momstown Central Alberta Celebrates Halloween

It was time for momstown Central Alberta's Halloween Craft party!

Everyone was encouraged to dress up, which we know the kids love, but we had lots of great moms in costumes, vying for one of our 3 prizes (with trophies!!) Funniest Costume, Scariest Costume and Best Costume.











Some of our awesome members brought lots of treats to share, we made hand print ghosts, played of course and had some parachute time.







The morning went by so fast, but it was great fun!

Check out what other momstown Chapters were up to here, here and here

Next up is our Wild West Craft Party on the 24th, and of course costumes are always welcome!!

The Glass Ceiling a Result of the "Mommy Track"??

Again I was listening to the radio this morning again Q... and they were discussing women and the glass ceiling and if the "mommy track" is to blame.

What I want to blog about was some of the comments made by one of the participants.

In particular the ones that stated that child rearing was a leisure activity, and that highly educated women have a moral duty to work, and that those women who stay home or work are time are setting a bad example to their daughters....?? Another 'favourite' was when she said of course employers will choose men over women as they will leave when they have kids. And that is OK as they want to get the most out of their investment in their employees...

Where to start, really I could write 5 pages of rantings on what this women said.

What we need is to start supporting each others choices, we women are not all the same, all have different motivations and reasons for choosing what we do. Some of us want to be stay at home moms, others want to be working full time, others want to run their own business, and everything in between. We need to leave the judgements and the 'mean girling' in the past.

(As an aside, I really liked the comments on twitter asking if this woman had children, as anyone who has raised a child know that it is no leisure activity.)

I was directed to this blog, which is a great read on this same debate.

I made the choice to work from home, and I know I am not doing my three daughters a disservice! I know I am a good example to my girls. They are only little for a short while, and I know I missed too much with my oldest when she was littler, when I was working full time. There was no choice then, but it wasn't the better choice FOR ME. When I went back to work earlier this year, my employer was not willing to offer me flexible hours, and everyone was miserable, and I know I am a better mom when I am not working away from my kids from 9-5 everyday.

This also speaks to the rise of the mompreneur that has been in the news lately, especially on my mind with Ann-Marie's winning the SavvyMom Entrepreneur of the year award. There are so many of us entrepreneurs who happen to be moms who want a third way... to be our own CEO.

Listen to the podcast of the debate if you haven't already and lets discuss!

momstown is SavvyMom MOM ENTRPRENEUR OF THE YEAR!

Wow... what an honor! I am so thrilled and privileged to be apart of this great organization and to work with the amazing mom entrepreneurs of momstown, including the winner Ann-Marie Burton.

Ann-Marie has encouraged me and inspired me in the very short time I have been one of the mom entrepreneurs of the momstown community, she to me is what a great entrepreneur is! I have worked with entrepreneurs for years, entrepreneurialism is my passion, for myself and to work with other entrepreneurs. The energy and passion that entrepreneurs have for their business is such an amazing energy to be around.

What this award means to Ann-Marie is posted here. What else does Ann-Marie's win mean to me? it validates that momstown is both an amazing community of moms and their families, but also that it is a viable business.

I have to extend my thanks to all of our members and friends who voted for momstown, and because we are so thrilled with this honor, we are letting our members and fellow mom entrepreneurs share in our win! How are we doing this?

momstown is saying THANKS for voting us SavvyMom MOM ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR with 1 FREE month membership!

MEMBERS win when we win! Free one month membership to NEW members and a free month extension for EXISTING or EXPIRED members. To redeem, please register on your local site and complete the form* at http://momstown-moments.momstown.ca/node/372. Available between Oct 21- 28^th. Memberships will be extended the first week of November.

PLUS, are you an ONLINE MOM ENTREPRENEUR? momstown wants to share our success by offering Online Mom Entrepreneurs exposure with a FREE national contest & member discount listing! Details, rules*, and entry at http://momstown-moments.momstown.ca/node/372. Available from Oct 21-Oct 28 for ad activity Nov – Dec 2011

Scarecrows Theme Craft Party

This morning we had a blast at our monthly theme craft party!

October's theme at momstown is SCARECROWS and we had 2 crafts to make! The moms had their turn earlier this month with the life sized scarecrows that we made at the Jungle Farm in Innsifail.

For more Autumn craft ideas check out our momstown arts & crafts blog here!

The kids of course played, made some crafts and then played some more!






Along with our party is our monthly selection from Scholastic Books that Carrie won her very own copy of! This month's book was Story County by Derek Anderson.

Welcome to Story County! Farmer, Dog, Pig, Chicken, and Miss Cow are eager to make a farm. And it's no ordinary farm. They paint the barn a rainbow of colors, plant crops of jelly beans and candy corn, fashion the prettiest scarecrow, and more, until presto!-the farm is complete. Or is it? New York Times bestselling illustrator Derek Anderson takes readers from white page to colorful farm in this charming tale of friendship (and teamwork), as five friends come together to create Story County- a special new home for young readers, where anything can happen!

Next month our theme is The Wild West!

