Rainbow Sprinkles!

Adventure: an unusual and exciting activity or experience

What does the word adventure mean to you?  Does it mean climbing Mt. Everest? Maybe it means striving to get on the Olympic Swimming Team for you.  Or could it be exploring inactive Lava Tubes in Hawaii?  Perhaps these are way out of you comfort zone and your idea of adventure could be going trail riding on your horse or exploring in an old forest.  What about riding in a horse drawn sleigh at Christmas time or learning to fly a helicopter?  Could it be trying new recipes or learning a new game?  Maybe it's going on a mission trip to the next state over from you or going overseas? What do you consider an adventure to be?  Do you make every day life an adventure or do you wait for that once-in-a-life-time-adventure to come along and that is it?



http://www.flickr.com/photos/never_house/7723841642/sizes/m/in/photostream/
by Never House

 As I thought about what adventure means to me some of the things listed above came to mind.  I enjoy canoeing or kayaking in new lakes and rivers, visiting waterfalls and the ocean. Someday I hope to visit Great Britain and see the castles, tea shops, country towns, busy seaside ports and so many other places that I've only ever read about.  I can honestly say that in the past few years my devotions have become a sort of adventure - digging into God's Word and seeking out treasures that He has for me each day.  Reading devotional books and finding special nuggets that inspire me to live a life set on fire for Christ.

However, as I ruminated on what I do for "adventures" to brighten up or spice up my day I was only drawing up blanks.  What do I do that brings some excitement into my day.  After thinking about it over night and still not coming up with anything, I realized it was time to talk to Mom.  She knows me better than anyone and sometimes helps me to see what I can not see even if it is right in front of my nose :}



http://www.flickr.com/photos/missmeng/7722312018/
by missmeng



So...we talked and she asked me what I enjoyed doing and try to do almost everyday....I realized that I try to spread "rainbow sprinkles" into at least one persons life everyday.  You're probably wondering what "rainbow sprinkles" are.  It is a term coined be Leslie Ludy when she saw her son ask for rainbow sprinkles on his ice cream.  She saw a parallel between the bright colored and beautiful sprinkles on her sons ice cream and the beautiful blessings that God sprinkles into our lives everyday. 

For those of us who have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Savior and been born again, earth is not our home, but rather a place that we are journeying through.  Living with Christ in heaven is our destination and earth is our training ground for things to come.  Life is an adventure!  Finding ways to "sprinkle blessings" or bring "rainbow sprinkles" into people's lives is exciting and adventurous.  It's almost like being on a quest for joy.  Looking for ways to bring joy into other people lives.

Some examples of "rainbow sprinkles" could be:

* Emailing a friend an e-card

* Sending a friend a handwritten note

* Writing my family little notes to let them know how much I love them

* Making my parent's or sister's beds

* Doing someone else's chores :)

* Buying a little gift for someone

* Sending someone flowers or picking some of our own if they're are in season

* Sending postcards

* Giving a hug when they are not expected

* Baking some treats for others to enjoy

* Putting something special in a lunchbox

* One year I wrote to each of my parents and my sister one note each day from February 1st through the 14th, telling them why I loved them.

* ....and there are so many other things to do.  It's an adventure to find what makes different people smile and laugh.

What do you do to bring adventure into your life? 

Freedom Is Never More Than One Generation Away!

"Freedom is never more than one generation away
from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children
in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and
handed on  for them to do the same." ~ Ronald Reagan

Our theme for the next two weeks will be focusing on things in our culture that we feel very strongly about.....My mind has been filled with several things; the abortion issue, apologetics, homeschooling, health, evangelism, the slave trade, orphans and freedoms in our beloved country, the U.S.A.

I decided to go with the Parental Rights Amendment.  An amendment that I have posted about on my private blog and feel is so very important for everyone in our country to know about. 

On Tuesday, June 5, 2012 Representative Trent Franks and Senator Jim DeMint introduced the Parental Rights Amendment in the U.S. House and Senate as HJRes 110 and SJRes 42!

The Amendment will be heading to the House Constitutional sub-committee on July 19, 2012.

