stamp arch

I've been playing in my clean craft room making a gazillion things for the 2peas WSW challenges. This is my favorite project so far. I've been waiting for the right time to use this funny sentiment by Catslife Press. It just cracks me up. This is the first arch I've made in a long while. It was fun to get back to the arches. All the stamp image stamps I bought from a friend at her yard sale in a bag full of stuff. They needed to come and live here to go with the sentiment.

Only 2 more days of school and they are minimum days. I'm so ready for summer.

tolerance

I have been busy these last couple of weeks doing a bit of spring cleaning. I'm clearing out the clutter in the house and the mind. Do you ever feel that life is trying very hard to teach you something? In different ways this year a theme keeps coming up and hitting me in the head... tolerance. I looked it up this morning and this is the definition that really defines this word best for me:

"Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world's cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. Tolerance is harmony in difference." This definition comes from tolerance.org

Are we teaching this to our children? I've been told most of my life that children are just mean to each other somtimes. A sort of it's an innate thing with all children. Actually, I've found just the opposite to be true. Our children embrace difference unless we teach them otherwise. When we teach our children that our way of thinking or believing is the only way, we are teaching them intolerance.

As I was growing up, I had a huge variety of friends. My parents never ever excluded anyone based on their beliefs, family values, color of their skin, or country of origin. All of my friends and their friends were welcome in our home. I distinctly recall one of my very best friends telling me about her family's experiences with anti-semiticism. It was absolutely unbelievable to me and I thought my beautiful friend was not telling me the truth. I have since learned that hate takes many forms, sometimes ugly and readily apparent and sometimes hidden and disguised.

My child believes in many things. One of the things he believes is evolution, that does not mean he doesn't believe in God. We don't believe in organized religion, that doesn't make him a bad person. He is one of the most conscientious, fair-minded, kind, and moral kids you'd ever meet. He is being discriminated against because he has been dubbed a "non-believer" by parents of children he goes to school with. The children are only repeating the intolerance they are learning at home. Please teach your children about tolerance. The result of ignorance and intolerance is painful and devastating.