Cookie Guys

Everytime we go to the Tim Horton's next to Maxi, where we get groceries, Nicky gets himself a "cookie guy". You can't get those at the other Tim Hortons', they don't carry them anymore. He loves cookie guys.

Sometimes, when I am out doing errands while he is at pre-school (oh the luxury of doing errand with no children! - but that is another story), I stop at Tim Horton's and buy him a cookie guy. He is always excited to check out the car when he comes outside.

Last Thursday, I didn't have a cookie guy waiting for him and he was quite disappointed. So I told him we could go home and maybe make cookies. I was thinking, "I thaw out the tub of ready-made cookie dough from last school fundraiser, and we make cookies." But no, Monsieur wanted cookie guys.

I went online and found this recipe. Mostly, we had fun cutting out little cookie guys, but I decided to make a special one for my little soccer dude:

The other children came home and had a hey day with the other cookies. Here are thier combined efforts at decorating:

Moral Dilemma

Got this in another e-mail, thought it was interesting... :)

You are driving down the road in your car on a wild, stormy night, when you pass by a bus stop and you see three people waiting for the bus:

1. An old lady who looks as if she is about to die.
2. An old friend who once saved your life.
3. The perfect partner you have been dreaming about.

Which one would you choose to offer a ride to, knowing that there could only be one passenger in your car? Think before you continue reading.

This is a moral/ethical dilemma that was once actually used as part of a job application. You could pick up the old lady, because she is going to die, and thus you should save her first. Or you could take the old friend because he once saved your life, and this would be the perfect chance to pay him back. However, you may never be able to find your perfect mate again.

YOU WON'T BELIEVE THIS.....................

The candidate who was hired (out of 200 applicants) had no trouble coming up with his answer. He simply answered: 'I would give the car keys to my old friend and let him take the lady to the hospital. I would stay behind and wait for the bus with the partner of my dreams.'

Sometimes, we gain more if we are able to give up our stubborn thought limitations. Never forget to 'Think Outside of the Box.'

Guns vs Doctors

Got this in an e-mail:


Doctors
(A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.
(B) Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year = 120,000.
(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171.
Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services.

Now think about this:
Guns
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000. (YES, Million)
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is 0.000188.
Statistics courtesy of FBI.

So, statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.

Remember, 'Guns don't kill people, doctors do.'

FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT
ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR.

Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!!!

Soccer Trials

By trials, I do not in any way imply try outs, I mean sufferings.

Our son Dominic has been playing competitive soccer since the winter of 2006, when he was U8. That first year, the winter and summer seasons that he was U8 and the winter season that he was U9, things went well. They played against teams that were older than them in the recreational league, and mostly, they lost, but it didn't matter, because that was temporary, and soon they would be playing in the U9 competitive league, against teams their own age, and things would be easier.

Except that for the 2007 summer season, when he was U9, the club decided that they would separate the boys into a stronger team and a weaker team. They did this knowing that there was only one calibre of play. It isn't until U11 that there is an A and an AA league. They took all the aggressive players and put them on one team, and Dominic's team was left with mostly defensive players like himself and new players that had just joined us from the recreational league. The stronger team had no problem winning everything, while Dominic's team continually lost. They couldn't even make it past the centre line until near the end of the season.

By that time, most of the players were fed up and quit and our coach was repalced with another.

The new season, winter 2007/08, wasn't so bad. They were now U10, and there were a lot of new recruits, enough for two "weaker" teams plus the stronger team. Dominic's team won about half of their games.

Once again, at the end of the season, we lost half the team, and changed coaches. The summer 2008 season was horrible. Halfway through the season, only about 5 or 6 boys would show up for a practice, and about that many for a game. We played most of the games from the end of July and all through August with about 6 substitutes from the U9 team. We continually lost 12-0, 10 -0. The best we could do was manage to lose by only 6-0. We complained at the end of the season, that the boys were tired of losing all the time, and I told the direction of the Club that they needed to find a solution to keep our players with us, because everytime we started over with new players, we got further behind. We were told that it was in our heads, and that it didn't really bother the kids to lose.

Which is about when we started bribing Dominic to play by paying him 5 dollars everytime he played a good game. (because getting massacred each time, was not bothering him.)

The two weaker teams were put together to form one team for the 2008/09 U11 winter season(because, once again, we'd lost about half the team in both cases). At this point, only two kids could say they'd been with the club since they were U8. (Compared to the stronger team, who managed to keep most of their players) We told Dominic, "Stick with it for another year, you'll see, it will get better, this winter you have to play in an AA league so you'll lose, but this summer you'll be playing in an A league and things will get better." They never won a game all winter, but they had a good coach, and at least this time around, most of the kids had been with one or the other teams for at least one previous season.