Here is the post that I wrote on my blog, explaining what the amendment is about:

As a monumental presidential election looms in our future it has caused many different issues to come to the surface. All of the issues hit close to home as they relate to our jobs, families, homes, economy, education and many other areas of our lives.


However, there is one issue that does not seem to surface too often and yet it is so critical to our continuation of freedom in the United States.


That issue is in regards to the Parental Rights Amendment. Our Founding Fathers fought for the freedom of this country. That we the people would have the right to decide how we want to live, how we raise our children, how we worship our God, how we spend our money and in so many other ways. Yet those freedoms are slowly being chipped away. Over the years the government has stepped farther and farther into our private lives and has made laws that take away parts of our freedom and has instead given more control to the government.


We must not allow that to happen in regards to our parental rights. Currently, the role of raising, guiding, training and deciding what their children do, hear and see is being quickly usurped by faceless bureaucrats.


Our freedoms are slowly being taken away. Freedoms that made this nation strong and great. United families that had the liberty to raise their children in a way that they felt was best for each individual child created a country that had strong morals, strong families, and love of country.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is a treaty that, if signed, would dictate that the federal government must enter each and every persons home and decide for itself if what is going on is acceptable. The rights of the parent would be replaced by "the best interests of the child" and the people deciding what is best for those children are 18 people on an international committee in Switzerland. The vast majority of parents know and love their children better than anyone. Our government should be supporting the parents and their rights.


If signed, we would be bound to this treaty and under the direction of the whim of these 18 people who will interpret "the best interests of the child" in whatever way they see fit.


In the United States, any treaty signed and ratified by congress is considered the law of the land and trumps an other laws already in place.


The ParentalRights.org is an organization that is desperately concerned with the future of the families in the United States. They have drafted a bill that already has sponsors and co-sponsors in the house and senate.


The Amendment is as follows:

Draft Parental Rights Amendment

For The United States Constitution

Section 1

The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right.

Section 2

Neither the United States nor any state shall infringe upon this right without the demonstrating that its governmental

interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.

Section 3

No treaty may be adopted nor shall any source of international law be employed to supersede,

modify, interpret, or apply to the rights guaranteed by this article.

We the people of the United States have been given inalienable rights. It is our duty and responsibility as citizens to make a stand and support those who desire our country to be a nation of liberty and freedom.

You can go to ParentalRights.org and find out more information about the treaty, the amendment, as well as additional information. You can also sign the petition if you believe that protecting parental rights is important. Please, share this information with your family, friends, neighbours, co-workers.

There are so many things you can do to help support parental rights and become involved.  Here is just a small list that I have compiled for those of you might be interested.

1. Pray - God can do anything and He wants us to come to Him in prayer.  Nothing we do can compare to what God can do. 

2. Sign the Petition - The more people who sign the petition in support of the amendment, the more people will know about it and congressman, senators and our president will know that we the people do care.

3. Read the different articles on ParentalRights.org and familiarize yourself with the pros and cons of the treaty and the amendment.  There are also lots videos that give you information as well.

4. Tell your family, friends, co-workers, neighbours and anyone else you come across about the treaty and how it would hurt this country.  Then tell them about the petition :]

5. Write to your Senators, Congressman, and let them know that you would like them to sponsor this amendment.

6. Write to your local papers or even your statewide papers and get the word out.

7. Post about it on your blog :]


Thank you for spending the time to read this whole post :]  I know it was long, but my prayer is that others will see the need and step forward and make a difference. 

Top 5 Advantages to Homeschooling

As homeschoolers, we have some amazing opportunities that kids in the traditional school system can only dream of. Here are the main five I've noticed in my life. I have had a pretty lenient school schedule—I probably classify as an unschooler—so maybe some things are unique to my style of education.

1. Freedom in Education

For me, education isn't a chore that must be completed before 3pm before I can have any free time. Learning is a lifestyle.

I was never forced to write essays or create models, so I didn't dread compiling books on equine psychology or drawing maps of the migration paths of Australian parrots—entirely on my own terms. I didn't waste time answering every question in the curriculum when I thoroughly understood the material—in fact, I never took an English course. Once I got the basics down, my history lessons came from whatever books and websites and field trips I could get my hands on, allowing me to corroborate the facts from various sources rather than taking one viewpoint's word for it. I adored science and supplemented my usual curriculum with the latest in the journals.

