What My Kids Taught Me

Our Week

2010-09-09T08:48:00.000-04:00

Most of my posting for our adventures has moved to facebook.

Monday (Labor Day)... We talked about what labor day was and it's origins sparked by my oldest asking why labor day was a holiday. We did other stuff too, but I forget what right now.

Tuesday-I had a photo shoot in the morning so they did stuff with dad, then we went to the park and on a "hike" when the playing part of the park was just a bit to warm for them to be enjoying themselves. Then we had Dungeons and Dragons night with friends, where the girls come in here and there and play with their characters (usually someone they make up for that one combat scene and the DM, who is my BIL, is really patient with them, it's great) or to roll either mine or daddy's dice (usually mine).

Wednesday-We started a Percy Jackson Unit Study. This is something that my oldest wanted to do. We read the first chapter of the first book (which she has read three times and I have read once) and started some activities. She did a Vocab puzzle, got 3 words into a 2nd puzzle and said "I'm bored" so she moved on to writing in her journal, then she started making a family tree. Then at 6 we had auditions for a play. My oldest (Marti) bought a Cinderella play (this actually http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Now-Im-Reading-Plays/Nora-Gaydos/e/9781584769729/?itm=1&USRI=cinderella+play) and yesterday she planned a gathering of her friends and they did the play, or auditioned, or practiced it. I had to take the car to the shop so daddy (the theatre buff) stayed with them. We need new brakes, fun!

Thursday- We have a friend over (who was at the meeting last night). It was funny, I remember doing this as a kid. Last night we picked up the girls' friend, Ashley, to go to the meeting with us. After the meeting, we went to drop her off and I was standing there talking to her mom (another homeschooler) and I hear Ashley say "did you ask your mom?" So, Marti turns around and asks "Mom can Ashley spend the night". I remember doing this to my mom so many times. It was great though because my answer was, of course, "YES!" and better yet, it was "yes" on a "school night"! Love it!

Oh, I babbled there, sorry. Today I expect that the girls will all play together and we might do some more Percy Jackson stuff.

Tomorrow-Grocery Shopping! We are a bit low on food right now so in the last week we have learned to be very creative with food. They really enjoyed helping us make 6 pizzas the other night so we wouldn't have to cook for a day or two :)

Oh My Gods!

2010-06-14T08:39:00.001-04:00

Most of my posting for our adventures has moved to facebook.
Journey With Us If You Will

Today I was thinking, as we prepare to go see Percy Jackson (for a third time in the theatre) at the local theatre that is running it this week for $1 per ticket as a "Kids Summer Movies" promotion...

Sometime back a few years ago, I was on a local homeschool list and I had posted about the free movies that one of our local theaters offers every spring and fall. Someone replied to me that it did not pertain to homeschooling. Being unschoolers, I didn't agree, of course.

I did end up leaving that group because a few weeks later one of the members posted about an anti-gay gathering (I think they were talking pickets signs and such, it's been awhile) at the public library when a gay author was coming to speak, or do a book signing or something. When I mentioned the fact that that had as little to do with homeschooling as my posting about the movies I was flamed off the group.Oy! But whatever.

Back to the topic at hand though. I was thinking this morning that the Percy Jackson "Empire" has been nothing BUT a learning experience for our family. We went to see it the first time with much excitement. It looked really good, and it was. Marti and Lilly both loved it, especially Lilly. A few weeks later my grandma gave me some money for cleaning her house. After refusing the money she told me "oh, just take the kids to a movie or something" so we took them to see Percy Jackson again.

Not too long after that we decided to pick up a copy of the book because Rog and I wanted to read it. My brother in law actually picked it up first and then he had to get the rest of the series as well. After he read it my oldest, Marti picked it up and devoured it. She proceeded to read the next book, and the next one and the next one and the next one. She had the entire series read within a week or two. After she finished it, she read it again and then again.

Percy Jackson has inspired so many conversations. She has even passed some of her knowledge on to me and her dad, her sister and even her friends. We have watched Hercules quite a few times as well and as we watch it she pipes up with flaws in the movie or little trivia facts here and there. Things like;

"Hera was actually jealous of Hercules so she sent snakes from, what my book says, Snakes-R-Us"

and

"Pegasus wasn't actually born from the clouds. He actually sprouted fully grown from Medusa's head after Perseus sliced it off"

and

"Phil doesn't know that Achilles mom dipped him in the river Styx so he would become invincible, except his heel, which is where she was holding on to him"

Rog actually asked her about this one. He asked why Achilles' mom didn't just dip him in completely and Marti told him that if your whole body goes into the river then you die.

And in true unschooling spirit, after she seemed to get a little bored with the Percy Jackson series (or at least needing a break from it) I picked up some other Greek Mythology books at the library. She is reading a book called Oh. My. Gods. and we also got three of the four books in the Mythlopedia series called What A Beast, She's All That and Oh My Gods! And, of course, it has shaped her religious beliefs some as well. She now believes in the Gods. We've tried teaching our girls about all religions, not just one so it's amazing to see her make her own decisions about things.

So, needless to say, in our little world, yes, movies and learning completely go together.

New Facebook page

2010-05-08T17:21:00.002-04:00

I try to keep this blog up. I really do. I made a facebook fan page hoping that I will update that more than I update this. For those of you who would like to follow us, visit Journey With Us If You Will

Some cute kid quotes (from my girls)...

2010-02-19T14:02:00.000-05:00

Just in random order

___________________

Lilly: "Lets go Christmas shopping mom". "Honey, we have to wait til Daddy gets his check next week". "Not to get prestents mom!" "What are we going to get then Lilly?" "KEYS!"

Lilly: "Must… have… biscuit!"

Marti: "I'm going to the computer."

Lilly: "You're not going to the future."

Marti: "So what's that got to do with the price of milk in China?"

Marti: "Would you inside them out?"

Mom: “What do you want to watch?”

Lilly: “Something with one of these letters. A, B, C, D, E...[ and the rest of the letters of the alphabet]”

Fred (during gaming): "And a voice speaks to you..."

Lilly: "What's eight plus eight?"

Lilly: "Guess what I'm naming my character!"

Angelica (a friend): "What're you naming your character?"

Lilly: "I don't know."

Lilly dancing

2009-05-23T11:12:00.002-04:00

It was really cute just now.

Rog put on a song by Red Hot Chili Peppers and told Lilly she might like the song.

"What's it called," Lilly asked.
"Californication," Rog answerd.
"No way!" was Lilly's reply.

About 30 seconds into the song she started swaying back and forth to the music, moving mainly her shoulders. Then a few more seconds later she was using her entire upper body to dance. By one minute into the song she was on her feet and moving.

Often I think she doesn't even hear the words. She just gets up and invites the music to take over her body.

:)

Update

2009-05-18T10:46:00.002-04:00

Well, it's only been about a month since I updated :)

We haven't done a whole lot, aside from living our everyday lives. I got sick with a sinus infection that had me on the couch for 4 day and kind of out of it for another 5 or 6. The antibiotics didn't really seem to work the magic they were supposed to (though they probably helped) and my body fought off the rest over time. Could have saved the doctor bill I guess. Oh well.

We have been spending a lot of time at the YMCA. We go to "open swim" about once a week and then the girls each have a swimming class that they attend.

Lilly's dance class ended the last week of April and she had a recital on May 2nd that went awfully for her because some other girl kept taking her spot and she didn't know what to do. I wasn't a very happy camper and neither was she so I doubt we will be going back there for dance classes again.

The four of us went and saw Monsters Vs Aliens which was good and we have some money saved up to go see some other movies this summer and to do some other things like going to South Haven and a trip to Michigan Adventure. Thank goodness we paid off all that debt or we would never be able to do all this.

From our daily lives:

Thanks for the airplanes, Aunt Cheryl. Lilly had a blast putting hers together and flying it with Daddy

Lilly made musical instruments out of glasses and cried when we had to dump the water out. This was all her idea, by the way, I just helped her get the glasses. She even filled up the water level to where she wanted it, tested it and would either drink some or put some more in depending on what sound she wanted.

The girls got to visit a friend who had baby chicks too.

They had fun playing in the Styrofoam that came with something that we bought. Can't remember for the life of me what it was that we bought though, lol!

And just recently Lil had a blast pouring baby powder all over the bathroom and then making snow angels in it. Rog had actually "caught" her doing it and gave an exasperated "Oh, Lil", but because he is generally a gruff sort of person when it comes to that sort of thing she thought she was in trouble and hid under the blanket. I tried to talk her out by asking her things like "Did you have fun?" and "Did you put powder all over the bathroom?". I finally brought her out with a passion when I asked her if she made it pretty. She came out immediately and dragged me to the bathroom to show me her beautiful angel. It was such a great experience.

And just the other day the girls got their hair cut.

Before:

After:

C-ya next time!

Easter around here

2009-04-12T07:18:00.003-04:00

Short little update.

Things have been going well. I can't complain really. We paid off some massive debt ($6,300) with our tax return this year and now we have a bit of money to spare. That has felt nice. It's kindda opposite of what everyone around us is feeling, which is weird. We were able to save to buy an Acer laptop, which has been nice so that there aren't so many "who gets the computer" related fights around here. We have also set money aside for Christmas (for the first time EVER!), for going to Michigan Adventure this coming summer and just have money in general savings. It feels pretty good. We are still paying on a couple low balance credit cards, plus my New York Institute of Photography schooling and student loans will be coming due fairly shortly, but all in all, I think we are doing well.

For March, I made notes on the calendar about some of the things that we did and wrote them in a little book for a summary.

Lilly has been going to the Drop In Center (a child care center for low income families) quite a lot this year. She gets 6 days per month and she loves being there to play witht he other kids. She only has until November (when she turns 6) to keep going so we are sending her as often as we can.

Marti started a story telling class at the Civic during the last weeks of February and went on through March. She had a story telling performance where her class performed "The Pied Piper" just over a week ago. She had a blast and will be taking Singing for Actors in the summer at the civic.

Which reminds me. We got a membership to the YMCA here in town and we have been going swimming 2-3 times a week which is a lot of fun. The girls will hopefully each be starting a swimming class here very shortly.

They also have a gymnastics class available this summer through the city that each of them want to take. So, lots of fun things coming up.

In March our family friend, Nicole, took the girls to Bounceland, which is an indoor place where they have a bunch of inflatable things that kids can climb on. It's an exhausting place for adults, but the kids adore it!

We also are seeing the Spring Matinees at the local theatre. We missed the first one or two weeks and we are missing this weeks as well, but we have seen Madagascar 2, Igor, Kung Fu Panda, and Horton Hears A Who. This week we are missing Tale of Desperaux, which the girls did want to see so we will defintely have to rent it.

The week that we were going to see Igor, Marti didn't want to go. We discovered (through talking with her) that it was because she felt like we were taking away her video game time, which she has been very protective of lately. So that led to us giving each of the girls a choice day where they can decide to do whatever they like. This past week it got forgetten about, but I will have to work to correct that so that Marti doesn't feel the need to protect her video game time so tightly.

We also got to visit with Marti's best friend on the 16th of March. Marti, Lilly and Gwen have started a nature club which Gwen's backyard is perfect for and now the girls want to move closer to Gwen :)

And the whole reason I started this post...

I <3 unschooling.

Yesterday we did the Easter basket thing around here. I bought probably $10-15 (I would guess closer to $15) worth of candy for Easter so they would have plenty of candy for awhile. So, you can see a change in my way of thinking right there. This holiday was an excuse to buy candy (not that I needed one, but I went out of my way to buy "plenty of candy"). I also bought other little (non candy) things for their Easter basket. Lilly found hers first. I bought heart shaped stones that look very similar to the heart that the main characters where in the Barbie movie, Diamond Castle. The girls were super excited about it and then Marti went looking for hers and several times we heard groans because she would open an egg and find chocolate. How funny is that??? LOL!

Finally, all the eggs were opened and the biggest hit of all were the heart shaped stones, the eggs that I had bought that has various stones in them, the magnifying glasses I had bought them to go along with their nature club and the flashlights that were bought for the same purpose. They kept shinning their flashlight on the stones and looking at them through the magnifying glass. :)

Oh, and the Kiwi story. When I was writing the above story I remembered another story. The girls were recently at the store spending their allowences. Lilly had picked out what she had wanted and still had a little left over. Usually when that happens we go for candy so we were walking down the candy aisle at the store when I remembered that she had recently said that she wanted more kiwi. I recently had bought a kiwi and she had loved it. So, I asked if she wanted Kiwi instead and the answer was a resounding "Yes!". Don't get me wrong, I didn't ask her to distract her from the candy at all. Also, I would have bought it for her, but she loved the idea of being able to buy it herself. When we got over to the produce selection she decided on two Kiwi and a package of strawberries (that were on sale). I love my fruit and veggie girl! :)

So, that's our life over the last 6 weeks or so...

Next time I will try not to stay away too long.

What Marti was saying...

2009-02-20T07:39:00.003-05:00

We were driving down the road and Marti was noticing all the "empty space" around us, like parking lots and yards that belonged to businesses. She thought that it was an awful waste of space. She said that they should at least plant more trees or something.

I couldn't stop the tears. It was a proud moment. :)

Sorting Money & Other Adventures

2009-02-19T09:03:00.004-05:00

I thought maybe I just write this down real quick because I hardly ever seem to be able to keep this blog up and by the time I get to it, I forget what I need to write.

The other day we went to a local chinese buffet for dinner. At the end, the girls both wanted dessert, which they very rarely finish. That particular night (I think it was Monday) Lilly had like 5 bites of her ice cream. She pushes it away, looks up at me and says (while holding her belly), "Mom, I need some *real* food. I want a salad." Gotta love hearing that.

Marti the other day said something that brought tears to my eyes. I will have to ask Rog what it was because I can't remember at the moment.

