Mixed Messages

First of all, for the kids to get their due, congratulations to the Cincinnati Jr. Rollergirls for a really spectacular game. They won both games, the level 2 and level 3 games. Kudos to the Neo's and the Dayton Rollergirls playing two competitive games with us. Thanks to Dayton for showing up with the Neo's who, on their own, didn't have enough girls coming down to play the games. Thanks to the coaches who really do put in a lot of time to do what they do with these girls. You all rock!

Win or lose, this is my favorite girl sport to watch. The girls are agressive. They play hard. And they can only win by being team players. The game is fast paced and keeps you guessing until the end. (I imagine this is how my husband felt when he would drag me to hockey tournaments to watch our son play years ago. A game that, although I loved watching Josh shine, I just could never get into really, outside of his games.)

Here's my own AphroDIEte (center with the grey helmet and pink jersey) blocking a girl from the other team in our first game of the year.

I know I probably seem like a fuddy duddy to my kids. I make them wear bicycle pants instead of net nylons. And they have to wear bicycle shorts instead of shiny silver and gold undies over those nets. And when my girls say, "but they all wear make up to the games, at least eye liner," I say I know that they don't ALL wear make up. In fact, I know of two who don't... My two.

I give my girls just as much leeway as I can. I do the best I can to give them as much responsibility as they want, to treat them as they want to be treated, to set up as many opportunities to grow as they want to have. There is just one thing that stops me in my tracks. I don't like to see little girls acting like they need to be "sexy" adults. I don't like to see adults looking like that but I really don't like to see kids who think they need to dress that way.  But ok so not all adults agree with me. I get that. That's fine. As far as I am concerned, the ol' "well I am not their mother" applies just fine here. Dare I admit that I don't care if my kids cuss every now and then, when it is appropriate for a cuss word. Or that I don't care if my kids muddy their best shoes in puddles during a good rain. But I will be damned if I can have them at the age of 8 or 12 trying to emulate (yes I am going to say it, so close your eyes and cringe if you don't want to hear it) street hooker attire. Again, I understand that I am probably not in the majority here, and I am willing to live with that.

Still when I go to a game to watch my daughters teams play and I see this...



And this woman is timing the game. I wonder if people aren't going too far. Ok so this is not me wondering. But downright saying. I love the sport. I love the game. I love that my kids want to play a sport with this kind of energy to it. This lady might be a Neo Rollergirl with the sport name Penal Eyes, but this might not be the best arena to sport your team spirit, since these girls start at 8 years old.

So while we, my husband and I, are talking about the inapropriateness of this view we are getting at our daughter's game, we hear our coaches scolding the girls on the bench for cussing at the other team. "No cussing or dirty talk at the other players or refs or you are out of the game." And I chuckle. I chuckle softly to myself. Because one of the refs AT THIS EXACT GAME has, "Karma ZAbitch" on the back of her striped shirt. And my husband noticed one of our OUR coach assistants at a scrimmage a couple weeks ago with stickers on her helmet which read "Kick Em In the Cooter." Yes I said COOTER!

And still I didn't think either one of these were worse than viewing the timer's shirt which read, PENAL EYES. Because Karma and Kick 'Em are just talking smack. Penal Eyes is bringing sexual tones into the game. Which to me was worse. Go figure.

I guess I just don't understand why other adults want their kids to be adults before their time. They will have so much time for that later. But once their childhood is over, its over. Why not hold on to that for one more day???



Steubenville is only 4 hours away

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/highschool--steubenville-high-school-football-players-found-guilty-of-raping-16-year-old-girl-164129528.html
"Drunk on their own small-town greatness, they operated unaware of common decency until they went too far, wrote too much, bragged too many times and, finally, on a cold Sunday morning, were hauled out of a small third-floor courtroom as a couple of common criminals."

Poppy Harlow for CNN - "Incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart,"

Here are just a couple examples of what I woke up to this morning. I don't know those boys. I don't know the town. I don't know anything other than the info I found on the internet, as I have followed this case. It puts a pit in my stomach. A girl was so drunk that she couldn't consent to anything, driving around in a car full of boys for hours, going from party to party, puking more after every stop. If no one had videoed any of this or texted all this, if these boys hadn't been caught, no one would even care about this. Tens of thousands of teen girls are driving around drunk just like this every weekend. EVERY WEEKEND. Boys are driving around thinking they are entitled to the life they are living: drinking, drugs, uncaring and unprotected sex. Little girls having no respect for themselves or others. Little boys having no respect for themselves or others.

