Voting Day 2011 - plus other stuff

Voting Day 2011
Today is voting day for our country's 21st General Election.  I'm proud to say that I exercised my right to vote today.  I'm sad to say that I haven't always done that.  For many years I had taken my right to vote for granted.  I found the whole process confusing and pointless.  Then I started to learn more about it.  I had to learn, because I wanted to teach my children.  That's when I started getting interested in the whole political scene.  I still don't know a whole lot about it, but I know a whole lot more than I used to and I am continually trying to learn more.

This year I had the privilege of presenting an information session about the election and our electoral system to our local homeschool group.  During our last federal election I had discovered the StudentVote site, which puts off a parallel election for students under the voting age so that they will become educated about the process.  When I told our homeschool group about StudentVote this year they were excited to take part in the StudentVote program during our 21st General Election.  Because of school holidays in our province we had to hold our Student Vote earlier than most provinces so we didn't have as much time to spend learning about the whole process as we would have liked, but we still had a great time.  I created a Student Vote 2011 Zapd website on my iPhone using pictures I took with my iPhone at our StudentVote. They are seriously looking forward to the next election so that they can do this again. Hopefully these kids will be inspired and educated enough that they will never take their right to vote for granted.

Mixed Feelings about the Big World News Story
Something else making big news in our country, and many others, today is the death of Bin Laden, as reported on the CBC News site.  While I am not sad that Bin Laden is dead, I am also not celebrating his death, as many others are.

I think much like Dara, of Readily a Parent, in what she has to say in her Why I Won't Be Celebrating Bin Laden's Death post.  I can't say that I'm fearful, because my hope rests in God, but I am sad to think about what happened and what potentially could happen still.

Just Two Weeks to Expo Time!
The Old Schoolhouse Spring 2011 Expo, an online homeschool conference, starts on May 16th, just two weeks away!  I can't wait!  I really enjoyed the last Expo that I took in and I'm expecting no less from this one.  If you don't already have your ticket purchased to take in the Expo live, you are out of luck!  The tickets have sold out!  That said, however, you're not totally out of luck because you can still purchase the Expo-to-Go.  If I were you, I'd hop to it.  You seriously don't want to miss it.


And that's what on my mind today.