Our new website is up and running!!

Hey- We won't be posting here anymore, we've moved! Check us out at:

http://thegravesfamilyonline.com/

Thanks!!!

Michael, Stacey and Kaitlyn

Education

Since I’m having technical difficulty with my photos, I thought I’d blog some thoughts. I haven’t done this in a long time and I was initially hesitant to do so, but I’m doing it. I’m not writing out of some passion nor out of some feeling like I need my voice to be heard. I just am so encouraged by reading other mom blogs about their thoughts that I figured it would be fun to sort out my thoughts online.

I read a lot of parenting books and family books, most of them written by moms who home school their children, so lately I’ve been thinking – what do I want to do for Kaitlyn’s education?

For the last few months, I’ve tried to answer the following question. Do I want to home school my kids? Needless to say, I could not come up with an answer, probably because there are so many pending circumstances that I just kept finding myself going around in a circle. It was really frustrating.

During this time I have taken up a personal study on Islam. I read everything that I can get my hands on regarding the Muslim faith. One of the lectures I was reading was comparing the large differences between Islam and Christianity and the lecturer made a profound statement (at least to me). He said something like ‘The vast difference between Islam and Christianity is that Christians believe in the separation of Church and State and Muslins do not.’*** The lecturer went on to talk about how devout Muslims want their religion to be the center of their lives, both personally and in governance of their country. (This lecture was written prior to the recent events in Egypt.) So in reading this lecture I changed my homeschooling question to this question. Do I believe in the separation of Church of state?

I don’t know. I think it’s a tough question to answer, especially for someone (like me) who considers herself a devout Christian. I’ll try to explain this but my current standing is that I am leaning more towards separation.

My first reason is freedom. I want Kaitlyn to have a choice about her faith. I don’t want her to feel an obligation to take the Christian faith on just because her parents have done so or because her friends have faith. I want her to understand the implications of becoming a Christian, that it doesn’t always just solve things nor is it a self improvement program, but that it is a continual relationship with God through His Son Jesus by ways of unconditional love and that is not always easy. Faith is a choice and she is free to choose as she wishes.

My second reason is democracy. I know, weird answer. I’m not a fan of dictatorship, unless I’m the dictator. Just kidding. Well, I’m not really kidding, but dictatorship seems oppressive and democracy, although not perfect, is something that allows people to choose what they want to do. And historically, when the Church is the dictator, things don’t seem to go so well for the people so I want Kaitlyn to live in democracy. And I don’t know how to have a democratic society without separating church and state.

I think that’s all I’ve got right now. I’m still leaning towards separation as far as where I stand on this topic but it doesn’t answer my initial question of Kait’s education, although it’s starting to direct a path. And I really don't have an answer, I'm just a blogger who is trying to figure out how to be a good mom and who is thinking out loud. My thoughts on this topic could change any moment and any action on this topic could change due to circumstance, but I wanted to share in hopes that it would somehow encourage you.

***I've been reading Father Zakaria's lectures on Islam and Christianity. He is a Catholic Priest who lives in Egypt. Of course, I can't find the quote that I used for this blog so I can't say if that was his or not, but regardless, his study is interesting to me.

time for a change?

Michael and I have been wanting to have a family website for a while now. But a few events over the past few days have pushed us to need to have one. First, I lost 20,000 photos on my macbook. I have an external backup and the photos are on Michael's computer, so they are not totally lost, but I have to now reload them and organize them, something that I thought would be a simple connection of my external hard drive and that has not been the case. I use my macbook to upload our blog and since my photos are in such disarray, my photo time has been spent reorganizing that before I load any new photos to my macbook and hence to our blog! Second, we purchase our site name and now that we are paying for it, I'm super motivated to start using it. It's going to be a LONG time coming, so I'll try to get my photo's together to make a few more publications on this site, but right now that is why I'm stalled with blog entries.

Anyway! We'll probably try to have some sort of launching for our new site, but unofficially, here it is: http://www.thegravesfamilyonline.com/

Kait's First Swing Ride!!

Our neighbors gave us their baby swing and today was the day for Kait to check it out. She LOVED it. She only cried when we took her out and she cried super hard then but her whole time in the swing, she was so happy.

For Michael - Go Huskies!

I dressed Kaitlyn today in Michael's favorite. She can finally fit in her 12 month clothes! She looked great and gave some great poses for the camera. (Michael took these pictures while I was at work.)

She found the camera strap and started munching away.

She is so happy when she is with her daddy.

Such a sweet baby girl.

Dinosaur Parade!!!

Something that Michael and I try to make a real effort at is to have a Family Time together on Friday nights and it is usually really relaxed, but tonight we needed to have a dinosaur parade! Kait got a riding dinosaur for Christmas from Grandma Ann and she loves it. Michael took down the streamers from the baby shower and tied them to her little dino. We drove her all around and she had such a great time!

She turned 8 months yesterday. Best 8 months of my life.

Melissa's Baby Shower

I love to throw a good party and when I found out my friend Melissa was expecting, I knew that it was time to have one.

Michael put up perfect streamers for me.

Baked the cake from scratch. DELICIOUS.

Melissa (left) and Erika (right).

Congratulations Melissa!!