Monday, January 26, 2009

My Rockin’ Family

by Kelly

Remember the summer? Summer is the best time of year for building family memories, at least it is for my family. We’d stay up late and be outside on weekends. We roasted more marshmallows than I could imagine, twirled glow sticks on long strings, and caught fireflies. Then it got colder and the family fun we looked forward to every weekend evaporated.

So my husband and I started “Game Night.” Every Friday we would haul out Monopoly and play until my 5 year old fell asleep in his chair. We’d leave the board exactly as it was and resume the game in the morning. We loved it! We had so much fun, and aside from my butt falling asleep from sitting for so long on our wooden kitchen chairs, it was just perfect.

After a few months, though, our super-fun family night was getting a little stale. So my technologically-addicted husband came home with an XBox 360.

Needless to say, the boys all had a great time with the variety of games that also came home with the Xbox. The problem was that there wasn’t a game that all 4 of us wanted to play together. I’d play Marvel Ultimate Alliance with the boys while my husband would play The Bigs and Halo3 with them. Our warm and fuzzy Friday nights had deteriorated into the kids determining which parent got to play with them.

About a month ago, I escorted my 7 year old to a classmate’s birthday party. They too had an Xbox 360. The game they were playing was just plain cool! It was Rock Band, a game created by Harmonix Music Systems, Inc., an MTV Networks company.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Rock Band, it comes with a drum kit, guitar and a microphone. The goal is to work together with someone on each instrument to complete a song with high accuracy. The screen during the selected song has designated areas for each instrument to follow including a lyric track for the singer.  You can even customize your member of the band, complete with hometown, hair color, body art and clothing.

Now on Friday nights you’ll find my husband on guitar, me on the drums, and the boys take turns belting out songs that are like old friends to my husband and me. My 5 year old sings “In Bloom” by Nirvana, and my 7 year old sings “Roxanne” by the Police. He also nailed “Tom Sawyer” by Rush, which we got as part of a downloadable content pack. My 5 year old blew us away with “Learn to Fly” by the Foo Fighters. “Vaseline” by Stone Temple Pilots and “Buddy Holly” by Weezer are other popular choices at home. My Dad comes by occasionally to sing “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett and attempt the Roy Orbison downloadable content pack.

After we get the kids to bed, my husband and I use the game like a karaoke machine and butcher popular songs in the convenience and comfort of our own home. Good times!

Evidently our family Rock Band nights aren’t that unique. It’s pretty natural that Rock Band has caught on with families; take this technology author’s story on NPR, for example. 

Families have been rocking out for decades when you think about it. There are the Osmonds, the Jackson 5, the Partridge Family (OK that last one is stretching a wee bit huh?), but, you get the idea.

On a related note, my sons begged for, and are now taking, guitar lessons because of this game. They badger their teacher to show them how to play songs they hear and like. They’re working on “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath right now. They heard it in the movie this past summer and since it’s not in the game, they’re learning it on the guitar for real. Who would’ve guessed Rock Band could prove to be educational? It had inspired a love of music from many decades as well as from a large variety of genres for my kids. Thank you MTV!

We really look forward to the winter weekends this year, especially since Santa brought us Rock Band 2 for Christmas. We still miss warm summer nights, but Rock Band has taken the chill off the mid-winter blues.

Now if we could only agree on a name for our band.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Well-Written Objection to Abstinence Education

by Teresa

I’ve written in this space before about the issue of teens having sex… and the stubborn view of some adults who think they can eradicate teen pregnancy and STD’s simply by telling kids… not to have sex.  It’s an unrealistic, and (according to many reports and studies) ineffective, unsuccessful approach.  Recently a blogger on Babble.com, a parenting website, took on the topic of abstinence education and she expressed her objections so well, I just had to share them here. It’s simply one of the best arguments against abstinence-only education that I’ve read in a long time.

Katie Allison Granju writes the blog called Home/Work ... she also writes a couple other blogs and has written parenting books.  Recently her daughter’s school notified parents of their intention to begin a program of abstinence-based sex education.  Admirably, Granju did not stay silent.  She sent a letter to the school explaining why she believes it’s a bad idea.

