your life. And since God and Christianity are banned from curriculum, does any Christian parent think that this class will be teaching their son or daughter how to raise their children up "in the fear and admonition of the Lord?" Do you really want the government teaching your children how to parent?

Setting the morality issue aside for a moment, in an age when everybody talks about how the education system is failing, and how we have to stress things like math and science, why are we spending millions of dollars and hours of school time teaching these things? Is this the proper arena for this? I think not. This is the job for parents, families, churches. Can schools who are failing academically afford to take the time to teach these things?

Finally, I did want to mention that the reason touted for this new curriculum is to address the extremely high numbers of teen pregnancy. While I share the concern for the problem, I completely disagree with their solution. Sex Ed has been taught in schools for at least 2 decades and the teen pregnancy numbers have just increased. Besides, what teenaged couple - or adult couple for that matter - will stop in the heat of the moment and say, "Wait, we can't do this. We can't afford the diapers."

*Click here for the local story. **Click here for the Texas Attorney General site describing the class.

Choices

I wonder what the people who put out/bought the

"Anybody but Hillary!"

bumper stickers think now?

Talk about conspicuous

Today, we left the house a little early so I could vote on the way to piano lessons. Our voting site is the local public elementary school. So if you can picture this, my five girls and I walk in to the local school at 11:15 am, and go into the library.

I see a long line - at least 30 people - in line in front of a table waiting to vote. I'm immediately thinking that I don't have enough time to vote before we have to need to get to the lesson. But then I notice another table with no one in front of it. I peek around the long line of people to see what the set up is.

Sure enough, the long line was in front of the Democratic Party table. There was no one in front of the Republican party's table.

So I sail up to the Republican table - literally, as my stomach feels like a huge, billowing main sail of a ship - with my gaggle of girls following behind me. I sign up and go up to a booth to vote, with the girls gathered around me watching me. We then headed out to leave for Kora's lesson.

The whole time, the line of voters in the other line was just staring at us. At my "large" family, at my girls who weren't in school (one of the election officials asked if we were homeschoolers, but then said "good for you"), and that we were in the Republican line. I could just hear their thoughts.

"One of those families."

Talk about feeling just a little conspicuous. :-) But it was good for the girls to be involved with me in the voting process.

Obama just doesn't get it

Man, Obama thinks he wants our votes BAD.

We have had four phone calls in the past 5-6 days from the Obama camp. The second one was from a real person, and Kelly flat out told him, "Please do not call us anymore; we will not be voting for him. I am very conservative; I am pro-life; I am pro gun rights; I am a very conservative Christian. I will not be voting for Obama." In other words: leave us alone.

We got another call from them the next night. I bet you can tell how THAT went over with my husband. :-)

Last night we got Obama himself on the line. Oh, ok, it was a recording, but still.

And today, someone actually showed up on my doorstep asking for us by name, wanting to give us literature about Obama. I politely refused, informing him that we would not be voting for him.

Just my luck, though, it was a nobody campaigning for Obama and not a movie star campaigning for Hillary. (Sean Astin was campaigning door to door here in San Antonio a couple of days ago.)

Just to be fair, I did receive a phone call from Rick Perry (Texas governor) last week calling on behalf of his "good friend" McCain. Now that's definitely not the way to get my vote, either! Not that I was going to vote for McCain anyway, but that would have been enough to send me running to find a new candidate if I had! How many "good friends" do these political candidates have anyway?

We've forgotten history

Just turn on any news program lately and you'll hear plenty about how rotten the economy is. And there is definitely alot of truth in it. We have felt the increase in costs, especially in groceries and gas. (This was one reason I started paying more attention to how I spent our grocery money.) I read yesterday about how we are in for a bad wheat crop and wheat prices are going to go up - although I think they already have as the flour I buy at Sam's has doubled in price in the last year.

But this morning when Kelly and I were watching the news, the reporter made a statement that really irked me. "Times are really bad right now." Yes I know it sounds innocuous enough. And I know that there are many families who have been hit very hard. But I'm sorry, things in the country are not "really bad" right now, comparatively.

Hear me out on this.

Yes I know all the predictions of gloom and doom - recession, stagnation, housing crisis, gas prices, these are all things I understand and have heard. But really, things just aren't as good right now as they have been for most of my adult life. We have been living through a time of great wealth and ease until very recently. Prices were low, inflation almost nonexistent, unemployment at record lows, interest rates on house and car loans very low. We've had it easy. And now that the pendulum is swinging back the other way (as it always does) we are panicking.

If you want to know about "times that are really bad" talk to your grandparents (or great grandparents) about what it was to live in the depression. Read cookbooks from that era - its quite eye opening. When we think we've got it bad because we can only buy the meat that's on sale, read how these women fed families with no meat, milk, butter, etc. These people lived through a time when they probably wished for only a recession - and don't forget the horrible drought that lasted for years that decimated so many family farms. They had it really bad.

Also talk to your grandparents about living through WWII. I know Iraq has caused some prices to go up, but we have never had to go "meatless on Mondays" or plow up our lawns to plant victory gardens. We would absolutely die if we have to have ration books to get certain items - we get upset if we have to take a raincheck on a sale item!

No, our country is scared right now (and the media is fueling it for all it's worth). And with fear we lose perspective. Now I'm not saying we should ignore what's going on around us. I'm all for being frugal, careful and discerning with money - just ask Kelly, who thinks I am too much sometimes! I am still working on bringing our grocery budget down, so that I've gone back to couponing after giving it up years ago. But we need to be careful not to get caught up in the hype. It keeps us from being thankful for what we have and being content. Our history gives us perspective - let's not lose it during this time. And as Christians, we have have the ultimate history - the Bible which shows us how God has always taken care of his people.

'Fess Up

OK, so how many of you let your kids stay up and/or woke them up to watch the lunar eclipse last night? Yep, that would be us. We don't let them stay up for too many things, but have a lunar eclipse, or let Mars get really close to earth and be orange, and we are disturbing much needed sleep to sky gaze. What's funny is how excited the girls get about things like that. We are studying astronomy this year, and read about eclipses a few months ago, so it was really cool for them to see what they had read about. They were very excited. Guess the "geekness" doesn't fall far from the trees, eh?

So does this deserve a line in the "You might be a homeschooler if..." chronicles?

Tired

I know this might draw the ire of friends like Cathi, but is anyone else already tired of the election stuff - and it's only January. The thought that we have to listen to this stuff for almost ten more months is quite depressing. And this is from someone who minored in political science in college. But I was less cynical then. MUCH less.

Speaking of tired, I can tell I have officially entered into the third trimester. Seriously I don't remember being this tired this early with the other ones. Much as I hate to admit it, I guess it's just that "o" word - yep, I'm older than I was the other times. Some days I feel fine. Some days I feel great, but that should be a warning to me, as the pattern has been that I feel great and get tons done on those days, and the next day I crash. I get so weary I could cry. Actually I get so weary I do cry, and my family has no clue what's wrong with me. :-) Of course, the fact that the baby is getting big enough to press on my diaphragm and making breathing more of a challenge is probably not helping. :-)