Happy Birthday Abbi!

I can't believe you're turning 12! 12 years since I had my first sweet daughter. What a gift you are.



Man,,its been 10 years since these pictures. The one on the left is on her 2nd birthday. And the one on the right is at the beach, the summer before her 2nd birthday.

So sweet.

Happy Birthday Abbidoo. :)

Back Home

I don't know if I'm happy or sad to be home. Nice to be home, yet, so miss all of our unschooling buddies.

What an amazing adventure we had. Not only did we go to the Live and Learn Conference, we then got to hang with unschooling families longer and continue on to the Grand Canyon. :D Nice.

The conference, as always, is one of the most amazing experiences that our family has each year. I tend to get a bit overwhelmed, there are lots of people, but the kids just love it, so we will be travelling to NC next year for it. :D I just have to find some quiet time amidst the excitement. We will be at a YMCA camp in the Black Moutains next year, so that'll be a cool change.

The hotel this year was awesome. Big enough facility and really cool/nice to all of the attendees. We even had a security guy bring sodas to the kids who were up late. No clucking or complaints from the hotel at all! :D

Here's Abbi with some friends.

More later....

Amazing

Well, we've had some amazing days- emotional, happy, sad, stressful, invigorating. Amazing.

We celebrated Hayden's and Hannah's birthday, and also recognized Hannah's passing from this life to her next phase. I have a really hard time putting into words the awesomeness that accompanies this experience. The friendships around it all. The love felt through the people. The sadness, yet happiness in the memories. All so amazing.

The ceremony I held for us was beautiful and seemed to be exactly what we all needed. I'd like to share one part that was really sweet. We were all offering to Hannah parts of the earth that we would want her to have with her for her journey. For example, I said "I am the beautiful sunrise. I offer this to you Hannah." Other things included were the fire, birds, flowers. When it was Alec's turn he was a little hesitant, not sure what to say and then he said "I'm a rock". Diana and I looked at each other with tears in our eyes. Amazed that he would think of that.

Alec was wondering why were in such awe.Alec didn't know that Hannah's last words were,,"don't worry Mom, I'm a rock".

This life is amazing. It can sometimes be sad, difficult, and even outright sucky,, but if we can step back and see the awesomeness that is present. What a gift. Diana always talks about how she's so blessed; I have to agree. I am also, so blessed. :)

Happy Day

That's what's written on Kyra's Bratz calendar today. Its a happy day today because Hayden and Diana are coming up to stay with us for a couple of weeks. We are all excited about it, been counting down the days. :) After those couple of weeks, we're heading down to Albuquerque for the http://liveandlearn.org We're sooo excited.

Also on Kyra's calendar are 2 gifts drawn on the 22nd and 23rd of this month. Its Hayden's birthday Tuesday and Hannah's on Wednesday. We're going to do some special things with Hayden on his day, then have a special ceremony for Hannah on her day. We'll have fun on Tuesday and then on Wednesday we'll be remembering and honoring Hannah. I found an amazing book called Ceremonies For Real Life by Carine Fabius. Its full of beautiful ceremonies to have on special days.

"Passing Onward:Making Peace with Death" is what we'll be doing, outside around our fire ring. Hannah loved the fire. :)

Our Inspiration

Tim's happier. He's still doing the same job, but is finding joy in other things. I truly believe that this is a gift that our children have brought to us.

Alec has really brought Tim a lot of joy lately, especially over Yu-Gi-Oh. Big time bonding over that interest right now. :D

One night they were dueling each other and I guess Tim was looking particularly serious so Alec said, "smile, Dad". lol We all had to laugh. Competition can be an issue sometimes. One might feel it and the other will say,, "can we just have fun?" And vice versa, it comes and goes. But its been a good ride, the Yu-Gi-Oh experience.

Alec will read and read at the computer about different cards, strategies,decks.. all sorts of things. Most recently he's been learning all about e-bay and bidding. They've been building different decks, which have different strategies, (different attributes) so they've been looking for particular cards to complete these decks. Its been great finding the cards at E-bay, some have only been like $3.00 and no shipping. :D He's figured out how to bid at the right time, I've offered to set the timer on the stove so we remember when to check but he hasn't needed it.
*******************************************************************

Its such a switcheroo,, this unschooling thing. :)

A LOT of people would think that you need to guide your children to what they need to learn/do. What a paradigm shift. That you can actually follow what your child likes/wants. I'm not saying that we don't offer things too, making suggestions; a partnership. But the world that our children has brought to us is startling. So awesome....so inspiring.

My deep down inspiration right now is -- Alec, Abbi and Kyra. :D

Quiet Time

Yep, I have quiet time.

Don't always know what to do with it though. *g*

Kyra is in Moorhead for a few days with Tim. She loves being able to see her friends and cousins over there. Tim's work brings them there so it works out well. She packs up all her Bratz and Yu-Gi-Oh cards and she's off.

We've had some busy weeks, lots of driving here and there.

