7-Quick Takes

Izzy is in the 15 to 19 year old age group and this is her first time to enter.  Here is her entry entitled Dead Tree in Spring Time

2.  Rosie added some saints to our peg saint collection this week!

St. Thomas Aquinas

St. Angela Merici

The saints of January!

3.  Calvin and Sarah had some difficulty deciding on a wedding date.  At first they were going to get married in the fall, but then there was the possibility of interfering with Noah’s championship cross country season in his senior year.  Then Calvin got hired as a paramedic in North Carolina, and the date got moved up to July. The problem was that the July date they picked coincided with the annual family reunion which they totally forgot about!  It wouldn’t be very fair to plan a wedding on the date of the reunion since Pete’s brother had already booked the pavilion and planned on the date and it seemed wrong to make family members decide between the two!

Luckily Pete was able to get a hold of his brother (which wasn’t easy because he only has a landline and he was out of town for a week or so) and his brother was able to move the date back a week! So looks like we’re going to be pretty immersed in family celebrations during one jam-packed week in July!

4.  In two weeks Mr. Pete and I are giving our annual Pre-cana talk.
Here’s what it looked like four years ago:

In 2012 I gave the talk by myself because it coincided with Mr. Pete’s annual trade show.  It was like talking to a very, very hostile audience. The evaluations were brutal and I vowed that I would never, EVER give that talk by myself again.

Then in 2013 once again Mr. Pete’s trade show coincided with the Pre-Cana day.  True to myself, I resigned. A friend of mine and her husband volunteered to do the talk instead.  But then her father died and I felt that I just couldn’t add one more thing to her plate of things to do, especially while she was grieving for her father, so I jumped back in again.

and I’m glad I did.  Last year’s crowd was much easier to relate to, and I felt that they were really relating to me as a person.  I also got some really nice reviews which makes it all the more easier to give the talk again this year- this time with Mr. Pete!

5.  Mr. Pete and I want to get into the house flipping business AND we want Izzy to be a big part of it.  That girl just has an eye for design, and what looks nice and she’s not afraid to work with her hands. Last week I went into the t.v. room and there she was sitting with Mr. Pete watching the Rehab Addict on t.v.!
 Although I don’t see myself doing much more than cleaning and painting, I’m certainly willing to learn some new skills.  And this will be a nice change from Medical transcription!  I also think it would be a great career for my daughter and maybe even one of my sons!

6.  Last week, I took to twitter to challenge Dr. Alex Berezow over his stupid column on USA Today where he suggested that parents who do not vaccinate their children or do not vaccinate them on schedule should go to jail. And the coward blocked me.  My offending tweets?

• asking him how we were going to fund incarcerating all of those extra people and who was going to take care of their children?  
• Pointing out that my I had had the measles, my sister had them, and so did everyone in my elementary school – and we all are in our 50s doing just fine.  

 7.   I’ve said it before so I’ll just reiterate it – I totally understand parents NOT wanting to give them to their children.  But whereever one stands on the issue, I don’t think it is appropriate to say things like:

As far as I’m concerned, not vaccinating your child is about as irresponsible as driving drunk with your toddler in the back seat jumping around without a child restraint

My kids have had some vaccines and I’ve passed on others.  I did not follow the schedule at all for Rosie because I thought it was too much too soon – and I agonized about all of it. But bottom line for me is that  Doctors and hospitals aren’t always right.  They just aren’t. I know that’s hard for people to accept but it’s true. They media also lies and sensationalizes things.  Right now it’s measles.  But the death rate of measles is  less than 0.1%.   Prior to the vaccine it was way less than that. So let’s quit guilting each other okay?  Here’s a post I wrote earlier this year on the topic.  This also seems like a reasonable case for when to vaccinate and which vaccines to get.