We have been playing lots of SUPER Mastermind lately, which the girls have been having a ton of fun with. They are both addicted to that game. We modify the rules a bit because Lilly is quite young, but she is awfully good at it. Here is a picture of her getting the code on the second try.
And finally what I sat down to write about was actually that Lilly was sorting play money today. Usually she strews it everywhere, walks around and hands it to people so they can buy things, etc. Today she put the ones in the first "slot", the fives in the second, the tens in the third and the twenties in the fourth "slot". She said she was sorting it like they do at Wal-Mart. :)

She then proceeded to sort the coins, though she needed a bit of help knowing which spot to put them. She had them arranged in order of size, which actually makes complete sense. While sorting ones she even notieced that George Washington was on the $1 bill. They had talked about George Washington at the Drop In Center on Tuesday so I thought that was kindda cool. After she was finished sorting, she handed out the money. :)

Oh, and I just found this and thought it was cool. These were the families that Lilly made up with the dolls at the museum. I thought it was pretty cool that *all* of the families were interracial. She didn't do it on purpose. It was just kindda random, but still really cool.

Science Experiment & explaination

2009-01-17T10:28:00.003-05:00

This was our craft project/science experiment for the day on Thursday.

We got the recipie out of this book...
Better Homes and Gardens Make Believe (Fun-to-Do Project Books)
We liked it so much we ordered it from Paperback Swap

By the way, Paperback Swap is an awesome, awesome book swapping site for those who LOVE to read. You should check it out!

1 package of Kool-Aid
1/2 Cup Sugar
1/2 Cup Cold Water
Vanilla Ice Cream
1 Liter of carbonated lemon lime beverage

Mix the Kool-Aid, Water, and Sugar in a pitcher. Then mix in the lemon lime beverage
Put the ice cream in your cups and pour the mixture over the ice cream.

P.S. I used my own words. I know the measurements are right but I don't have the book's instructions right here in front of me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, you probably want to know what's up with all the watermarks, huh? These pics aren't even that good, right? Well, you're right, but I came across some interesting information recently. I can seem to recall the link at the moment, but because we live in a disturbing world, there are people out there who steal pictures (and not just professional pictures) and put them on other sites. Recently I ran across a website who had her daughter's picture stolen and put up as an Orkut profile. So, really, it is for the safety of my girls that I watermark them. I hope everyone understands.

It's the new year

2009-01-04T14:21:00.006-05:00

I have been taking pictures, but not posting them. LOL! So, this is just going to be a spattering of things we've been up to over the last 6 months or so.

Lilly was playing in the water in the sink. She loves to make bubbles.

The girls making patterns

This one is from Marti's birthday party (in July). We went to Bounceland.

Summer fun with bubbles

Meeting long awaited cousin Jabari (in July)

We did the Diet Coke & Mentos experiment

This is the girls washing the kitchen floor. I did not ask them to do this. They offered.

The girls playing in flour

Lilly making a plate person

Lilly being a rubber band princess

Lilly making berry pie this past summer. The berries, however, made her hands itch. Uh-oh! Not too bad though. She was fine after she washed up.

Marti bike riding. She learned to ride without training wheels this past summer.

The girls flying kites

One day, the girls wouldn't eat dinner with us. It was no big deal really. But Rog and I (since we thought we were going to be eating alone) lit up some candles and the girls joined us. It was pretty cool.

Marti in her fairy princess halloween costume.

Marti took a make up class in October. Our friend Nicole was her teacher.

Lilly didn't want pics in her halloween costume. She dressed up in other stuff and let me snap away.

Lilly and her BFF at Lilly's birthday party

And a photoshoot with one of her presents from her birthday

This was cool. Rog and I were doing dishes. The girls thought it was cool that the yellow bowl turned the water yellow and the blue turned the water blue.

In this picture Lilly tore up a load of kleenexes to cover up snowflake because "he was cold"

The girls LOVE to play this game, Mastermind

And finally, a picture of Marti, Lilly and her cousins Izik and Tommy.

We had more "professional" type shoots in the last 6 months that you can see at www.hopescreations.com, if you wish.

Reading bugs

2008-10-01T19:38:00.002-04:00

Well, as usual, it has been a minute since I wrote here. Things have been busy.

Been working on lots of Miracle Diapers stuff. They have some awesome auction (not just for diapers) that you should stop by and check out. I am thinking up some of my stuff to add there too. Maybe a logo design and a couple of collages.
http://www.hyenacart.com/miraclediapers

I start school here soon too. Through New York Institute of Photography, majoring in photography of course.

I am only updating because I stole a minute just now. Rog is downstairs playing ball with both girls.

Lilly and I worked on reading today. I didn't really plan it out much. I just pulled a few books off the shelf and we read while she ate breakfast. She actually knew/sounded out quite a few words. It was pretty sweet since she has never really had any formal teaching. I think that is what I love the most.

Marti is reading away too. We recently got some Mary Kate and Ashley detective books from a thrift store for really cheap and she just ate those up. We seem to be running out of fairy books at the libraries. She has read all of the Fairy Realm books and the Fairy Chronicles books so we are keeping our eyes open for new ones. She is really loving the Mary Kate and Ashley ones at the moment too.

Marti has been getting kindda grumpy lately, especially with Lilly and tonight we had another talk. I had the idea that since she is a physical touch person that as soon as she comes downstairs from playing on the computer (which she has free access to) she will get a hug (unless she doesn't want one, of course) to help bring her back into "our world". Don't misread me here though. There are plenty of times that we join her world too (fairies, computer games, you name it), just so you don't think we are always trying to make her join us.

Well, I should get back to the family!!!

Accomplishments & "Getting Family To Help Around The House"

2008-09-03T10:41:00.002-04:00

Women, in general, particularly stay at home/work at home/homeschooling moms (and God forbid one woman carries all three of those roles, lol), claim that they want someone (mainly their husband sometimes even the kids) to at least notice what they do around the house. Better yet, wouldn't it be great if they actually *helped* with those things?

I think part of the reason they want to be noticed is because we (as a society) are people that feel we need to be productive nearly 100% of our waking hours. I admit to being guilty of this myself.

We are also people (not sure if this is societal or human nature) that tend to crave validation. Generally if we look (and with the existance of the internet, we don't have to look far), we can find such validation. BUT, is it a good thing?

Take, for instance, a stay at home mom who gets on a message board/chat room/whatever to complain about how she *always* has to do everything around the house and no one wants to help her. She has tried everything. I bet she hasn't tried *everything* (absolutes are rarely true, my young padawan).

But, of course, she gets validation. What mom hasn't had these thoughts? Me included, of course.

Let's look closer though.

Look how she writes.

Look at her complaints.

If she voices that, and possibly worse, to her family, *why* would they WANT to help her?

Here is the secret to getting your family to help around the house. Let them WANT to help you. How do you do that you ask?

I have often found myself wishing for more help, more appriciation.

My husband and I were having a discussion the other day and I was venting because lately I have found myself with not enough hours in the day which has been stressing me out.

"So again, nothing I do is good enough," he said to me.

I thought for a moment and then told him something along the lines of, "If you believe that then it's from within inside of yourself that the inadequacy begins."

I said it.

But it took a couple days before it's meaning truly took hold.

If I am wanting praise and appriciation, I need to look no further than inside, myself.

The same goes for getting family to help around the house. Do it for them, or if they house isn't as sparkling as you would like, let it go. If you can't let it go, do it yourself. Don't burden your children or your husband with it. Take it on as your own, and feel awesome about it. That is what you accomplished today. Houses with kids aren't meant to be sparkling.

This is not a new concept. Unschoolers around the world have been practicing this concept for years. It works, but the key is that you have to do it first, then you will see the result of it. I had to pick up after my girls for months before they willing got out the cleaner and rags and mopped the kitchen floor on their hands and knees. It works, believe me.

Checlist Complete

2008-08-26T07:38:00.002-04:00

I have a completed checklist for all the activities that are on the 4/5 year old activities post. However, I can't figure out to upload it. So, if you would like the checklist, please post your email in the comments section of this post or of the original post and I will email it to you. Or if someone would like to explain how to upload it, that would be great as well

I get it~ Knee & Elbow pads

2008-08-22T16:59:00.003-04:00

So, Marti just learned how to ride her bike without training wheels within the last week. She's had a couple spills though.

I always though knee pads and elbow pads were for over protective parents, but seeing the blood pour out of my "baby's" elbows and knees, I finally get why they were invented. I need to dig around the house now to find the ones that were given to her some time ago, or else get her some so that she doesn't cut herself up every time she goes out.

Hope everyone has had a great couple weeks.

July is gone already???

2008-08-13T15:59:00.003-04:00

Okay, I have been meaning to write here and at the sparkly blog for weeks, but WOW!

July flew past me.

In July we had my eldest's birthday party at Bounceland on the 13th which was a TON of fun!!!

We had a family friend die around the time of Marti's birthday party and his funeral was on the 16th. There were family friends that came up from Arkansas from the funeral, which we only see maybe once per year so it was exciting to see them again and sad to see them go.

We attended my nephews' birthday party on the 19th, as well. They are brothers born almost exactly (save for one day) 4 years apart.

I had taken the pictures for both parties and after the funeral, which had to be processed. I also did a maternity shoot on the 16th as well, which of course needed to be processed.

And the list goes on. It doesn't actually seem like that much when I write it down, but it had me wiped out, I'll tell you. Plus, usually my mom takes the girls at least once a month for the weekend, but that didn't happen in July so I didn't even have time to post a little something about being busy, lol!

Hopefully I will get back to a somewhat normal schedule soon. Although if you don't see me here, check over at this blog, and that might provide some explanation.

Sweeney Todd

2008-07-03T12:51:00.010-04:00

My family LOVES movies. We love to watch all kinds of movies.

We know our kids and what they can handle, generally. For example, you many think we are nuts but we probably wouldn't consider showing our daughters Bambi because they are *very* sensitive to animals dying in film and they would have some serious waterworks going when Bambi loses him mum.

One of their current favorite movies is Sweeney Todd. Yep, Demon Barber Of Fleet Street with Johnny Depp (they have probably seen just about every Johnny Depp movie made, well, most of them anyway) and Helena Bonham Carter. Brilliant movie. Awesome music. We've been "on" this movie for at least a month now and it has actually inspired a lot of things in our lives.

First of all, the music is absolutely phenomenal! Not only are we movie buffs, but we LOVE our music! Our tastes vary, but we listen to just about everything and the girls adore musicals including Sound Of Music, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (Marti sat through this entire movie at 3 years old), Phantom Of The Opera (2004 version) and others so it's no surprise that they would like Sweeney, really.

Then there is the connections thing. The connections from this movie alone has been amazing. There is the obvious "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" connections which we do all the time (and I have done since I was a kid with my mum).

There is also getting to compare the actor's performances with their other characters. We are unified in believing that Sweeney Todd is Johnny Depp's best performance, EVER (and as I have said, we have seen most of his movies (Like 33 out of his 35 movies))! As well as talk about the fact that there are 3 Harry Potter stars in this one movie (in case you don't know... Helena is Belatrix, Alan Rickman is Snape and Timothy Spall is Pettigrew).

We also get to talk about all the movies that Tim Burton and Johnny have done together (up to six now) as well as the ones Tim, Johnny & Helena have done together (3), the ones Tim did with his former fiance (5, plus she was the inspiration for one of Marti's favorite characters, Sally), how he often casts many of the same people in a lot of his movies, and the Tim Burton films that Danny Elfman did the music for (10, I think). We get to talk about Tim's style, how he has a bit of an obsession with horror actors and how he often opens his movies in a similar fashion.

Of course, since watching Sweeney Todd we have rented a movie of the Broadway play with George Hearn and Patti LuPone. We discussed how we felt about their performances and how stage performances are so much different than movie performances. Marti prefers the movie over the stage performances to the point where she will cover her ears if anything else is on. I actually love George Hearn's performance in both the 1982 performance (which we watched on youtube) with Angela Lansbury and in the 2001 performance with Patti (the one we rented), but I hated his female costars. Angela and Patti were awful, in my opinion.

We also got to see someones Lego rendition of the Sweeney Todd songs on Youtube. After we watched these Marti went and tried to build similar things with our Legos, but we just don't have enough so she went and played Sweeney with her dolls upstairs. Here are some of the YouTube videos that we watched.

This guy has some Lego videos from Sweeney, from Dark Knight and from Star Wars
http://www.youtube.com/user/ThatBobaFettGuy

Now this guys videos aren't so great, but his Lego creations are amazing!
http://www.youtube.com/user/SirNadroj

We also found this girl while searching for lyrics. She is quite good. She is a little shady at first and gets a couple lines wrong, but is overall really good.
http://thesimsonstage.ea.com/textAudioPlay.html?performanceId=%2BKKCIjm1h3U%3D&categoryId=135&play=Y

We could go on and on with the connections I think.

All that aside, we have looked up so many words in the dictionary to let Marti know what they meant, and some of them to find out for myself really. Some might not be appropriate for some kids, but Marti was ready.

Beadle
Dardenelles
Virtuous
Naive
Pious
Succumb
Sulked
Contrite
Plight
Repented
Daft
Jubilate
Damask
Trench
Mountebank

and the proper pronunciation of assuage

Oh, and the fact that we had to budget our tight Wal-Mart income in order to buy the movie and the soundtrack was also a source of discussion.

Well, that is all I can really think of for now, but I am sure there is more.