My dad had back surgery so we went to Moorhead one weekend. (He's fine :) and feeling much better than he was. And then last weekend we had a wedding. My niece Natalie got married! It was a beautiful wedding. An outdoor garden venue, which was just heavenly. The girls had a blast dancing at the reception/dance, while Alec was happy to get down to the cities to also visit some card shops. Always thinking about those Yu-Gi-Oh cards ya know!

I've been doing some reading, crocheting, henna tattooing and learning Yu-Gi-Oh too, phew, its really complex. But I did duel now,, wahoo.

We are getting ready for our trip to Albuquerque and the Live and Learn Conference -- So Excited! And Diana will be coming up here this next Monday so its getting close. She'll be caravaning with us down there. Following the conference, we'll be taking in the Grand Canyon with the Lovejoys -- adventure is a comin'.

I'll blog more later when I get my other computer back. The one computer that I can download pictures from is in Fargo getting worked on by the Geek Squad. Our video card choked so we HAD to get that fixed,,,MUST--HAVE--GOOD--GRAPHICS. *g* We're such a gamin family. :D

Time and passions

Wow, a week since I last blogged. O.O Time really speeds by, I think my life must be good. :)

We've been doing a variety of things the last week. Swimming being one of them. I picked up a new pool a couple of weeks ago and that's been a big learning lesson for me. Wow! Talk about a learning curve. ugh,,,There's a bit of maintenance to figure out when one gets a big pool that you can't dump out! Doh,,,

So, we've been looking up ph stuff,, chlorine levels, algae stuff and learning that well water isn't the prettiest when you add chlorine :P~~~~~ OK, so it looks like pee water right now but its clean. :D We did figure out that if we put in a bit of clarifier the iron and minerals look as if they've gone away! Yay,,, well it looks like it anyway. *g* Gotta love chemical reactions.

Alec continues to be fascinated with Yu-Gi-Oh and figuring out ways to get more cards. He and his dad are having an awesome time dueling,, soooo complex to me. I'm so glad I have a husband who balances me so well. He loves and understands all the strategy games; I'll play them but it is really hard for me to *get* them.

We also seem to balance each other out quite well when it comes to calmness and peacefulness. About the time I start grumpin' about buying more cards for them, Tim reminds me that it is his passion right now, and it really isn't that much money. I examine my feelings.

What if his passion was the cello still? How much would lessons be each week,, what about needing a new, bigger instrument? Adding those up would put things in perspective. Its funny how if its what you think is worthy, the money isn't a question. If its not,,,, well,, that must be why I started stressing out.

Reminder to me: I'm NOT going to dismiss his important interest in this card game. I am going to see it as VALUABLE and just as AMAZING of an interest as playing an instrument.

Sure I can spend $2.00 on another booster pack. :)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An on again off again interest for Abbi, well I suppose practically her whole life, has been horses. Just the last month or so she's been talking more and more about them. I think it became more evident to her when she saw some in the 4th of July parade. She came home from that wanting a pony really, really bad. :) Ponies,,,,hmmm,, we looked them up on the internet. They sometimes can be mean, from the inbreeding, and you aren't going to be able to ride them as you grow into adulthood. Maybe a quarter horse would be better?

We can't have a horse at our house right now but we could board one. Yet,, they really are very expensive and a very big commitment. I really don't feel like I have it in me to take care of another pet,,let alone a horse. So we talked about it and thought that riding lessons might be a good idea. She could maybe go and help take care of a horse, see all it entails,, learn all about them---during all that we could think about purchasing one.

This morning I finally got a call back from a lady I know who does riding lessons. She said Abbi could start next Monday.

Abbi is psyched!

Our butterfly

Here's a link to the video of our butterfly coming out of its chrysalis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDbb8LLXc7M

I tried to post the movie right here but couldn't get it to work. Hopefully this will. :D

Butterflies :)

Yep, those caterpillars did turn into butterflies. And oh, was it fun! :D

It was cool that we had 4 of them to watch because if we missed one,, we still had the others to view. So good thing. :)

The Twins, Margaret and Jeff, (Kyra named them) hatched first and its just amazing how quickly the hatching,, or getting out of the chrysalis happens. Before I went on a walk they looked like this:


The dark ones are the ones that about ready to burst out.
After my walk they looked like this:


They are so amazing.

Here's Kyra with them on some flowers in the front of the house.


Then we went over to Fargo-Moorhead for 1 night, came back and Saddi our dog found the 3rd one under the table. It had come out while we were gone but it was ok, Saddi just stared at it and we released it outside.

The last one hatched a couple of days later, it was the runt of the bunch. Bob, as Kyra called him, was her favorite, and she was pretty sad because she stayed in Moorhead and missed it. We did take lots of pictures and even got video of him coming out of his chrysallis. I'm going to try and put that at You tube and I'll link it here later.

This whole process is so amazing and a couple of things happened this time that I'd never been able to see. First, I had never seen the chrysalis actually form. When the caterpillar gets nice and fat (a couple of weeks old) it turns into a J shape, then a day or so later loses its outer skin. Ours pretty much bursted out of its skin at the bottom and wriggled its way out, losing it from the top. Then you have the light green chrysalis. It stays as a chrysalis for about 2 weeks then at some point starts turning black and you can see the wings through the now transparent chrysalis. When its at that point, its going to come out soon, when it starts coming out, the actual emergence only takes maybe a minute.

