A Mother’s Perspective on a Brave Soldier’s Reply Letter to Gwyneth Paltrow’s Twitter Comment

I am touched by a soldier’s reply to Gwyneth’s twitter comment.

She said:   “You come across [online comments] about yourself and about your friends, and it’s a very dehumanizing thing. It’s almost like, how in war, you go through this bloody dehumanizing thing…”

Bryan Sikes, a green beret replied I could see how you, and others like you in “the biz”, could be so insecure and mentally weak that you could pair the difficulty of your life on twitter to my brothers who have had their limbs ripped off and seen their friends shot, blown up, burned and disfigured, or wake up every morning in pain – while just starting the day is a challenge. How about our wives? The ones that sign on to be there for us through thick and thin, that help us to shake the hardships of war upon our return? And do all this while being mothers to our kids, keeping bills in order because we are always gone, and keeping our lives glued together. They do all this, by the way, without a team of accountants, nanny’s, personal assistants, and life coaches. Yeah, reading a mean tweet is just like all that…..” 

 

Why am I touched by this?

…. the acknowledgment of oftentimes unnoticed, unrecognized chores/things ordinary wives and mothers do on a daily basis from a man’s or a husband’s perspective is just heartwarming… mind you there are many who think that these things/chores are  part and parcel of being a wife or a mother and so are not something grand to be grateful about.

 

…. not all men are taken by beautiful looks and sexy bodies, who can just do, say whatever they want and get away with it .

 

…. it humbles me. It makes me think of how petty my complaints are about the inconveniences in my own personal and family life.

 

…. it makes me look at the beautiful things in life.

 

Angelina Jolie’s perspective is a lot better: “I actually feel that women in my position, when we have all at our disposal to help us, shouldn’t complain,” “Consider all the people who really struggle and don’t have the financial means, don’t have the support, and many people are single raising children. That’s hard.”

 

Screen-Shot-2014-05-29-at-11.44.34-AM

Photo source


To view the full letter of  Bryan Sikes to Gwyneth Paltrow please click here.

 

I’d love to connect with you in

Facebook

twitter

pinterest

sverve

Klout

Google +

 

 

 

You might also like

DSC01907                                      kim

Cavity Free Family                                              Pregnant Women Harassment

 

 

 

 

UPDATED: Empowered Kids Corner: Unconventional Toys

Fotor0527173046

Derick, two years old with great passion for electrical things.

While other kids are playing with toy trucks and action figures, he on the other hand likes to tinker with  fans,  extension wires, and other electrical devices.  At the supermarket, he gets really fascinated with “electrical fans”, and would rather stay there than explore the toy section.

He has other “normal” toys, but his everyday favorites are broken electrical fan, extension wire, electronic mouse, and vacuum pipe.  Among all of these his greatest favorite is the electrical fan. Who says toys are only those sold at toys stores.  For Derick, this broken fan is a toy, it is in fact an educational toy.

quite eccentric huh ^_^….

Is this a foresight of his profession or career in the future?  What do you think?

What I know is that his passion over these things is simply overwhelming.

 

Kids learn best through play. Play may seems trivial to uninformed individuals but it plays an extremely important factor in a child’s cognitive, affective, and psychomotor development.  As a parent, I have observed these from my very own kids.  Their personalities are developed, and they learn to interact with others through play.  They learn to express themselves, rationalize and reason out.  More, they acquire and develop a degree of linguistic understanding which together with other factors like media, parental interaction, and school, they are able to form a rather complex linguistic expressions.  In fact they experiment on words.  For example, in the midst of pretend play, my son was groping for words to use and having found none, he just simply explained “it is so hurty”.  Aside from this, they learn how to solve and resolve situational problems during role-play and imaginative play which they would eventually used in real world circumstances.

Through play, children learn interpersonal skills like empathy and sympathy. In this modern era of gadgetry where gadgets are making people indifferent, interpersonal skills are undeveloped, rare and yet ironically very vital.  We as parents must find the balance, while these technology have become an everyday household, playing with other kids is still incomparable.

Life skills are another set of significant developmental tasks children have to learn.  These skills are associated with how well we live life in the future.  These have been related to how well one manages oneself in studies, and workplace. For kids tying shoes, folding laundries, study habit, cleaning ones room and the likes are simple life skills that instills life long values which could later on translate to having organizing, management, relational, and personal skills.

Without a doubt play is an essential in growing up.  If you take away play, then you don’t only deny children their childhood you are also taking away from them their future.