4/5 year old activities

2008-07-03T10:40:00.017-04:00

Checklist of Activities
Download here

From Donna:
Play-doh
- you can find some make your recipes as well
Finger paints
Corn starch and water
Paper mache
Shaving cream
- to finger paint with or on a slip and slide
Cooking
- making bread by hand
Magnets
Tie dye
Treasure hunt in sand box
Give the dog a bath
- very wet and very messy
Gardening
- plant some sunflowers or pumpkins or....
Dig a hole in the dirt
- fill it with water - have fun
Wash the floor
Wash the windows with a spray bottle
"Paint" the house with a paintbrush and water

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From Lisa:
Play doh & cookie cutters
Non-hardening clay
Bright colored paper to color on
- we have neon paper that my niece likes
various coloring mediums
- chalk; pencils, gel pens, markers, crayons
(they make different crayons like glitter, neon, etc,)
They make paper punches that punch out small designs
- for example a heart.
Scissors and glue
(they make glitter glue)
A stapler
A hole punch
Sidewalk / driveway chalk
A huge tub of water and things like
spoons, cups, meat baster, eye dropper,
measuring cups, squirt guns / squirt bottles
Sing and dance videos or cd's of music
- my 3 yr old nephew loves to dance when
I put on the Disney Tarzan cd of music
- free would be finding a great radio station to dance to.
Shaving cream on a table top is fun to mess in
- get a can from the dollar store.
Various size balls to play with
- Koosh balls are great for indoor.
Finger paints
Paint with a paint brush
Water color paints
- you can color on white paper with a white crayon
and then paint over it with water color paints and
the paint does not stick where you colored.
Small sessions of activities like hopping
- hop on one foot, switch, hop with both feet;
run to the back of the yard and back,
time her (if she wants) to see how long she can do such and
such or how long it takes to do something like run to the back
of the yard, stand on one foot, stand and play catch with the
Koosh, how many hops does it take to get to this place
- count for her/with her, etc.
Throw a ball/Koosh/bean bag/folded up socks into a laundry basket.
Gather up boxes and make things.
We've made a sail boat, a race car, etc
with boxes large enough for Z to sit in when he was that age.
I remember a 12 pack soda (coke) box being an engine on
something we made. He has also made forts and buildings large
enough for his GI Joes. If you have a Sam's Club or Costco's near
by or possibly other stores might let you have their boxes for free.
How about a board and some nails and a hammer ?
We used to love to make "mud pies" as children
- all it took was something to make it in (usually our wagon),
dirt, water and available items like sticks, leaves, rocks, and
Z also loved to build with mud, sticks, rocks, etc. He would build
channels, damns, water falls, etc.

From Mary:
My first thought was corn starch and water!!!
And craft dough made from white bread and glue.
VERY messy while making and ends up with a lovely texture,
nice enough to do rose petals! And it air dries. The recipe
I used years ago called for glycerin which I don't keep around.
I substituted dish liquid.
One thing I haven't tried yet is rose beads, which sound really
cool. But I've made magazine beads (where you roll a strip with
glue) and those are great.
I remember stepping on soda cans when I was little so they squish
around your shoes and you can "tap" dance. Also making "stilts" out
of cans and string.
Cat's cradle.
Collect all your crayon bits and pieces, sort by general color and
then melt and make into new crayons. You can use the wilton molds to
make some really fun ones that are nice and chunky to hold.
Maybe you could lay out a bedsheet when she's going to do a craft
project to catch all the odds and ends. Then just get out the
construction paper, the colors the scissors and tape and see what
happens!?!?

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From Stacey:
anyways, my kids 'love' painting in the bathtub! you can mix any
kind of ingredients together, even powdered sugar, water and food
coloring (so when young kids lick, no biggie;) they paint walls, we
turn water on, empty and keep doing it over and over. they love
to 'pick up their mess!:)

make a life-size sugar cook of child, frost with creme cheese/powder
sugar or whip creme frosting and put fruit (colorful) on it for
clothes, hair, etc. (was in family magazine) cute! haven't tried it
yet:)

my kids love to make their own tortillas/bread

take a bath, color water a different color each time (food coloring)

glitter spray for hair. my kids love to play 'rock-star'

finger nail painting

melt down candles into separate jar, get one of those 'candle
warmers' (walmart candle aisle, furniture section) and smell the
smell! made it themselves:)

melt candles down, decorate a pine cone with it!! just pourt it
over. pretty pine cone, smells good:)

make meals fun! cut and orange, lets, say. just a slice, put it in
center of plate, then take 5 or so blueberries, then add another
colorful fruit/veggie and keep going till you have all the..(don't
know what they're called;) but the 'rays', i think going across the
plate. make little people;) for st. patricks day, color it all
green! green eggs, etc. i've tried coloring pancakes...can't seem to
do it...;)

make your own hats/masks, etc. go for nature walk, talk about what
you've seen (google it:) see what other 'flowers'(or whatever they
show interest in) there are:)

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From Ginger:
My boys loved a large lid filled with rice. We used this instead of a sand
box. It lived in the kitchen with funnels and all sorts of things. When
they were done, we'd have fun with the brooms and 'clean' up. Usually it
was clean enough to just put all the rice back into the box.

I used to put water in our recyclable tubs and things and then freeze them.
We'd go outside on the patio and draw or make things with the ice. This
cooled them down on the days that were hot.

We have window markers that draw on all our windows and the sliding glass
door.

We used cardboard and golf tees as our board and nails. This was great with
shoe boxes, too!

We made tons of confetti with paper. The loved cutting things.

We played 'family ball' with the squish balls intended for the pool. This
is where you put as many balls on the floor as you have and roll them as
fast as you can back and forth.

We also play sock snowball fights. As it sounds, we get all our socks,
separate each individual sock and roll it into a ball. Then we divide them
and use the bed as the 'fort' in between us and throw them to our heart's
content. Then when it was over, we'd open a drawer in the dresser and play
'basketball' to put them all away.

At this age, I washed little 'real' clothing as the boys were always in
dress-up stuff. I converted old clothing (some mine) into costumes like
Robin Hood and capes out of old material or sheets. Hats were a hit too.

We had a sheet in the living room to make an instant cave to play in and
read in. A dining chair was used as the door to crawl under.

We spent a lot of time in the tub. They make great tub toys that hold the
color tablets, some bubbles if they wanted and they make color crayons that
can be used on the bathtub walls. Sometimes just 'washing' the walls with
the bubbles and a washcloth was enough to keep them occupied for hours!

Anything that's easy to stack then knock over was fun. We have soft blocks
that they loved to do this with. I'd build a 'structure' as fast as I could
on my right, then as they were running I would build one as fast as I could
on my left. This kept them running around for a bit!

We loved just adventuring, too. We'd get all our stuff (flashlights, a
bucket to carry our stuff in, magnifying glass, map [usually something we
drew with the necessary 'x' on it]) and headed out. We'd make up the
mission as we went along and often it changed many times during the walk.
We'd save a space on our deck that was to display all our 'treasure'.

The boys enjoyed blowing bubbles and more so - they enjoyed chasing bubbles
that were blown. This was great in the park or outside in the grass.

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From Sandra:
Also try waxed paper and aluminum foil, for art projects. A pencil
on aluminum foil can be very cool. Also the foil put on top of
something carved, or even coins. But over a patterned metal platter,
or pottery with a pattern, and press down the aluminum. Then it can
be made into a ball. Then it can be put in the recycling.

Waxed paper is also cool with a pencil or colored pencils, and there
are ways to layer leaves and flower petals between the layers and
iron them between sheets of paper (so the wax doesn't get on the iron
or ironing board).

Paper towels and food coloring. You can make kind of tie-dye designs
with little cups of food coloring, fold the towel, dip different
corners in different colors, unfold it carefully and let it dry. You
can use those for wrapping paper (or tissue inside a box when a gift
is being wrapped).

All of those take a lot of adult interaction, but that's a good
thing. Instead of looking for things she can do without you, look
for things you can do with her.

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From Nancy:
> Waxed paper is also cool with a pencil or colored pencils, and there
> are ways to layer leaves and flower petals between the layers and
> iron them between sheets of paper (so the wax doesn't get on the iron
> or ironing board).

You can shred those stubby ends of crayons with a grater, then
sprinkle them between sheets of waxed paper, heat with an iron until
the crayon melts, then staple all around with a frame of construction
paper. Hang it in a window and you have a stained glass effect. The
leaves and flower petals would work with it, too.

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From Jenny:
" gather up boxes and make things. We've made a sail boat, a race car,
etc with boxes large enough for Z to sit in when he was that age. I
remember a 12 pack soda (coke) box being an engine on something we made.
He has also made forts and buildings large enough for his GI Joes. If
you have a Sam's Club or Costco's near by or possibly other stores might
let you have their boxes for free."

Ohhh you just gave me a nice memory! When C was about 5/6 we
acquired a bunch of big boxes, big enough to sit in. She made a train
out of them and attatched them altogether and put all of her special
stuffed animal friends in it, with her biggest bear being the engineer
with a special engineer (mr. bubble) hat. That thing was played with
for months, it went inside and outside. The neighbor kids loved it! We
lived in a big house at the time, so it lived anywhere it wanted to and
lasted a good long time!

M (6) has loved loads of hands on messy stuff. Almost everything
eventually involves more than just her hands by the time it's all done.
I keep large squares of cardboard to lay out to do large scale painting
with hands and feet, or the cornstarch and water stuff, or the playdough
stuff.

Things we keep as staple supplies are cotton balls, cornstarch, food
coloring, flour, salt, koolaid, large tempera paints/poster paints,
loads of paper, many things to paint with, rubber stamps and ink, yarn,
anything that seems like it might be fun and interesting, like those
water soluble packing peanuts, etc. We also have a messy art book that
has recipes that use common ingredients. Margaux pulls that out when
she is looking for physical stimulus activities.

Fort building is a fun and lasting activity to occupy a kid for many
many hours. We've even gone so far as to put the tent up in the living
room, or even the yard in the summer for outside play.

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From Sandra:
-=-Fort building is a fun and lasting activity to occupy a kid for many
many hours.-=-

She could have a cardboard house with stained-glass windows (back up
to the crayon-shavings-in-waxed-paper

)! And an aluminum-foil-wad
doorknob! Make a hole in the door and pull through a long fan-
folded piece of foil, and then wad up the ends that stick through for
doorknobs!!

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From Pam:
We used to dump stuff in the bathtub for the girls to play with/in.
You can buy finger paints, but we used to buy powdered tempera paint
and mix it with a little liquid soap and water. A favorite was instant
pudding. Cornstarch was good. They had a big bag full of bathtub toys
that were really mostly kitchen utensils, plastic food, fast food
toys, beach toys, etc. Egg beaters, whisks, sifters, funnels, basters
- those I remember as being especially fun.

Playdough made at home is WAY cooler than store-bought. Google for a
recipe - but be creative. Add oatmeal. Or high fiber cereal like Fiber
One or rice - for weird consistencies. Add pineapple or chocolate or
mint flavorings. Add bits of herbs and spices. You can use the
coloring that is used by cake decorators to get more vivid colors.

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Nicole said:
I asked my resident expert on 5 year old activities what she would suggest.

She says you have to make snowcones, do cannon balls onto the air matress , sugar painting ( glue on the paper then sprinkle colored sugar on ) , bicycle painting...

my 9 year was the "bicycle washer" and squirted paint on her tires and she rode her bike over a big piece of cardboard making colorful tracks.

From Ginger/Sandra:
Sandra said: Paper towels and food coloring. You can make kind of tie-dye
designs
with little cups of food coloring, fold the towel, dip different
corners in different colors, unfold it carefully and let it dry. You
can use those for wrapping paper (or tissue inside a box when a gift
is being wrapped).
========

OOoo, how about putting the food coloring in little travel spray pumps
and tie-dying with that!

From Diana:
> > Waxed paper is also cool with a pencil or colored pencils, and there
> > are ways to layer leaves and flower petals between the layers and
> > iron them between sheets of paper (so the wax doesn't get on the iron
> > or ironing board).
>
> You can shred those stubby ends of crayons with a grater, then
> sprinkle them between sheets of waxed paper, heat with an iron until
> the crayon melts, then staple all around with a frame of construction
> paper. Hang it in a window and you have a stained glass effect. The
> leaves and flower petals would work with it, too.
>
>

Once finished with a colored picture, you can rub the back of the paper with
vegetable oil for an instant "stained glass window" :)

From Pam:
> Sandra said: Paper towels and food coloring. You can make kind of
> tie-dye
> designs
> with little cups of food coloring, fold the towel, dip different
> corners in different colors, unfold it carefully and let it dry. You
> can use those for wrapping paper (or tissue inside a box when a gift
> is being wrapped).

[My kids] and I were dying eggs and we had lots of extra dye so
we used it on round coffee filters (fold and dip). After they are dry,
put three of them together to make flowers.

From Joyce:
We've also dyed rocks with egg dye. Porous rocks (like sandstone)
work really well, but different rocks have different effects. Try
half submerging some.

From Margaret:
One thing my daughter has really enjoyed is her art table. We have a
large low table covered with a wipeable table cloth and a low
bookshelf next to it with more books and art supplies. It is in the
living room/kitchen/dining room area (all open & connected) so it is
right in the center of everything.

The art table has plain paper, construction paper, scissors, glue,
glue sticks, crayons, markers, rubber stamps, pipe cleaners, popsicle
sticks, origami, tape, a stapler, lots of non-messy paints (dot-art
paints and another set that is like roll on deodorant), coloring
books, writing books for practicing letters, yarn, poofy balls for
art projects, stickers, clay, noodles, playfoam and probably a few
other things. We also have paints (water color and tempra), pastels,
glitter glue, and playdough available upon request. She LOVES it.

We had most of those things around before we had an art table, but
putting them all together for her like this made a huge difference in
how she used them and how often she used them. One of the things that
she really wanted for her birthday earlier this week was to get new
supplies for the art table. She helped me shop for new art supplies
and she was very happy when I reorganized the table and added a few
new things.

Some things I plan to add:
aluminum foil
feathers
pine cones & other things we collect outside
paper plates
colored pencils
colored tape (she has had this in the past and loved it - huge "spider
web" in the living room!)

From Barbara:
tie-dyed coffee filters also make marvelous butterflies when tied in the
middle with clothespins (or with pipecleaners), then you can tie a piece of
string on them and fly them like little kites! for the flowers, we fold the
filters up into fourths or sixths and cut petal edges into them, also, stick
a pipecleaner in the center for a stem, layer a few filters, bend the stem
in the center. the most fun is experimenting with different shapes and
folds.

More From Lisa:
Blow up a balloon and "keep it in the air" great indoor activity.

Balloon volleyball is fun - set up a net (sheet or large towel works great) one person on each side of the "net" and hit the balloon back and forth. OR you could bat the balloon back and forth between you two without a "net".

Balloon punch balls - it's a thick balloon with a rubber band. You hold onto the rubber band and rhythmically punch it back and forth - those are cheap and at most stores like groceries and Wal-Mart;k-mart;target types.

Z loved making balloon "things" like animals, hats, etc. We had a book that gave picture instructions, and the skinny balloons with the little hand pump - because you really cannot blow them up with your mouth. The instruction book was great in that it was a launching off place.

