The war zone may be pointless, but I would think that after the horrible way our veterans were treated after Vietnam, we would realize the difference between supporting our troops and supporting a war. This past week we had 3 soldiers come home from Iraq in our town. The 5 year old son of one of those men is in my daughters class. When I went up to that little boy and told him how happy I was for him that his dad was coming home, he lit up. We owe a debt to these soldiers and their families for what they do. These families risk their children, spouses, and parents so that MY family doesn't have to. I may not agree with the politicians, I may not agree with the war, but I'm damn proud of our soldiers, and their families. As for videotaping that moment, I would hope that the tears of this little girl would show people how much these families sacrifice for the rest of us.

I caught a soft shell turtle once while fishing in the Iowa River. It was purely by accident, he stepped on the hook, so I caught him through the foot. He was not a happy camper. (understandably) Fortunately I was able to just clip off the barb, and remove the hook without injuring him further. But I have to say, when I set him down, I was rather surprised at how quickly he ran off. I don't think I could have caught him again if I had wanted to. But it was really neat to get to see him up close like that.

I have a pet skunk, and we really enjoy having him. We're always learning something new about him, and it's great to be able to educate other people about skunks in general. Our skunk is very mild mannered if a little on the nervous side. We took him to a local county fair to enter him into a 4-H pet contest. He wasn't allowed to compete, because they didn't have a category to place him in, but they let us bring him into the ring, show him off, and let people ask questions. He patiently hung out while people came by and petted him, photographed him, and asked questions for 4 hours.
He is also rather rotund. And we feed him fruit, veggies, eggs, yogurt, and olive oil on a rotating basis, and although he has lost 3 lbs, which is a huge amount in such a small animal, (he was 15lbs when he came to live with us) he is still obese. Skunks LOVE to eat, and they will get into ANYTHING if there's a chance of food being obtained. Lock up your fridge, cupboards, and pantry, because a skunk will open all of them. They are very strong, and very smart. Check out all the different colors domestic skunks come in, and check out youtube for videos on domestic skunks, there is some funny stuff!

I don't lie to my daughter. Sure, we do the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, but if she asks me a question, I always try to answer it honestly in a fashion that she will comprehend. (She's 5) I don't understand why people feel the need to lie to their children. Why tell your kids that the chimes on the ice cream truck meant they were out of ice cream? Why not just say, "No, you may not have anything from the ice cream truck."? Of course, I'm also an advocate of unconventional parenting. When my daughter cut the neighbor kids hair, and then lied to me about it, I cut off HER hair. We donated it to Locks of Love. At least someone got some good out of the lie.

He needs to serve his time, just like any other convicted child molester. How would he feel if Charles Manson ran off, and when they finally caught up with him years later, they said, well, it's been so long....why bother trying to send him to jail now? After all those people have been dead for YEARS! They don't really deserve justice any more.

I found it interesting that they didn't compare the them to people who didn't play sports at all, but participated in the things like 4-H and the Scouts. They compared people who played sports only, and those who included other things like 4-H, what about the people who went to things like 4-H exclusively and didn't participate in sports at all?

Where is the Big Treehouse in Marshalltown, Iowa?

My former teacher Mick Jurgensen has been building it for years. He used to bring the blueprints to class.

http://www.bigtreehouse.net/treehouse.html

We have a pet skunk, "Flower" my daughter named him, or "Wee skunk" as I call him. We also have 4 cats as well. We do not bathe him, he takes care of himself in that regard, his previous owners bathed him weekly and all of his hair fell out. He is litter trained, and has run of our house just like our cats do. It is perfectly legal to have him, although some states only allow the fancy colored ones, black and white ones are not legal since you can't tell the difference between domestic and wild ones. You can't really let them outside, they have no homing instinct and will just wander wherever their nose takes them. If you startle ours he will "poot" which releases a little bit of an odor, but it only lasts for about 30 seconds before it dissipates. Skunks will eat and eat and eat so they do tend towards fatness if you don't control their diet. As you see in the video they are very food driven, and are able to gain access to pretty much ANYWHERE unless you skunk proof it. He's a fun pet, and definitely a conversation starter. When we moved and had the plumber and cable man come into our new home we had to warn them....Yes, he is a skunk, yes he is supposed to be there, and yes he is descented. When people ask if he's "deskunked" I tell them, "No, he's descented. If I ran over him with a car, THEN he would be deskunked."

Wow, did that make me feel dumb. What amazing, driven kids. I love the one where she didn't even patent her finds. She just made it a gift to the world. Above and beyond her brilliance, to understand the impact of kindness as well is phenomenal.

I was expecting something much smaller, a raccoon, skunk or opossum. Not Bambi!

Great post, I found it very enlightening. We recently sold our house, not because we had to, but because we felt it was to big for us, but we lost our shirts on it. And we did a for sale by owner. If we had gone through a Realtor, we would have walked away owing money. I wasn't in the sub-prime category, but I don't every remember being asked my race when I applied for a loan. My broker didn't meet me until it was time to close, and the bank certainly never looked at me. So other than going by a surname, how is the government determining how many mortgages are going or not going to minorities?

Am I missing something? -15C is about 5 degrees Fahrenheit, correct? We get those temperatures in the US every winter, and our trees don't "explode". Of course the ground froze to 3 feet deep, that's why when you build anything in Iowa, you have to put the footings below the frost line. I understand that these people didn't have today's technology, but they still should have had the ability to store food, wear warm clothes and build fires. I suppose that it is the same mentality as people in the southern states that are so used to the warm weather that even a little dusting of snow or ice causes problems, and when there is a major freeze, everything shuts down, and they're just not prepared.

looks like a strawberry huller. There's really nothing to reference the size.

This is awesome. Just one man doing something to put a smile on someones face. It didn't cost anything, just a little time, some cardboard, and a willingness to make someones day better. I bet his hand was sore though!

Obviously not everyone agrees on what would be an appropriate name, when I was pregnant, I had a female nurse that was doing a check on me, ask me what names I had picked out. I told her we were thinking of Tristan Everett for a boy. She rolled her eyes at me and said, "Well, I'm sure you'll think of something nice eventually". I about slapped her. WTF? I really doubt that these kids were removed from their homes based solely on their names, but I'm sure the names and the big stink that the parents put up regarding the cake simply drew the states attention to other problems that may have been going on as well. You could definitely say that what these people are doing are damaging to the mental well being of these children. They are essentially destroying the possibility for any normal social interaction for these children. If they named them Sally or Joe but then refused to let them out of the house, would it be any less of an abuse?

I'll be interested to see how this all pans out.