 

I’ll Return Back Your LOVE

Facebook

Twitter

Google +

You might also like

Empowered Kids: When Kids Decide To Do It Themselves
4 Extracurricular Activities for Your Kids

Like and Share Me

 

 

 

 

KidCoder Beginning Web Design Review

Disclosure: I got this product as part of an advertorial.


Did you ever wonder how websites, games, and smart-phone apps created by people who made their living from these? Have you in your wildest dream, thought of creating apps and designing your own website?

Well, your dream is about to come true.  Even your kids as young as 4th graders can design his/her own website.

In this modern, technology jammed times, a know-how is definitely an advantage. Having the knowledge will not only make one a mere user of technology, but a creator.  Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs are creators who made it really big.

 

This is a review of  KidCoder Beginning Web Design.

KidCoder Beginning Web Design is a self-study, no prior-programming-experienced course,  offered to 4th to 12th graders. This course which needs to be installed in your computer comes with student activity starters, supplementary instructional documents, fully coded solutions for all activities, tests and answer keys, and guidance on evaluating projects. The step by step activities are detailed, thorough, and engaging. It can be completed in your own computer using the text editors and web browsers that already exist in your computer.  There is no need to purchase any additional software.  Plus, they offer free technical support.

 

 

So, what’s in store for you in this  course.  Let us take a peep.

kidcoder cover

 

This is the student menu.  To the left you will see the things needed in this course.  The student textbook are both in PDF and electronic versions.  You can choose whichever best suits your kid’s learning style.

 

 

kidcoder act starter

Here, you will find 20 lessons which are linked to easily view the content.

 

This is where your finish product goes.  Detailed instructions are given in order to create this folder.  To make your website design live, which means uploading in the internet, they also provide step by step procedure and online documents needed to make this happen.  All of these are found in INSTALLATION AND EXTRAS.

kidcoder online doc

Pros

*Designed for people who do not have any technical or programming experienced at all.solution menu

*It provides hands-on activities as against just feeding series of instructions right away. This provides opportunity for learners to think, explore, and resolve given tasks on his/her own.

*If ever one gets stuck on certain activity, the solution menu provides the answer on how KidCoder engineers solve the task themselves.

*They provide online technical support for free.

*Depending on your own pace, you could be a web designer in no time.

*Information are selflessly and generously imparted.

*There are no hidden third party software purchases.

Cons

I took my time looking into the course, trying to find any loophole or negative thing about it.  Honestly, none at all.

Would I recommend this?

Absolutely, without any second thought. I am glad, I was given the opportunity to review and be given a free course.  Its relevance to me as a mother, blogger, and teacher is surmountable.

For more information about KidCoder beginning web design please visit them at the following links.

Website: Homeschool Programming

Facebook Page: Homeschool Programming, Inc.

Twitter:  HS Programming

Disclaimer:

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

All opinions expressed here are honest, and are not influenced whatsoever by anyone or anything.

 

You might also like

Protect Me, Mom and Dad….

Fotor0408110526

Kids Academy Mobile Apps Review

 

Supermarket Savings Keep Budgets in Order

Life presents many different kinds of savings opportunities, which keep cash where it belongs – in your pocket.  Big savings are easybug to see on major purchases, like automobiles and homes, but smaller savings also add up over time.  While they might not seem like earth shattering moments, saving money on trips to the supermarket have a big impact on your family’s bottom line.  Just think about the number of times you shop for food every year and it becomes very easy to see where the savings eventually become significant.

Repeated expenses are one of the best places to trim savings, because they come back to haunt you again and again.  Losing a few dollars on a bad one-time purchase is one thing, but consistently selling yourself short on day to day buys is a budget-breaking endeavor.  Regardless of how small they are, incremental savings have a long-term impact on your food buying costs.

Even though food is a necessary expense; the things you choose to spend money on at the supermarket still fall into a category known as discretionary spending.  Left without monitoring, grocery spending can quickly get out of hand; especially for families feeding several mouths.  The key to saving money at the market is awareness.  Casual approaches, on the other hand, lead to difficulties for shoppers who let their guard down at the supermarket.  Impulse buys and excessive spending ruin food budgets, so education and commitment to trimming costs help shoppers keep spending in line.

Look Around for the Best Buys

As consumers, we always want to feel good about the purchases we make, so a little bit of leg work helps us realize the best available values.  Shopping at a single food store isn’t always the best approach to savings.  On the other hand; running around town chasing bargain buys isn’t cost effective either.  The key to successful supermarket savings is knowing where the proper balance lies and pouncing on the best deals as they become available.

