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Let’s PARTY! #UBP13

By on April 5, 2013 Comments { 17 }

Welcome to the UBP13 Party! Well, it’s not MY party, but we can party along with the rest!

Ultimate Blog Party 2013

 

My name is Dawn, otherwise known as @MommaKnows or @DawnMPerkins on Twitter. This is my online home, forum, scrapbook, and place where I ramble about lots of things. I’m a 41-year old wife of 18 years, a homeschool mom (15 years and counting!), a Jesus girl, a part-time CNA in a nursing home, techie, and off-again on-again writer.

My husband and I have  raised 4 kids and have 2 still at home, so we’re finally in the home stretch! We have fostered 22 kids, 2 of which we were blessed enough to be able to keep forever. Life’s not perfect and neither are we, but we work it. We added two new “kids” to the family in the last few months, when our oldest son was married in October, and our youngest daughter was married just last month. We have 3 grandbabies too, and two on the way! We’re growing a family “the old fashioned way.” :)

grandbabies

And those grandbabies? They’re a lot more fun than having our own kids were. I know everyone says that, but now I understand why.

Why the UBP?

The first UBP I joined in on was 2010, and I met some really great bloggers that year. It was fun checking out the (hundreds! of) different blogs and finding new ones to subscribe to. The Ultimate Blog Party is just a lot of fun. :)

While you’re here, I’d love it if you would…

Followme

To subscribe to posts by email, enter your email address up there ^, on the right in the sidebar.

I have two Facebook Pages: My Author Page and

The Momma Knows Fan Page

I’m on Google+ and Twitter

Look me up and give me a shout out! Happy #UBP13!!

categories: Social Media

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Top 10 Action Items: Update

By on March 12, 2013 Comments { 1 }

On January 1, I created a list of Action Items for the upcoming year. I had them in mind, started working toward them, and then forgot about the list. It’s not that I forgot what I wanted to work toward, I just forgot I had posted the list. Until this.

2013 Action Items Update

It was Jess who made me start thinking about the list again. Let’s refresh, shall we? I know I need to! :)

1. The Bible in 90 Days. I haven’t posted about this in quite a while, actually. Yes, I’m still reading! I am, however, four days behind. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. Four days is better than the WEEK I was behind as of last week. I’ve been reading an extra half-day’s worth per day. Or trying to. I caught up on a whole day just this morning. Oh but I’m not done with today’s yet. Whoops. So anyway, still reading.

2. Prodigal Planet, my new site, launched on March 1st! It’s pretty exciting to see how it’s touching parents already. If you’re struggling with a tough teen, this is the place for YOU.

3. Homeschooling. It’s going well, although not perfect but what is? We are still beginning later in the morning that I want to. Late as in 10-10:30am. But it works. As long as I am on task, they are on task! *forehead smack* We’ve started doing timed freewriting and while I can’t say they love it, they don’t hate it and I think it is going to push them to actually WRITE something. I know it has helped ME tremendously, as I open up a composition notebook and just WRITE too!

4. Passports. We have the applications all filled out but haven’t taken them in to the Post Office yet. I’ve been waiting on E to be avaible to go too, but I may just go take mine in without him.

5. Teaching our boys to find joy in helping others. I had no idea how the Lord would move in this area, but he sure has! We have been serving a ministry called Blessings Under the Bridge, every other week for the past 2 months. We go down and serve the homeless population downtown Spokane by distributing clothes, toiletries and meals. It has been an amazing blessing for us and our boys LOVE doing it! They willingly skip their Wednesday karate class every other week for this. Here’s a slide show that my husband & boys are in, from under the bridge.

6. My health. I’ve sorta fallen off the wagon with that. I was avoiding all dairy and wheat, had lost 12#, and was finally feeling really GOOD. No more gut aches. I haven’t gained any back, but I’m maintaining and started eating wheat again and dairy once in a while… and the gut aches are back. I’ve been sporadically running and going to Zumba, which I really, really need to get back on schedule with. Zumba is twice a week and if I run 3 times a week I will be getting exercise FIVE days a week. So I need to just do it.

7. De-crapification of cluttered spaces. I have not even begun this. We have the month of April off from school, so I plan to really hit this one hard. April and December are my decluttering months, and I will make the most of it! I feel like I’m drowning again.

8. Training for Bloomsday. I think we have already established that my WANT-TO and my JUST DO IT haven’t been very close lately. Ahem. And Bloomsday happens 2 days after we get home from a week in Hawaii. We’ll see how THAT works out.

9. A digital schedule with alarms. I started to do this, but outside of putting my life into my calendar on my phone, I haven’t been able to find a good schedule app. And then I had to reset my phone and lost the calendar. I know. When will I learn? :P

10. Social Media Scheduling. This is one area I AM working on streamlining, completely. If you follow me on Facebook you probably saw me friend a bunch of people as “ME” but a second me, then I deleted the second me, and created a FB Page as ME, and sent out a slew of “Like My Page” requests. Um. Yeah.

So I’m having a bit of an identity crisis, but it’s okay. I have a new email address, my Google+ profiles will be merged in 2 days, my Facebook friends all know I’m not really crazy even if I seem like it, and I really want to stay in touch with you so I created a bunch of FB Lists to manage the chaos.

