just cool! – Page 3 – a hippie with a minivan

oh…. cool…

On the way to and from the pulp and paper museum I saw something that not only caught my eye but made my heart skip a beat…

“Musée des Religions du Monde” (Museum of World religions)

I am so excited to check that place out… I have a feeling that the kids are too young to enjoy it and if they are with me I might not be able to look at the things I want to look at, so I might head out there alone so I can really look at things…

I can’t believe that I had no idea that it existed though…. I am so glad that I saw it!

the adventure of my xmas gift…

Simon has an Ipod which has most of our music on it… and I had a small mp3 player that was just not cutting it anymore… I had to change the music on it often because 1 gig just wasn’t enough to get me through the day…

So I asked Simon what he was getting me for xmas and then told him that I would love to have a new music player…

I didn’t want to spend too much and I wanted to have more space… So I looked on the net and starting “window shopping”… I was about to decide on a sansa 8g that was on amazon for 129$ and Simon “OK’d” the price… but then I saw that the brown Zune 30 was on special for the same price so I decided to go for that… of course since I am in Canada I would have to have it sent to a friend… By the time I got her response on if she minded or not the price had already went up… so… determined to get it around that price… there was a few places that had it at 99$ and I looked around and found it at Dell for 95$… I was so excited… I paypaled my friend the money and she bought it for me… then a few days later I noticed that I would only get it in Feb!! I checked on online a bit and saw that I was not the only one to have ordered it at that price and have a Feb delivery date… it was a “black friday” special so all the prices had since gone up… so people were stuck waiting or cancelling their orders…

So I decided to call Dell… I told them that I was in Canada and I had bought it though a friend and that I was dissapointed in the delivery date because it was a gift… they told me that I could cancel my order and give me a 45$ credit so I could get another colour (the other colours were being sold at 195$) so I told them that it was not fair that I should need to pay more for the same player in a different colour because they had sold too many and couldn’t deliver. So I got a 95$ credit! So I asked my friend to get one of another colour… then saw that with the 95$ credit the new Zune 80 would only be a 50$ price difference… and only 20$ more then I was originally going to pay for the Sansa… So I got that instead…

My friend was so amazing and patient because there was a wait and everything with the refund and credit but it all worked out and I did all of the talking with Dell so she didn’t have to deal with all of that…

I just got it on Friday and I am LOVING it… the software is not great but the player itself is amazing and I am LOVING listening to all my music and having podcasts etc… and I still have tons of space on it!

My little coconut purse…

I found this at a little artisan stand today…

but first a bit of history of it…

The woman that had the stand co-founded a company called eco-coco… and they import fair trade coconut products… the shell of the coconut is usually thrown away but they realized that sanding it down actually makes them gorgeous and now they make products out of that and pay the workers 2X the minimum wage…

http://www.ecococo.org/ is their site (in french only)

So here is my new little treasure…

Look at him now….

I am a big Raffi fan… as a child I listened to his music and now the boys love him too and recognize his songs and his voice…

I knew that he was for child rights and was an amazing spokeperson for children and now, I respect him even more…

Look at this… A Covenant for Honouring Children

The words of A Covenant for Honouring Children suggest nine guiding principles for living. Taken together, they offer a holistic way of restoring natural and human communities, thus brightening the outlook for the world we share. They form the basis for a multi-faith consensus on societal renewal.

Respectful Love

is key. It speaks to the need to respect children as whole people and to encourage them to know their own voices. Children need the kind of love that sees them as legitimate beings, persons in their own right. Respectful love instills self-worth; itâ€™s the prime nutrient in human development. Children need this not only from parents and caregivers, but from the whole community.

Diversity

is about abundance: of human dreams, intelligences, cultures, and cosmologies; of earthly splendours and ecosystems. Introducing children to biodiversity and human diversity at an early age builds on their innate curiosity. Thereâ€™s a world of natural wonders to discover, and a wealth of cultures, of ways to be human. Comforted by how much we share, weâ€™re able to delight in our differences.

Caring Community

refers to the â€œvillageâ€ it takes to raise a child. The community can positively affect the lives of its children. Child-friendly shopkeepers, family resource centres, green schoolyards, bicycle lanes, and pesticide-free parks are some of the ways a community can support its young.

Conscious Parenting

can be taught from an early age; it begins with empathy for newborns. Elementary and secondary schools could teach nurturant parenting (neither permissive nor oppressive) and provide insight into the child-rearing process. Such knowledge helps to deter teen pregnancies and unwanted children. Emotionally aware parents are much less likely to perpetuate abuse or neglect.

Emotional Intelligence

sums up what early life is about: a time for exploring emotions in a safe setting, learning about feelings and how to express them. Those who feel loved are most able to learn and to show compassion for others. Emotional management builds character and is more important to later success than IQ. Cooperation, play, and creativity all foster the â€œEQâ€ needed for a joyful life.

Nonviolence

is central to emotional maturity, to family relations, to community values, and to the character of societies that aspire to live in peace. It means more than the absence of aggression; it means living with compassion. Regarding children, it means no corporal punishment, no humiliation, no coercion. â€œFirst do no harm,â€ the physiciansâ€™ oath, must now apply to all our relations; it can become a mantra for our times. A culture of peace begins in a nonviolent heart, and a loving home.

Safe Environments

foster a childâ€™s feeling of security and belonging. The very young need protection from the toxic influences that permeate modern life-from domestic neglect and maltreatment, to the corporate manipulations of their minds, to the poisonous chemicals entering their bodies. The first years are when children are most impressionable and vulnerable; they need safeguarding.

Sustainability

refers not merely to conservation of resources, renewable energy development, and anti-pollution laws. To be sustainable, societies need to build social capacity by investing in their young citizens, harnessing the productive power of a contented heart. The loving potential of every young child is a potent source for good in the world.

Ethical Commerce

is fundamental to a child-honouring world. It includes a revolution in the design, manufacture and sale of goods; corporate reform; â€œtriple bottom lineâ€ business; full-cost accounting; tax and subsidy shifts; political and economic cycles that reward long-term thinking. Ethical commerce would enable a restorative economy devoted to the well being of the very young.

I am going to be following him more closely now and I would love to get my hand on the book and CD for us “Beluga-Grads” 🙂

Resisto Dancing, Songs of a Compassionate Revolution, the musical expression of Raffiâ€™s Child Honouring philosophy…

A cool little coincidence…

For the last few years I have been lurking on the Quebec homeschooling Association page and about two months ago I had responded to a message from a mom looking for homeschoolers in the area, I got a PM from one mom, sent her a PM and then didn’t hear back right away and then went on the site a few times after that to see if there had been more responses hadn’t been one yet…

With the vaccation time and summer I had just not went back to the site for a while… So when I went back last week there was two month old PM’s waiting for me, one from the mom that had pm’d me before asking to get together in the near future…one from a mom telling me where she lived (about 2-3 min away from me by car) and asking me how old my kids where …. I answered both of them…

A day or two after I got an e-mail from the second mom… she said she realized soon after my message that we already knew eachother… and then went on to explain that she is a breastfeeding volunteer also (we saw each other once though) and that we had met at the grocery store when she asked me if I was the one that sold wrap and slings…. and then while talking to someone and talking about babywearing stuff she clicked on my user name…

I had found her really cool when I had seen her at the grocery store but had forgotten that she was just starting out as a volunteer…

What is really cool is that she said that homeschooling is already a big part of her life even though her daughter is only 4 1/2… So now I will have someone local that I will be able to talk to about homeschooling and has an interest in babywearing and breastfeeding and has a child about Xavier’s age…

Now, if only her # wasn’t busy each time I tried to call her 🙂