S. has demanded that I post today. Heheh. I guess I'd better comply. She looked pretty stern. Well, I don't really know why I haven't, just busy, I guess.Last week O. was upstairs jumping on his little brother's bed. I told him "Get off Z.'s bed and come downstairs." Well, he did obey about the coming downstairs part but not about getting off Z's bed. That is he decided to slide down the stairs on Z's mattress. Unfortunately his forethought ended at the bottom stair and failed to take into account the bookshelves that are about a foot or two out from the stairs. The mattress came to an abrupt halt but O. went flying and smacked into the corner of the bookcase. Ugh.The blood didn't really start for a second or two and then he moved and it just started pouring. He started screaming and yelling "I'm dying I'm dying, somebody call an ambulance I'm dying!" Poor guy, I guess it is pretty scary to see all that blood. Well, we got him with a towel and called R. to pick me up some skin glue and such and we pasted him all back together. Had to put a few spare parts back, but he seems OK, only twitches a little bit. :)

See, he's back to normal. :)

Also I finally read the book Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher. I kind of wasn't really excited about reading it at first but a friend recommended it so I thought I'd give it a try. I was really pleased with it and liked it a whole lot better than I thought I would. It had a lot more depth to it than I thought. I guess I was kind of suspicious that it would be a sort of massage on the conscience of those who would really like to bow to the left on environmental type issues and so forth but can't leave their free market sensibilities, if that makes any sense. Or that it would have that kind of self righteous legalistic tone that sometimes comes from the agrarian side of the Cristian homeschooling group. I just didn't feel like I wanted to take time with either of those scenarios. But it was actually quite refreshing and not legalistic in it's tone at all. I'd like to get my own copy of it, if I can find it used, cheap somewhere. :)

Before I read it though, S. stole it and read it in a couple hours. (I used to not believe her when she said she read books that way, so I asked her questions and she could always answer.. so well.. It kind of reminds me of the way Agustas Gloop eats chocolate in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the way that girl reads books.) When she was done I asked her what she thought and she said "Well, it was all pretty much the way I was raised." I guess it is that way because I think in Oregon Republicans just do tend to be more "crunchy" than the way they may be in say, Texas or something. But I thought it was really interesting and fleshed out a lot of the lines I've been thinking on.

The trick to this sort of thing, though, is not to make it a creed type of thing. You know, like the way certain groups all start imposing certain rules of the group on each other-like say you are in a certain group of homeschoolers and they all bake their own bread and if you don't it's kind of looked upon as a betrayal of the creed of the group? Or I remember during Y2K it almost looked like you were questioning the book of Revelation or something if you weren't saving up food.

Isn't that such a gracious approach? I remember once RC Sproul Jr said that writing a defence for reading to your children was like writing a defense for butterflies. (In a book catalog) Who wouldn't want to? Who wouldn't want to turn off the TV and spend a little time with your kids, go to a farm and eat a fresh tomato, spend more time just together as a family and a worship community?

Well, as I was going to Rod Dreher's blog to check how to spell his name, I saw this troubling post, and was reminded who wouldn't want us to do these things-teacher's unions aren't real thrilled at the idea. I hadn't heard anything about this. Better pray for the homeschoolers in California.