Christmas Cheer Via a Christmas Star.

      Media Mondays is a place for all things media.  From social media to news media we will cover everything concerning communication.

So.  This week something is happening in the skies that hasn't happened in nearly 800 years.  We will be able to witness Jupiter and Saturn being the closest to each other they have been since the middles ages.  This is called a "great conjunction of planets" and I am super excited for it.  Because this is happening so close to Christmas, this is also being labeled The Christmas Star.  Now, isn't this something to bring a little cheer to your season?  I find it no coincidence that this little miracle is happening now in the middle of a very weird year with the pandemic and all.  I am going to think of it as a special little gift from the heavens to us, showing us the eternal love our Creator has for us all.  The heavens have been a big part of the Christmas story too, remember the wise men being lead by a star to see the Savior in Bethlehem? So, Merry Christmas. Who knows if this was what happened for that great journey, but it's fun to think about, isn't it? Get out there and see for yourself today, December 21st.

    Maybe you don't know this about me, but I am super into all things celestial.  Looking up at the night sky is one of my favorite things.  I can tell you lots of useless information about the universe and beyond, and you can bet I will be out in the cold on Monday to see this phenomenal occurrence.  An extra bonus is that there is also a meteor shower going on at this time and that is an added bonus to this little gift on the Winter Solstice.  (Yea for the days starting to get longer!)

    Seeing this is a Media Monday post, if you would like to read more about the Christmas Star here are a few articles that I liked:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2020/12/18/how-when-and-where-you-can-see-christmas-star-planets-then-shooting-stars-on-the-solstice-this-week/?sh=727672625348

https://www.space.com/jupiter-saturn-great-conjunction-2020

https://www.wbtv.com/2020/12/20/are-we-about-witness-star-bethlehem-this-christmas-week/

Also, I am a slacker so here are a few Flashback Friday Pictures that could have been published last Friday:

Last year in our matching pajamas.

..

Ellis at his favorite place in Green Bay
The National Railroad Museum.

My favorite tradition at IHS
Hoodies for all!

Baby Z with Santa at Ellis' preschool.

Ellis with Santa.

Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa's.

A favorite place to visit:
The Botanical Gardens in Madison, WI.

Thirsty Thursdays: A Bright Spot in These Dim Times

 Thirsty-Thursdays are a place to talk all things thirst. Thirst can be actual, physical thirst and direct us to the subject of tasty drinks, but it can also drive us toward a mental thirst, the thirst for information.

    Life has been a bit different the past nine months or so. Work has been really different for me the past nine months. This school year is the most challenging I have faced in my nineteen years of teaching. I am learning lots of new technology things to keep my classes ready to go fully online at any moment, and I am also trying to find new ways to motivate students, who already have a hard time being motivated.

    Let's be honest here, I, too, am having a hard time being motivated. See, pre-covid, I had a lot more going on outside of work. I don't consider myself the most social person, but I am realizing more and more that I need a social outlet. With the whole idea of "social distancing" I am not getting even the little amounts of social interaction that I crave and need. I have gotten into a rut. I have hit my snooze several times everyday. Recently, I have gotten in the habit of just setting my last alarm out of my four pre-set alarms. It feels silly and a wee bit pathetic. I am just not motivated to get up and get going like I usually am. So, I totally get my students' lack of motivation, but I also realize that they need to be motivated or we are going to lose a lot more graduates than we usually do.

    So, basically there are reasons we need a little bright spot here and there. One of my co-workers has created "Thirsty Thursdays" for us at work. Here, we can visit her stash of flavor syrups to add to our sodas to celebrate the end of days with students(See Fridays are student free). It's the clean version of cocktails at work. I look forward to this every week. I don't know how this little thing brings so much light, but it does.

    What is my drink of choice, you ask? I love a extra dirty Coke Zero. I add coconut and half and half to my Coke Zero and instantly I am on some beach somewhere enjoying a "mixed" drink.

Seeing it is December and I love Coca Cola, I think you need a little bright spot that can be found within Coke's yearly Christmas Video. Enjoy:

    Coca Cola has been in the business of Christmas Advertising since the 1920s when ads featuring Santa appeared in popular magazines. Most recently, the ads often feature polar bears and are amazingly cute. These cute commercials started in the 1990s. I love how they are often family themed and overall just plain fun. Enjoy a few now:

    If you need a little bit more of a pick me up, be sure to do what Coke would tell you and "Have a Coke and a smile."

Be As Little Children

 

Writing Wednesday is a place for me to write whatever I want to write.  

Pic found HERE

So.  You have seen A Charlie Brown Christmas.  If you haven’t, please go take the next thirty minutes and watch it.  You will not be disappointed.  

