Take a look...

It's been ages since I've posted - lost of personal stuff I can't really talk about here.  However, I wanted to take a moment to share this.



At the time of this writing, it's actually at $1,996,595USD raised of $2,100,000 goal, 95% and 5 days left.  They are so close to raising the funding to tell the story the media has ignored.  Even pro-choicers should be clamouring to put an end to stuff like this (and Gosnell is by no means an outlier) and get this story told, if they truly believe in women's health and safety.

My budget is tight, but I just made a second $25 donation today, but donations as small as $1 can be made.  Every penny counts!  Please click on the graphic above and donate whatever you can afford.


Thank you.

A Break?

A lot has been happening since the last time I've been able to post on either of my blogs, and things got rather ... tense.

At this point, however, I think things have finally started to calm down.  For starters, we are no longer concerned that a mentally ill man is going to suddenly show up at our door or try to snatch his kids.  He's under investigation by children's services for child abuse and steps are being taken to protect the girls and their mother from him, should he show up.  The likelihood of that happening anytime soon has dropped - at least in part due to being served notice that he faces a restraining order, civil suit and various criminal charges on his return.

Communications between the girls and their father have been all but cut off.  The Watcher has refused to talk to him directly, and when we tried sending an audio message she and Beetle Child made, his response was ... less than diplomatic.  Beetle Child has since sent another brief message, but The Watcher didn't want to take part.  After his response to the last one, she didn't see the point.  There has been no response to the audio message Beetle Child has sent.

With Egypt spiralling into civil war, there's also that to prevent any travel.  Their dad isn't in the big cities, but he would have to go to Cairo to come back, and things are not looking good there.

Since not having any more contact from their dad, either by email, Skype or telephone, the girls have become amazingly ... ordinary.  The behavioural issues we'd been seeing are all but gone, with nothing more than normal, childhood issues to deal with.  They're still not where I would expect them to be for their ages in some areas, but in others, they have bounced back remarkably.  Children are so resilient!  Best of all, they are getting to see their mom often, even spending almost entire days with her.

The nightly "talks" with The Watcher, as she struggled to find the words to explain her fears, worries and describe some of the things their father did while they were living with him have pretty much ended.  Instead, our nightly cuddles after their bedtime story have ordinary chats about ordinary things.

The battle isn't over, by any means.  We still have counselling sessions coming up, their mom is getting a Legal Aid lawyer for herself and another will be assigned to the girls.  We're looking at more court sessions in the future, and there's still finding out just how extensive their abuse and neglect has been over the past 2 yrs.  It's actually been good to hear the girls sometimes talk about pleasant memories with their father.

We don't know what's going to happen next, but at least we're breathing an little easier, even if we still can't let our guard down completely.

This whole thing has been quite disruptive, and our lives have been turned completely upside down, shaken and stirred.  I am so grateful to my family for their patience - none of us expected things to get this crazy, but I was the one who brought this on us, and I'm thankful for their support in all this.

In an ideal world, their mother will be able to get an accessible unit in our co-op - she's still on the waiting list - and the girls would be able to be with their mother even more.  With our assisted living staff, her physical and medical needs would be taken care of as well as in the care centre she's in now.  Not being able to move into a place like ours is the only reason the girls had to move in with their father to begin with.  It's unlikely she'd get a unit large enough for them to actually move in with her, but even if she got a 1 bedroom, we'd be just across the street and the girls could easily move between two "homes." If a larger accessible unit were to become available, priority is given to members before becoming available to people on the waiting list.  Who knows - maybe someday, the girls will actually be able to live with their mother again! At least now, this sort of scenario looks possible.

On the down side, it means that our other plans have been diverted, if not shelved entirely.  My father is celebrating his 90th birthday this fall and I have a nephew getting married, but I see no way we can make the trip out.  I haven't seen my family in 2 years, and by husband hasn't seen his in 4.  Not that my husband can physically handle the drive out anymore, with his own health problems.

*sigh*

Instead of heading out to visit the family in Manitoba, we'll instead be focusing on moving to another, larger unit.  That's another hit on the finances, as my husband will not be getting a raise this year (due to a technicality, of all things - frustrating!).  With two new youngsters in the house, there's no way I can get a job, but Youngest wants to get a full time job and Eldest plans to get a part time job after the summer festival season is over.  They have both talked about wanting to contribute to the family finances.

I have the most amazing children.  And the most amazing husband.

I am truly blessed.

Life keeps moving on

If you've been reading my homeschool blog at all, you'll see things have been a bit busy for us lately!  At a time when we were approaching an empty nest and ending our home school journey, we're starting all over again with two youngsters who have joined our household.  I've had little time to post on  blogs, as any writing time I've had is instead diverted to documentation. 

