~

2015, BRING IT ON!

Another year has come and gone by so very fast.  I am so ready to start this new year that is on its way.  What a difference a year can make.  I am more confident than I have ever been.  Being confident has so many benefits, and I am embracing every one of them.  I am stronger than I have ever been both mentally and physically.  I am happier than I have ever been, and I am not taking any crap from anyone (life is too short for that)! I am grateful for my girls, my family, and my amazing friends and neighbors.  I know 2015 will be filled with great things for my girls and I, and I am READY!!!

Random New Year's facts/trivia.

A little bit of randomness about the New Year's celebration.

~Happy New Year, Julius Caesar!  Thanks for creating this celebration 4,000 years ago making this the oldest holiday.  Yep, he gets credit for yet another major event.  Caesar made Janus (January) 1st, a national holiday to celebrate the new year.  Background:  Janus was an interesting Roman god.  He was the god of doors and gates.  He also had two faces, one was the face of the future and the other, the face of the past.

~If you are in New York for New Year's Eve, you can check out the dropping of the ball which signifies the new year has begun.  New York has hosted this event since 1907 with the exception of 1942 and 1943 due to World War II.  This massive ball currently weighs in at almost 12,000 pounds and has more than 2,500 Waterford crystals (made in Waterford, Ireland) attached to it.  It is a whopping 12 feet in diameter.  The original ball was over 700 pounds and 5 feet in diameter.  Here is a peek of the ball for 2015 from USA Today.

~In Sydney, Australia, you can watch the more than 80,000 fireworks set off from the Sydney Harbour bridge.

~If you just happen to be in Japan, you will find homes decorated with bamboo stalks for prosperity, a plum blossom to show nobility, and pine branches which symbolize longevity.

~Of course, we have all heard the song Time Goes By for Auld Lang Syne (Time Goes By) a million times.  The song was written by a Scottish poet named Robert Burns in 1788.

~When the clock strikes midnight in Britain, people gather around and sing Auld Lang Syne.

~In Norway, a whole almond is added to rice pudding, the one who gets the serving with the almond is guaranteed to be wealthy for the year.

~In Greece, a coin is baked inside a loaf of bread.  When the loaf is cut and if the almond is in the third slice of bread, spring will come early.

~If you are in Sicily, you will be served lasagna for good luck.  Other types of pastas are considered to bring bad luck.

~More black-eyed peas are eaten on January 1st, than any other day of the year.

~It is thought that the reason for the noise/noise makers is to ward off any bad spirits at the beginning of the new year.

My previous blog post about New Year's can be found here and here.

The Walking Dead.....There is never enough Daryl Dixon.

On now, AMC.

Another shirt I want..................

The Walking Dead Fan Apparel. 

Going to try this...............

Cinnamon Cashew Breakfast Smoothie

Ingredients

• 1 cup Silk Cashewmilk (Original or Unsweetened)
• ½ cup plain Greek yogurt (coconut or soy yogurt works too)
• ¼ cup old-fashioned oats
• 1 tbsp peanut butter
• 1 tbsp ground golden flaxseed
• ⅛ tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 banana
• 1 cup ice

Instructions

1. Combine all ingredients in blender and blend until smooth.
2. Enjoy immediately or refrigerate and serve within 1 hour.

NOTES:Dairy-Free/Vegan Alternative: Substitute the Greek yogurt for soy or coconut yogurt.

Find this recipe and more like it at The Penny Wise Mama.

These two!

219 Days until Atlanta and 255 days until Charlotte.

Ticketmaster 

Define irony...............

The girlfriend of the guy who founded Match.com left him for a man she met on Match.com.

My greatest blessings!

Raising kids is not an easy task, especially when you are doing it alone but that might be a blessing in disguise.  I am 100% confident that I am doing everything that I can for my girls and it shows.  I hear it all the time, how my girls are confident, secure, smart, caring, loving, generous, and just great teenagers.  I am grateful for that, nothing else matters.  What is your greatest blessing?

TWD

~Crane

~

Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Time to get a bunch of new socks since they scored 5 SOS: Rock Out With Your Socks Out Tour tickets for two shows!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

~

Single moms and the dating scene.