Take a large straw and attach gift wrap ribbons of various widths and lengths to it with a stapler or anything else you have for a stick/wand/something to attach the ribbons to. Running with the streamers/ribbons and waving them around.

go for a "walk" and hunt for neat things to glue onto paper; make rock creatures - a pet rock perhaps.

From Aar:
keep a good stock of stationery items in their cupboard including glue, threads - thick/strong/thin/various color, cellotapes - diff sizes - broad, medium, small - newspapers, various shape cutting scissors, spirograph making plates, waste pieces of cloths from your local tailor, spool, cloth pegs, unused cardboard boxes like things. sand, sand toys, water tub, water toys kept in a place where it is easy to clean up later. having a junk box (in my kids words - its precious items box) is also a good idea.

let the kid slowly learn to manage their his own free time by making/experimenting things around the house. also remember that you cannot make the child happy all the times by providing things in their hands... they need to figure out things on their own to occupy themselves.

More From Sandra:
-=-water toys kept in a place where it is easy to clean up later.-=-

We had a plastic bin for water toys, and would leave it in the tub
until they were dry and then put it under the sink. That was helpful
here.

The art table ideas are making ME want to go and play with paper and
glue and dye. I did want to remind moms whose children are new to
this and who are considering these things for the first time of this:

Don't make it your child's responsibility to keep the area clean.
You clean it up. Maybe, if you make it fun, your child will want to
help. But part of unschooling is providing space and materials for
learning to take place.

If you say "You can use these things if you clean it up," you might
as well say "You can use this, but the result will be me being angry
and you being in trouble."

Small children are capable of taking things off a shelf long before
they're able to put them back. They are able to color long before
they can manage to put crayons back in the box.

Make it your job to clean the area up, not theirs. The results down
the line will be wonderful.

Yesterday I was unloading a very full dishwasher to load it up with
two sinks' worth of dishes. I asked Holly if she would help, and
pulled out the silverware tray. She was putting that away and I was
putting away the other stuff, and I turned around and she and her
boyfriend were finishing off the whole rest of the inside.

He's from a "Clean it up yourself" family, and when I've gone in
where he is and offered to pick up his dishes, or brought him and
Holly food, he acts surprised and embarrassed and grateful--out of
proportion to what I'm doing, which is picking up dishes from where
people have eaten. He's not used to it. But my kids come and get my
dishes too, or if they pass by where I am they often ask if I need
anything.

Generosity will have a payback, a few years back.
Selfishness and control will too, but you won't like that one.

Cameron said:
Just to mention, there is spray frosting that can be used very artistically. Tastes terrible, so after we bought some and decided not to ruin a cake with it, it became backyard spray paint. It doesn't wash off any faster than the acrylic paint they fingerpainted onto the back porch, though. It's just not so toxic. One really cool ghosty face has lasted months. We also used to spread a large (8'x6') sheet of heavy plastic in the kitchen and give them paints (tempera, usually) and paper, or paper plates, or cardboard boxes, or small unfinished wooden things, or 25-cent baskets from the Salvation Army store. Often they painted in their underwear, then ended up painting their bodies. This offers still more fun in the tinted bath which follows. Plastic comes in huge rolls available at hardware stores. We also have spread it out on the floor to play in bubble stuff and in uncooked grits, a winter 'sand.' When the fun is done, roll it up and
throw the plastic out. We have also recently built 'log cabins' out of popsicle sticks from the dollar store. One house is very planned and tidy, and one is "like the Weasley's house, all tippy." Emily asked to paint something with acrylic paints again, so they are going to paint the picnic table. This resulted a few years ago in a porch with very sweet multicolored hand prints, etc. I can't wait to see what will end up on the picnic table this summer.

More From Pam:
> We have also recently built 'log cabins' out of popsicle sticks

If you take two or three sheets of newspaper - lay them one on top of
the other and roll them together from one corner to the other - put a
little piece of tape to hold the roll together - you can build with
the newspaper "logs." You can build HUGE structures and if you're
thoughtful about how you build, they can be very very strong. Use
masking tape or scotch tape to build with.

It takes a while to roll enough logs to have a lot of fun with them -
so I suggest parents (with kid help as much as they want) sit and roll
logs for a few hours one evening - maybe while watching tv. Then the
kids can have a plentiful supply to build with.

Friday Fill In

2008-06-27T16:07:00.002-04:00

http://fridayfillins.blogspot.com/

1. Birthdays are okay.

2. Spring is my favorite season because of everything coming back to life.

3. I feel my best when I am in line with Who I Am. (Reader of Conversations With God, here)

4. Chinese anything is my favorite food!

5. First impressions are very usually correct.

6. The best piece of advice I ever received was "Follow Your Heart".

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to being by myself (introverted and the girls are away for the weekend), tomorrow my plans include attending my brother's graduation ceremony and Sunday, I want to mostly relax but also get some house cleaning done!

Re: teaching to read

2008-06-26T19:10:00.001-04:00

From the AlwaysLearning list...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-=-With dd, I had already had the benefit of seeing ds teach
himself- -=-

I think it will help you move further faster if you revise this
thought to "I had already seen him learn to read."

He didn't need a teacher, not even himself.

http://sandradodd.com/wordswords
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was just thinking about this today because on Monday someone complimented Marti's reading skills. She is 8 (or will be in about 3 weeks) and I believe she reads at or above her level (whatever that means), but really don't know in honesty. I think the reason that I get this comment (Wow! She reads really well for her age) is because she looks younger than she is (many people think she is 6 or younger).

But the situation left me wondering what to say to someone that tells me that she reads well. I know that "She taught herself" isn't "appropriate" if you ask Sandra (lol), but with others outside the unschooling world, it seems like the best answer I can come up with. A couple times it has sparked a conversation and sometimes I hope the little things (like that or like seeing the girls out and about with us during school hours or seeing that we treat our girls like we love them instead of like they are burdens (which happens a lot when you ride the city bus around here)) will enlighten people. I don't know.

Anyway, I my point was that I was just exploring this theme today. Crazy how that works, huh?

Apology

2008-06-19T20:40:00.002-04:00

I wanted to pop on and apologize for not updating this in a long time. I have been busy with the girls and with taking pictures.

I have a couple little stories though...

Time in Example
5/22/2008
Lilly hit Marti
I brought her inside, and am ashamed to admit I spanked her bottom (for the first time in months though). Within 30 seconds I was appologizing and we were crying together.
So, we went downstairs and it turns out she was hungry and much more easy to "deal" with once I appologized and LOVINGLY got her something to eat.

6/12/2008-Marti turned down a powdered donut because "they don't taste good to me anymore".

Now, there is so much more that I want to write, but it's almost time for bed so I will pop on in a couple days I hope.

School

2008-05-20T09:28:00.000-04:00

I was in a Christian bookstore yesterday and looking around while my daughter was going to the bathroom (the reason we were in the store this particular time). I came across a scrapbook for school children. I open it up, out of curiosity and on the very first page it says this:

"God created recess
To bring a spot of joy
Into our schools of learning
For every girl and boy
Other memories linger
Though some completely fade
But memories
From the playground
Are the best ever made"

It made me glad the my children's entire lives consist of one big recess.

It also got me thinking about my own school experience. The poem is right. The memories that are most vivid are the ones of recess. How sad.

Mother's Day

2008-05-07T08:16:00.001-04:00

I have been thinking about Mothers Day lately.

Typically on Mother's Day I go into "martyr thinking". My dear and devoted husband wouldn't know romance if it bit him on the butt so generally speaking, I don't get anything. I might get something if I whine about how I didn't get anything, but then it feels like he's just doing it to get me to shut up so it doesn't mean anything.

Yesterday I got to thinking about the purpose of Mother's Day. What is it? Well, of course, everyone knows that it is a day to honor mothers. To show them how much you appreciate them, right?

Why do I need/want one day every year to celebrate being a mother? One day to know that i am appreciated by those whom I care for? ONE DAY? You have to be kidding me. I started rethinking that. I don't want ONE day. I want to know I am appreciated every day. I don't need a diamond ring or a piece of paper that tells me that. I need to look at my family in a different way. I need to see the ways that they tell me they love me EVERY SINGLE DAY!

So, I started yesterday.

My first "Mother's Day" was marked by the fact that my two beautiful, very social daughters who are unschooled (and since we haven't had a car in several weeks we haven't been able to make it to local meetings) turned down playing with the local schooled neighborhood kids (whom they have been playing with every day for the last 2+ weeks, might I add so they aren't not getting *any* social interaction right now) to make slime with their mom. What a compliment to hear them tell the kids to go home because they are doing a project with mom. It warmed my heart.

You can see the results of our science project at

http://365daysofsparkle.blogspot.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, after thinking about all this, I had to look up Mother's Day on wikipedia and got to learn the history of Mother's Day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother's_Day

Here is some interesting information on it...

At first, it was to honor the Gods in Roman and Greek times. Here's how it came about in the US.

The United States celebrates Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May. In the United States, Mother's Day was loosely inspired by the British day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War. However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, she wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament. Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.

When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on 10 May 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Originally the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, this building is now the International Mother's Day Shrine (a National Historic Landmark). From there, the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states. The holiday was declared officially by some states beginning in 1912. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States.

So much for that idea, lol!

"Homeschool Space"

2008-04-29T08:55:00.003-04:00

I have neglected this blog for a little too long. I have so many pics I want to post and stuff.

First, I have been working on a couple other things and wanted to "announce" them. I have a new blog, 365 days of Sparkle. I meant to post on it everyday, but it isn't turning out that way. I am also working on my photography, most of which gets posted at my deviant art site, but I haven't posted there lately either.

Okay, here are a couple pics of recent life in our house.

This is Lilly offering to do chores on her own (for chore wars).

The Girls, working with daddy on a wood project of his.

The little people on the trampoline that came and visited Lilly and I.

Marti showing of the loss of her 4th tooth

Our new "garden".

Also, I wrote this post on a message board that I frequent. Someone was asking for pics of how their homeschool space was organized. I put my revelations in red.

Well, we don't do "school-at-home" (we unschool) so I am not sure this will help you (everything is learning material in our house), but here are a few pics of my messy house, actually, just of the 2 main rooms downstairs and part of the bathroom.

In reality everything is "sprawled" all over our house, which bugs me a bit (the "everything has a place and everything in it's place" part of me), but sort of fits with our life. None of our "school stuff" is segregated into appropriate catergories because our lives aren't split up into subjects. We live the way we learn, we learn the way we live.

I didn't include the trampoline, sandbox and swingset out back, where they spend most of their warm days feeling the sand between their toes, learning about worms, climbing trees and jumping to their hearts content. I didn't include the front porch where we spend much time talking, playing in the rice box and have a mini garden planted (this is my first year doing a "garden" and a big thing in the backyard without a tiller was a bit intimidating to me).

I didn't include the upstairs either. Most of their "toys" are up there. Right now the hallway (which is a large open space, not a narrow typical hallway) is set up with barbie stuff galore. I was thinking the other day that my girls don't play with their toys enough. So, I set up their barbie stuff how I would have if I were going to play with it. I didn't even get halfway done when Lil was up there playing with me, and Marti wasn't far behind.

Their play food and dolly stuff is in Marti's room (which she asked for and slept in for about 2 weeks and is now back in our family bed). Their stuffed animals and dress up stuff are in my sewing room/photography studio. And we also have 3 shelves of books in our family bedroom.

So, in terms of helping you organize, I bet that I did sqat for that :lostit: , but it's what works for us at the moment (it's subject to change at mom's will and does *very* often).

So, here are my pics then. You'll have to forgive the state of the house. It needs a great many repairs and we are working on them slowly.

The Yellow arrow in this pic is pointing to something I forgot to photograph. This is the CD shelf. On top of the shelf are a couple baskets which have past mini pages (from the newspaper), flashcards, etc.

This is where we store library books

Audio/Visual area

Being taught proper English by an 8 year old.

2008-04-18T19:23:00.005-04:00

I feel like I am getting behind now for some reason.

I wanted to share this story.
Today, while eating lunch as a family I said "we haven't 'ate' like this in a while" because we haven't been actually sitting down at the table and eating together lately. Marti (who will be 8 in July) said to me, "Mom, it's 'eaten' not 'ate'. This girl has been to 1/2 a year of preschool and 3 weeks of Kindergarten. We have never had success with a curriculum (I tried for 2 weeks in what would have been 1st grade and for 2 weeks at the beginning of this school year) and has *never* had an English lesson in her entire life!

Also, I wanted to thank all the patient people on the unschooling lists over the last 3 years. Today has been a "wow" day for me. I feel like Superman, "leaping tall buildings in a single bound" and stuff. Here are some of my random thoughts today.

About not having a car (a dilema we may be facing)...
DH and I have been back and forth on this issue. I think that maybe *not* having a car won't really be all that bad. He sees not having a car as a lack of freedom and independence.

Today I asked him what *not* having a car meant to him because I was tired of butting head with him. I wanted to know where he was coming from, not so I could change his mind, but so I could relate. He said things like "no freedom" and "no independance". He didn't want to have to rely on the others or the bus.

After he told me what it meant to him I told him that to me, not having a car *meant* freedom AND independence. Freedom from debt was of course the first thing I thought of. We have can save $140 per month not having a car, which at first can be partially used to pay off our debt. Since we only make $600-700 per month, that is a lot of money. Freedom from debt led to so much more. Freedom to be *able* to live on a part time job (currently reading How To Survive Without A Salary) and have the extra time to be with each other. The list goes on.

When I explained to him that in the past month we have been able to set back $110 (granted, it is to fix the car) he started to come over to the "dark side". I said, "Imagine what we could do with that money if we didn't have to spend it on fixing the car." I didn't set out to convince him. I set out to understand him.

Other kids
My girls have been playing with these other (public schooled) kids in the neighborhood. They aren't the most respectful kids in the world, but they are okay. Today, Lil and I made cookies shortly before the kids showed up (after school got out) so I thought I would send a few out to the kids. The kids scarfed them down and begged for more. I let them have another and told them we didn't have anymore (even though I really wanted to say we didn't have any more to share, dh would kill me if I gave them all away). They didn't say thank you. They asked for more. When I told them we had no more, they asked for milk. I told them we didn't have any (we have 1/2 a gallon and dh drinks *lots* of milk, especially with his cookies).

