Free Rod & Staff Curriculum Samples!! April 5, 2007
Posted by Karen Joy in Giving searchers answers, Homeschooling.2 comments
I get quite a few hits from people looking for info on Rod & Staff stuff. R&S, being produced by the Amish, who really aren’t into technology, doesn’t have its own website. However, I was just looking at the website of one of the online purveyors of R&S materials, and noticed a link that said “Free Stuff.” Well, golly. You can actually get samples of all the R&S curric from K through 6th grade, for free! They mention that they reserve the right to limit quantities, of course, but for anyone who is thinking about using R&S for all or part of their homeschool (or private Christian school) curriculum, I think that’s a stellar offer.
I might have missed out on something. April 5, 2007
Posted by Karen Joy in God/Christianity/Church, Random Stuff, Travelling.1 comment so far
Hm. Well, I had an occurrence happen today, which has led me to wonder if I missed something. It was one of those coincidences that have me considering if it was God trying to tell me something, or use me, or ??? and missed out on it. I’m not kicking myself with regret or anything, but it has given me pause.
This past Sunday, I was in Illinois, staying with my paternal grandma. She’s kind of been up in arms about where to go to church, since my grandpa died two years ago, and she’s been sort of drifting around, visiting different fellowships. So, it’s not like she was dead-set on us attending “her” church or anything for Palm Sunday. She mentioned that there is a Vineyard in Bloomington Normal, which ended up being about 20ish miles south of her home. We have been very involved with our “own” Vineyard for more than 10 years, and it’s always nice to visit another church and seeing what God is doing in that congregation.
(The Vineyard is an association of churches — not quite a denomination. There is a lot of variance between each local church, but usually, a similar core, and one can count on similar values, and recognizing at least a couple of the worship songs in another Vineyard.)
Anyways. Church there was a good experience; I’m glad we went there. At the end of our visit, I met a man — probably in his 50s — and I enquired about his accent. Turns out he was from Ghana, in west Africa. He couldn’t believe that I actually knew where Ghana was, but I sketched him a little outline of the western coast of Africa, drawing the borders about where Ghana is. (This is thanks to the book Window on the World, which is a sort of geography & social studies meets prayer-for-missions book which we read through — and prayed over — while we were working on Sonlight’s Core 2.)
Yesterday, I came home from our 2 week trip to the Midwest to find out that my computer’s access to the internet wasn’t working. Long story short, it turned out that the security software for our high speed connection needed to be updated, and my computer was balking at the process. At the final resolution of things, I had a 45 minute conversation with a tech at the end of a toll-free number. As I was waiting for some things to download and unpack, I asked about his unusual accent, thinking (honestly) that he was likely from west Africa somewhere. Well, whaddya know? He was from Ghana.
He was a young man, in his 20s, by the sound of it, in Columbus, Ohio for school.
I told him about the other Ghanian (?) I had met, which he seemed to find interesting… then, our phone call was finished.
I find myself wondering if the whole thing about meeting two people from the same distant country in the same week means anything. I’m wondering if I should have been more inquisitive into the tech-support guy’s life. Who knows? He was probably being monitored, and may not have been forthcoming. But, I feel as if I should have at least asked if there was anything he’s been asking God about, or for. I at least prayed for him this evening as I was making dinner, and pondering over the two events.
Every time I’m not as bold as I probably should be, I regret it — like today. I’m not torn up about it… it’s just that, if God is doing something, and wants me to be in on it, I want to BE there, be available. <sigh> I just feel that, at least potentially, I missed out on something.
Oklahoma! (Our Midwest trip, part 1) April 5, 2007
Posted by Karen Joy in Celiac Disease, Cooking/Baking/Food/Recipes, Friendships, Homeschooling, The Dear Hubby, The Kids, Travelling.2 comments
I decided to take a trip to the Midwest to visit the family and friends who are dear to me, but who, well… my husband wasn’t all that interested in seeing. We made the trip concurrent with a trip he was taking to Scotland, so that neither of us were sitting around twiddling our thumbs in each others’ absence.