First, I will say that there is a difference between a single woman and a single mom.  A single woman only has to look out for herself, a single mom has to look out for herself but more importantly, her children.  Every minute of a single mom's day is filled with one thing or another having to do with her children and working to get money to feed them and provide what they need especially if it is a situation that the "other parent" is not involved and does not help support the children.

So how does an exhausted, over-worked, stretched to the max, single mom go about finding a nice, trust-worthy man to spend time with?  If anyone has a good answer for this, let me know.......There are no less than 40 different commercials on TV at any given time of the day or night boasting how singles can meet online, and their success rates are amazing so I decided to check it out just to see for myself what one might find there.

If you google online dating sites, your computer might explode since there are so, so many.  I just randomly picked a few and searched a few profiles.  Many of these profiles looked really fake and just so forced.  Men trying to make themselves appear better than they actually are.  One profile in particular really got my attention, not in a good way though.  This guy had so many red flags that I just wanted to share a little bit about what things in a profile you might want to avoid like the plaque.

Let me just say, I am not going to give the name that this poor guy used, I am not quoting directly, and I am not giving out information about the site that this info is on because that is not my point, I just want to point out things that might look suspicious or not real to maybe help out a fellow single mom, and no, I am not claiming to be an expert profile reader but a person can make a fake profile just as easily as he can make a real one.  Just sayin........... and if he has time to sit around making fake profiles, he is probably not the best choice.

So the profile said things like this.  He is a man looking for a woman, aged 30.  This is not  a picky guy either as he is interested in Asian/Black/Latino or mixed race woman.  Red flag:  This is telling me that this guy will date anyone and everyone or anyone who will have him.  Desperate! In my opinion.  He states that he is 6 feet or above.  Does his height change?  He states he is separated but does not elaborate.  Is he separated from his wife, his live in girlfriend, his other girlfriends?  Exactly who does he mean here?  Anyone that claims to be separated, you should probably be a little cautious of because you really do not want to date a guy that is already taken even if it is only in the legal sense-dramaaaaaa..  He also points out that he has children but not at home and the next statement says he can't have children.  I am not sure what this means.  How many children are there?  And does this mean he has children that he does not have custody of and he can't have his children around him at his home?  Or that he did the world a favor and made sure he could not have any more children?  Who knows?  He claims to have some college, maybe clown college, he does not smoke but he does not mind if you do, and he is a social drinker.

His description states that he loves life, the lake, he loves to jet ski, and relax by the beach.  He also likes going to the mountains and relax in the fresh air and the gentle cool breeze.  He obviously has a lot of free time.  He just love being outside, he loves to cook, and work around the house.  Sounds like a winner!  He also works for public service.  The sad thing here is that there are so many evil people working for public service, they know how to work the system to their advantage.  He also boasts about owning his own business in which he uses his vehicle for and that is why he does not All I can say here is that I image Sanford and Son when I think of this.  An old man driving around in a piece of garbage truck.  He is also a drummer in a local band.  A 45-year-old rock-n-roll dude!  Run!  He does not claim to be rich or poor.  So he most likely does not have a lot of money.  He believes that things happen for a reason.  I am not sure why anyone would point that out, maybe he experiences a lot of karma for things he has done?  He claims to be a hard working man.  He is a honest man.  I think if someone has to point that out, it is probably not the truth.  He is an energetic man and motivated.  He believes he has enough energy and motivation left in him to last a good many more years.  I don't even want to know what this means.  So to sum it up, if you are looking for an honest, hard working, and passionate guy, he is your man.  This is a definite red flag.  It just sounds so corny.  I saw the profile pictures and all I saw was an aging, leathery-faced man that probably threw away everything good in his life and is now just an old, desperate guy living at home with his mommy and daddy complaining about how the world has done him wrong.  Poor guy!

drive a fancy car.

So I think just from this one profile that the online dating scene might not be all it is cracked up to be. I will continue to research this idea of where single moms can meet real, honest, decent men and post as I go.  There has to be a better way than this.

Here is another post I wrote about single moms and dating.

Remember too, never let your kids meet anyone that has not been around for a while and who you think is a trustworthy person.  There is no reason for your kids to get involved in your personal dating life unless you know the person and think they might be a keeper.

I know where we will be tonight at 8......

Watch One Direction tonight on NBC, The Story of My Life.

Then catch 1D on the Jimmy Fallon Show at 11:35.