Finally they quit asking for things and I couldn't help but to grumble (to myself) about how ungrateful they had been. As I was grumbling, I got to thinking. Maybe they saw right through me. Maybe they knew we had more of this or that. Maybe they knew I wasn't sharing what I had with love. I was being stingy (because we don't have the extra money). Even now, when they are back and asking for more cookies, I am still being stingy. It's no wonder they weren't thankful.

On college (yes, I know my oldest is only 8-almost 8 I mean)
There was a post recently on a board I frequent (called Diaperswappers) about unschooling. Someone asked about how unschooling prepared kids for college. Here is my reply.

I provided a bunch of links, but then thought... Maybe she doesn't want to read all that so I pulled a few quotes out. I can't testify to the college question because my oldest is 8, but I trust her to do what is best for her. I can say that at this point, it doesn't look like she will follow a traditional college route. She wants to be a mom. She loves babies and she wants to be able to stay at home with them. That said, she has also expressed interest in being a homebirth midwife. We have a local midwife that teaches that outside the typical college setting. I do hear that most unschoolers who choose to go to college do great because that is in fact their choice and they haven't been stuffed full of curriculum for the past 13 years. I know that I had had plenty of curriculum by the time I graduated and chose to wait on college. I am 27 and still waiting because now I have kids. My kids won't be so full of "institutionalization" and curriculum that if they want to go to college they will succeed at a high level.

Then I quoted Joyce's website and found an article on about.com and one on nehn.org. I am so glad that I have you all to fall back on.

On Bananas
My youngest DD *loves* bananas! I *hate* finding banana peels all over the house so yesterday before I gave her a banana I peeled it for her and threw it away. No mess to clean up or get annoyed with later. Simple, huh? It's the simple things that count.

I think that will be it for now. See you next time.

Feel the POWER

2008-04-12T08:53:00.003-04:00

What an amazing day, and it isn't even 9 am (wow, it has taken me an hour to write this, due to breaking for breakfast and to put a movie in for Lilly).

First a little background. Unschooling doesn't always come easy to me. In fact, it doesn't often come easy to me. You would think it would come a little more easy than most because my mom came as close to unschooling (though she didn't know the term) as one could given her circumstances, but sadly, it doesn't.

Also, a bit on our current circumstances. I am an introvert, and do need time alone. In "good" times, I don't *need* a lot of alone time. In stressful times, I need more than I like to admit (or ask for). Currently, life is stressful.

~We are attempting to live on $600-700 per month (although we don't have rent or mortgage, but it's not as easy as it sounds, even given that).

~Our only car broke down 2 1/2 weeks ago. It's transmission related, but we don't know exactly what until this coming Thursday.

~Because our car is broke down, the girls and I have been having to stay home most of the time and I think "cabin fever" is running high, as we naturally love to be out and about.

~At the beginning of March (so the bill for February) we got a $650 electric bill (apparently they had only *estimated* for December and January, but they had estimated low so they tacked on the rest to that bill). Obviously, with only $669 of income in March we weren't able to pay it, so now we have the $625 (I did pay a little) shut off notice and another $300 bill for April (March's bill). To answer questions, yes, we are trying to get help with it and I am pretty sure we can, it's just a tad more difficult now that we don't have a car.

Those are the *main* things that are stressing me out, I think. And believe me, I know it could be worse (in 2002 we were living in a tent in my mom's backyard after our home was repo'd), but things are crazy stressful and life in general feels out of my control.

I should also add that we live in Michigan, which has the highest unemployment rate in the nation (aside from Puerto Rico) by a margin of 1.2%, so "go get a [better] job" is a lot harder than it sounds.

http://www.fxstreet.com/news/forex-news/article.aspx?StoryId=aea7fdc2-c8df-40a9-b1f5-f6d6c0055879 (Feb 2008 unemployment 7.2%)

Anyway, after all that babbling, I wanted to tell a story today about Power. Not like electric, but the kind of thing that you see most "business tycoon" type people craving and pursing until they become domineering, pompous prats.

I've already said, I haven't been able to get much alone time lately. Usually my mom takes my girls every two weeks for a couple nights (I can just hear a lot of you say "LUCKY!" and yes, I know I am *very* blessed by this. It's the one thing that keeps me sane.) and that is enough time for me to rejuvanate. Two weeks ago, she had to work and this weekend she couldn't take them either. So, now I am faced with another 2 weeks of no alone time, which stresses me out even more.

I asked my SIL if she could take the girls for a couple hours this weekend to the park or something, but it's supposed to rain so it doesn't look like that is going to happen.

I asked my dh if he would take the girls to see a free movie today, but he would be out all day (with the having to ride the bus issue) with a movie *and* having to work. When he said no, the disappointment shone clearly on my face, I know it and I could see him worried about how I would handle it. Usually, especially in the past, I would blow up at him and everything would become his fault.

Instead, I went upstairs and brushed my teeth (I have also been known lately to take a shower). While brushing (and thinking I could really use a really high dose of patience today), a line from a movie came to me (forgive me, my brain works a lot in lines from movies, increasingly over the last ten years).

From Evan Almighty:
God is speaking to Joan Baxter, the main character's wife.

"Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for the family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other? "

So, I started thinking of the situation as an opportunity to be patient. Lilly had followed me upstairs and was talking to me, playing with the hair dryer, etc which was becoming increasingly annoying (the thought "Can't I just have 30 seconds alone!" screaming loudly *in my head*). I yelled at her, then apologized, put the hair dryer away and asked if she wanted to take a bath (her *favorite* thing to do). Then, I came downstairs and Rog was walking around trying to be helpful, but obviously thought he was walking on egg shells, expecting me to blow up at any moment.

Here is where the (think of Genie from Aladdin said in your best Robin Williams voice) *absolute power* comes in.

I asked him if he was going back to bed if he would please take the box [of cloth diapers] upstairs with him.

Seem silly? I basically gave him permission to go back to bed. I wasn't trying to be controlling. I don't think that the power is the fact that I controlled him, but in that I controlled me, and my response to the situation.

I think the trick was, I *wanted* him to go upstairs. I didn't say it so that when he walked away I could fume inside my head about how he should have wanted to sit here and talk to me.

Before, I would have started picking up the house, huffily, all the while yelling at him because I wasn't able to get my alone time.

The feeling was amazing.

Bus Ride

2008-04-09T09:42:00.002-04:00

This is Roger, Amanda's husband, and I have a story about our 4-year-old, Lilly. First, there are two things that led up to the situation. The first is that our car stopped functioning two weeks ago, and getting around has been interesting to say the least. Our girls had their first bus ride ever last Wednesday as a result. The second thing that led to this situation is a shut off notice from the electric company. Amanda had been talking with our Case Worker had the Department of Human Services about help, and she had filled out an Emergency Application that she had printed off from the internet. Lilly and I took the bus to DHS to drop off this application. While we were there, since we had time and money, we had a snack and a couple drinks from the vending machines there. Lilly asked if we could make the trip again the next day. Later on, on the bus ride home, she asked me where the papers I had were. That's when I realized that she thought the whole trip was about having a snack together someplace new.

No Car :(

2008-04-03T13:41:00.005-04:00

So, we have been without a car now for nearly a week and a half. It has been different and a bit stressful, but all things considered I think we are handling it well. The first week was rough. The girls started fighting quite a bit and we realized that we needed to get out of the house every day to help with that. So far, so good.

Here are a couple pics from the last 10 days or so, then I have a bunch from yesterday.

Lilly helping me make laundry soap.

Lilly working on her masterpiece. This was so cute! I wish I had gotten a video.

This is a pic of a castle that Lilly made for her dad.

Yesterday was a big day for us. We decided to ride the metro bus downtown to the library (not the one we usually go to, a closer one actually). It was the girls' first ride on the bus (and my second!). We had fun, but we stayed out just a little too long. Lil had an issue getting off the bus because dad told her to follow me, and she wanted to stay by him. We were holding the bus up so I picked her up (as well as I could with other things in my hands), while she screamed then I carried her home (which was only across the street). We were all tired and went upstairs and fell asleep shortly after getting home.

Oh, we also did a science experiment before we left yesterday. So, here is the experiment. It is a little milk in the bottom of a container, then a couple drops of food coloring and finally you stick a toothpick in with a bit of dishsoap at the end.

Here are the girls' puppet shows at the library, well, Marti's isn't uploading, so here is just Lilly's.

At the park...

Feeding the ducks...

Riding the bus home...

Snow again??? and more

2008-03-21T20:02:00.003-04:00

First, I wanted to post a few more pics from our nice day a little over two weeks ago, on the 13th. After dad got home from work we went to the park and to the library.

Here they are riding their bikes, then playing on the park equipment.

And of course, I have to post this pic of Rog. I absolutely love it. I am working on a way to play with it in photoshop.

This next picture is of Lilly cleaning the kitchen floor, VOLUNTARILY. Yep, you read right. She just WANTED to do it. You might say that it is just her age. Kids at that age love to help, right? Keep reading! (Pardon the crazy mess of a floor/cupboards. We are working on remodeling.)

Are you ready for this, you people who thought it was just age? Here is my 7 1/2 year old playing chore wars. On the 18th she just up and decided to log into her chore wars account, which she hasn't been in since October, when we were requiring chores.

Marti rarely WANTS to help out with chores. I would say "never" but often give her the line "Absolutes are rarely true, my young padawan", so I guess I should take my own advice. Anyway, when I say, "Marti rarely WANTS to help out with chores", that is like, almost never and when we ask her to do a chore (ie please put away your clothes) she grumbles and groans about it. We don't ask her often.

Anyway, since I have a record of it at chore wars, here is a list of things that she CHOSE to do a couple of days ago, on her own. No one asked. When she asked me if she could do chore wars, I told her that the prize really didn't hold any weight anymore (the prize was free time which she would usually use to play video games, but now she has unlimited game time) and she didn't care. She still wanted to play.

~Dusted
~Washed Kitchen Floor
~Took the laundry out of the dryer and put it in the appropriate basket
~Washed the TV
~Washed the floor in the front entrance
~Watered the cat
~Washed the mirror
~Washed the front door, inside and out
~Sanitized the door knobs

And she did some more chores the next day!!!

This next picture is of Marti and Lilly playing with their new toys yesterday that they bought with their allowances. They were getting along grandly. After playing for awhile with those toys the girls went outside and played in the backyard. When I told Lil it was time to come in to go to preschool she said she didn't want to go. So, we had a talk and decided that she is done with school. She is a homeschooler now, just like Marti and she was very excited about it.

THIS morning, the 2nd day of spring, when I left the house, it was a little chili, but was free of snow. I just took some pictures of our front step and our back porch a few minutes ago. We have gotten like 5 inches of snow. And I just put away the snow blower. Looks like I am going to have to get it out again. Curses! Michigan weather bites!

If you look carefully enough at the second picture you can make out dh's footprints from when he went to work only 4 hours ago.

Funny Story

2008-03-15T11:51:00.004-04:00

The girls are at my mom's house this weekend.

Last night Rog and I watched a video with Suze Orman discussing financial matters called Young, Fabulous and Broke. It got me thinking about our financial state, which like most Americans, is currently (and pretty much always has been) in a state of peril.

So....

Roger and I were in the car driving to pick up something from Freecycle this morning and my head is reeling about what I need to be doing to help our financial state. I am driving and thinking (which I do a lot) when suddenly Roger pipes up with a question.

"Why do Pirates wear big hats?". I laughed and laughed. It made me think about all the self help books that I have read about the "complexity of women" and "simplicity of men". Roger said it was like something out of a movie.

I just had to share.

1 Gig of videos, the trampoline & countdown to spring

2008-03-13T11:17:00.003-04:00

First, I have an announcement to make. My daughter is growing up too fast!

The story of every parent's life, I know.

My oldest is 7 1/2 and about 3 days ago she told her dad that she wanted her own room so she could "keep it clean and make her bed." So, I made it happen, even though my first a year ago would have been "we don't have enough room for that".

You know what though? She has only been in there for two nights, but she has kept it clean (even though some of my sewing stuff was still in there) and she has kept the bed made. If eventually she decides that she doesn't want to clean or make the bed, that will certainly be fine with us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We have been anxiously awaiting warmer weather here in Michigan the last couple of weeks. We even have a sort of countdown going on and Marti knows that the 20th is the first day of spring. The weather has been "teasing" us with back and forth warm and cold days. Today is not overly warm, but the big trampoline outside was dry for the first time in months so the girls went out to jump. Lil was actually trying to not be in this picture, but ended up in it anyway.

Oh, and I have to share this pic too. This pose was Marti's idea. Before I had gotten out there, she was meditating and she decided, after I had taken several pictures of her meditating that they were going to pose for one, like this. What makes this picture kind of comical is that Lilly (the one that is "praying") doesn't think God is real (completely of her own accord, but I suspect it is because she is more the logical "I don't believe in anything I can't see" sort of person because the same statement applies to Santa and the Easter Bunny as well) and the one meditating does believe in God.

Of course, I knew that that was going to be something that I was going to want to blog so I grabbed the camera to take the picture. I turned it on to find that the memory card was COMPLETELY full of videos. All of them made by Lilly. Now these videos are generally of her just dancing, talking to the camera and often, forgetting about it being on and going about her business. Here is a short example from the 1 gig of videos that I downloaded today. Can you guess that she has been watching a lot of Shark Tale lately?

I have many times had thoughts of deleting some of these videos. Then I think of Hannah, a girl from family I have never met, but who's story touches my heart. And I think of Isaac, a little man who changed my life. I just can't help but to think that if I ever lost my Lilly that I would never be able to forgive myself for deleting those videos.

Thank you Hannah and thank you Isaac.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, I completely forgot to include these pictures in this post (I usually go chronologically).

This picture is from March 2nd. We were on our way home from Grandma Gail's and Lilly wanted to go out to eat at Stir Max. We were actually on our way home so that Dad could go to work, so Stir Max wasn't an option, plus, we didn't have the money.