Plato said, "All learning which is acquired under compulsion has no hold upon the mind." Because I wasn't taught under compulsion, the knowledge I've gained has taken firm root and my mind blossoms with passion for learning.

2. Lessons in Self-Discipline and Time Management

Did I ever take advantage of my freedom and shrink away to less constructive pastimes when I should have been doing something educational? Yes. I learned my lesson, and it's a much better lesson to learn at this stage in life than later on, when it really matters.

I had the opportunity to learn essential life lessons like self-discipline and managing time and putting priorities in order the hard way before failing a college class or getting fired from my day-job. My experiences will give me discretion in the years ahead, when I won't have my parents around to ensure I complete assignments on time.

3. Free Time

Unless I put a time-consuming task upon myself there's really nothing to hinder me from pursuits that don't fall under core classes, like classical piano and drama and sewing and horse training and novel- and screenwriting. I can take an hour or two to practice that Bach piece or rehearse lines for a play, or spend the afternoon teaching my horse to play fetch, or dedicate the month of November to the National Novel Writing Month. Or just read. Or write this very post.

Each of these things could potentially lead to a career (well, maybe not writing this post), so they're important skills to develop.

4. Making Friends

Some people find it mind-boggling that homeschoolers actually make friends. (Really, if most kids don't make friends outside of school, what kind of sad lives do they lead?) But one of the great advantages to homeschooling is that we get to meet people with similar interests, be it at band practice, soccer games, robotics competitions—you name it. And among homeschool groups, we're likely to meet people who share our values, adding an extra level of intimacy to our friendships.

The main issue that spurred this blog was how lonely we homeschooled girls often feel surrounded by the worldly people around us, but at least, as homeschoolers, we do have more opportunities to seek out people like us. Just last week I was able to attend a Christian writers' conference (thanks to not having a rigid school schedule holding me back). It was my third time going, and each year I've made friendships I believe will last a lifetime.

I might not get to see my friends every day (which is mostly because I live a weird life and my friends live far away--they see their other friends regularly), but I do have a number of wonderful, true friendships that run far deeper than those portrayed by the media.

And if we are blessed enough to have friends nearby, as I once did, we can spend time with them while our school-going peers are in class or doing homework. I cherish the many daytime hours I got to spend with my friends before I moved away.

5. Spending Time with Family

I have been asked, "Don't you hate being around your parents all day?" If this is the mindset, something is wrong. That's not to say I don't long at times to stretch my wings, but living at home has cultivated healthy relationships with my parents and a stronger bond than would probably have formed if I only saw my mother in the evenings and weekends. (Which is probably why I'm not as close with my father.) It can be hard at times to be at home so much, but I endeavor to be nothing but loving. If I can't do that with my own family, I can't do that with anyone else.

I was an only child before my brother was born year before last, so I'm thankful I'm able to spend as much time experiencing sisterhood as possible before I go away.


Homeschooling has been one of the greatest blessings in my life. I thank God daily for the opportunity to have such an education and for an unquenchable love of learning.

What great opportunities did you have through homeschooling that you couldn't have had otherwise?

Photo courtesy mikebaird on Flickr

Treasures Found in Homeschooling

Nothing beats homeschooling :]

I am daily thankful for the decision my parents made when I was in second grade, to take my sister and I out of a private school and homeschool us all the way through till graduation!  There were/are so many blessings associated with being homeschooled that it is hard to choose one thing that stands out in my memory as something that was unique to being homeschooled - something that your average kid would not have been able to do.

I guess I'll go with the memory of training alpacas :] 

I have to preface this story by saying that my sister and I were involved in 4-H animal husbandry as soon as we were able to join (8 years old).  We started out with horses and stayed with them until 2002 right after I turned 12. 

