Vaccine Hysteria in Archdiocese of KCK: Vaccinate or Leave School

It's easy for me to sit here as a Catholic homeschooling mom of five with a husband with a good job and a few side careers of my own. It's easy for me to pick and choose the vaccine cocktail for my kids. Mr. Kerrie handed me that responsibility long ago and I did my best.

We do vaccine but I won't do Gardisil and we don't do chicken pox, among others. We do the regular ones we are all supposed to be frightened of ... Polio, Pertussis, Tetanus. I did the Tetanus shot since my kids like to go barefoot and I keep them up to date on that one, but do we REALLY need the others I give them? I doubt it. I think we are all freaked out. But I do it anyway and I respect my friends who do not.

Yes, people die of chicken pox. Yes, horrible things happen. I have not personally done the research on how many Polio or Whooping Cough cases have been happening but apparently there is about to be an epidemic and Catholics are at fault for refusing the vaccines. I thought maybe my unschooling hippie friends would be at fault for this one but nope, it's us danged Catholics.

So my husband and I were shocked tonight when I heard from a friend what was going down in my hometown and beyond. I posted on Facebook:

I just heard that if your kid goes to Catholic school in the KCK Archdiocese (yes, this affects many of my peeps) and is not vaccinated within 45 days (with the vaccines that use aborted fetal cells) your kid won't be able to attend school. I also heard the Archbishop and Superintendent are not meeting with anyone on this. Thoughts?

So it gets better! It sounds from this letter that you are okay if your kid is, say, allergic to eggs and eggs are used to make a certain vaccine. But if you just don't want to inject vaccines made with aborted fetal cells into your CATHOLIC kid, you have to suck it up and do it anyway. Oh, and this letter comes AFTER school started. They could not even give the courtesy of pulling this crap at the start of summer to give parents time to figure it all out and make other choices. Sounds like a great way to RESPECT LIFE, Archdiocese of KCK. What are you thinking?

AND, they are urging you to write the vaccine manufacturers, LIKE THAT HAS EVER DONE ANY GOOD! Laughable!

Check out this letter below, and sorry for the poor screenshot quality. One is the letter to write to vaccine companies and the other is the letter to parents about the situation. I am not calling out St. James Academy on this one because it is all Catholic schools who are having to deal with this. I actually feel sorry for them.

And I close with this that I posted on Facebook also:
Can I ask the parents at St. James something? And other Catholic high schools? So mandatory drug testing of your kids is okay but this is not? It all starts somewhere, with those little things that they stick their faces into that they should not (they are to educate, not drug test). At what point will you start to say NO?

I just think we need to wake up and that's why I get fired up and post things like this. Nazi Germany was not created in a day, people. It took a long time to gear up and happen and a lot of complicit people ... this is ridiculous and I am wondering what is going to happen in 45 days. The countdown is on.

P.S. I apologize if you are having trouble leaving me comments. I welcome all comments, even those from depressed and angry trolls trying to mess with my day. Good luck with that one. I installed Intense Debate on my blog a few years ago and could never get it off.

When My Kids Reset What Siri Calls Me on My Phone

On Wednesdays ... We Wear Uniforms ... #HomeschoolCoop2015

I can't explain how excited I am about the Christ the King Academy homeschool coop this year. I wanted to get into a coop once I could really devote myself to it and make sure we had what we needed and get there on time and participate and help out and wanted to make sure my kids were of an age where they would stay in their classes happily ... more or less.

Today was that day!

The satisfaction feedback questionnaire I gave my kids after coop today put them at about an overall 70-80% satisfaction. (I really asked them to rate their day on a scale of 1-10.)

I was worried the littles would not stay in classes without me while I helped in other classes. I was worried they would not keep quiet or still in Catechesis. I was worried Michael would hate the whole thing since he prefers Legos to most people.

I did more praying than worrying, though ... it turned out great ... even with an Eva who didn't feel her best the night before and a Callie who fell into the corner of a wall the night before, giving herself a lovely little cut on the back of her head. I slept on the floor of the girls' room last night so I could check on them. I was worried (there is that word again) we would not make our first day of coop.

WOO HOO! What a great time. What amazing women and cool children. What organization and communication and terrific library and classes. I am already wondering what I might be able to teach next year to elementary age kidlets that they would find fun.

So, Mom and Dad, your grandchildren are getting socialization like crazy and great classes and fun and friends and also all their educational needs are being met at home with me teaching virtual school.