Unfortunately, instead of focusing on the girls, we are focusing on getting advice from the law courts, contacting the police, lawyers and getting involved with social services.  All because of their father, who has managed to reach out from Egypt to cause us all problems.

As difficult as their father has been, it had been my hope that we would still be able to keep the girls in contact with him.  I strongly believe in the importance of a father in children's lives, and would never willingly try to prevent them from talking to him.  His own actions, however, made it highly unpleasant.  In seeking legal information, there was even surprise expressed that we were allowing them to speak to him at all, given the circumstances.  We have no legal obligation to allow him access to the children while out of the country.

Unfortunately, in the few Skype calls he's had with them so far, he's been more interested in dishonesty and manipulation.  Today, however, he has hoisted himself by his own petard.  He talked one of his daughters through changing their Skype password, telling them to keep it from us.  She wrote it down. 

Now we can't log them into their Skype account at all.  What she wrote doesn't work. 

As international phone call attempts have been complete failures, Skype was the closest thing to a reliable means of communication they had with him - and even that was questionable, as there's the usual delays and occasional failed connections.  My original intent had been to regularly send him emails with updates on what the girls were doing, including photos.  In thanks, I got unreasonable demands, bizarre accusations and threats against me, so no email.  That left regular Skype calls with the girls.  Now, they don't even have that.  Because of his attempts to separate the girls from our trust, he has succeeded only in separating the girls from himself.  I am not going to attempt to regain access to the account.  He will have to live with the consequences of his own actions.

Link: YouTube is Breaching my Rights...

YouTube is Breaching my Rights by Forcing me to Promote the Redefinition of Marriage – Xt3 Library

Here is my problem - because I have a YouTube channel, I am now promoting the redefinition of marriage through my YouTube channel, against my will, because this rainbow heart appears on my channel.

YouTube claims to be “a place where all communities can feel proud to express themselves and connect through video.”

What about the communities that want to promote marriage being between a man and a woman?

In one of my gmail accounts, I opted to recieve the odd Youtube email.  Usually, they include about 9 videos of potential interest.

Yesterday I got one promoting "pride."  It had 19 videos, all extolling the joys of being gay.  It's all about loooooovvveee dontcha know.

Of course, how many people will dare object?  After all, if you have any objection, it must mean you hate gays or are a religious bigot.  There is no in between allowed.

Well guess what, Youtube?  I don't hate gays, but I do hate having destructive behaviour promoted as being all sunshine and rainbows.  It's not about "love" no matter how determined the activists are in defining the issue their way.  The bigotry and intolerance is from the activist side, and that now includes Youtube.

The Grand Experiment...

Liberal Indoctrination in Canada's Schools

The indoctrination extends past the curriculum and into extracurricular activities. Gay-straight alliances (GSAs) have become more and more common across Canada and have been pushed aggressively by left-wing provincial governments. But these too are unnecessary. The TDSB's 2006 survey found that body image, academic performance, language background, race, and culture were more likely than sexual orientation to cause students to feel unwelcome from school activities. Only 1% of students felt unwelcome based on their sexual orientation. On a list of 10 factors, sexual orientation was found to be the second-least likely cause of bullying (after Aboriginal background). Sexual orientation was also the least likely factor for students to feel that school rules had not been applied fairly to them. The left loves to claim that the reason for GSAs is to build tolerance and curb bullying. If these were their real goals, they would be promoting white-black alliances, muslim-infidel alliances, rich-poor alliances, able-handicapped alliances, ugly-attractive alliances and stupid-intelligent alliances before they got to gay-straight alliances.

Interestingly, I know Liberal homeschoolers who keep their kids out of school because they think our  public school system is too conservative/Christian.

In case you're interested...

If you're not seeing a lot of activity on this blog, pop over to my homeschool blog and you'll see some of what's going on that's keeping me a bit busy to post here.

6.5 million People and 30 years; Traditional Marriage is Still Tops

NOMblog: New Danish Study of 6.5 Million: Health Benefits of Marriage are Unique to Male-Female Unions

During 2000 to 2011, Danish male-female married couples were the healthiest and least likely to die at various ages compared with individuals who were unmarried, divorced or widowed. In contrast, same-sex married men in Denmark were no healthier than unmarried men. Same-sex married women had much higher mortality rates than other women, including the ones who were unmarried, divorced or widowed. There was no apparent marriage “benefit” in terms of better health or longer life for these same-sex married women.

I find it curious that, in so many studies, outcomes are so much worse for lesbian couples than any other group, except possibly single mothers.