Hallowe'en Costumes = Lingerie?

Lingerie is the new Halloween costume... or so it would seem!!

I am busy planning our Halloween party for momstown Central Alberta, and I wanted to find a new Hallowe'en costume for the occasion, my fabulous witch costume has had its day , and I need an excuse for a new one!

So checking out the costumes online, the flyer's and in stores, it seems they are all made for porn stars! Seriously! My options seem to be a witch (see above, been here done that) or a nun (don't worry though there is still the sexy nun option available!)

Since when has Hallowe'en turned into the contest of who can wear the least amount of provocative clothes and pretend it is a costume? Also for another blog post, way too many little girls costumes are over the edge of appropriateness.

Now as a disclaimer, I have dressed up as a french maid in my younger days, but now it seems there is no happy medium, it is either full on lingerie or a sack, and this is the choice offered is witch or nun. I just wanted a new fun costume that was appropriate for a kids party.

So I guess I am becoming creative and making my own!

What about you, what do you think about the costumes that are offered for sale?

Travelling with Young kids

Does your family have the traveling bug? Or do you travel just as a couple?

Our family has the traveling bug bad...(OK maybe it is just the parents!) But when we travel we travel as a family. This makes many question WHY????

When we traveled to Zimbabwe, everyone from friends to the public health nurse questioned why we would bring a 1o month old. It was even suggested more than a few times, that we leave her behind! We were gone for a month!!

Last week, our family was privileged to travel to the Dominican Republic, as momstown papa Paul was awarded a work trip, and us 4 girls escorted him! When I told people that we were going away, so many asked why we didn't just go the two of us, leave the kids with the grandparents... and they knew we have a 5 week old! She is exclusively breastfed to start with, but she is not sleeping thought the night, not even close, and I cannot imagine asking my parents to look after her for week while we went away... that is a lot to ask, but I know those who have done so, even with younger babies...

I am a true believer in choice, and it is not my place to question how others parent, but this is not our choice. We believe that traveling as a family brings us closer together, is amazing quality time, and we wouldn't do it any other way.

What about you? How young is too young for you to travel with your kids?

Another Fabulous Resource brought to you from momstown

Do time outs and counting to 1-2-3 work in your house? I know I have been at the end of my rope some days and it seems like it is just one time out after another, and still the behavior continues. When you have an 8 year old, an eight minute time out is a long time, and at this age, it isn't as effective as it once might have been.

So I am very interested to listen to one of the webinar's that momstown and Positive Parenting are teaming up again to bring to members. On October 20th and 24th they are presenting a 1 hour webinar training course on parenting discipline. The webinar objective is education and participants can leave the session to tools to help them be a more confident (& content) parent.

Here is the link to register, and yes it is free, which makes it even better!

Things that make you go hmmmm

I was listening to Jian Ghomeshi this morning when he started to discuss this "Should Facebook take down 'rape joke' pages?

As an aside it is World Breastfeeding week. Why are these two things even remotely related you might ask?

Well maybe you recall that Facebook considers pictures of a woman nursing a child obscene. Therefore they will remove any pictures of a woman nursing her child... but they won't remove these 'rape joke pages' as these are not obscene. Hmmmmmm.....

Why do we live in a culture that believes nursing a child is obscene, and rape jokes are OK? Showing a woman feeding her child cannot be pictured on Facebook, but these distasteful jokes can. I have read the comments on the Blog to the discussion on Q today, and lots say let the Internet monitor itself, free speech etc. etc. OK then, same rules for all. But they aren't. Facebook the giant of social media has decided which is OK and which isn't. Facebook's stance on these two issues boggles my mind. Why is this OK? Even Facebook with a petition of over 200,000 thousand signatures hasn't changed their position on the 'rape jokes' pages....

This dichotomy bothers me... pictures of breastfeeding = obscene, rape jokes = OK?

Your thoughts?

momstown Central Alberta goes Scarecrow Building at the Jungle farm

In honor of this month's theme of SCARECROWS the moms of momstown Central Alberta took a fun field trip to the Jungle Farm to build our very own scarecrows! For the moms in our group who are "city slickers" this was our first time at temping to make a "real scarecrow" and I think that maybe the moms got more into it than most of the kids! (wink)

For our outing, we first had to maneuver about 18 moms, kids and strollers onto a wagon pulled by an antique tractor, this as you can imagine took some time, and during this time we were lucky for momstown mom Bradley as she saved us, when the tractor started rolling with said kids moms and strollers attached in a wagon with no one in the drivers seat!!

Once we were on our way, the tractor took us to some farm animals that the kids were able to feed. The kids obviously loved this!





Then we were finally onto the scarecrow factory to try our hands at this life sized craft, involving copious amounts of hay, clothes and power tools!






We were all impressed with our results...

But the hard part now was getting our creations home, well at least for me this was a challenge. Luckily Jodie saved the day and delivered ours to our house, and our scarecrow was just a bit worse for wear... OK a lot, she lost lots of her stuffing, her pants fell down, and she needed a repair job before taking her spot in our front yard.