Oh, their classes are:

Joel: Drama, Music Appreciation and PE
Michael and Callie: PE, Science Experiments and Lego Robotics (second semester is Egyptian Mummification)
Eva and Samuel: Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, Storytime, PE and Science Experiments

Check back for more posts about homeschooling fun!

McLoughlin's First Day of Homeschool 2015-2016 (Virtual School)

Okay, look. Maintaining multiple blogs while attempting to maintain my sanity is proving too difficult. I'm going to start blogging the hot mess that is my life HERE ... all in one spot. That includes Mr. Kerrie (I know you all love him because he puts up with me with barely an eye roll), the 5 little Kerries, homeschooling, writing, business junk, proofreading, recipes, Kansas City and other travel stuff and more. I'll try to make easy categories for you in weeks to come because I love ya like that.

I'm not going to bore you with a bunch of curriculum stuff. We do virtual school now, in our second year, and it helps keep me accountable and on track. Otherwise we would just "field trip" and volunteer and swim and play and mess around all day long. ALL. DAY. LONG.

I am going to show you some pics of my kids opening their Calvert curriculum. This stuff is like $1,000 per kid if you buy it yourself but since we live in the Great State of Kansas, we get it pretty much free, including all the support we could ever need. The trade-off is the State is in our biz a little bit in the form of 3-times-per-year at-home testing then that pesky State Testing (where are those results, by the way?).

All our boxes came end of July so we've been doing some checkpoints early when we get the time to get a jump on the school year so we can take a week off for a vacation in October, go see Tutu and Dave or Poppy and Nana on a whim. I love the flexibility of the program and that fact that my kids are not required to be online a certain number of hours per day. My favorite times with the kids are when we lounge around reading ... everything from The Most Dangerous Game to Theras to Mr. Popper's Penguins and beyond.

I just have to say that I really do love being home with my kids and homeschooling them. I realize it's not for everyone but it entirely works for us. It's important to do what works for your family!

Eva, first grade

Michael, 6th grade

Joel, 8th grade

Callie, 4th grade

Samuel, kindergarten

Check out my piece over here at Kansas City Mom's Blog about Back-to-Virtual-School Tips and Traditions!

#TickPick Site and App Review: Cheaper Sports and Concert Tickets!

"Your price. Your seat. No hidden fees."

I have to say I love TickPick's tagline, especially the no hidden fees part. It's not like Mr. Kerrie and I go to a lot of concerts or events these days, but the kids are getting older and we will be getting back into that game. I also would love to check out the circus since Sam has been bugging me about that and things like Disney on Ice, Royals games, etc.

So the first thing I did when I went to review this site was look up the beloved Kansas City Royals because my husband has actually been talking about taking the boys and his friend Patrick and his boys. I was not disappointed.

I input 7 tickets needed on TickPick and was given many options of where they could all sit together, along with a map of the stadium. I found tickets as low as $9 each for the Detroit game in early September. I went to check out and there were NO FEES. SERIOUSLY!

Okay, next I went to see if they had any circuses coming up. I mean, I run my own circus at my house with the 5 kids and extra around all the time, but we like to watch other kinds of circuses, as well! I quickly found the Ringling Bros. circus in different cities and scrolled until I found Kansas City and it's here in September!

Uh, oh. Tickets sold out fast. The night we could go was entirely sold out! BUT ... another cool thing is you can BID on tickets and also SELL tickets you no longer need! So I could pick another date or I could bid on someone else's tickets. Fascinating! Win-win for everyone!

Well, the cost of tickets to the fancy circus was too much for our budget currently so check out the Shrine circus instead. Nope, none close to me in Kansas City.

So I bid on some tickets for the Ringing Bros. on the night we could go. I wonder how hard it will be to get 7 tickets together ... but I did it anyway at a price they suggested and that was low enough that we can afford. It's a great option! They have some sort of cool algorithms that help figure out which tickets are the best deals and what are the best bids for the section you're looking at.

I did all this on my laptop but I also have the free app downloaded onto my smartphone and it will be awesome once my bid is accepted and I can just walk up to the ticket taker at Sprint Center and show my phone like a cool chick and have them scan my 7 tickets JUST. LIKE. THAT.

Bottom line: I love this site for all my needs! I don't have to go separate places for different kinds of tickets. TickPick takes care of it all. You get cheaper sports and concert and event tickets and NO BUYER FEES!

Give them a try! Please use this link and if you make a purchase I get $20 off my next purchase of KC Royals tickets! Thanks in advance!