It's a Walking Dead Christmas!!!

An early gift for me from my buds.  Gotta love it!

It's Christmas!

It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas, days with Christmas dinners and nights filled with Christmas sleepovers!!

Luckily, my girls love to eat a variety of different foods, and they love to spend the night with their friends! Oh what fun it is...................

Christmas!!!

I need this shirt!

SNL Host Amy Adams Meets One Direction Under The Mistletoe

Merry friggin' Christmas!!!

~

Merry Christmas!! Like my hat? I don't!

Who doesn't love geometry? C15, that is who!

Or math, or algebra, or ....
I have this amazingly smart young lady that hates any kind of math and every kind of math.  She does not discriminate on the hate of math.  I am not sure why, she has always score well-over 90% but she hates it no matter what.

This year for tenth grade we are using Teaching Textbooks Geometry.  Traditional 10th grade geometry is Euclidean geometry. The section C15 is working on now is a direct tie in to her world history which is a great bonus even if she does not think so.

Who is Euclid and what is Euclidean geometry anyway?

~Euclid was born approximately 330 BC and died approximately 260 BC.

~Euclid, a Greek mathematician, is known as the Father of Geometry because of his revolutionary ideas, and his textbook called Elements which was written in the year 300 BC.  The word Euclid

click for image link

means good glory in Greek.

~It is thought that Euclid attended Plato's Academy in Athens prior to moving to Alexandria, Egypt.

~Geometry can be dated back to as far as ancient Egypt around 3000 BC.

~The word geometry means earth measure.

~Euclid wanted to prove that by using logic and reasoning, you could find out if things are true or not.  For example, the idea that all right angles are equal.  Euclid used logic and reasoning and prove that to be the case.

~Whether we like math or not, we still must learn it.  Geometry is a good math topic for C15 since she is a photographer.  The relationship between geometry and photography is an important one-i.e. aerial photography, photogammetry, depth perception, triangulation, and on and on.  Here is a free book called the Handbook of Aerial Photography if you want to learn more.

Click for image link

Help:
Intro to Euclidean geom/Khan Academy

Malini
Geometry games online.
Famous people-Euclid.
wiki

Another benefit of homeschooling is............

being able to take a break when you need one.

~

The Maze Runner by James Dashner DVD release 12/16/2014

5 SOS coming back to Atlanta in 232 days.............

Rock out with your socks out tour.

Click here for details.

New for the tree this year.

Family traditions can be so much fun.  For the last two years, both my kiddos have been getting a new ornament representing something special to them.  Here are this year's newbies.

This is a tiny ornament compared to the box and it is so cute! 

Nothing says Merry Christmas quite like Divergent's Tris Prior.  It is good to be Divergent.

Two birds/2014.

Cute snowy owl.

Now on to the cookie making!

Early Russia

We left off at the end of the Byzantine Empire which leads us into early Russia or was it really "Russia?"  The majority of ancient histories always include ancient kingdoms and migrating people but "Russia" was really a group of cities that fused together to make an empire.  The earliest humans settled in Russia around A.D. 500.  These new settlers and the Slavs mixed together and created an empire, the Ukrainian city of Kiev.

This new empire ruled most of European Russia for over 200 years but then was divided into Belarus, Ukraine, and Muscovy.

I am keeping this as brief as possible because there is so much to learn about Russia, it could take a full year just studying Russia.  I just wanted to highlight a few of the most important areas.

Varangians-image from the web

~In the early part of the 9th century, a group of Scandinavian people called the Varangians crossed the Baltic Sea and ended up in Eastern Europe.

~In 862, lead by a warrior named Rurik, they entered into the city of Novgorod.

image from Britannica 

~For reasons that are not exactly clear, Rurik lost his title of leader and Oleg (Prince of Novgorod) was his successor.

~Oleg continued on southward and in 882, Oleg and his group took over Kiev.

~Kiev was a Slavic city that had been around since the 5th century.  Kiev was located along the Dniepr River.  Also know as Kievan Rus' which today is Belarus and Ukraine.

Rurik-image from the web

~Kiev became the central place for trade routes between Constantinople and Scandinavia.


~Around 989, Oleg's great-grandson, Vladimir I, was the ruler of the kingdom that spanned from the Black Sea to the Caucasus Mountains and into the lower reaches of the Volga River.

