My Wake Up Call

I guess my mom thought I was sleeping too long this morning, because she sent Zebedee in to wake me up! It turns out that he was pretty tired himself. ;)

Little Sleep Walker

He decided he'd rather relax with me instead of waking me up. :)

Awwwww....

Homeschooling in California- Please Pray!

Here's the e-mail I just sent out:


~Friends and Family,

We are writing to you with an urgent need for prayer. On February 28th a court decision was passed down in a private court room in California. This decision makes homeschooling illegal in California except for those parents with a teaching certificate. California is now the only state to move backward with homeschooling rights. Not only does this encroach on homeschooling rights, it shows that the three judges involved in this decision care very little for parental rights.

As for our family, we answer to God. We refuse to become "state certified" in order to teach our children from home and raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We are grateful to God for our freedom to homeschool, and we are in mourning at this time along with the many homeschoolers in California.

Please pray for the many families who homeschool in California. Pray for the over 200,000 children who may be forced, against their religious convictions and the will of their parents, out of their homes and into the state schools if this decision is not reversed. Also pray for the homeschool parents who are worried, unsure, and scared but have decided to place their trust in God.

If you are not concerned about Christian parental rights, your children or grandchildren might not have any. Now is the time to do something about it before it's too late. Please go to www.hslda.org and sign the petition to request depublishing of this California Court Case.

Also, you can go to: http://www.oneplace.com/Ministries/Focus_on_the_Family/Archives.asp?bcd=2008-3-7
and listen to Focus on the Family's "In Defense of Homeschooling" broadcast from Friday, March 7th.

- Marty, Allie, Sarah, Randi and Karl <>< ~

Please spread the word, pray, and sign the petition. Thanks!

Frugal ways of caring for small animals

This is my first time participating in Frugal Fridays!!! I love Crystal's blog on Biblical Womanhood. I don't go a day without reading it!

My Frugal Friday tips this week are for those with small animals as pets. I've had pet rats for almost four years now. Through that time, I've learned a lot of ways to spend less on them, but still give them a high quality of life.

The first idea I have is to make your own food mix. Buying from bulk food bins is a great idea. I've been making my own rat food for a while. It includes low protein dog food, multi colored pastas, granola, multi grain cereal, cranberries, dried bananas, and whatever other healthy things I can get for a good price.

Right now I have two rats- Donovan and Zebedee. I shop for their base diet every other month. I spend between $10 and $15 each time. When I first became a rat owner, I also had two rats- Nosi and Notti. I bought pre packaged rat food from the pet store for them. I shopped for the food at least two times a month and spent anywhere between $7 and $12 each time. My homemade diet gives me WAY MORE bang for my buck. Plus, it is very much more healthy for the rats, and they love it!

Suebee's Rat Diet is a well known diet in the rat community:

http://www.ratsrule.com/diet.html It can be modified to fit any ingredients you want to add or take away. For other small animal diets, I recommend doing some research on what you need to include. (Keep in mind, this is a base diet. A complete diet always includes a vast variety of fresh foods. Which, I might mention, is also pretty inexpensive when you feed your pets bits and pieces of the fresh foods you are eating. ;) )

My second idea is to make use of bedding/litter material that would otherwise be thrown out. My rats are kept on Critter Care natural pet bedding. This would be considered the "off brand" of Care Fresh (although I find Critter Care to be less dusty ;) ) When the price of this bedding went up, I found myself spending quite a bit more on it than I was used to. It only went up a dollar, but my stinky boys go through LOTS of bedding. My family started saving toilet paper and paper towel rolls, paper dixie cups, and cardboard of any kind (tissue boxes, pop tart boxes...) I just rip it up and use it along with the Critter Care. I NEVER would have guessed how much money this saves me. I can now use a bag that would usually last me 2 weeks anywhere from a month to a month and a half. That's a huge money saver!

Frugal Friday readers, please share any other frugal pet ideas you might have. Thanks and have a great weekend!

ASL Commercials

This is too cool! My sign teacher sent us some information a few months back about a Pepsi commercial that uses ASL. I waited and waited through the Super Bowl, hoping to see it. (it, so I'm told, did come on... during the pregame show.) I looked it up later, and it really is a cool commercial.

Then I was watching TV the other day at work (during Claire's nap!) and I saw a new Disney commercial in ASL!!! I was so excited... I actually understood the whole commercial. (the boy was speaking English and using ASL, but I knew the ASL.)

A new fad for advertisers? Maybe! If so, it's definitely a fad I will be enjoying. It's pretty effective too. The Disney commercial uses English, but the Pepsi commercial only uses ASL and subtitles. So it's silent, which draws attention (especially during the super bowl) Good stuff! It will be so much fun to see how many other commercials end up using ASL. Here they are:

http://www.wdwpublicaffairs.com/ContentDrillDown.aspx?DisplayItem=43b3ab9a-339e-4ee9-8ee0-820b106ce685 Disney

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffrq6cUoE5A Pepsi

The First Post

I've had this blog for a while but I haven't done much with it. I'll try to post some interesting stuff every once in a while. It's a good place to talk about my rats. ; )

To share something VERY new... I'm now officially training to be a Master Herbalist. I just registered with the Global College of Natural Medicine. It's a one year course and I'm really excited about it!!! www.gcnm.com This is something I've been thinking and praying about for quite a while, and now I'm sure that it's very much worth the investment. Becoming a Master Herbalist is not only an interesting thing to do, it will be very useful. So many people are interested in natural healing these days (for good reason), and I believe this will open a lot of doors for me. Even better, this is a home study course. It's very important for me to be able to remain home-focused, even throughout "higher education".
Plus, "Miranda Trujillo, MH" doesn't look so bad. :) ;)

Have a great day!