How the "Left" Stole Christmas.

'Twas the month before Christmas
When all through our land,
Not a Christian was praying
Nor taking a stand.

See the PC Police had taken away,
The reason for Christmas..why no one could say.
The children were told by their schools not to sing
Of Christ, shepherds, Wise Men, angels, or such things.

It might hurt people's feelings, teachers were asked to say,
"December 25th is just another 'holiday'."
Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit
Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!

CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-pod
Something was changing, something quite odd!
Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa
In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.

As Targets were hanging their trees upside down
At Lowe's the word Christmas was no where to be found.
At K-Mart and Staples and Penney's and Sears,
You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears.

"Inclusive, sensitive, di-ver-si-ty"
Are words that were used to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen
On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton!

At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter
To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.
And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith
Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace
.
The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded
The reason for the season, stopped before it started.

So as you celebrate "Winter Break" under your "Dream Tree,"
Sipping your Starbucks, please listen to me.
Choose your words carefully, choose what you say:
Do shout "MERRY CHRISTMAS!" not "Happy Holiday!"

So, our life has been going well. Mom is home schooling Jordan and Colton here at home, and McKayla and I have been attending the Classical Charter school every day.
It's been in the forties for the past few days and that has been very enjoyable. We had some snow for a while then it rained and it all melted.

MOM- Mom has been busy home schooling and keeping up with the laundry. She continues to make her own bread and cook.

DAD- Dad has been going to work every day. He is preparing to start school again. (college of course)

KACEY (me)- I continue to work on my grammar skills. I have completed a crocheting project and I am now trying to finish a a scarf that I have been working on for almost two years. (knitting)

MCKAYLA- McKayla is getting over a cold that kept her home from school. She is working on a school report for a homeroom class.

JORDAN- Jordan continues to draw she is also working on learning how to play the piano.

COLTON- Colton also is learning how to play the piano. He is doing very well.

NEW HAPPENINGS

Recently McKayla and I got put into public school. We are going to the Classical Charter School. The Classical Charter School (css) is different then other schools because it teaches at a higher level. For math I am doing Saxon 7/6 and McKayla is doing Saxon 6/5. Most schools wuold not even be doing Saxon math. It is really awesome to be in public school!!!

Mom is canning a lot. We picked pears (from our tree), apples (from our great aunt's friends house), and plums (from our great aunt's friends house and from our neighbor's house). Mom has had to can all of that, and it is taking her a while. :)



cute picture:

The trip to the Sahara Desert 2006

Hey ya'll! I will tell you about our trip to the Sahara Desert.

Well, Dad and I went out to the Sahara Desert with my Gramma at first. That was two years ago. My Gramma had gone in 2003 and now we were joing her in 2004. You might be thinking that the title says 2006 and here I am talking about 2004. A little sidetracked? Not! After we got back I kept asking to go back and if I could even go back. A couple of nights I would just cry and cry because I wanted to go back so badly. If you where a parent and your daughter wanted to go back overseas to one of the places where Americans were hated the most what would you do? I don't think that my parents knew what to do. After two years of praying,hoping,wishing we returned and this time we took Mom and McKayla besides me and dad. We joined a team of 46 people to travel for three flights, one 14 hour layover, 28 hours stuck in the Algiers airport on the way home and 10 days in the refugee camps.....




Their Story.
The Saharawi refugees fled from Western Sahara
when Morocco invaded from the north and Mauritania from the south. The refugees fled to the Sahara Desert in Algeria and the Algerian goverment gave them some land in the desert were they are still waiting to get back in to their home country. The refugees have established three major camps Smara,Auserd,and Layoun. Besides that there is three more smaller camps, Rabony (the goverment "camp out"), Dhakla (the muslim schools are based there), and 27February (one of their holidays). The Saharawi have lived in the Sahara Desert for about 30 people. There are about 170,000 Saharawi living between all 6 camps.

The Saharawi are still dying, giving birth,working and many of the Saharawi have gone to cuba and spain to study and have been educated. There are nurses, doctors, and dentists living in the camps who have gotten free education because of their situation as refugees. It is not like the Saharawi have put their life on hold and are just sitting around waiting for the sky to fall kinda thing. They have built schools, homes and stores. Christ The Rock built a english center in Smara and they are teaching english to the Saharawi. Every March and every July a team from Wisconsin, Michigan and other states join together and head out to the camps for a period of time. The July team does concerts and the March team does VBS programs. We joined the March team...

Travel (on the way there)
We, (as in 46 people) left March 19 and returned April 4. Once we had Left Christ the Rock we drove to Chicago.We then flew to Frankfurt, Germany and had a fourteen hour layover. Then there was a flight to Algiers, Algeria, Africa then to Tindouf, Algiera. In Algiers we had spent a night at A hotel called Dar Dief. The Campbell family had a huge room with a loft and an incredible view of the Mediterranean. Anyway. Once we got to Tindouf there was still an hour or so drive between us and the refugee camps.

The Camp
This year church decided that the entire team would got to one camp (smara) instead of splitting up between four camps (smara, layoun, auserd and dhakla). With that in mind I will tell you about our time in smara.

We got to smara very late at night and were seperated into five or six homes. Our host family was sleeping when we got to there house. Dad and I had stayed in their home two years ago so we knew the family. So did Paul Stevens, one of the other americans who was staying in the home with us. He had come to the camps in 2005, and now he was returning with his nephew, Ben. We ahd a lot of fun with them. Paul, Dad and Ben would just start talking about the grossest stuff while we were eating. To give you a glimpse of what they were talking about, read this song that my Dad made up: We are family, so tell me if you went a po-py.

McKayla and I were grossed out, but it was kinda funny.

What a day was like

We would get up at about 7:00 a.m and have a little breakfast, then go outside and wait for the bus (a city bus) to come and take us to our seprate vbs programs. Mom and I did music and Dad and McKayla did string art. We did six days of vbs with two sets of kids. We would do vbs three days in a row and then take a day off and then do three more days with a seprate group of kids. After we were done we would eventually get picked up by the bus. The ten minuet drive was lengthened by about half an hour due to to stalling and breaking down coming from the buses end of the line. We would sit on cloth seats in this bus without air conditioning, and watch the temps rise slowly. The sad thing is the bus driver would not let us open the window for some breeze. Moving on. The driver would sooner or later either 1) fix the bus and keep moving or 2) get us a ride with some one else and they would drive us to the Reception center and from there we would walk back to our host families.

They would serve us lunch and then during the afternoon we all pretty much just rested and napped. At five in the afternoon we had the choice of helping Jessica teach and sometimes we went to the market. Just about every evening we went to a team activity, such as a devo or a concert by the band that came with us. One night we went to the sand dunes. Supper was at 10 or 11 and we hit the sack, most of the time, before 12. We got up at about 7:00 a.m.....

Travel (on the way back)

We left the camps at about 7 or 8 and headed off to tindouf. From there we flew to algiers and spent a night at Dar Dief. At about 11 we headed to the airport to wait for our flight to Frankfurt, at 2 a.m only to find out that a fog made it impossible for our plane to land and take off. We got to wait for 24 in the airport for the next flight to Frankfurt the next morning at 2. Overall we waited for 28 hours. Fun. Anyway... Once we got to frankfurt we had to book new flights because we missed ours due to the delay. Our team was seperated into a couple groups and we headed off to Chicago at different times. Then we drove to Christ the Rock and went home.

Thank you for reading about our trip. I hope you liked it.