At the start of the 2009 summer season, we were told that our coach would become Head coach for both the A team (us) and the AA team (the stronger team). He would be assisted by younger coaches. Two coaches for us, and one for the AA team I believe. He would be at our practices and our games. And players from our team would have the possibility to move up and play AA if they worked hard enough and some of the AA players would move down, because not all of them were strong enough to be there. Two A players did indeed move up to the AA team for the summer, although none moved down. We were hopeful that, at last, we would have a good season, but we also told ourselves, that if we were still losing half the team and changing coaches again at the end of the season, we would seriously consider giving up.

Thanks to the fact that we were finally playing in a league our level, we did manage to finish 5 out of 8 teams over the summer and normally did not lose by more than 1 or 2 points in a game. However, the head coach did not show up for any of the practices, (he only showed up for the games) and dedidcated his time to the AA team only. This left the two young inexperienced coaches with no supervision, and they proceeded to organize practices that ressembled their own. Which is to say, practices aimed at an adult AAA clientele. If the kids did something wrong they had to do a lot of pushups and laps around the field. If they did something well, there was no word of encouragement to signal it. At least one boy left the field during a practice, crying. Attendance at practices started to diminish.

Once again at the end of the season, we lost just under half the team. Many of them left temporarily, because of hockey and other activites, but at least one left because of the coaches. We told the technical director and the General Director for the club more than once what was going on, and for the start of this new season, the only thing they had done to correct the situation was to find an adult coach who would help the young coaches. What we really needed was an adult coach that the young coaches would help instead of the other way around. Everything came to a head this week, as we lost two more boys, one left after last Friday's practice and won't come back unless the coaches go, the other just had too much on his schedule and wanted to come back in the spring. The price for this winter season was based on there being 16 players. We were no down to 12, which meant paying over $700 to play, when for essentially the same program (two practices and participation in a 7x7 league) Marysss is only paying just over $400. The only difference is Dominic's team has one 11x11 practice which requires more stadium space.

Marc and I decided that, at that price, and Dominic not wanting to play with his team anymore, and the team still having problems keeping its players, the head coach ditching us, and with the problems with the young coaches, we were going pull Dominic out.

We sent more than one e-mail to the Club, telling them they had to do something, and noone answered, so Marc (who is manager) sent an e-mail saying that Dominic was quitting, that 3 of the other boys had also quit, that they needed to find a new manager, and that the price was now $770 per player since we were now dividing the price for the team into 11.

That finally got the club moving, because they sent an email to Marc, asking him to forward it to the other parents (and to copy them - to make sure he sent it I guess) saying that they would recruit more players and that the administration would find a solution so they wouldn't have to pay $700+ individually to play.

I am sure that the administration will find some solution, but I highly doubt their capacity to find more players to play for the team. They also mention nothing about placing the young coaches elsewhere, with another team, with an adult to supervise, and giving us different coaches. If they give us different coaches, they would probably automatically have 3 players come back. (including Dominic).

As it is, if Dominic does not want to play with them this winter, he will not be playing. We are done pushing him to play in spite of the difficulties we have every year within the team. I am tired of telling him at the start of each new season that it will be better this time around, and then having to eat my words because it never gets better.

Dominic is fed up playing with the team, (not because of his fellow players) Marc is fed up managing the team (not because of the parents), because the needs of the team are not being met, because we are often ignored, and even insulted in one case. And I am tired of playing the peacemaker all the time.

So I believe it is time to take a holiday. Perhaps Dominic will try out again in the spring. If things seem better.

Off to the Printers

Soccer Dude

Nicky, ready for soccer (big boy) posing with his Burger King crown.

Typical...

ACORN, a Nut They Won’t Crack

by Robert H. Knight (more by this author)
Posted 09/17/2009 ET

I’ve been bashing the Washington Post lately and am starting to feel bad about it. So maybe if I do it a bit more, I’ll feel better.

If you were an editor, how and where would you play a story with these elements?

On Friday, Sept. 11, the U.S. Census Bureau announces that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a major player during the 2008 election, will no longer be handling any part of the 2010 Census. On Monday, Sept. 14, the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate votes 83 to 7 to bar ACORN from applying for HUD funding.

The actions followed the release of “sting” videos showing ACORN officials in Baltimore, Washington and New York advising what they thought was a pimp and prostitute about how to evade taxes while setting up a brothel for underage girls sex-trafficked from Central America. Four ACORN officials have been fired so far. One ACORN official advises the “prostitute” on tape that the underage hookers could be listed as “dependents” and that she’s really a “performance artist” for tax purposes. Well, why not? The National Endowment for the Arts has doled out tax money to nude “performance artists” who smear themselves with chocolate, or worse. And it fits in with the NEA’s recent scandal in which the agency got caught ordering grant recipients to do propaganda projects promoting ObamaCare.

There is so much corruption emerging from this young administration that it’s like watching a skeet trap go haywire and release dozens of clay pigeons at once. If only the media would load their shotguns and have a go of it.

