Do You Realize...

life is a series of memorable events? Cooking Thanksgiving dinner with family, jumping on the trampoline after too much turkey, cutting our Christmas tree, riding the train with the family, helping to build something with your own two hands, singing made up songs @ will, watching kids sleep, watching kids tear up the living room, helping kids tear up the living room, playing in giant appliance boxes without the appliance, do these count as memorable events? For me, today, they do.

Blue, Blue Sky

My sister graduated the academy a couple of months ago. She is on probation now. Jess has been doing very well with her on the job training so I think it is safe to post about it now without worrying about having to knock on wood and all that voodoo. She worked hard to achieve her goal and we are all proud of her. There are some random pix in this batch as well as her graduation photos.

We did not take that many photos @ the cabin. I don't know what it is about being out there, I just forget everything. It's a magic cabin! Anyway, photos of a few weekend accomplishments to come.

Fire at Midnight

Here are pix from some of the trips we have been on recently. We have all enjoyed being outside this season. We are leaving in a few hours to our little cabin in the woods. I think I will try to post some pix of the progress. The cabin is no longer just the floor. I think those are the last pix I posted. It is almost complete. We have to drywall it in and add the subfloor and flooring. I know it sounds like there is still quite a bit to do, but we have come a long way. The water capture system is in. This weekend we will install the wood burning stove and build a picnic table (not sure why we are only just now doing that one) as well as begin work on an out house. There will not be electricity for now. We have a generator that we use occassionaly. Is there such a thing as a quiet generator? Who wants to use them when they sound like you have a tractor in your house? We stuck it outside and ran an extention cord in, but that really wasn't too much better.

So time to stop procrastinating and pack myself some clothes and get all the blankets in the truck...snacks must have snacks. We're off.

Upside Down

I love that song. It is the title song from the Curious George movie. I think it describes our lives and the mindset we (maybe mostly me) are attempting to maintain as we (I) go about our daily life.
Mady has had the opportunity to ride some world famous cutting horses the last couple of days. These horses have been trained so well, they will train an inexperienced rider to ride correctly. Amazing horses, intelligent, loving, beautiful. Mady has enjoyed riding immensely. She is looking forward to riding again today. She is easily completing the few "workbook" pages she needs to fill in each day and keeping up with all the 4H vet science work she wants to do. It stuns me that people would think that these simple workbook pages provide learning. We ordered the 5th grade national standards test for Mady to take around Christmas. I am amazed @ how simple it appears. The math...well, we all know by now arithmetic is only part of the math picture and logic is a much larger piece to that picture. She could use practice in the arithmetic section, lol! If people saw the vet science work she is required to do, they would certainly wonder why anyone would question if she is being educated.
I think the newspaper reading is making for some interesting conversation. We talked about GM last night. It was all over the paper. Of course the papers are great for leaving out the real details. Seems as though there is just enough there to make one want to dig for more information.
Today is Nenaw's birthday. We won't mention her age here, but let's just say, it's one of those ages that when you were little you thought was old! (She doesn't read the blog so I think it is safe to say that.) She is not old. We went over yesterday and decorated the house for dinner. Papaw cooked steak and potatoes on the grill and Niki and Mady and Ezra baked her cake while Luke napped. We purchased her a Nintendo DS with several games from all and flowers. We ate dinner outside. The weather was prefect. There was an occasional faint breeze through our tall oaks. So faint, in fact, no leaves fell from the trees when we felt it on our sleeveless arms. About the time the sun began to fade from the sky, we lit a fire in the pit. My parents and I and the girls reclined by the fire for a couple of hours after Dom took the boys home to rest. We spoke about everything from the eyeopening, yet disturbing movie "Bordertown" to hanging out @ our cabin this weekend. We spoke about Christmas and what not to do this year as well as what to do when our cousin Danielle comes down for 3 weeks! Everyone is excited about all the upcoming events.
Today, I think we will take a walk and look for some leaves for some Thanksgiving crafts. We stayed up late last night reading the newspaper, reading riddles (to improve our logic skills) and playing with some unconventional math and science experiments and tricks. I love that we can find things to make learning fun and interesting all the time.
Off to search for leaves I suppose.

Nature

Where Are You?

Did we already use that post title the last time we were MIA? Too much going on here in the lives of these unschoolers.

The election, and outcome, were amazing experiences to share with the kids. The night of the election, Mady and I went to eat @ a local hamburger hot spot. It was packed as usual, and the veggie burger was good, even if that is not their specialty. Mady had an enormous chicken fried steak. The girl can eat! She is getting so TALL. As Mady and I slowly chewed our food, our eyes were glued to the T.V.'s in the restaurant broadcasting the election poll results as they came in. I spoke with her about the meaning of all the data on the screen. She seemed to understand though she wasn't very inquisitive about any of it. I had not spoken much with her about the election prior to that night. She did not seem interested. She was much more interested the night of the election however.

After dinner we made our way downtown for some Swing dancing lessons. Mady had a blast and learned a bit. She also made some new friends. Mady has been much more open to new experiences lately. She adores her animals and wants to be with them all the time, but she has been doing a much wider variety of things lately. I hope I am offering her enough options. How many new people does a young girl need to meet? I always think we have plenty of time to do...whatever. In reality, if I stop to think about it, she is 10. 10 years ago was a another life time to me, but it has gone by so quickly. I have a feeling in 10 years, it will be yet another life time to me. I feel as though I need to help her see all the world has to offer. I know my children do not see the impact they are having on my life, I mean, my learning. I am uncertain I would ever have pursued some of the things I am now pursuing if they weren't my children. I somehow feel more responsible for things that happen in the world with them here.

Niki is almost constantly walking around with a book in her hand. She wants badly to be able to read on her own I think. She enjoys me reading to her. Anything. The girl asks me what every word she sees says. We have several of the little books with all the 3 letter word stories. We look @ them often. I think Niki and Luke and Ezra all enjoy listening to Dr. Seuss the most though. The pictures are entertaining as well. I love reading them, they are fun, and funny.

Mady is having to do some actual book work to appease her father. She hates it. It has proven to be rather easy though. I ordered her a few cheap workbooks. I have noticed her reading much more lately as well. I have been scouring Goodwill and Half Price Books for any book about animal rescue I can find. Mady will read if it is about animals. I read to her (to all of the kids) all the time. Tonight we read the Sunday paper for our town and the larger town near us. I tried to read everything but I did skim some of the thing that didn't appeal as much to me instead of reading them aloud. Dom asked me what I have done to help protect my civil liberties. When my answer was, "I am a citizen. I supported you while you were overseas. I sent care packages for troops. I have been to a few protests. I write letters to our reps in Congress. " It all sounded very defensive to me and I began to wonder if our children knew about their civil liberties and what they could do to help them remain their civil liberties. All this brought on by the California Prop 8 article in the paper. What do other people do? Again, am I doing enough to be an example to our kids? Am I doing enough to educate them?

And Ezra is awake...