Who are these boys and girls?

Well they are the boys who once played with cars and action figures in their rooms as toddlers. Maybe they slept with a teddy bear or blanky at night after their parents tucked them in and kissed them goodnight. They went to the parks and learned how to swing the swings. Maybe their moms taught them how to pump their feet to swing without help. Their parents probably watched them off to the bus on their first day of Kindergarten, maybe even packed their pb&j sandwiches. Maybe they went to their friends houses for sleepovers on weekends.

And the girls? Many of them played princess dress-up, played house with their dolls and cooked in their play kitchens. They made cookies and cake with their mommys. They tried on their mom's high heeled shoes. These girls dreamed of being on tv or famous singers. They had play dates with other little princesses, and stuck their tongues out at the boys on the playground. Their parents watched with pride as they first learned to ride their bikes without training wheels. They learned how to swim at the Y. They played soccer with all the other little girls when they were of age.

Who are these kids? Well when put this way, they sound an aweful lot like all of our kids. Could they be yours? Mine? Could we, me and you, be producing young adults who not just live like this, but don't mind living like this? Don't see a problem in this?

Kids who don't think about what could happen to them if they get so drunk that they cannot even stand up on their own. Kids who don't worry about what tomorrow might look like after a night like this. Is this the new "kids just being kids"?

Are we the complacent parents who don't care to really know where our little boys and girls are late at night anymore? They are 15 or 16 years old, they are fine. We are all just fine. Just kids being kids. They will be fine.

After all, they are only 4 hours away from me and my little girls. Only 4 hours. That is mighty close.

The Ghosts of KY

 This elf is located on the big hill down to the first clearing.

This is the first ghost we encountered, but it started our search for more like it along our hike. This one was all the way over on the second plot of land we aquired last year.

Now this ghost was extrememly interesting. It was actually a ghost leaf. You wouldn't think they are quite as common as they actually are.

This guy was our favorite. To tell the truth this was the only ghost that we made. Well we gave him eyes after we decided that he was to be our revered moss ghost.

 

More on Girl Scout Cookie boxes

Another project I did this year on how to use up those cookie boxes creatively...

This is actually a cookie case cut down to a smaller size. A friend of mine and I were out shopping with her kids, and one of her daughters saw a basket that she could not buy. Her mom asked what she would even do with that basket. She said she would make it into a hanging doll bed.

So I offered to make one for her with a cookie box, because of course, I am trying to repurpose them. So some spray paint, fabric, duct tape, and a hanging doll bed has arrived at its new home already. Well there are TWO girls, so I made two.

What to do with all those darn Girl Scout cookie boxes...

So with Girl Scout cookie time going strong, you might have seen some girls hanging around looking like this:



 



 

For every group of girls you see hanging around at the grocery store like that, is a parent or two who has a wall or walls that look like THIS in their house:

 

If you are one of these families who inherits the job of holding on to thousands of boxes of cookies for a month or two each year, then you might consider each year what to do with all those case boxes when the cookies are all picked up and purchased.

For a couple years we saved the boxes and stored them... Then when the kids were bored sometimes they would go upstairs and use them as blocks to make houses and towers and other such building projects. I eventually got tired of the boxes of mess everywhere upstairs, though and broke them down. Marley, 7, still misses these days sometimes.

This year when all those boxes arrived, I was going through a bit of an overhaul of my home. We are going to be putting our house up for sale soon, and we have been trying to declutter. That gave me the idea of finding a use for these boxes. They are small but VERY sturdy.

My project for the boxes that I kept this year is THIS. First I measured the boxes to see which size box fit where I wanted them to go. Cookie case boxes come in different sizes, if you didn't already know this. Then I tore the top flaps off the boxes.

  Next I spray painted them. As with all paint projects, I applied spray primer first. Then after this dried I added the color I wanted.

 After the color paint dried, I measured the box sizes for fabric, making sure the fabric was extra long so it would hang over the box. And I have fancy storage boxes. These red ones hold Marley's Polly Pockets and Petshops. NOTE: Without the fabric there would be small holes in the bottoms of the boxes that would let small objects seep out.

These boxes sit in my dining room bench to collect the books the kids leave on the table.

Girl Scouts is all about conserving. Conserving energy, water, time, etc. So all these left over boxes, even when recycled, are being just wasted. Why not put them to good use? What other ways can you think to use these boxes? I have a friend who uses them in her gardening projects with her scouts.