In the short animated flick, Charlie picks a tiny scraggly tree. This choice is a little rebellion of all the commercialization of Christmas.

I’m not sure if my mom was making the same protest.  I think I remember her saying a few times that she felt sorry for the trees that didn’t get picked(we usually cut down our own tree at a cut-your-own-tree place).

This tree isn’t as spacious as others my mom picked through the years.  She explained to us that she liked how the space allowed for more room for her ornaments.  True, these trees made for lots of room, as evidenced by the next picture.

Look at all the room for all those ornaments.  In fact, if the tree could bear the weight, you could put small children or small animals as ornaments in that tree. 

Some may gawk at these silly little trees, but they were a family inside joke.  We would often pick on my mom about them and carry on about our silly “Charlie Brown” trees.  To be honest, it wasn’t ever the decorations that made christmas for me.  I don’t remember a whole lot of those ornaments, but I do remember the time we spent around the trunk of those trees and the time we spent together going and picking them out.  I remember how we would wake up early and my parents wouldn't let us go into the living room until a certain time.  I remember how we would first go into the hallway where the stockings were hung on the stairway edge and discover our first surprises.  Funny thing, I don’t remember any of the trinkets except the fact that there was always some sort of yummy chocolate in those stockings.  I remember how my family always would hide my last present, the big one, the one I was waiting for, the only one I really asked for and by the time they showed it to me, I had given up hope to get it. Funnier yet, I don’t remember many of those big presents either. 

You see, Christmas isn’t about how perfectly you decorate, it isn’t about the presents you receive, and it certainly isn’t about a perfect tree. Christmas is about memories, it’s about traditions and it is most certainly about spending time with loved ones.

May we look past all the decor and the pressures to have a perfect holiday and just take in all the magic that is Christmas.

I may or may not have a little bit of my mom’s taste in trees, by the way.

I’ve been calling our tree the “Ghetto Tree” this year.  It is the top of a blue spruce Reuben cut down in our front yard.  I was mildly joking when I said we should use its top for our Christmas tree this year.  Reub thinks it is great and we don’t need to go buy a tree as long as the needles don’t fall out.

Truth is I actually do love it, even if it curves far away from the wall.  I love that it reflects this cool gray color from the blue needles.  I love that it was once a part of our yard.  I love that it was free and that we made most of the decorations on it.  I love that it sits in my home, where we now are creating traditions for our own children.  I love that the magic of Christmas is reliveable as I watch my kids being excited. 

May we all become children again(I’m the littlest one on Santa’s lap).  Search for the light.  Search for the magic.  Search for peace, joy and comfort.  That is the true message of the season. Find the reason for the season!

 

Eyes on other Things.

   Tech Tuesday is a place for all things technology.  Here we will discuss both low tech and high tech thing-a-ma-jigs.

    “Mommy!  Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!  MOMmy! MOMMy!  MOMMY!!!!!!!!!

“What, Zarah?”

“Mommy, eyes on me.”

She has a pretty great point.  She is one hundred percent more important than my phone.  Being face to face with her beats any scrolling of Instagram or Facebook, the two apps who grab a lot of my attention.

So, one day I decided to come home and put the phone on the charger.

“Okay, guys, I am putting my phone on its charger and you have me for the next two hours.  What are we gonna do?”

I look down at two very shocked, deep in thought faces.

“For reals,” Zarah said, not really knowing what I fully meant.

“So, like Mom, we can do anything?” Ellis inquired.

“Of course, within reason so that we are still safe and happy.”

“Mommy, can we drive our truck around the neighborhood?,” Zarah asks.

“You bet.  You guys get to decide what we do.”

And off we went. Ellis drove first and took us around our block and past some of our friends’ houses.  He was so excited to be able to see an Appa(a character from The Last Airbender) sticker on the back of a friend’s van. Zarah took her turn and went around another part of our neighborhood.  I walked slowly behind.  It was a pretty day and I was glad to be out in the sunshine.  Little did I know that this one little gift of time would help the rest of the night be more calm and relaxed. 

We carry technology around all day.  It often makes life easier and we have a world of information at our fingertips.  It isn’t a bad thing necessarily, but we do need to realize that sometimes we need to plug it into the wall and leave it alone: free from its influence.  I’m happier and have happier kids when we have real together time, what they like to call “Mommy Time.”  Mommy time is low tech and sometimes you just need to go low tech.

Having eyes on other things is needed. Give yourself a break. See what happens. Comment about how it goes.