We actually only had a few minutes until we got home so I was trying to quickly understand what I could do to help her to quit crying. I offered to make her some rice when we got home or stop and buy her some fruit or ice cream (her usuals at Stir Max). Nope! Not what she wanted. So, I offered to set up our table with chop sticks and Chinese calendar placements, just like the restaurant.

Lilly: "No, that will be too much work."
Me: "But I am willing to do it if it will make you happy."
Lilly: "We can just stop for ice cream, mom."

Great! And just in time too because the last grocery store on the way home was coming into view and we were cutting the time pretty close for Rog getting to work. Anyway, she was very proud of getting her very own ice cream.

These next two pictures are from the Science Literacy Night that we went to at the local public school (my oldest LOVES Science and was exceptionally excited to go). Both girls got to test simulated blood from a crime scene, make silly putty, slime, learn about the periodic table of elements where they showed this video, and much more. They really enjoyed themselves. You even get to see the hand print smudges on my TV! Yay!

The blah days of February

2008-03-07T08:11:00.002-05:00

Ah!

We are all now stuck in the "blah" days of February. Well, it's March now, but until the snow melts, it's still "BLAH!" up here in Michigan. Not much to report really. We are just biding the days at this point. Taking in every experience and learning how to be better, more cooperative people.

I have no pictures, but last weekend we went to a pool party with our local homeschool group. It was LOADS of fun! We even took my nephew, Tommy, to the party (wow! I forgot how much work a baby is) and kept him overnight (I could joke about how little babies sleep, but he did surprisingly well except for a 5:30 am waking time, but I am a morning person, luckily).

My friend posted to one of my groups about all the holidays being about getting "stuff" these days and now that has me thinking

Here is my reply to her...

I tend to agree with you about "stuff", but then I think about Love Languages. One of the languages is gifts. Rog and Marti are gifts people. It doesn't have to be big stuff, but they love it. One time, I was out shopping and I got a little toy out of the quarter machine (well, I think it is fifty cents now, but ykwim) for Marti. She was absolutely ecstatic about that little toy. She carried it around all day and slept with it that night even. She doesn't carry it around every day anymore, but when it turns up amongst her toys she cuddles it and gets so sentimental. Sometimes I think it is crazy, but then I think again. Who am I to call her crazy? Wouldn't it be great if we could all get THAT much joy out of a little toy out of the quarter machine?

That reminds me of one time when we were at CiCi's Pizza and this little girl wanted a toy out of the quarter machine, but her mom said something along the lines of "You expect me to buy you that JUNK?" and the little girl said a very resolute, "Yes!" The mom said "No way" and practically dragged the girl out crying and screaming. All over TWENTY FIVE CENTS! How sad. That wasn't really related to your "stuff" post though. This next story is though...

My MIL was asking Marti this past year what she wanted for Christmas. Marti told her that she wanted to spend time with her (Marti's second LL is quality time). That was it. I am sure it seems to Marti that "grandma doesn't have time for her" because for the first 3 years of her life she went over to grandma's every other weekend. Well, MIL was STILL bugging after me to tell her what Marti wanted for Christmas. I was ticked. So, I went to one of my unschooling groups. They helped me see a different perspective, which is this. My MIL speaks (Love Languages) in gifts. If she isn't giving gifts to these kids, she doesn't feel like they will love her. Skewed, yes, IMO, but there it is. Laid out for me. I explained that to Marti about the LL and that MIL's was gifts and she understood. Now, she can appriciate the gift for what it is, an expression of her love.

As far as kids growing up thinking they are "bad" because Santa didn't bring them anything, I think that has WAY more to do with the way people parent. My mom was a single mom until I was 15. I have 1 brother (he's half as are all my siblings, but was the one I was raised with) who is nearly 8 years younger than me. We often didn't get a lot for Christmas, but we knew it was because mom didn't have the money. I also don't think she carried on the Santa thing for very long AND she got us things throughout the year AND she spent time with us.

We were also raised to believe in the "real life" Santas, instead of pretend men in red suits. The "real life" santas were people that had the gift giving spirit. A couple times there was a bag of stuff left on our porch when we were little with toys and stuff in it. Mom never figured out who it was from. A couple times, since adulthood, I have gotten cards in the mail with gift cards in them. Never signed. THOSE are the REAL LIFE santas and THOSE are what we should be teaching our kids about IMO. I let Marti believe in the Santa fantasy up until Christmas 06 when she thought Santa was going to bring her these great gifts. Well, we didn't have money that year so I told her that the man in the read suit didn't exist. I did also tell her about "real life" santas as well, but it pretty much "killed" Christmas for her. She was okay the rest of that year, but this past year, Christmas came and went without much notice to her.

Lilly doesn't believe in Santa. She came to that conclusion on her own. She also doesn't beleive in God, again her own conclusion. We think it is pretty much because she can't see them, but we will see, I guess. Either way, we aren't telling her she is wrong in either sense.

Wow! Now, I am rambling. Sorry.

I got nothing else for today. Thanks for reading!

Dust is beautiful

2008-02-22T16:24:00.004-05:00

Before I get started on posting last week's pictures, I wanted to tell you about a moment I just had.

We are moving things around in our upstairs and in the process, it was kicking up some dust. Inside one particular window the sun was shinning in just right so that you could see every bit of dust that was flying. Lilly piped up and said "Oooooh! Fireflies!" and went over to swish the dust around.

A few minutes later I was lying on our bed, right next to said window and I decided to watch the "fireflies". It turns out that dust is in fact very beautiful. There were red, blue and green specks and then there were some that seemed to glow for a few minutes until it fell where the light didn't hit it as well. It was beautiful.

So, today, my daughter taught me that dust can be a beautiful thing.

This first picture is the gift that Marti got for losing her 2nd tooth. She lost it on the 13th. She lost her first tooth about 2 weeks before that.

That same day we decided to celebrate Roger's birthday a day early because the girls were going to go to their grandma's that night. This is Lil helping me make Roger's gigantic cookie.

And here is the gigantic cookie.

Here are the girls making cards for Roger.

Here we are singing Happy Birthday to him.

We also spent Wednesday night watching the Lunar eclipse, but we didn't get any pictures of it. I don't have a tripod that would work very well for that. Both girls were really excited about it. I wasn't sure Lilly was going to make it because she usually goes to bed between 8 and 9, but she wanted to stay up to see it. So we watched it go completely into shadow, and then went to bed because at that point she was getting way too tired to stay up and she asked to go to bed.

Been Busy~Feb 21st

2008-02-21T08:04:00.002-05:00

Things have been kindda busy around here so I haven't gotten much posting done.

Wanted to share some pictures today of last week, then I hope to post tomorrow from this week.

These pictures are from our homeschool craft day at Katie's house on February 7,2008. We learned about the Chinese New Year, made dragons and lanterns, plus we got to see the new baby, Cho. It was a lot of fun!

On the 9th we bought a coconut, just for fun, for the first time and had fun opening it up. Lilly loved eating the coconut, but none of us were too fond of the coconut milk. We still had fun cracking it open and milking it then trying to figure out how to get the fleshy part out.

Feb 5, 2008

2008-02-05T18:50:00.000-05:00

Well, it's only been a couple days, but we had a bit of fun tonight.

Actually, this past week we bought new toothbrushes (the girls were not wanting to brush their teeth, which isn't a huge deal, but I thought new toothbrushes and toothpaste might help) and they wanted to save their old ones. Instead, we took pics of them with their old toothbrushes. We do this with much of their artwork and lego buildings and block buildings as well.

Today Marti was pretending to be a Queen. She insisted we call her Queen Marti and we had fun playing for a bit until we all got too warm upstairs and Lilly said that Marti was being a snotty queen. Her gold "dress" was made from scraps of a bed skirt that was given to us, but was too big for our bed.

After playing Queen, Lilly wanted to put together our US puzzle so we all sat down to do that. The girls would ask which state they had in their hands and I would tell them and let them know that it went "near _________" and name another state. Marti informed me that Tom Sawyer is from Missouri (apparently she learned this from Fairly Odd Parents, which is a show I wasn't sure about at first, but grew to love it and realized that just about every episode was very similar in that Timmy always makes an irresponsible wish and the Godparents can't help him fix it so he has to figure out how to do it by himself) and that the Mississippi River is in Mississippi. They know it is REALLY cold in North Dakota. Lots of potatoes are grown in Idaho. Georgia is famous for it's peaches and Zoey 101 takes place in California, where lots of movies are made and movie stars live. All because there are pictures on almost all the states :)

I did want to share one more thing that the girls used to play on Noggin. They used to play this video and I thought it was adorable so now they play it all the time for me. I love it!
Online Videos by Veoh.com

Oh, wow! It's been a minute.

2008-02-03T16:00:00.001-05:00

The girls have been on the computer a lot lately so I haven't got much of a chance to update. Today they are at Grandma's and I am enjoying uninterrupted time at whatever it is I am doing at the moment, but I miss them as well.

Let's see what kind of pics I can find today, although I don't think there will be too many.

I haven't caught most of our learning in pictures this last couple weeks. In fact, some things I KNOW I haven't caught have been pretty good discussions with Marti. I can think of two right off the top of my head.

First, she watched the movie Serenity with her dad a few nights ago. Tuesday it would have been. Now Rog and I are really stuck on this movie and the TV show that went along with it, but never got a fair chance called Firefly so we have been watching it a lot to be honest and she hasn't shown much interest which is fine, but the other night she got bored of playing Furcadia and went to sit with dad.

**********SPOILERS AHEAD**********
The next day she had a doctor's appointment which I took her to and on the way home she wanted to discuss "the Pax" that was talked about in the movie. The Pax was a chemical released into the air on a planet called Miranda because the Alliance (the government) was sure that it would stop the people on the planet from fighting. Well, the Pax did its job a little too well and all the people on the planet stopped fighting, but then they stopped doing everything else too including breathing. Only catch was, about 10% of the population had the opposite reaction and they became overly aggressive to the point of rape and murder. The Alliance was trying to cover up what happened on the planet and the characters of the show were on a mission to make it known.
**********SPOILER OVER**********

Anyway, the discussion that Marti and I had was about anger. She basically thought that the Alliance had a good idea, wanting to try and weed out anger. We talked about how anger was an emotion that we actually NEED to have. We talked about healthy and unhealthy ways to express our anger and we talked about adrenaline. It was a positively lovely conversation, all because we watched a movie.

Sometimes I feel like we watch too much television (movies really, we don't have TV right now), but then things like this happen and I know that we are living the right life.

The other discussion that we had was just yesterday or the day before. First, a little background about religion. I was raised Christian in a Nazarene church from birth to about 13ish. Then I was in and out of church every once and awhile (think like once or twice a year) until I was about 23 at which point we attended an awesome church 45 minutes from our home every Sunday for about a year. Gas prices got to high so we looked for another church and didn't find a good one. We have been to church only a handful of times since.

Last year, my long time (I am talking 25 1/2 years here and I am only 27 years old) best friend was carrying a son and went into premature labor. She had Isaac at 27 weeks. He lived 18 days. Here is his web page if you would like to see the whole story. His life, and mostly his death was a HUGE turning point in my faith. I questioned whether God existed and if he did how he could put my friend through this. She had been trying for a baby for so long. I questioned EVERYTHING and in a way, I still am going through my journey. At this point, I don't know what I believe, except that God, if there is a God, is okay with my journey. I believe that Leslie in the movie Bridge To Terabithia summed it up well when she said "I seriously do not think God goes around damning people to hell. He's too busy making all of this."

So anyway, on to mine and Marti's conversation. What happened was that I got up out of the chair and as I did I was stretching and saying "Oh, my God" in that sort of tired, didn't really want to get up sort of way. She informed me that I was not supposed to say God's name in vain. I asked her where she learned that (she went to Sunday school 3 1/2 YEARS ago!). She told me that she remembers it from Sunday school (WOW! I'd give anything for that girls memory!) and that she also knows it from the few Christian cartoons that we have including Veggie Tales and Hermie. Because Bridge to Terabithia was so fresh in my mind I asked her if she thought God went around damning everyone who said his name in vain to hell. She said "well, no". It was interesting to talk to her and see her unwavering faith like I used to have.

Okay, I think I have written more this time than I ever have. Wow! On to pictures.

On January 24th the girls and I made the BEST chocolate chocolate chip cookies EVER!

The best part, right?

Then we had to do dishes, their decision, not mine.

Sweet Rewards!

The girls also signed their Valentines which we will take with us to the homeschool Valentine party in a few days.

On January 25th we went to the Museum, which currently has the Magic School Bus Weather Exhibit. My girls both really enjoy getting in front of the news camera and watching themselves on the TV. While I was taking pics of Lil she was saying something about watching "Lilly Watch One" which is a spin-off from the movie Red Riding Hood (I think Joey Fatone does such a good job in this movie!) because their TV station in the movie is "Wolf Watch One". I tried to get her to say it on video, but NOPE!

I wanted to share this next picture because it exemplifies that this blog is as much if not WAY more about what *I* learn from my kids than what they learn from me. On the day in question I was having a VERY grumpy day. Stress had tackled me and pulled me to the ground. I had just laid there for awhile, but in the process of trying to get up and back on my feet I had made myself one of my favorite foods, chicken salad. I had just sat down to eat it when Lil came up and asked for a bite. I didn't really want to share, but I gave her a bite thinking she wouldn't want anymore. She proceeded to make a fool out of me and decided to go get her own spoon so we could share. THEN when it was all gone, she wanted a salad of her own. I managed, in the moment, to step back out of myself and see things from a totally different person's perspective, which is why I asked for this pic to be taken.

These pics are from a day when we had had quite a bit of snow and had to go shovel the driveway. We had also gotten the rake out to help because the snow was very heavy and wet and hard to move (and we only have one shovel). Lil decided she wanted to use the rake too. But in a different way. Rakes make very good spoons.

I wanted to share these pics because they are so similar. Marti is 3 1/2 in her pic, Lilly is 4. I bet that you would never guess she is a little louder, a little "spunkier", would you?