Back to ACORN. Think there’s enough for a story yet? Let’s add two more facts: During the early 1990s, Barack Obama, now president of the United States, did leadership training and legal work for ACORN. You can look it up in a Winter 2003 article in the journal Social Policy entitled, “Case Study: Chicago -- The Barack Obama Campaign,” by Toni Foulkes, a Chicago ACORN leader and member of ACORN’s National Association Board. Or you can read Stanley Kurtz’s excellent National Review article, "Inside Obama’s Acorn," which brought the Foulkes article to a wider audience last year.

In addition, ACORN is being investigated in at least 12 states for voter registration fraud and mishandling taxpayer money. Several people were arrested last week in Florida. Oh, and one more fact. ACORN has received more than $50 million from taxpayers since 1994, and could receive up to $8.5 billion more, according to the Washington Examiner. This is the group, remember, that has a habit of violently disrupting public meetings when not out registering voters like “Mr. Donald Duck.”

There they are, the Post editors, huddled around the big table on Monday. Hmm. They scratch their heads. Urge each other to think big, with the bloodhound instincts of Woodward and Bernstein. Result: a six-inch story on the Senate’s ACORN vote by the Associated Press -- not even by a Post staff writer -- buried at the bottom of page A-6. It’s two stories down from the massive run-over from yet another front page story hammering Rep. Joe Wilson (S.C.) as a closet “racist” for calling out Obama during his speech to Congress last week. Also on the front is a four-column feature on how electronic legal filing is squeezing out bicycle couriers.

This overt attempt to avoid the juiciest and most important scandal in years is not just happening at the Post, of course. As of Monday, ABC, CBS and NBC had ignored the story, according to the Media Research Center's Dan Gainor on Fox News.com. ABC’s Charlie Gibson got caught on WLS-AM radio in Chicago on Tuesday morning admitting that his network has not covered the story because, well, “I didn’t even know about it.” He actually joked that “maybe this is just one you leave to the cables.” Like Fox News Channel? For an audio clip of Gibson and all the details, click on Michelle Malkin’s website.

We are now in an era in which liberal media bias is so obvious and embarrassing that Glenn Beck, Accuracy in Media, Media Research Center and others exposing it must be getting dizzy deciding what to show next.

As for ACORN, they are rattling their swords, threatening to sue Fox News and Breitbart.com for running the video clips (according to Politico). Instead of mea culpa, it’s mea sue you.

It’s time to ask why ACORN still has a shot at receiving government money from other agencies, and why the Justice Department has not filed RICO charges. That’s the racketeering law that’s been misused against peaceful pro-life demonstrators.

To the media and their government clients, they’re the scary ones.

Robert Knight is Senior Writer/Correspondent for Coral Ridge Ministries at www.crministries.org, and a Senior Fellow with the American Civil Rights Union at http://www.theacru.org/.

L'Évangile du jour

Evangile de Jésus-Christ selon saint Jean 3,13-17.

Car nul n'est monté au ciel sinon celui qui est descendu du ciel, le Fils de l'homme. De même que le serpent de bronze fut élevé par Moïse dans le désert, ainsi faut-il que le Fils de l'homme soit élevé, afin que tout homme qui croit obtienne par lui la vie éternelle. Car Dieu a tant aimé le monde qu'il a donné son Fils unique : ainsi tout homme qui croit en lui ne périra pas, mais il obtiendra la vie éternelle. Car Dieu a envoyé son Fils dans le monde, non pas pour juger le monde, mais pour que, par lui, le monde soit sauvé.

Extrait de la Traduction Liturgique de la Bible - © AELF, Paris

Les icônes pascales de l'Église d'Orient montrent comment le Christ entre dans le monde des morts. Son vêtement est lumière, parce que Dieu est lumière. « Même les ténèbres pour toi ne sont pas ténèbres, et la nuit comme le jour est lumière. » (Ps 138,12) Jésus, qui entre dans le monde des morts, porte les stigmates ; ses blessures, ses souffrances sont devenues puissance, elles sont amour qui vainc la mort. Jésus rencontre Adam et tous les hommes qui attendent dans la nuit de la mort. À leur vue, on croit même entendre la prière de Jonas : « Du ventre des enfers, j'appelle : tu écoutes ma voix » (Jon 2,3).

Dans l'incarnation, le Fils de Dieu s'est fait un avec l'être humain, avec Adam. Mais c'est seulement au moment où il accomplit l'acte extrême de l'amour en descendant dans la nuit de la mort qu'il porte à son accomplissement le chemin de l'incarnation. Par sa mort, il prend par la main Adam, tous les hommes en attente, et il les conduit à la lumière.

Pape Benoît XVI
Homélie pour la Vigile pascale, 07/04/2007 © copyright Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Gracieuseté de L'Évangile au Quotidien

Catholic Folk Toys

Came across this and thought I would share:

http://www.catholicfolktoys.com/index.php