I am seriously amazed that a) a 13 year old boy made this and b) that a 13 year old boy gets it while some adults STILL don’t get the cruelty behind this supposed delicacy. The shark fin doesn’t even have a flavor until it’s soaked in chicken or ham broth.  Mmmmm.  Tastes so good, I could have gotten chicken soup instead, it would have tasted the same and is something easily mass produced for human consumption. Hopefully the chicken wouldn’t have died a horrendously cruel death by drowning or being eaten alive.

(Sorry vegetarians and vegans – That probably sounds heartless to you, but not all humans are going to stop eating meat and the least they can do is eat meat that is easily sustainable and from a source that is not going to go extinct if we keep hunting/overfishing it for our consumption.) 

Kyle, you are super talented and super smart! 

Subscribe to Kyle’s youtube channel

Support groups who support our seas, without our oceans, our entire ecosystem would collapse, and we, my friends, wouldn’t be here any more.

Sea Shepherd

Shark Angels

P.S. Check your medicines, especially your chondroitin.  Is it made from bovine (cow) or shark cartilage? Cows can be mass produced for food and other purposes, sharks cannot be mass produced and some species are dying out.

Liked that? Read these:

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• Green Books Campaign – Turtle Dolphin Dreams

The post Shark Fin Soup – Agony In A Bowl appeared first on Not Everyones Mama.

It’s the last day of school for us!  Woot woot!  No more setting my alarm for 6:30 AM!

At least until June 3.

Then Jordan starts character building academy.

He can’t wake up on his own so my alarm will be beeping at 6:30 for 2 weeks starting then.

Jordan took a selfie that I stole borrowed

I can’t believe it’s the last day already.  My last day of having a kindergartener, 3rd grader, and 7th grader for this year.  Next fall Nano will officially be off to preschool and then the next year I will have all 4 kids in school full time.  Be prepared for lots of tears when my baby heads up to the school and not because I have to then go back to work.  I’m actually looking forward to that part.

Let’s see if there is a huge change from the beginning of the year.

Jordan had a nice hair cut back then.
It’s coming again.  They’ll shave his head for character building academy.

The girls on the first day

If you want to reminisce a little more, here’s the first day of school post from this year. And here is the post where I am a tad disgruntled with how early school has been starting. FTR – they didn’t listen to me.  School starts a day earlier and gets out one day earlier for the 2013-2014 school year.

Alright, have a wonderful day!  I’m off to put my girls on the bus for the last time this year.

Liked that? Read these:

• First Day Of School Pics
• Alyce’s First Day Of Preschool
• School Has Started
• First Day Of School

The post Last Day Of School! appeared first on Not Everyones Mama.

That same day that everything hit Oklahoma, we were fearing the same thing here in Iowa.  Thankfully it wasn’t fun as far as thunderstorms went but the tornadoes didn’t whip through here as badly as they did there.

The night before we were in tornado warnings and I guess our sirens were supposed to go off but they didn’t.  While I should have been on my way to the shelter I was attempting to put my cats in duffle bags to take with us.  I seriously need to invest in pet carriers for them.  They did not come near me the rest of the night.

That storm didn’t feel nearly as bad as the one the next night.  When the hail started, I honestly thought our skylights were going to break.  It was so bad I started moving electronics off of our island just in case they did break. I was trying to do it calmly so that my kids wouldn’t start panicking over the storm.  Keeping them calm is never easy, especially Katiana.  One time in preschool they read a book on tornadoes, it showed some of the damage a tornado can do and what we do during a tornado. She has had her own tornado phobia ever since then. She resembles me as a child with my own fear of thunder.  More on that in a moment.

Hail on the porch (Yep, my porch needs repainted)

After the storm everyone was posting pictures of the rainbow on Facebook.  My sister in law noticed after the fact that in one of her pictures she caught a double rainbow.  It was gorgeous!

My own picture – I didn’t catch the double rainbow
over here but it still was beautiful!

Afterwards we had beautiful cotton candy colored clouds.

 
The blue sky and clouds from my porch

I have to say that that storm scared me a lot more than the one the night before. It was louder and stronger and everyone in my non-internet life knows how scared I am of thunder.

I have two phobias – things that sting and thunder.

Did you know there’s a name for that?

Ceraunophobia

I learned that in high school psychology.

(I also still have night terrors, which I learned in the same class that I should have outgrown once I left childhood. I didn’t.)