Everything You Didn't Think You Needed to Know about Snapchat

 Have you ever sent a Snap?  Have you ever received one?  Do you even know what I am talking about?

    Snap is what you do on Snapchat.  Most people have heard of this picture messaging app and automatically think of teenagers, because, let’s be honest, teens are the ones snapping most.  I have a few students who have to take multiple selfies in one class period and I have no doubt they are sending a Snap message to a friend, who is also in class somewhere and who also should be paying attention instead of staring at the phone that they have so sneakingly stashed in their crotch area.  (No really, they think they are sneaky, I just think they are weird.)

    So, you have heard of Snapchat, but do you know anything besides the “disappearing” pictures or the fact that teens love it? Maybe it is so bizarre to you, that, like me, you never had the desire to learn about it.  

    Well, here are five things that you have wanted to know about Snapchat but didn’t know until today that you actually wanted to know them.

1. Snapchat Beginnings:

    Snapchat Inc. met its beginning in July 2011. Three friends, who were attending Stanford, came up with the idea.  Well, actually two, Reggie Brown and Evan Spiegel launched the idea and asked Bobby Murphy to write to code for them.  Their idea sprang from the idea that people were worried that their bosses may see embarrassing pictures that they posted on Facebook.  The trio thought that if there was a spot to share those often embarrassing but entertaining photos without the permanence of Facebook, it would be appreciated.

2. Daily Use of Snapchat

Little did the three creators know that not only would Snapchat be appreciated, but that it would be used by 238 million people daily. Each day each active user opens the app over thirty times a day, sends on average 35 messages and spends about 50 minutes within the app.

3. What exactly are these people doing within the app with all that time?

The main thing people do while using Snapchat is to send “Snaps” to their friends. A Snap is basically a photo or video that lasts on the recipient's screen for a maximum of ten seconds and then it “disappears”(of course, anybody can screenshot these images making them not disappear). Users can also post a “Story” which is a maximum 10 second video or photo that appears on their profile for the next twenty-four hours.  (If you are using Instagram or Facebook, both of these have borrowed this concept from Snapchat).  There is also a “Discover” page within Snapchat, which is much like a news page, where popular user’s and advertisers' content is posted.  

4. Why do teens love Snapchat so much?

There are a few things that draw teens to this app.  One of the biggest draws really is that everybody is doing it.  A few of the teens I talked to actually said that they use Snapchat to not only send pictures back and forth but for many of them it actually is where they send text messages the most.  This isn’t surprising because texting via Snapchat makes it harder for parents to see what they have been sending(their messages disappear after being read) and they can send videos and pictures to friends a little more conveniently than through regular text messaging. 

5. What are some things that are controversial about Snapchat?

From an adult standpoint, lots of what Snapchat is all about is a bit controversial.  But some specifics are very controversial.  For starters, Snapchat’s Discover Page, which is accessed by swiping left from the home screen, is a place for all sorts of questionable content.  Content from people, publishers, companies, and other users can randomly pop up.  And this content isn’t always appropriate especially for teens and young people.  It is like a huge page of random stuff and there really isn’t much control over what content shows up.  

Snapchat also has a Snapmap, which is a place where users can share their location with their friends. Obviously, having everybody know where you are can be a bad thing, especially if a teen makes friends with people they don’t even know in real life, like the creepy guy who is also a predator.   

A little less creepy but still a little concerning is a feature called “Our Story” which users can submit their stories to and Snapchat chooses which content is shown to all of Snapchat. In order to submit to “Our Story”,  you must have your Snapmap enabled, basically showing your location to anybody who happens to see your content, which through “Our Stories” can be seen by any Snapchat user.  

Probably the controversial part of Snapchat for parents is the “For My Eyes Only” folder.  Here, users can save content and nobody can see it but them, literally.  It is password protected and encrypted.  Even if the user forgets the password, it is so protected that even Snapchat can’t help get the encrypted content back.  So, if you are the parent, and you are trying to keep an eye on what your kids are doing on Snapchat, you can’t access this section.

One of the most interesting things I learned about in my searching was that there actually is pay for content on Snapchat.  Here users can set up extra content that is only seen by paying users.  Hello, this is an instant opening for Porn content.  I bet Snapchat is making lots of money for some of these pay for content users.

So there you have it.  Everything you didn’t think you needed to know about Snapchat.  If you feel like doing anymore research yourself, here are a few of the websites I visited:

https://www.snap.com/en-US/privacy/privacy-by-product

https://www.verywellfamily.com/what-is-snapchat-and-its-use-1270338

https://www.snap.com/en-US/

https://www.netnanny.com/blog/five-things-every-parent-needs-to-know-about-snapchat/