Thread:Tooniee/@comment-5278765-20141123210942/@comment-5278765-20141123214201

Oh, awesome. I'll make sure everything's squared away and get the pages published.

It's a policy for when the day care is closed (meaning when we're not able to provide care during our regularly scheduled hours). Right now, due to the church, it says that we must close if it's a code orange or red. Now code red, I get, because that means the city has declared that it's unsafe to be on the roads, so most businesses close and most of the parents don't have to go to work. But code orange just means to be cautious, so most businesses are still opened and parents have to work, but since we're closed, they also have to make alternate arrangements for their kids or they're forced to take the day off. Last year, because of the policy, we lost a family with three kids (and mom is now pregnant with two more, who would have come to us, but now aren't) and this year so far, we've lost three more kids. And we still might lose more, because parents want care that they can have consistently. Last winter, I don't know if you remember me saying I was home from work a lot, but we ended up being closed for like 25 days. Now about 5-7 of those were days where it was seriously dangerous to be out on the roads and only emergency vehicles were meant to be out, but the other days, I could have easily gotten over to the church.

Thanksgiving is nice, but its origins are horrifying.

In the US, the Sinterklaas present thing is a part of Christmas. On Christmas Eve, as parents (not mine, but most of them) tell their kids, after you go to sleep, Santa Claus comes down the chimney and leaves presents under the tree, which you then open on Christmas day. Usually, kids figure out that Santa's not real in mid-to-late elementary school, I think. I was never taught to believe in him in the first place, so I never had to go through figuring out that the story doesn't make sense.