Ceraunophobia is the fear of thunder and lightning. The origin of the word Cerauno is Greek (meaning thunder, ligtning or thunderbolt) and phobia is Greek (meaning fear). Ceraunophobia is considered to be a specific phobia.

I’m telling you, at 17 I would still crawl, shaking, onto the bottom of my parents’ bed during a thunderstorm.  My mom would ask each time, aren’t you a little old to be crawling into my bed every time there’s a storm?

Nope. I’m not.

One time, after I graduated high school and lived on my own, I remember we had a horrible storm during the day. I couldn’t get a hold of my mom or my best friend, the two people who understood my fear, so I made my best friend’s dad (a psychologist, or psychiatrist, one of the psych words) stay on the phone with me the whole time. I cried. I’m pretty sure he diagnosed me as even weirder than he originally thought I was.

At 38 with 4 kids, I’ve had to learn how to internalize my fear.  I don’t want them to have this fear like I do, brought on because I’m running around scared out of my mind. I sit there telling them we are fine while I am trying hard to hold back my own tears and trying to remember if my lorazapam is in my purse or the medicine cabinet because the thunder literally terrifies me.

Not the lightening. It’s specifically the thunder.  Those huge booms, the cracks of noise that shake the whole house.  The smaller booms start the whole panic process because those smaller booms mean the bigger ones are coming.

If there was a lightening storm with no thunder, I would be standing outside watching it.

I love lightening.

Silly isn’t it?  I’m not afraid of what can hurt me but terrified of the thing that can’t.

Now bees and wasps are another story. They can hurt you.  So I’ve been told.  I’ve never actually been stung. That’s surprising because of the way I run around in circles and scream when I see anything with a stinger.

I’ll save the story of me at 17 stopping my mom’s caravan and hopping out in the middle of a busy road because there was a huge fat bumble bee in the car for another day.

Have a wonderful non-thunder filled (I hope) day!

Liked that? Read these:

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• My Only Real Tornado Experience
• I’m Cranky
• Sunday Soccer Practice

The post Thunderstorms appeared first on Not Everyones Mama.

Bad blogger.  I should have posted about her recital on Sunday but Sunday was crazy then Monday I couldn’t find my camera cord, now it’s Wednesday.  I still can’t find my camera cord so we are suffering with iPhone pics.

Let me start at the beginning of the day.  Saturday was Alyce’s first dance recital ever.  If you recall, I was nervous for her because at dress rehearsal “the lights made me forget” (her song). I was seriously stomach sick kind of nervous for her.  She’d never performed in front of a large audience before. I didn’t want her to look out at the audience and be scared.  I really had no need to be nervous.

Front of her dance hair
I did move the bobby pins after this picture

Back of her hair

She slept in curlers Friday night so that her hair would be ready to go on Saturday morning.  First I got her curly pony done. Then I covered it with a scarf.  Thursday when she wore her hair like this to school for the rehearsal I ended up having to recurl every single piece before we left.  I wasn’t taking any chances with her hair.

Blue eye shadow, red lips, mascara, and blush
You know standard stage make up that makes you cringe
when you put it on your 6 year old.

Katiana was reading her a book so she’d sit still and not mess up her hair.
It ended up being flat by the time we got to Stephens Auditorium.
Flat I could fluff, at least it was still curly.

Speaking of Kat, she was a bit upset that she is 9 and didn’t get to wear any make up while her 6 year old sister did.

We compromised.  I did her hair and let her wear a little mascara and clear lip gloss.

Front of Kat’s hair

Back of Kat’s hair

Forty minute drive to Ames and we were ready for the recital.  I dropped Alyce off downstairs with the dance moms from our group and found my seat.

When I finally had a chance to look at the program my mouth dropped.

World’s longest recital?

Sixty nine dances.  And that was just the matinee show.  There was an evening recital too.  I’m not sure if that had different dances in it?  I do know it didn’t have some of the littler ones.  They just danced the matinee.  I was so excited because besides Alyce being on the stage for the first time, I finally was going to get to see my niece, Taylor, dance. She does hip hop and is on our studio’s competition team.

 
Waiting for the curtain to go up

Now at this point, one would think I would have video.

I should.

I don’t.

I’m not sure how to get the video from the mini-cassette that is in our camcorder.  It has a spot for a memory card and a cord to hook it to the computer but I haven’t used it all that much in the 5 years since we have had it.  Oops.

I was also too far back to get a decent video with my phone. 

I do know that Katiana recorded Taylor’s first dance after I told my husband not to have her do it.  The whole video is of the chair in front of her, the curtain on the side, and a few shots of the girls actually dancing.