So, I packed as lightly as I could for FIVE people (one large and one small suitcase, plus my overstuffed backpack), and flew out of Phoenix for our first stop, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I am suspicious of relationships that begin online, but… well, this one did. I met Shellie on the Sonlight Forums. There, we discovered that, among other things, we were both wives of Vineyard pastors, we both had celiac disease, and we both homeschooled our children with the same curriculum. For the last three years, we have been e-mailing, calling on the phone, and corresponding through snail mail, deepening our friendship. Until this trip, we had never met IRL. That detail, plus the fact that she has five kids and I have four, would seem to predict a potentially chaotic meeting. However, our stay at her home was by far the smoothest of our trip.
Meeting Shellie (and her hubby & family) IRL was great, and I immediately felt at ease. I felt like I knew enough about her from our three years’ history that there were few surprises.
We spent three nights there, and except for Audrey-Baby, we hardly saw our kids at all. They all clicked, and ran off to play — outside, inside, anyplace. And nighttimes were like a giant sleepover. It worked out perfectly.
Here is Shellie, making her daughter Meg’s 12th birthday cake:
Meg had had a birthday sleepover the weekend before, so shared her real birthday with my family. My husband had insisted that I bring everyone out to dinner. We did so, going to Pei Wei, which has a gluten-free menu. However, it also has peanuts in several of the menu items. Wesley is anaphylaxic to peanuts, but we fairly regularly eat from Pei Wei — just not the peanut dishes. Darin, Shellie’s husband is also deathly allergic to peanuts, but is even more sensitive, so spent dinner helping police the NINE kids, and didn’t eat. 
I’m not sure if the dinner was more fun or more fiasco. It was pretty crazy, and I felt awful that Darin couldn’t eat.
Here’s Shellie’s daughter, Claire, who is two days younger than my Wesley:
Here’s my Grant, looking very happy to inappropriately use our hosts’ scissors in their back yard:
I’m really not into visiting all the “tourist” sites, but the one we went to — Woolaroc — was definitely worth a trip. It was the country home/ranch of Frank Phillips, the oilman who started Phillips 66. It is 3,700 acres, now a wildlife preserve for many species, native and non-native. It also boasts an impressive museum of Western art and artifacts. There was so much there that, even though we spent (I think) about 4 hours there, we barely scratched the surface, and our kids were disappointed to leave.
Here’s a pic of all of us who went:
Update on my bad review of Enjoy Life’s granola April 5, 2007
Posted by Karen Joy in Celiac Disease, Cooking/Baking/Food/Recipes.add a comment
Well, though this wasn’t my purpose, complaining seems to have paid off. I wrote a review of two gluten-free cereals put out by the same company, and they sent me SIX coupons for free product, each worth up to $5.50. I will redeem them gladly.
The coupons were enclosed in a nice, honest, at least semi-personal letter, mentioning that there is “room for improvement on our granolas.”
It seems to me that Enjoy Life is in the midst of a marketing blitz — I’m seeing their products pop up at stores all over the United States. And it’s SUCH a relief knowing that I can buy anything they produce and it will be safe for Wesley. BUT, perhaps they should have done a bit more product development before putting their stuff on the shelves. I mean, I’m glad to have the coupons, but I wish celiacs (and others w/ food allergy and/or intolerance problems) could be assured of a good-tasting, nicely-textured product, instead of just a “safe” one. Maybe there are other celiacs out there with tons of money to burn, who don’t care if they spend $5 on a box of something that turns out inedible, but it seems to me that the majority will eventually get tired of being disappointed by the product, and Enjoy Life will eventually lose those customers.
While on our trip (of which I will post more soon!), I bought a bunch of g.f. convenience products that I probably wouldn’t otherwise have purchased (due to their expense), including Enjoy Life’s bagels, both the plain and the cinnamon-raisin. They both tasted good, but they were about as dense as a brick, and only vaguely bagelly. <sigh> Wesley liked them, but he doesn’t have any frame of reference, since he’s never had regular bagels. Well, he hasn’t had any since he was about 11 months old, before I knew he had celiac disease…
Anyways. In short, Enjoy Life has great customer service. I just wish their products were more reliable.