Vladimir I-image from the web

~Vladimir wanted to establish a faith for all who lived in these parts.  After careful consideration, he decided upon Greek Orthodoxy.  He was against Islam mainly because in the Islamic faith, drinking alcohol is forbidden.  I guess that is as good a reason as any.

~After Vladimir came Yaroslay, the Wise (grand prince of Kiev).  He encourages the arts, enforced laws, and made friends with other states.

image from the web

~Sadly his biggest mistake was diving his kingdom among his children.  He ordered them to get along and cooperate with each other but you guessed it, they did not.

~After Yaroslav died and by the time 1054 rolled around, Kievan Rus' had broken up into smaller power centers.  This did not work out so well.  Their struggles were massive and when the Mongols invaded, Kievan Rus' was obliterated.

~Around 1237, Batu Khan (grandson of the ever famous Genghis Khan) invaded Kievan Rus' from Kazan and over the three years that followed, the Mongols (Tatars) destroyed the majority of Kievan Rus' (Novgorod and Pskov).

Batu Khan-image from the web

This is where we stopped but it picks right back up in the next lesson with the Ottoman Turks.

Crash Course History with John Green-Russia, the Kievan Rus, and the Mongols, #20
The Viking Answer Lady
Russia
BBC Russian timeline
Russia, ancient and present day on Pinterest 

Islam, the Quran, and the Five Pillars-Crash Course World History: John Green

Here comes Cookie!

Help for women trying to divorce and co-parent with a self-absorbed, narcissistic, sociopath.

Image belongs to: Your Tango

This is one of the most difficult things a woman can do but hang in there, it will get better.  You have to learn how to not let them push your buttons, document everything, and severe all contact unless it is directly related to the children.  Eventually, asking over and over again when the child support money is coming, when are you going to give them money for clothes and necessities, and such, it gets you no where.  Anyone that does not support their own kids willingly has a problem and is a problem but the courts will take care of that.  You just have to wait for it to happen.  I feel bad for all of you in that situation but look at it this way, your kids see who is doing what and they know who is taking care of them.  They won't forget it either. Feel free to contact me privately.

Abused Sanctuary blog
Paula Renee at Wordpress
The Narcissistic Partner and the Relationship Agenda 
The Huffington Post
The Journey Never Ends Wordpress blog

Supernatural - The Things We Left Behind Trailer-Tonight at 9.........

The Byzantine Empire.

Image from

~The Byzantine Empire can be traced back to around the year 330 A.D.

~The Roman emperor Constantine I dedicated a new Rome at the site of the ancient Greek colony of Byzantium.  A man named Byzas was the founder of this colony located on the European side of

Image from wiki

Bosporus.


~The capitol of the Byzantine Empire was Constantinople.  Present day, Constantinople is called Istanbul and is the largest city in Turkey.

~While the eastern half of the Roman Empire survived, the western half was not so lucky and fell in 476.  In 1453, the entire Byzantine Empire fell after the Ottoman army stormed Constantinople.

~Even though Byzantium was ruled by the Roman law and the official language was Latin, the majority of the people spoke Greek.

web image

~In 527, Justinian I became the Emperor (born 482, died 565), and this was called the Justinian Dynasty.  His reign was from 527-565.

~It was during the Justinian Dynasty that the empire gained more territory, greater wealth, and more power.

~Under Justinian's direction, all Roman laws were under review.  These laws were eventually rewritten into a book called The Corpus of Civil Law.

Image from wiki

~Justinian's best known project was the Hagia Sophia which was a massive church he had built in Constantinople.

~At the time of Justinian's death (565), the Byzantine Empire had occurred much debt due to war after war.  This forced the next ruler to impose heavy taxes on the citizens.

~The Byzantine army was also very sparse at this time and by the seventh and eighth centuries after being attacked by the Persians and the Slavs, the once great Byzantine Empire was crumbling.

~This is also the time that Islam was founded in Mecca in 622.

~The Muslim armies attacked the empire from Syria.

~When these attacks were over, the end of the Byzantine Empire was undeniable.

~Syria, the Holy Land, Egypt, and North Africa, as well as other territories were under the Islamic forces.

~~Great place to stop.~~


Find out about the food from the Byzantine Empire.
Timeline
The Fall of Constantinople by the History Channel