The video of Alyce has the people in front of us walking in front of the camera at midpoint.

Taylor’s third dance wasn’t even recorded.

It was so good too! That girl can dance.

I wish I could move like she does.  I almost cried watching her.  My first niece, my baby girl, is going to be 15 in July and she oozes talent.

You know, I might just settle for having her figure in her costume. She’s gorgeous!

I bawled when Alyce was on stage.  Couldn’t help it.  Tears were rolling.

All in all, both girls did amazing.  Alyce didn’t forget her dance.  She didn’t spend the whole time watching the teachers off to the side, and we noticed the girls next to her were watching her for the next move.

After not quite 4 hours of dancing, the matinee was over.  We decided to hit up a Chinese buffet where mom bought us supper.  Thanks mom!

All of my kids were tired and cranky.  My niece and nephew were passed out in a booth.

The adults were in a good mood.

Alyce and Nano and ICE CREAM!

Alyce and Taylor – Told you Taylor was gorgeous!

Taylor gave Alyce a kiss.

Alyce and her beautiful dance teacher

Speaking of her dance teacher, every time she took to the stage to dance and every time her assistant was dancing (he is absolutely amazing BTW, a  professional already and he is Taylor’s age), Alyce got the biggest smile on her face.  She loved finally seeing what they could do and what she will learn how to do.

I’m so sad her teacher is going off to college this fall so Alyce won’t have her again.  I don’t think she’d have her again anyway because she teaches combo I and Alyce is moving up to combo II but we would see her around the studio at least.

Alas, she has to go.  I wish her the best of luck in college.  I know she’s going to do great.  She is such a beautiful talented sweet person.  I adore her.

That my friends was Alyce’s recital day summed up in a gazillion few pictures. I’m already looking forward to next year.

This summer she is taking Combo I to reinforce her ballet techniques (she started dance in December and they have been focusing more on tap because of the recital) and she is taking tumbling.  I want her ready for Combo II this fall and not to feel like she needs to hurry and catch up with the other girls who have already been in dance for 2 years.  Plus, I can’t wait to see her do a side aerial someday.

Promise I’m not turning into a controlling freaky dance mom. Yet.

Have a great day!

Liked that? Read these:

• Alyce’s Dance Rehearsal
• Alyce and Dance
• First Night Going Out In How Long
• Did I Save It?

The post Alyce’s Dance Recital appeared first on Not Everyones Mama.

Last night was the dress rehearsal to the dance recital on Saturday.  They are doing it at Stephens Auditorium in Ames.  If you don’t know Iowa State University, it’s a big auditorium, a real stage with bright lights and lots of room for the audience.  It’s a little intimidating the first time on stage. 

She told me afterwards that the lights made her forget her dance.

Eek.

She did really good though for the first time in that situation.

Leecy is closest to the the camera in the back row
Practicing back stage

I could see her nerves, she forgot some parts and looked to the sides to watch her teachers.  I remember standing on a big stage like that and it can be overwhelming.  I hope on Saturday she gets that confidence that she has in regular rehearsals back.

Backstage with their teacher, the fabulous Miss Mickey
Leecy is the one with the blurry foot.

Silly pic cuz the sun was bright.
Poofy hair, blue eye shadow, red lips – almost an episode of Toddlers & Tiaras

And the video – Alyce is the first one to skip in from the right putting
her as the first one on the left in the back row to start out with.

Sorry about the quality of the video. And about my giggling about them being off a bit in time. She did great but you can see what I mean about nerves.  In rehearsal she looks straight ahead, smiles big, and remembers all the steps.  It’s hard to get on that big stage.  I really hope she feels better when she is up there on Saturday.

The good thing about the bright lights?  You can’t see all the people watching you!

I don’t remember the lights scaring me when I danced.  We danced at the civic center in Des Moines.  I just remember being excited to get on stage. It was that way my entire life, especially for singing.  I rarely had bad nerves, just excitement to get up and sing.  I told my sister in law that must have mean I was a bit too cocky. The only time I ever got nervous was when I was singing at weddings or in front of family.

I had my reasons.  Family can give constructive criticism and tell you you sucked. Random audience members will hunt you down to tell you how good you did but they don’t hunt you down to tell you how many mistakes you made.  That’s what your vocal coach is for.

Have a great day!

Liked that? Read these:

• Alyce and Dance
• First Night Going Out In How Long
• Did I Save It?

The post Alyce’s Dance Rehearsal appeared first on Not Everyones Mama.