SO, Like my page, Circle me on Google+, follow me on Twitter, and hang out with me here. Maybe we’ll all get more done if we help each other. :)

Okay? ;)
Top Ten Tuesday at Many Little Blessings

categories: All About Me, Home & Family, Homeschooling, Social Media

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Sure Has Been Quiet Around Here

By on February 28, 2013 Comments { 3 }

You’ve got that right! I’ve been working very hard, and now I can show you my big project!

Finally, to fill a niche that I’ve long noticed has been absolutely empty, I give you…

ppheadersampleWhat niche needs to be filled so badly, you may ask? The one that no one wants to talk about. That niche that, like a dirty broom closet, stays closed to prying eyes, doesn’t see the light of day in “proper Christian” places… especially not amongst Christian homeschoolers. It is visited far too often but is never discussed.

I’m talking about really tough teenagers.

Not typical teens.

Don’t get me wrong: I know that making your kid get up before noon or get her chores done without nagging can be a real pain. I get that. I’ve been there too.

But what I’m talking about is the internal battle two parents experience when their teen is right on the verge of running away, and they are too afraid to go to sleep so they sit up in the dark, on the couch, praying and listening as he bumps around in his bedroom half the the night. Or the instant panic a mother reaches when she discovers drugs in her daughter’s backpack. Or when the doorbell rings and your son is standing between two police officers, looking angry rather than guilty (the way you’d expect him to look).

These are the kids many of us have. We love them. And God loves them. And we need to reach them again, but first we have to deal with the crap they are throwing at us. (Did I just say crap? Why, yes I did.)

That is Prodigal Planet.

If you’re in need of support, please go there. We have five writers, all experienced parents who have been where you are. You can also follow @ProdigalPlanet on Twitter.

The Momma Knows will still be here, talking about homeschooling and parenting and fun stuff too! The harder things are just getting a new address.

categories: Faith, Home & Family, Homeschooling, Social Media

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Are We “Friends” or are we FRIENDS? Blurring Lines in Social Media

By on February 21, 2013 Comments { 5 }

Are We "Friends" or Are We FRIENDS? Blurring Lines in Social Media ~ TheMommaKnows.com

People’s lack of judgement when it comes to Facebook and other social media is disturbing.

My building and the organization that runs it has a pretty strict policy about social media. As an employee, I am forbidden to list my place of employment on my Facebook page, on my blog, in any blog post, or on any type of digital media. We are also forbidden from “Friending” any of our patients or their family members on social media outlets. I don’t know if it’s official policy, but I also don’t friend my co-workers. I figure if I wouldn’t tell them all about my life or hang out with them outside of the building, what’s the point?

I work in a nursing home. I’m on-call, so I float and fill in where ever they need me to be. I work on every floor, in every section, with every resident in the building. Most are sweet and kind, or at the very least they are indifferent or have dementia. But there’s one–just one– who is just plain not nice.

He is difficult for everyone who works with him, has been known to make false accusations, and is just generally a pain in the rear most of the time. He’s also very self-sufficient and pretty much does his own thing. He uses the computer a lot, he’s on Facebook and I don’t know what else. He’s pretty tech savvy for an old guy living in a long-term care facility.

Last weekend, I heard him ask one of my co-workers if she saw his Facebook update and got his email afterward.

???

I became curious, so I looked him up on Facebook. His profile is private (as is mine) but his friends list isn’t. As I scrolled down his friends list, I became more and more disturbed. I counted 16 of my co-workers there– and we have over 80 so I’m sure I don’t know all of their names. But there were enough. The social media policy notwithstanding, this is a guy who is NOT pleasant to work with. WHY would someone want to let him Friend them?

Is it just me, or is there a disconnect now… a blurred line where just anyone can come right in and make themselves at home? Social media has opened our lives to the world, but only when you give it permission. And we’re giving it. We don’t even think twice about what we say, or who we say it to. And in most cases, we’re saying it to everyone on our Friend’s Lists. There used to be a point when work stayed at work, our personal lives were just that: personal. For me, that is still the case. For many, it is not.

This is forcing me to evaluate myself in some hard ways. I don’t friend people I don’t know. Wait, yes I do but I didn’t before. I didn’t before I started attending blogging conferences and meeting people– and not meeting people– and now when I get the friend requests I usually approve them if they are blogger I “know”. Or should I say, a blogger I have heard of or interacted with before.

And now I’m thinking that maybe I need to stop doing that and do a Facebook Friend purge.

Granted, some of the bloggers I’ve met and KNOW and LOVE and I am so grateful, so THANKFUL for their friendships. But others?

It brings me back to my initial idea that if I don’t know them, wouldn’t (or don’t) hang out with them, why am I Facebook “friends” with them?

So there’s the rub. I don’t want to “diss” anyone by unfriending them, because I am really way past believing that everyone online is an internet stalker or axe murderer. On the other hand, couldn’t they just follow my blog’s FB page and get updates that way? Could we be friends through the blog pages first?

What are your thoughts on this? If we are Facebook friends and don’t know each other in person, would you be offended if I deleted you and asked you to follow The Momma Knows Facebook Page instead?

I am really struggling with what to do now.

 I want to hear your thoughts on this! All of them!

categories: Social Media

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