April Snow

I poached this off Erik's sister's blog...they just got all this snow, that is some kind of crazy!

Catching Up

We've been crazy busy lately. I run the state SAT testing for island home schooling families but it's all done...until next year. I still need to send everything back. So here's what we have been up to...

Erica practicing balance, posture, and position bareback,
Erica can hula hoop while riding her rip stick-I'd say that's some good balance,

Erica found a really cool moth,
Owen entertaining himself in the rain,

last Friday we headed off for a night time reef walk and found some really cool sea life,



Evan and his hole hole or flag tail fish,
shrimp,
a symbiotic relationship between a hermit crab and 3 sea anemones that attach to his shell. When the crab needs to move to a bigger shell he also moves his anemones. They protect him from predators and he supplies them with food,
Owen found a a coral banded shrimp,
this is what the shrimp he found would look like if we had been able to catch it,
he also found a really large, gooey sea hare...or maybe it's hair??
shells.
This is really cool, we totally learned something new. Dunlap broadsides were printed on the night of July 4, 1776, by order of Congress at the shop of John Dunlap near the corner of 2nd and Market Streets in Philadelphia. About 200 copies were printed, only 25 are known to still exist. These copies predate the handwritten Declaration of Independence in the National Archives. They were done quickly and in excitement-watermarks are reversed, copies were folded before the ink dried, punctuation move around from copy to copy. The Dunlap broadsides were sent across the colonies over the next two days and another copy was sent to England. Producer Norman Lear bought this original Dunlap broadside for $8.14 million and has put it on tour. It was here in HI for two days. There is a great 15 minute movie that accompanies the document.
The kids were pretty excited to get to see it, here they are with their copies of the broadside,
Evan tested for his purple belt,


Erica was in an Easter play,

after testing was officially over we took some pictures of some gorgeous flowers,





and the kids found a huge praying mantis,

you lookin' at me...

Thankful Thursday

it's Easter

Jesus rose from the dead

testing is over

military spouses

to be born in the U.S.

Thomas Jefferson

Free Books

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Guest Blogger

My dad is just beyond cool...

The other Roman wall between Glasgow and Edinburgh is called the Antonine Wall and it was a great earthen wall and now it's a great ditch but nonetheless still very interesting. As for the Wodes history tells us there were non-Romanized Celtic tribes so there could have been Wodes as there were definitely a people in Scotland called Picts and some of our ancestors descend from the Picts like the Bealls and we have four families of them, the most famous being Col. Ninian Beall who captured by the British was deported to the colonies where he became quite famous and a colonel in the Revolutionary war, plus he was one of the 10 or so land owners who sold property to the US government to create Washington,DC. What was outstanding about Ninian was his great height, he was reported to be 7 foot tall with red hair.

As for the Celtic tribes history tells us that they initially fought the Romans and lost and like the Indians they were driven west to the borders of Wales and their lands taken from them, Cornwall and the outer fringes of England by the German tribes of Saxons, Angles, Jutes and Frisians who were initially invited in as mercenaries by the Romans who were leaving, so later the Danes moved in and established Danelaw, they were defeated in turn and absorbed. Hard to believe that all of this German background of England affected WWII history so many years later when Adolf Hitler considered England to be German but little did he realize that there was little about the English people that remained German, it affected his carrying out the war, he held back at Dunkirk and never thought England would declare war on Germany, he figured wrong and in the end it led to his defeat. Before the war he was spending a great amount of time with the Mitford sisters Unity and Diana and the Chancellery in Berlin was the place where Diana Mitford married Sir Oswald Mosley, he obviously was spending too much time listening to the wrong English.

(l to r) Jessica, Nancy, Diana, Unity and Pamela Mitford, pictured in 1935. Not pictured is Deborah.

Interesting thing about Diana Mitford Mosley, her husband if he hadn't become openly a Fascist could have been Prime Minister of England where he would have been a whole lot more useful to his cause than coming out openly in the Black Shirts, after their imprisonment during WWII in England they moved to France and settled down next to the Duke of Windsor and his wife Wallis Warfield Simpson of Baltimore and the two families became great friends, I guess they had lots to talk about since they all knew Hitler, Diana was exceedingly beautiful and retained her beauty into her 90s when she died, the whole story of the Mitfords, Wallis Warfield and the Duke plus Mosley is fascinating, I actually heard and saw Sir Oswald Mosley speak in Trafalgar Square in 1961, what a tremendous speaker but was so anti-American as I remember.

Special Birthday Today

Thomas Jefferson...

Thomas Jefferson was a very remarkable man who started learning very early in life and never stopped.
• At 5, began studying under his cousins’ tutor.
• At 9, studied Latin, Greek and French.
• At 14, studied classical literature and additional languages.
• At 16, entered the College of William and Mary.
• At 19, studied Law for 5 years starting under George Wythe.
• At 23, started his own law practice.
• At 25, was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses.
• At 31, wrote the widely circulated "Summary View of the Rights of British America" and retired from his law practice.
• At 32, was a Delegate to the Second Continental Congress.
• At 33, wrote the Declaration of Independence.
• At 33, took three years to revise Virginia 's legal code and wrote a Public Education bill and a statute for Religious Freedom.
• At 36, was elected the second Governor of Virginia succeeding Patrick Henry.
• At 40, served in Congress for two years.
• At 41, was the American minister to France and negotiated commercial treaties with European nations along with Ben Franklin and John Adams.
• At 46, served as the first Secretary of State under George Washington.
• At 53, served as Vice President and was elected president of the American Philosophical Society.
• At 55, drafted the Kentucky Resolutions and became the active head of Republican Party.
• At 57, was elected the third president of the United States .
• At 60, obtained the Louisiana Purchase doubling the nation's size.
• At 61, was elected to a second term as President.
• At 65, retired to Monticello .
• At 80, helped President Monroe shape the Monroe Doctrine.
• At 81, almost single-handedly created the University of Virginia and served as its first president.
• At 83, died on the 50th anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence along with John Adams.

Thomas Jefferson knew what he was talking about because he-himself studied the previous failed attempts at government. He understood actual history, the nature of God, his laws and the nature of man. That happens to be way more than what those in government understand today.
A voice from the past to lead us in the future: John F. Kennedy held a dinner in the white House for a group of the brightest minds in the nation at that time. He made this statement: "This is perhaps the assembly of the most intelligence ever to gather at one time in the White House with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

This is why I love Thomas Jefferson...quotes:

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

Thomas Jefferson said in 1802: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property - until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

Life with Owen

Owen doing school, talking to himself: What is the theme of the poem?...I have to write more than the poem...

Me (listening to him): chuckling

Owen to me: look at all these lines (for him to write his answer on).

Evan: Erica, what is a horse's eye called?

Owen: The Eye of Horus

Evan: yelling at Owen

Owen in his little Owen voice: it was just a joke

Me: I got it Owen, that was funny, you are pretty smart

Owen: it wasn't a smart question

Owen: I just saw a Beware of God sign

Me: ??? really?

Owen: but it was written backwards

Erik: Can God make something so heavy even He can't lift it?

Me: ??

Owen: Yes, but then He makes Himself more powerful to lift it.

Erik: !!

Me: Wow Owen!

We don't have pictures from this weekend so here are some of my Dad at the Tartan Ball. I think he looks pretty handsome.

My Dad's tartan is the Confederate Memorial Tartan, designed by Dr. Philip Smith in 1995. Grey stands for the Confederate States of America. The fields represent the Confederate Army in line of battle - light blue for infantry, flanked by red for artillery and yellow for outriding cavalry. The red field represents the Confederate flag in true proportions.