Santa: Part Deux

We didn't go see Santa on Sunday. We would have, but I was sick, Pat didn't really want to go, and his parents were gone for the afternoon. We hadn't mentioned it at all to the boys, but I think Grandma did on Sunday morning. They didn't seem to care too much that they missed it.

I've been trying to figure out where Cole stands on Santa. He told me he knows Buddy the Elf (Elf on the Shelf) doesn't go to the North Pole because he isn't real. I asked if Santa was real, and yes, he thought Santa was real. But, if you ask him who fills his stockings, he answers that I do. So I don't really know if he thinks Santa brings him presents or not. At this point, it doesn't really matter. I'm not going to push a lie on him for a couple of years of "magic" at Christmas.

I was chatting with a friend the other day. Her family never did Santa, so for her, she doesn't really get the hype. For me, my first grade teacher sat us all down in the front of the room and told us all that Santa, the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, etc. weren't real. I'm fairly certain she made it clear we weren't supposed to tell anyone we knew the truth because I didn't tell my parents until I was in 4th grade. She was kind of a manipulative person and none of the kids liked her. Anywho, so I don't remember being overly excited about Santa, just the presents.

For those of you wondering about our Christmas chain, here are a few sites with Bible verses. Since we didn't start ours until a few days ago, I kind of pieced a bunch of verses together. We just made a simple one out of construction paper. I let the boys cut the red and green strips, so it definitely has a "homemade" look to it :)

This one has very short and sweet verses each night, which would be great for younger kids.

This one has longer passages.

This one is my favorite. It doesn't have the verses listed, but I may attempt to make a fabric chain for next year.

If you simply google Christmas countdown chain or Advent chain or attach the words Bible verses to the end of your search, you'll come up with tons of them. There are even some ready to print for you.

Santa

I'm not a huge fan of Santa. *Gasp* I know. I mean, the guy's got all the fun stuff. The fun songs, the cute decorations, and of course, the presents! But he isn't what Christmas is about. We do Santa, but my kids don't really buy it. Not that they aren't gullible enough (Cole still occasionally calls Long Johns, Long Bobs), but we apparently don't sell it hard enough. I wanted to just skip Santa all together, but Pat claimed we do all "my" traditions, so he gets Santa. I relented. We decided that Santa would fill stockings, but the big stuff under the tree comes from us. We try not to go overboard on our kids either. This year, I think they are each getting 4 gifts from us and a few little things in their stockings. I digress.

So what's not to like about Santa? I think he hides the true meaning of Christmas. We try to teach our boys that Christmas is Jesus' birthday and why he had to come as a baby, but they are constantly bombarded with Santa movies, Santa stories, and toys, toys, toys. Suddenly Christmas is about what they want and not about the Baby in the manger.

I'm also a hypocrite. Tomorrow we will take our boys into town to see Santa and I'm sure I'll even post a picture of them (Cole anyway) sitting on his lap. We also do the Elf on the Shelf, although my boys don't buy it. For them it's just a find the elf game every morning. That's fine with me. They have fun finding him and if I forget to hide him the night before I get to hear "Mom, you forgot to hide Buddy!" They don't think for a minute that he's real. I'm honestly not really sure what they think of Santa. Cole started saying things like "that doesn't look like the Santa we saw before" or "how can Santa be over here and over there?" Magic doesn't answer the questions either because magic isn't real. When people ask them if Santa is coming to their house, the boys give them a look like they're crazy and have no idea what they are talking about. I'm ok with that.

I am trying to find ways to phase Santa out and Jesus in. Every year we make a Christmas countdown. This year I added Bible verses to read each night. We are starting with verses from the Old Testament and we'll read the story of Jesus birth closer to Christmas. I didn't start it right away on the first, so I'm improvising and the first week we are actually working on their lines for the Christmas program at church. What kind of things do you do to make Christmas about Christ and less about Santa?

The Chicken or the Egg?

Raising chickens is not pretty. Anyway you slice it, chickens are dirty birds. A few weeks ago McDonald's and Target announced they were dropping Sparboe Farms as their egg supplier. Why? Well, Mercy For Animals launched an animal cruelty campaign against them. My problem lies in the reasoning McDonald's and Target dropped SF. Do they honestly believe SF is treating their chickens inhumanely? Probably not. If abuse was the norm and not the exception, they wouldn't be one of the largest egg suppliers. Frankly, if their chickens were abused so badly, they wouldn't produce that well. So they dropped SF because Mercy for Animals says they are abusing their chickens and has video proof! Then the media comes in to play and suddenly you lose consumers. You can't believe everything you see on youtube. If Mercy for Animals is really out there to stop animal abuse, why is their agenda so political? Why not report the abuse to the higher ups in the company and then come back to see if anything has changed. If nothing has changed, then sure, release your video. Instead they videotape livestock producers for months, gathering footage, and then smear the companies name. How is that helping the poor chickens, pigs, and cows on the farms they are taping? Suddenly the company has no market so where do you think the excess goes? Not to some rescue farm where the animals live out a happy life roaming a pasture in the sun. No, the excess probably goes to slaughter.

