The Best Kool-aide Mom contest of Lady Jan's Home are---

The Best Kool-aide Mom Blogger
Contest

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My number one #1

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My Mommy blogger is actually a great-grandmother, who is raising her three beautiful great-grand daughters. She does so much and I don’t think I can do her any justice, so I cheated and copied some stuff off her own blog. If you already know Ann you’ll know her

blog Rock Rebel Granny.

Ann in her own words about her life, and family:

Ann's Great-grand daughters--Elcie has lived with me since she was 13 months old and Rochelle and Rebecca have never known anything else. They love both their parents (kids usually do) and this is working, at least for now. I love their parents too but babies come first.

My daughter Carol (oldest child lives with me). She's undergoing treatment for intestinal cancer. So far, so good. Ray is my husband, a semi-invalid. He worked when we first moved here; he can't now. Full time disability. (Currently Ray has been in and out of the hospital suffering from some stomach problems, that may or may not be his gullblatter, but the doctors don’t know yet. Hopefully the MRI he just had will tell them something soon.)

Elcie has cerebral palsy and some learning disability associated with it. Rochelle is learning disabled (probably dyslexic but catching up fast in special ed). Rebecca is another story. Very bright but has difficulty focusing. Schoolwork is an ongoing struggle. Not quite ADHD but leaning that way. If something interests her, it has her undivided attention and she can be quite the perfectionist (almost too much so). If it doesn't interest her or if she doesn't "get it" right away, she shuts down.

I spend hours with her plodding through math trying to bring her "D" up to at least a "C". She is enrolled in a 6 week after school program to work on the math as well which is good but it's a long day and by the time we get to homework, she's exhausted which makes focusing that much more difficult.

Elcie and Rochelle have both become self starters for the most part this year (Rochelle always was) so I have more time to spend with Rebecca. They're both Honor Roll kids (at their actual learning level, not grade level). It's still a juggling act though.

I think that brings everything up to date somewhat. Everyone knows how political I am, flaming liberal and very involved here. I save most of that type of rant for isamericaburning which I share with"worried american"who began it. Occasionally, a little creeps in here; especially where education is concerned.

I think that brings everything up to date somewhat. Everyone knows how political I am, flaming liberal and very involved here. I save most of that type of rant for isamericaburning which I share with "worried american" who began it. Occasionally, a little creeps in here; especially where education is concerned.

Ann is a very busy lady, and yet she finds time to blog too. She has one and half blogs.

Rock Rebel Granny and is America Burning?

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My second #2 place winner is

Ipodmomma, she grew-up right here in California in a small hot dusty agricultural town of Chico, not unlike my own home town. She and her family (her and her husband and three children)moved to a small England village of Yorkshire just out-side of York UK. Being a Californian she Bar-B-Q’s a lot, and I would be interested in what her English neighbors think of that.

She is a stay at home mom, and a home schooling mom as well. I have the greatest respect for home schoolers, as it is a difficult job. Not only are you mom, and chief cook and bottle washer, but you’re a teacher mentor and councilor too. She wears all these hats lives in what is basically a foreign country and gardens and finds time to blogs too--Three blogs as a matter of fact!

Ipodmomma, Learning to sing, and There is nothing here!

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Ipodmomma in her own words:

Every spring we have this little anniversary, of moving to England. And this year, ten years, is the kind of one where you really have to think, wow, that’s a lot of years, a lot of time and days and moments that have made up a fairly large hunk of one’s life. The bulk of my children’s lives have been spent here in the UK. Even with Ted living in Wisconsin for 10 months, she’s still spent more than half her life here. And for J, it’s almost her entire life outside the country of her birth. The days go by, adding up to weeks and months and suddenly you are facing a decade, a DECADE! Ten years that seem to have come and gone without notice, without warning as to the speed and directness of their passing. They were here, and now they are not. And the signs left behind are of taller children, photographs, memories... Memories of what was, what has been, what is still here and inevitably, what has gone. Things come and things gone, and all of it makes up a quarter of my life, up to now...

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I had no idea the day we arrived, I’d be here this long. You don’t think in those kinds of time allotments. You think months, a few years maybe. Then you see the days going by, and it’s all upon you, before you can reel it back in. Unlike the kite, time cannot be retrieved. It keeps going, to its place beyond the trees and clouds, somewhere past our ability to haul it back down. You can look back at time, in pictures and videos, in your own memories or the recalled stories of others, and there is time, but you cannot hold it anymore than you can hold ones gone. You can only look, and then close the book, end the reminiscing, and look forward to the day ahead...
Ten years in the UK. And another day comes to a close, and here comes the next one...

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My number three #3 place winner is

Madcapmom another home schooling mom, and a vigorous gardener, as well as a top notch cook and a dandy mulch maker. She also has two blogs.

Madcapmom, and Whistling kettle.

I nominated her for third place because of her home schooling, and the gardening. I have the highest respect for women who stay home to raise and home school their children. It’s a hard decision and a difficult job, but Madcap is managing it, and managing to put in her yard numerous raised beds to grown their own veggie in their town lot in their back yard in Horsebite Canada. And doing it with a sense of humor too! In fact all my moms have a really good sense of humor.

Madcap in her own words:

Madcap, Chive, Poppy and Runner-Bean. We're a homeschooling family trying to live a sane life in a crazy world! Walk with us as we "farm" our 50X110' town lot, practicing for the Big Time when we finally move to an acreage. I’m spirituality of locality, finding delight in our own backyard (well, until she finds a house with more acreage anyway).


Ipodmomma’s thoughts on gardening--A couple weeks ago, someone said to me in great exasperation, "Well, we can't ALL be gardeners, you know!"

Wasn't that long ago that we all were. In Alberta in the 1920's and 30's, a house without a vegetable garden was an oddity. That's how people ate. Shipping food in was a very expensive business. It wasn't until the 50's, when the oil began to flow and the money poured in, that gardens gave way to useless lawns.

The lady I was speaking to thinks gardening is my "hobby". I suppose it is, in the same way that grocery shopping is my hobby. Or washing my dishes.

Quilting is a hobby. I do it almost exclusively for the pleasure I get out of colors and fabrics. If I stopped quilting and never took it up again, there would still be enough warm blankets in the world to cover the globe about three feet deep. It would be a long while before anyone had to make another quilt.

I don't see the same holding true for the food supply. I'm very concerned about how unbelievably dependent our meals are on a continuing supply of petroleum, and I really believe the oil supply is dwindling more rapidly than politicians and big business would like us to know. As Eleutheros pointed out a little while ago, according to David Suzuki, the average foodstuff on Canadian plates has traveled 5000 miles to get here from where it's grown. That's horrifying, and how can it be anything but unsustainable? I wish it weren't true, but deep down I know it is.

Please plant some rhubarb this year. Or saskatoon. Or a few canes of raspberries. Please plant something to eat.


Happy Mothers day to each and everyone of my Blog Mothers.

And all you Mothers out there!

Have a good one!