She calls her post, “Abstinence, meet a mama who objects,“ and I’d like to quote one of the best passages: “Your letter introducing the program states that the teens will learn that sex outside of marriage has ‘consequences’ that include STDs, unplanned pregnancy and ‘heartbreak.‘  In fact, these things are not consequences of sex outside of marriage, but the consequences of physically unsafe or emotionally unwise sexual activity. Marriage does not prevent ANY of these negative consequences, and to suggest otherwise is misleading.“

I couldn’t agree more with that, and several of her other points as well.  If you have a teenager, check out what she has to say on the topic.  She really makes a great argument.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Resolutions.

by Teresa

Hello, readers:
Kelly and I had busy holidays and some vacation days thrown in there so the posts have been a little sparse lately!
But, I’ve been meaning to write a bit about my New Year’s Resolutions. 
So here’s a quick look, for those of you who may be interested:

Sure, I want to do all the usual, like eat healthy foods and get more exercise.  But there are a couple things I’m hoping to accomplish that are a little less typical, I think.

I’d like to be more “green” in the New Year.  I’m keeping up with my reusable bag habit.  I’ve decided I need more grocery store bags because often, the ones I have get filled, and I end up taking home some plastic bags, too.  I’ve also changed my grocery shopping routine a bit, so that after all the food is put away, I don’t consider the task “finished” until I fold up the bags and put them back in my car.  Otherwise, I’m likely to end up zipping to the store on the way home from work, and not realizing until I get there, that I don’t have the reusable bags with me.

I am hoping to get my all of my photos into actual photo albums.  This will never happen.  I’m setting myself up to fail here, because like many parents, I take hundreds of photos of my children.  They’re all organized and saved in the computer, of course.  It’s just actually getting them printed that’s my problem.  I know I won’t be able to catch up on all the photos that aren’t in albums yet.  But I hope to get some of them done.  And here’s my plan for moving forward: I hope to manage to print out at least the best dozen or so photos from each month, at the end of each month, and get those in an album.  So at least there will be something there to commemorate the big events.

Finally, and this may sound like a strange resolution for a journalist, but I’m going to try to communicate more!  Not on the job, where I do plenty of communicating, thank you very much.  I want to do more to stay in touch with the important people in my life.  To this end, I’ve done a couple of things.  I have finally learned how to text message!  I’m sure 20-somethings may be rolling their eyes as they read that, but until now, I just hadn’t done it.  At all.  Now I have a phone contract that includes texting, and I’ve found I actually enjoy using it for little things, like sending quick “Happy Birthday” messages to friends.  I’m quite certain I’ll never reach a point where I’m texting all day long like some people do, but it’s nice to have this option, now. 

I’ve also joined Facebook. This is something I have been resisting for quite some time now.  I finally decided to give in a few days ago.  (A couple of days after I joined, Slate published a great article on “reasons why people should join Facebook.“)  So far, I have about 25 “friends” and I’ve had some very happy experiences: “finding” people I used to know in college, learning new things about people I know. And I’ve had some experiences that are a bit mystifying, bordering on annoying: people I hardly know, and even some total strangers trying to “friend” me for reasons unfathomable.  But all in all, speaking here after just a few days with it, I think it’s going to be a worthwhile experience.

Finally, in the midst of all this computer and cell phone technology, I’ve vowed to hand-write at least one letter or note, per week, to someone I care about… and send it through the U.S. Mail.  I like this new goal the best of all my resolutions.  I bought some new, nice stationery, and I am really looking forward to quiet moments spent writing, each week, throughout the year.

By the way, this week on turnto10.com, we asked people how they’re doing on their resolutions.  More than 600 of you answered our survey, and here’s how the numbers ended up: 68% of you said you don’t make resolutions in the first place!  20% of you said you’ve stuck to them so far (good for you).  About 9% said you’ve broken your resolutions, but you’re not giving up, and will keep trying.  But 4% of you said you broke your resolutions, and that’s it, you’re giving up!

Only time will tell whether I’ll succeed with mine or not. 
If you’ve made resolutions, good luck with yours—and belatedly, Kelly and I wish you all a very Happy 2009.