It was a beautiful New England fall day.  You know, the one where your just entering fall and the weather is still warm, but not stifling.  I want you to picture a true to form agricultural fair.  You can hear the cows mooing as their owners spraying them down, trying to clean them before Fitting & Show; you can hear the announcer down in the infield announcing the placing of the horse show, and you can hear the sheep and goats baahing, waiting for their little trainers to come and feed them. You can smell those fries that you can only find at the fair along with those jumbo donuts that only come around once a year.

So, you can hear & smell, but what can you see?  Well, there is the 4-H Ice Cream Parlor where there is always a long line of people waiting to get there frappes, sundaes or just a bowl of hard ice cream.  There are the buildings filled with crafts that people have worked on all year and of course there are all the concession buildings selling unique items. But the important thing that you see, is the red and white striped tent.  Inside of it is an obstacle course made up of jumps, hula hoops, weave poles, and a kiddie pool.  And going through the obstacle course are a couple girls ranging from 9-13 years old, leading their alpacas.  They willingly handed over the lead ropes to us to let us play with their animals.  We were hooked:]

That October we joined the Jumping Jax Alpaca Trax 4-H Club and leased our first two alpacas, Black Mirage and Ace Ventura.  These two boys that had been donated to the club with several other alpacas from a farm in Ohio.

That day at the fair was a turning point in our lives.  We have since had up to 12 alpacas, but our numbers have fluctuated over the years and we currently have 11.

However, I want to get back to the point of this post.  "What is one thing that we were able to do growing up as homeschoolers that most kids would not have been able to do?"

A month before we joined the  4-H club, our mom took us on a field trip (a plus for homeschooling) to a farm about 50 minutes away.  This farm had miniature donkeys, sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, horses, dogs and guesss what...alpacas.  We hit it off with the owner and when she found out we were 4-Hers we clicked even more. (She had been a 4-Her and had raised her kids with 4-H).



A new born cria on the farm :]

 We visited the farm several times, as she had a fiber area where she gave classes on how to use the different fleeces.  One of the times we visited we got to talking about the different  training classes we had taken with our 4-H club on how to halter train, lead, and gain the alpacas trust.  She said that she had to train several crias (baby alpacas) every year to walk on a halter, stand still and allow people to touch them, so that she could bring them to the different breeders shows each season. 

~At this point I should mention that alpacas are VERY skittesh animals and it is not their natural instinct to ask for attention, but rather to run away from people.

With all the other things on the farm that kept her busy she didn't have the time to train them and would we be interested in training them?  We were shocked and honored!  The animals that she was asking us to train were the "cream of the crop" on her farm and would be representing her farm at the shows.

This is where it got exciting.  Because we were homeschooled  this was a terrific opportunity that we were able to take!  If we had gone to a public or private school we would never have been able to accept this offer.  We had to plan on two hours of travel time every time we went over and then at least 3 hours training and we had to be over at the farm a couple times a week. 

We learned so much about animal husbandry on this farm, as well as business management, and like anyone who spends time with animals, it gave us several opportunities to grow some character. 

We worked there for several years training each new year's crias and continuing to work as well with the previous years show animals.


Suri Crias - There are two different breeds of
alpacas. Suri fiber grows in long pencil locks.

 I usually worked with the Suri alpacas.  Something about them just drew me to them.  They were more skittish then the Huacayas, but once I gained their trust you could see a relationship building.  When we would bring them to the show, it would often times be their first time being away from their mom and because I was a familiar face and smell and my voice was familiar, they would cling to me.

God gave us so many opportunities at the shows to be a bright light for Him to so many people.  Because there were so few kids there, we were watched all the time and people would comment. 

We learned so much at the shows about the alpaca industry, the different businesses and yet there were so many little things we learned (although not little in the grand scheme) like responsibility, respect and using every opportunity to reflect Christ.

There were also the lessons that came with traveling, packing, and preparing for these shows.  We were taught how to be prepared for anything but to still be frugal.


Huacaya Crias - My sister trained these.
There fiber grows straight our like
a teddy bears :]


The life skills that we learned over the years would not have been learned if we had not been homeschooled.  The time needed to pursue these activities cannot usually be found with kids who attend a public or private school unless there parents actually own the farm or they live right next door to one.

We learned so very much in the 6 years that we did this and I am so thankful for the opportunity that we had and the lessons that we learned.  God is good.