Then a pic of Lilly and Stella pretending to be bunnies. This was Friday.

Then, on Friday night we were lucky enough to get to watch my nephew, Tommy while his mommy went out (she doesn't get to do that too often).

Finally, I wanted to share a picture and a video of Marti.
On Friday night as Lil and I were going to bed (we go much earlier than Marti does) Marti was telling me that she was cold. So I suggested that she cuddle under the blankets on her bed, just until she got warm and then she could get up. I had NO ulterior motives when making that suggestion by the way. None whatsoever. She said that she didn't want to because she then she would fall asleep and she wasn't ready to go to sleep which in itself was a funny statement to me. I told her that if she did fall asleep than she was probably READY for it. She disagreed so we got her a blanket and she went into the library area of our house (the hallway upstairs). When dad got home, he found her asleep in the library. She told me the next morning she had read two books, cuddled up under the warm and passed out.

That's our "Don't Wanna Miss A Thing" Girl. Check out her slide show here.

All within the last day

2008-01-18T10:35:00.000-05:00

I tried to post yesterday, but found myself just complaining about how Lilly is not being as well behaved as I want her to be. What a laugh!

So, here I am today with pictures of things I have suggested to them and they have loved the ideas.

January 11th~We headed to Walmart so that we could pick up mini trampolines for us and for Stella's family because they were on sale for $19, which is like 1/2 off. Marti and Lilly also chose to spend their allowances (which is $5 every other week per girl, not much but they are currently happy with that). Marti had saved her allowance from the payday before so she had $10 and Lilly had $5. We went through the normal, "Mom, can I have this?" and "Let's look at the price. Nope, this one says ______, you don't have enough for that one, but if you save your money you will have it in ______ weeks ".

Marti picked a fairy Barbie and a Polly Pocket set complete with horse. Conveniently, I had recently cleaned out their room and moved all the Polly Pocket stuff downstairs in a case.

Lilly picked the same pink fairy Barbie as Marti and recently named her Nika.

So, here is Stella and Lilly on the trampoline which was initially in the basement, but is now upstairs in their bedroom.

And a picture of them together LOOKING like best friends. Don't let that fool you, lol! Stella also looks taller in the pic because she has dress up shoes on. They are actually about the same height even though Stella is 10 months younger than Lilly.

And a picture of Marti with her Polly Pockets on Friday. This was the first day in a long time that she had little interest in playing video games.

Saturday morning Lilly got up and wanted to play Veggie Tales Dominoes (which I printed from here and laminated at Office Depot when they were doing free laminating for teachers back in September). So, we played a game, then we spelled her name out, which she was very proud of, as you can see.

Tuesday, I thought the girls might like to try something new so Lilly and Stella helped me make crepes. Lilly and Marti wouldn't try them, but Stella liked them.

Yesterday Lilly and Stella climbed into their swimsuits and took a bath. This activity is a sensory thing for both girls. Usually it calms them. Yesterday, it ended in fighting, but they had fun for a minute.

We also pulled out a game that I bought back in the summer and forgot about. Pin the key on the treasure map. They liked it alright, but Lilly couldn't grasp the concept of leaving the blindfold on. If she left the blindfold on she just couldn't see where the X was to put the key.

We also downloaded a game suggested on one of my lists called TimezAttack. I wasn't sure Marti would get into it, but she loves it. Now, she is learning her multiplication facts BEFORE she has her addition and subtraction facts memorized. Uh-oh! Just kidding. It's an Oh-well here!

It seems yesterday was quite a busy day. In the afternoon Lilly and I went to buy a "snake" in order to clean out our kitchen sink drain (which didn't end up working), but Lilly came into the kitchen and asked what I was doing. I said, "Snaking the drain". She says, "Can I snake the drain?". Of course I let her and she thought it was just the best thing. That alone made all the trouble we went through for "nothing" totally worth it.

Today, the girls made sticker pictures and macaroni necklaces, plus they have been playing in the girls' bedroom a lot lately.

Well, that's all for today. Have fun this week!

Lots of Breakthroughs

2008-01-09T16:27:00.000-05:00

I only have a few pictures today, but am happy to report a few breakthroughs.

First, we have noticed that this week, Marti has had much less interest in video games than in previous weeks. She has spent quite a bit more time cuddling with us to watch movies (which we do nearly every night), playing with Lilly, and reading books before bed. It's nice, but I know that she still adores her video games and this will come and go. I am fine with that.

The second isn't a breakthrough so much as my advice to another mom. This is definitely about what my kids have taught me. I babysit for this particular mom and she was distressed about her daughter's behavior, especially when it came to getting dressed in the morning. The reply was quite long.

This was my advice to her...

"I don't notice too many issues with her. I am thinking that right now, currently, she is sick and that could be the cause of some of the issues.

As far as clothes go, I am sure you already let her pick out her own things, but (and I know this can be difficult) try and make sure her favorite outfits stay washed. Also, you might try asking her if she wants to pick her clothes out the night before or have you tried hanging everything on hangers? I used to put pants, shirt and underwear all on a hanger. There are less choices this way and I know for Lilly that too many choices can be overwhelming.

Another suggestion. Try putting her dresser in the laundry room. I don't know why this might work, but we have taken the girls' clothes out of their room and some days it seems easier, some not. However, Lil has stopped taking out all her clean clothes and strewing them all over the room now. Have you tried pruning down her clothes? Maybe there are too many to choose from.

As far as the behavior issues go...

I used to have HUGE behavior issues with Lil (or what I perceived to be behavior issues). Eliminating the Red dye issue has helped a lot, but what has helped even more is following the principles of unschooling. Now, unschooling can be a lot to swallow and I know that you can't actually take your kids out of school so please don't think I am suggestion that.

It can be a lot to read, but the VERY best site for info on unschooling is www.sandradodd.com/unschooling, but I wouldn't go there right away.

The first thing that I want to suggest is that you do is wrap yourself up in the word "autonomy".

According to Merriam-Webster

Main Entry: au·ton·o·my

Pronunciation: \-mē\

Function: noun

Inflected Form(s): plural au·ton·o·mies

Date: circa 1623

1: the quality or state of being self-governing; especially : the right of self-government

2: self-directing freedom and especially moral independence

3: a self-governing state

This is what we are striving for in our household and that includes Stella when she is here. To an outsider, it looks like I spoil my kids. I will admit that I do my best to give my kids EVERYTHING they want. I certainly think that they deserve it.

I would start by nearly always saying yes. Say yes to everything you can, and even some things that you can't.

Before I start to explain a little, let me quote Amy...

"Saying yes doesn't mean that I ignore my needs and limits, or that I don't keep my children safe, or that they don't learn how to treat people well. We talk about all these things, and I model respect, and we often come up with solutions together. I'm not nearly perfect at it yet, but I really don't punish anymore, and I'm always trying to work my way toward "Yes, and how can I help?""

When I first started saying yes I came upon a situation that most people would say no to. Lilly wanted to play in the road. This was at my MIL's house, not my own and she was about two. I could have easily told her no, but I didn't. I went into the road with her and I watched her the entire time. She soon grew bored with it and was back in the yard. She has only asked to play in the road one other time although she did ask to ride her bike in the road last summer because it was easier than riding on the sidewalk (she would get stuck on the cracks) so, again, I went in the road with her. If you live on a busy street you could still say yes by saying "Let's ride on the sidewalk" or "Lets walk around the block where there is a less busy road."

Now, you are going to meet a TON of resistance with this idea. Firstly within yourself. Before I started this, I thought "well, this will be easy, I don't say no a lot anyway". Boy was I crazy there. I am still working with myself and I first heard of unschooling THREE years ago!

You will also probably meet resistance with your husband, I am sure. Don't tell him what you are going to do and don't expect him to do it. Just model it. If you walk in on him saying no or scolding one of the kids I would suggest getting said child out of the situation by taking them and doing something with them, getting them something to eat (even when it's almost dinner time) or whatever. Then go to your husband and see if there is anything you can do for him. Don't mention the scolding of said child. Perhaps he had a hard day at work, etc. This was a bit hard for me at first. I thought "I already do nearly everything and have my plate full as it is and YOU want ME to do something MORE for HIM?" So, believe me, I have been there.

Also, other family. I try and remember with them that *I* am my child's advocate and sometimes her ONLY advocate. If she were to talk back to said adult, no doubt she would get in trouble. So I do it for her so she doesn't have to. At Christmas, Marti was in a tree outside a public place where we were having our Christmas gathering. My grandfather told me to get her down. I just said "No. She isn't hurting the tree." and I walked on by him. I was able, at that same gathering though, to look back and see that my girls were the most well behaved of the bunch. Including some of the older teens.

Just know though that sometimes, this will all blow up in your face. You will yell and you will scream. You will feel awful about it. Your mom (or sister, or dad, or fill in the blank) will say something to your daughter and you won't say anything, but you will think later, I should have said...

Relish those moments. Those are learning moments.

About a week ago Lilly pooped her pants and I BLEW a gasket and then some! I yelled and screamed at her and then turned around and yelled at Roger. I felt awful IN THE MOMENT, but I STILL could not stop myself. After I got things sorted out I went upstairs and meditated on it. Lilly hadn't even come to me right away about it and I was pissed about that. She hadn't come to me because she was afraid I was going to blow up and I did. What did I teach her in that moment? That she CAN'T come to me. She couldn't come to me when she pooped her pants. If I kept this up, would she come to me when her friends offered her drugs down the road or when her boyfriend wanted her to have sex? I realized I was NOT being the mom I NEEDED to be.

Yesterday she pooped her pants again. There was no yelling and no screaming. I showed a bit of disappointment at first, but I tried my best to clear that and I know that next time, I will be even better.

In those moments, when you yell and scream or when you get disappointed or when you are sure it isn't working because of something your mom said or something Dave said, feel free to give me a call or go read at Sandra's website.

I know this has been a ton of info and advice and I am not sure that you will be interested, but those are my thoughts."

I felt quite pleased with the realizations I have come to leading up to that letter and while writing it. I hope that it helps one or two other soul out there.

Now, on to the fun stuff!!! Pictures for the last couple days!

Yesterday was grocery shopping day and Lilly went with me to the first store. For awhile she sat in the cart with the grocery list to cross things off per her request. It lasted about 3 or 4 aisles and she was down walking, but I took a picture of the grocery list because it shows lots of handwriting practice and some reading practice (if we were concerned with those things, lol).

As far as the handwriting goes, I picked up a couple things that weren't on my list and she insisted that I spell them out for her so she could write them down and be able to cross them off. Too cute!!!

This next picture is of Lilly teaching me how to play a new game that she made up because I told her that I did not know how to play the game Phase 10, which is what cards she had brought out.

And we can't forget the one a bit later where she decided she was hungry for sugar. My knee jerk reaction would be best described if you watch Ned's Declassified. On the Field Trip episode, at the end when Moseley sees Ned in the Wild Boy Get up and "laughs", that is about what I was feeling like when I seen her with the sugar, lol. If you have no clue what I am talking about, I highly suggest the episode. Heck, I highly suggest the show. It is a family fave! Actually, I found the clip on Youtube (gotta love youtube!). The part I am talking about is about 2:25 into the clip.

I actually got her a little bowl of the sugar so she could my big one didn't get spilled and turned around a few moments later to the sugar spread all over the desk, so it turns out I didn't have anything to worry about after all.

A little later that evening Marti was playing a game on miniclip and I look over to see Hilary Clinton being "knocked out" by Rudy Giuliani. Hilarious. She didn't really understand about it being about the presidential candidates, but I told her we were about to pick a new president and this game's players were modeled off of those candidates.

The last picture I have for now, is from today. We live in Michigan. It is January 9th today and my girls were able to go out and play on a completely dry trampoline. I think the farmers have got to be loving this weather. How it snows and then melts and soaks into the ground, then snows again. I would think it would produce quite a crop coming up. I hope it does them well.

And I sign off for now so I can go get dinner and enjoy nighttime movie cuddling at the Horein Manor.

The Holidays

2008-01-03T14:15:00.000-05:00

I could tell you all that we have been busy around here the last few weeks and that is why I haven't posted, but I bet you already know.

Our Christmas and New Years were both good. My great grandfather who is nearly 80 went into the hospital on Christmas Eve and unfortunately came out with hospice so we are all spending lots of time with him.

As usual, we documented the last few weeks with pictures and will be putting together the pictures and videos from June 2007-December 2007 on two big DVDs. We have 4.16 Gigs of picturess and 2.57 Gigs of videos.

We wanted to share a few with you all and even a couple videos of us sledding that we took today.

Lets start with talking about the latest video game that we have been playing. It's called Harvest Moon Magical Melody and we got it from our local library. Marti and I both LOVE it. Her favorite thing is to watch me play (which would honestly bore me to death if the roles were switched, but she loves it). Anyway, here is a pic of some of our accomplishments ( you can click on the thumbnail and be taken to a bigger version if you wish.

In the center we are freeing the Harvest Goddess (one of the main goals in the game). From the top clockwise the pics are as follows

-LiLari (our characters name) with our sheep who are named Baaaab (from an episode of Drake and Josh called Sheep Thrills), Acrobat (not named after anything, Marti picked this name), Bella (Bellatrix from Harry Potter) and Cissy (Narcissa from Harry Potter)

-LiLari with our chickens who are named Cormac (after Cormac McClaggen in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince which I had just finished reading), Abbot (Hannah Abbot in Harry Potter), Won Won (what Lavender Brown calls Ron Weasley in HBP) and Wormtail (Peter Pettigrew's nickname in Harry Potter)

-LiLari with the love of her life, Alex, the doctor in the town.

-The Harvest Goddess right before turning from stone back into her regular self.

The other pictures are of different notes we recieved which helped us to free the Goddess. The ones I included in the collage I can't remember the exact names for the notes, but...
the Wild note, the Fodder note, a note for planting a tree, dyeing wool note, brushing note, shearing note for shearing the sheep, the snow note, and the second home note.

This game has been much fun for the both of us and now we are trying to find a way to collect the money to buy it.

CHRISTMAS

This next picture is of my eldest daughter. On this particular day we went to a gathering of my maternal family with whom I am fairly close, but we don't really see much of anymore, like we did when we were kids.