Ugh! I'm so tired of animal "rights". We have to have licenses and permits and inspections for nearly everything we do, but my drug addict neighbor can have gobs of children and no one bats an eye at the squalor they live in (my neighbor is hypothetical by the way). I want to know that my food supply is safe, but we waste millions of dollars on useless programs because of these "humane" organizations. We have to fight for our right to produce America's food supply. These groups don't care about animals. They care about their pocket book. They care about their agenda. I guarantee that the leaders of these organizations have never taken a moment to ask the question "why?" Why do you dehorn cattle? Why do you clip pigs tails? Why do they debeak chickens? It's not fun. It's not pretty, but there is a reason. When it comes to animal production it's not about cruelty, it's about practicality. We don't do unnecessary chores. We've got enough to do without taking time to figure out new and unusual ways to hurt animals. We can solve our own problems. If people would be willing to spend more for locally raised products instead of the fastest and cheapest it would lessen the need for corporate farms.

My parting thoughts. Do you know what free-range and cage-free really mean? Free range: USDA regulations apply only to poultry and indicate that the animal has been allowed access to the outside. The USDA regulations do not specify the quality or size of the outside range nor the duration of time an animal must have access to the outside. You may now dispel any image of chickens running around happily in someone's yard.

Cage free is simply that, they aren't kept in cages. It does not mean they are not packed just as tightly or even tighter into a barn to produce eggs. This is often why chickens are debeaked, so that they cannot peck their cage free neighbor to death.

My final thought: think the HSUS and Mercy for Animals aren't connected? I found this post interesting.

Freemartin

I apologize for the confusion about freemartins. I thought I'd explained that and I probably should have linked to that post, but I'm lazy. So this Friday, our lesson will be about freemartins.

There is an excellent article that goes in to specifics here, but for those of you who just want the basics, I'll explain. A freemartin is the female of a set of male-female twins. During their development in utero, their hormones mix, making the female infertile. Since over 90% of these females will be infertile, they are typically raised as feeder cattle from birth. Some farmers keep them and check them at breeding age (typically 14 months), but it is rare to get one that can be bred. It is more expensive to raise a heifer than a bull/steer, so knowing that a female is a freemartin saves money in the long run. However, since we are unsure, it's better to err on the side of caution as a heifer makes more money in the long run.

So there is today's lesson! I had no idea what a freemartin was when I was dating Pat.

Sickness, Be Gone!

Our house has become an infirmary the past week. First Tate ended up with a double ear infection. Probably my fault. I was telling his teacher how he's never had one, so I doubted that's what his cold was. Less than an hour later he was complaining his ear hurt. Thankfully it didn't burst and he's been doing much better, although I think his cold is returning to his eyes. The poor kid looks like a raccoon.

Next up was me. I finally broke down and went to urgent care last night to discover I have bronchitis. Apparently my limit is 4 nights of no sleep before visiting the dr. Let me tell you how not fun bronchitis is. I'm hoping it clears quickly. I'm exhausted. I finally got an hour of solid sleep today, which is the most I've had in about a week. Fun stuff!

Today was Cole's turn. After complaining to everyone else, except me, that his ear hurt, I finally took him in. He too has an ear infection.

My goal is to make it through Thanksgiving with no impromptu visits to the doctor. I do have to go in next week, but that's when we should find out all about #3!

School Daze

I don't know if I've even blogged about school yet. Sigh, it's November already...

The school year started off a little rough for Tate. I think it was the combo of school 2 mornings a week and swimming 2 mornings a week. For about the first month we were on the go every day. That and me being gone with Cross Country every afternoon and trying to take away the nukkers, was probably not a good combination for him. He was rotten! He threw fits, refused to nap. Ugh! He was less than pleasant. Once swimming lessons were done, he seemed to do much better. He's actually kind of fun to have home alone.

He seems to be doing well in school. I haven't heard otherwise, so I'm assuming he's doing fine. I know he doesn't talk much, but he makes up for that at home. I'm still not sure about his teacher. She seems ok, but I have no idea what goes on at school. That's another blog post though.

Cole is doing fantastic this year. I am so glad we gave him another year of preschool before sending him to kindergarten. He is so much more outgoing and independent. He can name nearly all of the kids in his class. Last year he could barely name one. He even has a little crush on one of our neighbor girls in his class. The highlight of his day is if he gets to play with B~. He answers questions in class where last year he preferred to sit back and watch. I went to his pumpkin party at school last week and it was actually fun. Last year I had a clingy boy that didn't want to do anything if I wasn't right there. This year I got to watch him play the games and his excitement at all his candy and prizes. He's a completely different kid. His teachers agree too at how much he's changed from last year. I certainly don't regret that decision at all!

One of These Is Not Like The Other

Now that you have that song in your head...

We've had a lot of twins this past year. It's starting to slow down, finally, but twins come with problems. Yes, there are the typical difficult birth, etc. problems, but we've had a couple of unusual problems. Below are 3 calves, in order of birth. The first one was born 2 days before the last 2. First problem? These 3 calves are from 2 mothers. Which 2 would you guess are twins?

Second problem? The last one is a bull calf, which means one of the heifers is a free martin and no good. But which one? Unfortunately, this is the second time we've had this problem within about a month of each other. We'll raise both heifers as heifers and find out in about a year which one is good or not. Welcome to life on a farm!!!