We are creatures of habit, for the most part, so there is a certain level of comfort attached to shopping at our favorite grocery outlets.  Moving through aisles quickly and knowing the way around our trolleys is convenient, but supermarkets use that to their advantage.  For instance, some markets price a few items competitively, in order to present the illusion of low prices to the public. While the promoted pieces may indeed go for bargain buys, the money is made up in the price of other items consumers need.  By targeting specific items from multiple sources, shoppers are able to have the best of both worlds by saving and shopping efficiently.

Fresh markets and other resources furnish great alternatives to one-stop supermarket shops.  Fresh fruits and vegetables are competitively priced, and access is convenient for most shoppers.  This local option requires flexibility, since each day’s bounty is based on the seasonal availability of crops.

Meat is an Expensive Addition to the Trolley

Where you shop is not the only thing driving your food spending; what you buy is equally as important. Budget conscious shoppers steer clear of certain categories at the market, or shop them wisely, at the very least.  Meat is one of the most expensive supermarket sales categories, so saving money takes into account the amount of beef, pork and poultry purchased.

Savings money on meat doesn’t always mean removing the items from your diet, but buying the most expensive cuts every time you shop is unacceptable. When you need a nicel cut of meat, consider payday loans for a little extra cash. To save money on meat buys, learn to prepare less expensive cuts of meat, so that your lifestyle is not impacted – only your cooking methods.

 

 

I’d love to connect with you in

Facebook

twitter

pinterest

sverve

Klout

Google +

You might also like

image

Empowered Kids:  When Kids 

Decide To Do It Themselves

 

The Secret Hotel

ankasjdfl;

A Hotel With No Name – Would You Do It?

If someone said to you ‘hey, come and stay in this hotel but I can’t tell you the name of it’ you probably wouldn’t accept. After all, who wants to splash their cash on something when they don’t even know what they are buying! We work hard for our money so it stands to reason that we are going to want to make sure that when we spend it, it is something that we actually want!

That is why many people are put off by the secret hotel concept at first glance. After all, if you have to pay to stay somewhere then you want to make sure that you know what you are getting for your money. When you first read about booking into a hotel with no name it can seem like such a bad idea however it doesn’t have to be all that scary.

The Real Secret Hotel Concept

Actually when you log onto a website to book a secret hotel you do get more information than just the chance to book into a random hotel. For starters you get the location of the hotel, the star rating, a review and of course details of amenities that the hotel can offer you during your booking (here’s an example). When you look at all of the details you do get before you actually book a secret hotel room and the fact that it is usually priced at 50% off it suddenly becomes all the more tempting.

Making Life Even Easier For You

If you want even more information on a hotel before you book then you’ll be glad to know that there are websites that can help. If you log onto a website then you could be left crying ‘found an additional description of the hotel at Secret Hotelier but not the name, arggghh!’ but at least you’ll have more information than you did before!

Of course you also have the back up that these hotels want you to come back and book with them. They certainly don’t want your hotel stay to be a bad one, after all their reputation is at stakes! When you consider all of the details and the massive amount of money you would be saving, why wouldn’t you book into a hotel with no name?

 

I’d love to connect with you in

Facebook

twitter

pinterest

sverve

Klout

Google +

 

 

You might also like

el nido

My Asia Travel Bucket List

Kid’s Hairstyle for the Summer

Summer is here.  It is not just hot, it is very hot.

As you think of different activities or plan for places to visit this summer, do not forget to consider the following sunblock lotion, sunglasses, hats, or even umbrellas.  The temperature is just insanely unbearable.  It is better to keep umbrellas in hand.  It is no longer practical to walk under the heat of the sun unprotected.

Kids are also vulnerable to Miliaria, better known as prickly heat.  The neck, nape, and back are the most susceptible part of the body.  To prevent this, make sure that your kids are always clean and fresh.  Taking a bath in the morning and before bedtime would be good. Let your kids wear loose shirts or dresses for the summer as this will allow air to flow freely  preventing damp cloth from clinging unto the skin. For girls who have long hair should keep their hair tidy.  Braiding your kid’s long hair would be a good way to keep the neck and nape fresh and well aerated.  Here are different hair braiding styles to choose from. Take your pick ^_^

 

DSC01613

 

 

DSC01602

 

DSC02242

 

DSC01909

 

 

Do you know how to braid? I would love to hear from you.

 

I’d love to connect with you in

Facebook

twitter

pinterest

sverve

Klout

Google +

 

 

 

 

You might also like

Summer collage

 

Summer Photoshoot