Lilly was on the VERY shy side for the first half of the gathering and I held her most of them time (and as it is usual with family, we got a few snide comments which we completely ignored).

Towards the end of the event Marti decided to go outside with my 12 year old cousin and my 7 year old decided to climb the tree. When I found out, I laughed and went out to take a picture, which is below. My mom loved it too as she happened to be the "Best Tree Climber On The Block" when she was growing up and considering she lived in the country, blocks are VERY big there, lol! My grandpa did tell me to go get her out of the tree and when I refused, he dropped it. Here is the pic.

I personally had a little trouble dealing with Christmas as all my girls wanted to do was play video games. They weren't even that interested in gifts. It was a silly thing that I ended up becoming a martyr over for a few days, but I got over it rather more easily than I have with similar things in the past.

Here are some pics from New Years Eve when we decided (just that afternoon in fact) to go to the beach on Lake Michigan that we often migrate to several times throught the year, especially in the summer.

The Lighthouse

Daddy and Lilly playing Star Wars

Marti

Lilly

AND on the way back home, Marti let her chocolate melt in her hands and ended up rubbing it all over her hands, but it was okay because we were stopping at the store anyway. It took her a full five minutes to get the chocolate off, lol! It felt good to not make a big deal out of this. This unschooling thing is catching on, lol!

New Years Eve Night we had quite a snow. I took pictures in the early hours of morning before dawn (yes, I wake up naturally before dawn on a regular basis WITHOUT an alarm). If you click on the pic, you will see a bigger pic and can even see the moon peaking through the branches. I was able to share this beautiful view with my family through pictures because they all like to sleep later than me.

Later that morning Lilly was playing on Playhouse Disney and made me a picture, so I had to share that too.

And then, even later we all went outside. The girls played in the snow and Roger and I took turns cleaning off the car, shoveling the driveway and sidewalks. Marti started a snowman. The first pic is Marti and Lilly with the bottom of the snowman. The second is of Marti with the middle which she ended up throwing at me because she "didn't like" something I said. It hit me pretty good and we had a good laugh.

And Finally, the videos from today. The first is of both girls going down and "crashing" at the bottom and the second is of Marti attempting a ramp which had been pre-built. Her sled got tripped up on the ramp and she fell face first into the snow. After we got the snow out of her face she was fine. In fact, when she seen the video she cracked up and told me that I should put it up here, so I am.

Not Much Happening-Rant about furcadia

2007-12-18T06:28:00.000-05:00

We didn't have a whole lot happening this past week, I guess. We have been working on making Christmas presents this week and of course playing lots and lots of video games. Marti's latest game that she has checked out from the library is called Harvest Moon and it actually looks really fun and I am looking forward to playing it myself. She hasn't been on Furcadia as much as she used to. From what she has explained to me, it is getting harder and harder to find nice people there. No complaints here, not after someone claimed to be a murderer recently.

Some might ask why I didn't pull the game away from her if that was happening and I did think about that, but I decided I wanted to let her make her own decisions regarding that game. She really liked it and I didn't want her to look back with anger.

In my vision, I can see her stumbling upon the game 10 years from now. Now, there are of course many, many outcomes possible, but two that crossed my mind were...
1. She looks back on the game and feels completely awful because I made her stop playing. There is tons of renewed anger that not only caused damage the first time (I mean obviously caused damage because she is angry about it now, not to mention the fighting and tears the first time around), but is causing damage at 17 as well.
OR 2. She looks back on the game and has fond memories of her mom "letting" her play even though mom was not fond of the game for a time (yes, I expressed to her that I was very upset about the "murderer" comment.

I decided to choose option 2.

Now that I went on and on about that, I did remember one pretty fun thing that we did this past week. We had a co-op with our local homeschool group (that are not unschoolers) where we learned how to do felted wool soap. We took a bar of soap and felted the wool to go around the soap so that it had a "built in" loofa of sorts which was also exfoliating. I forgot to bring the camera, but maybe I will take a pic of the soaps.

I think that is it for this week. See you all later.

Christmas Pics and more

2007-12-11T16:07:00.000-05:00

We don't have too many pics for this week. Our gator and fish seem to have stopped growing and the girls decided that they will make good bath toys. Maybe they will grow bigger in the tubs.

We do however have pics that I have forgotten to post at various times.

Here are some science experiments from the beginning of November.

Static Electricity:

Making Music:

Other:
Marti rolling a book on the floor with straws (friction)

Here is Lilly reading by flashlight in the dark (of course, it doesn't LOOK dark because the flash was on, but I assure you, that is what she was doing.

Here are some pics of Marti designing a "Happy Birthday" book for me last Thursday on www.seussville.com as well as some other stories.

This is Lilly from early this morning playing with her new book that she got for her birthday from her grandma. It's got a "Lite Brite" at the top and the book shows you how to spell words with the pegs. Very cool.

And here she is with her camera from her aunt Mallory.

Finally, here are their Christmas pictures that I took this afternoon. Marti had two really good ones. Lilly was not into it today too much so we got one okay one. Then there is one of the girls together.

This week

2007-12-05T07:50:00.000-05:00

We have had a busy week. We got tons of advice on "meeting needs". I will share them at some point, but for today I wanted to get some pictures posted of this past week.

On Friday of last week, we had some friends over. Things were kindda crazy around here with 6 kids 7 & under running around, but it was a lot of fun too. Marti helped me pick up the house before they got here (without arguments) and we made chocolate muffins to give to our friends while they were here. All the kids (well, not little Maggie) had a blast jumping on the trampoline too. Here is a picture.

Lilly actually had a really hard time with this and didn't stay on for too awfully long because she wanted to control/direct everyone's jumping.

On Saturday we put up the Christmas tree. Here is a pic of the girls with their bulbs that their grandma had made for each of them.

Marti wasn't fascinated with decorating this year like she has been in the past. Most of the time that we were decorating she was playing video games with her friend Hannah who was over for awhile. Can't blame her. I probably should have planned decorating for when friends WEREN'T over, but she didn't seem upset or seem like she felt she had to choose between the two options.

Sunday we put together a couple experiments. First was the Naked Egg experiment.
Here is our egg freshly put into the vinegar, 8am

Here is our egg 13 hours later

And here it is at 7:30am the next morning

Soon after that pic I drained the vinegar and was going to see if the liquid in the egg would come out due to osmosis, but Lilly decided that the greater experiment would be "how much pressure applied to the egg membrane will make the membrane break". So now we just need to get another egg into some vinegar and try again!

We also put the alligator and fish back in distilled water on Sunday.
So, this is Sunday...

Monday...

Tuesday... (we couldn't find the red fish at first, but we found it yesterday)

We also got to make bread mix (we put all the dry bread ingredients into ziplocs for quick breadmaking) and Lilly wrote "Bread" on every back. On the first bag I told her every letter and then she wrote that letter. On the second bag, she said "B?" I said, "Yep, B." She said "R?" I said "Yep. R." and so on. She forgot the letter "A". The third, forth and fifth bags she spelled out bread and I confirmed each letter. Here she is with her first bag.

On Monday we got our first really good ground covering snow here and the girls went out to play (yes, without coats).

We also made chicken noodle soup for lunch with homemade egg noodles and the egg noodle dough was shaped a little like Alaska which we thought was kindda cute!

Finally, on Tuesday we went to visit another friend and had a blast. While we were at their house they brought out their hairless albino rat named Remu (pronounced Rema) and Marti got to hold her. Marti said "it felt very nice to hold a rat. I've never held a rat before."

I think this week I will try and post a bit more often so I don't have such a long post all at once.

Meeting needs...

2007-11-29T14:43:00.000-05:00

I have posted this question to some of my groups, but wanted to post it here as well. I often struggle with this.

First, How do you meet the needs of 2 or more children when they want different and often conflicting things? For example, today dd (4) wanted me to sit and watch a movie with her. DD (7) wanted me to make her some lunch. I did end up doing both, but narrowly avoided a meltdown by dd (4) because her attention was mainly with the movie. The meltdown came a few minutes later when I brought the girls lunch. Apparently dd (4) didn't want mac and cheese. In fact, she wasn't hungry. She was thirsty. I had brought her water, but she wanted sprite. I felt that I handled that decently though. I just turned around, went back to the kitchen, put the mac & cheese on the counter and got the sprite. I do think that I could have done it with more love though.

The last few days

2007-11-28T16:30:00.000-05:00

Well, it has been about a week now since I posted.

We visited the ILs for Thanksgiving on Thursday which was really pleasant, except we missed cousin Izik who was at his dad's. We did get to see baby Tommy though. Here are the girls and baby Tommy.

He's getting to be so big. Here he was after he was first born.

On Saturday the girls were spending the night with my mom so dh and I cleaned the whole house and it was looking pretty awesome. I cleaned out my sewing room and took pictures of my workspace to post (sometimes it is fun to look at other people's spaces for ideas). So, here they are. Click on the thumbnails for a bigger view.

This week we have just been doing the usual, whatever happens to come up. Marti played Furcadia for 12 hours yesterday. I have to admit, some of the folks on the game have seriously irritated me. This one time several people made copies of my daughter's character with slightly different names. All these "Lia"s (my daughter's character) were going around being rude to her and to other people. We wrote to Furcadia about it and got no response.

Then, yesterday this 17 year old boy told "me" (I was playing my daughter's character at the moment) that he was going to find me and kill me, then when I brought it up a minute later he denied saying that and called me a liar. I was pretty pissed, but it didn't seem to bother dd very much so I just let her keep playing after telling her that I thought it was rude and mean and that she should just walk away from anyone being that mean to her.

I think she thought I was going to take the game away. I have done that in the past, but this time I didn't. She got "bored" with the game about 9pm last night. When she got up this morning she got back on Furcadia almost right away, but was bored with it within the hour. It was nice because we finally got a chance to connect with her today. She has been spending a lot of time on Furcadia and refusing to come and join us in what we are doing (which is perfectly fine, I was just missing her (I know I could have joined her, but that is a whole nother issue that I don't have time to discuss in this blog today.)).

Today she played some Phantasy Star on the Game Cube with Daddy. They started out by having to figure out what the best name would be because certain names (letters are assigned numbers) are best for finding certain cool items. I understand what dh was saying about it and got involved with helping pick a name, but it's hard for ME to explain in writing.

They tried Lara El (dh is a HUGE Superman fan), Marta El (a version of Marti's name) and Lila (pronounced Lil-a, a version of Lilly) El, but not of them worked the way they wanted to. The final name ended up being "Lila(space)El(space)" which got her an Oran (Orange) section ID which was best for finding daggers.

The kids also did a lot of jumping on the trampolene today since it was actually dry today.

So long for now, I have to get ready for class.

Goal: No complaining & More pics

2007-11-21T14:07:00.000-05:00

A few of my friends and I are working on 21 days of no complaining. Man, what a chore it is becoming. Monday was day one. Tuesday was day one. Today was day two. Tomorrow is day one again, lol!

What we are doing is based on these websites.
Watch Your Language
Going Complaint Free

I was also reading on Sandra Dodd's website yesterday or the day before on her "Parenting Peacefully" page and stumbled on a quote by Ren Allen that finally made me "get" how to get myself to change for the better.

"I think in previous times, I was always fighting myself to try and change. That doesn't work so well. Mindfulness does change what you react to, but it happens so quietly and naturally you hardly realize it. A moment happens that is so drastically different than how you would have reacted in the past and it's almost like a slap (a good slap) and you're thinking "WOW"."

I even had a discussion with my best friend about these subjects last night that was ME giving HER advice, but I think that it was just as enlightening for me because now I know that I DO "get it".

Anyway,
Here is a couple more pictures of our local happenings.

This is the girls enjoying our latest Freecycle gift, a 15ft trampolene. They adore it of course!

And here is Marti last night showing off the Sudoku that she completed (with my help). We worked on one of these a few months ago and I am ashamed to say I pushed her too much, but this one she accomplished with no pressure.

Pictures

2007-11-20T11:31:00.000-05:00

I want this blog to be about us finding our way into radical unschooling. For now, we are going to start with pictures to show what we have been up to lately.

This was back in September, but it was a density experiment that Marti, Lilly and I did together. It didn't turn out exactly like the directions said it would, which made it even more awesome because we got to talk about why it didn't turn out that way. It was a lot of fun.

Here is some pictures from a "growing" experiment that we did. We got some creatures (alligator and two fish) from a "Chemistry Day" at our local museum and put them in water like we were told. We left them there for about 2 weeks. Then we took them out to let them dry up so we could put them back in the water to see if they would grow faster the second time. We haven't gotten (we keep forgetting to get) the water (has to be distilled) so we haven't done the second part yet.

Day One Day Two

Day Three Day Five

At the beginning of November we went to our local museum, which is currently host to The Magic Schoolbus Kicks Up A Storm. They really enjoyed being Weather "women" so we have started making our own backgrounds to attach to our very large television so they can stand in front of them and forecast the weather while being videotaped (the camera at the museum doesn't actually tape, just allows them to be viewed on a screen above).

Here is Marti casting the weather for the US

And Lilly being the camera girl (which she adored more than being IN FRONT of the camera). She even looks like a little director, doesn't she?

On November 5th, I got up early (5:15 am EST) to check the skies for this event. We had nothing but cloud cover. I was really bummed, but thankful I hadn't woken the girls so they could see "cloud cover".

I checked again at 6:30 am and most of the cloud cover had gone away so I woke everyone up.
We got to see the moon, Venus (which I had actually been seeing for several days out the bathroom window and didn't know it), Saturn, Regulus, and we are pretty sure we got to see Mars. We all enjoyed getting to see the planets before the cloud cover hit again.

Here is a picture of the moon and Venus.

Lastly for today, on November 11th we moved the couch out in my daughters' bedroom and found a hibernating (well we assume it was trying to hibernate) bat which led to discussions of hibernation (of course), bats, bat habitats (including our house), and even fear (mom and girls are afraid of bats). It also reminded the girls of the time we had a raccoon in our house. I will have to remember to have them dictate that story sometime for you. Perhaps in video.

Here is the pic of the hibernating bat.