Here's Bob with Abbi:


I'll post more pictures at my flicker account. I think you can access those pictures by clicking on the Flicker ad box on the sidebar of the blog.

Our days, as of late..

Boy, Tim sure looks happy on the picture below. A lot happier than he's been the last week. Unfortunately, he's been sick. We think he was probably bit by a deer tick around the 4th. He's been sick for the last 6 days or so. Went to the doctor on Monday of this week and they think its Lyme's. So he's taking antibiotics and we're hoping he's gonna feel better soon. Such a bummer. We so love the outdoors up here, but you really do have to be careful. I'm just so glad we got him on something right away. He should be fine, just getting through this rough part right now is a challenge.

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

Some kid stuff for you. :)

Alec has been Yu-Gi-Oh crazy again. I'm so glad Tim enjoys strategy games. They've been dueling a lot! And Alec is now waiting for some new cards that he found on the internet to make a certain kind of deck. I can't remember what its called now but it has one feature that it follows and he's really psyched to try it out. He went online and researched all the different types of decks and builds of decks. (Builds are the ways you can put decks together, different cards will give you different advantages in a dueling situations. You can also give your characters that you play in RPGs different builds. RPG=role playing games)

So, after he researched the different builds and what sounded good, he then went online and found the most resonably prices cards. We also checked pawn shops and different card shops to see if there were any around. We did find a few, and really good deals, but most of the ones he wants we are ordering off the internet. He's excited to get these, probably in the next day or so. And he's super excited to bring them to the Live and Learn Conference, where he'll be hosting a Yu-Gi-Oh funshop. :)

Another passion for Alec right now is weapons. Different kinds of guns, rocket launchers, swords, etc. Yesterday it was guns. He loves discussing different kinds as he sees games or movies. I'm currently looking for some books that might have nice pictures of different ones. He'd really like to see everything that is out there and also possibly historical ones too. When he sees one in a game or movie, he's always interested to know if its a real one or just fantasy. If anyone reads this and has a title of a book, please let me know.

I'm really trying to support him in this passion but its a challenging one for me. I'm not much of a blow it up, shoot em up type of girl. But for some reason he's just fascinated with it. He so wants to use one, a real one, so were looking into that possibility. We don't own one, neither Tim or I have ever wanted to hunt or shoot one, (although I guess Tim did use a beabea (sp?) gun a few times.

He walked around yesterday with a big squirt gun, spinning it around Western style, like you would spin it on your finger and back into your holster. He also loaded it and proceded to squirt my geraniums. lol,, (which they really needed, thank you Alec! ) and was very light on his feet in doing it,, making sure to dodge any incoming bullets. ;) I love the imagination I see flowing so freely within my kids. Very cool.

I'm thinking he may like some old western movies or maybe other current ones with gun scenes. I'll have to google that too, anyone , again if you have ideas for this passion, please let me know.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now Abbi. She's still into role playing with several different characters on World of Warcraft. Its amazing the different themes and storylines she comes up with while playing that game. Most recently it was a bit boring in Goldshire (the town that she hangs in in the game) so she decided to create a character that's a thief/pickpocket. They actually have to write out most actions because the characters only do certain things, like laugh, or cry or wave, stuff like that. Nothing like-- Raine (her character) brushes up against Blaine, bumping her. "Oops" says Raine. [That was the pickpocket move ] Then the other character might say,,"Blaine checks her money bag to make sure its still there". And Raine dashes out of the inn, down the dusty road. [Then Abbi will move her character around appropriately to act out what she's typing.]

Another thing that Abbi is really interested in right now is horses. We are waiting to here back from a lady here that gives riding lessons. We're hoping she'll let Abbi take care of a horse and learn all about the care and details of horsemanship. She really wants one but we're going to do this first and see if she likes it. We can't have a horse around our house right now ;) or even outside. But we can look into boarding one and we are also somewhat considering moving from our current house. I won't go into that subject right now,, too long of a discussion, but we are open to looking for a place that we could have a horse. :)
~~~~~~~~~~~~

And Kyra.
Kyra has been over in Moorhead the last few days. She opted to stay over there and hang with some friends, cousins and Grandmas and Grandpas. She is coming home today with my mom and dad and of course bringing Ben and Matt with her. ;) Ben and Matt are her cousins, Ben loves to play with Alec and Matt and Kyra are true soul mates. :) They'll stay here with us for a few days. Yayyy!

She is still into Bratz big time and is planning out her funshop at the Live and Learn Conference. She's going to host one for kids to come and play with their Bratz and also remember Hannah. Hannah is who introduced Kyra to Bratz. So its a very special love for her.

She is also still painting quite a bit and always up for making stuff out of the most creative things. We have quite a savings of tp rolls and paper towel rolls,, not to mention Altoid boxes now because we've been enlightened on a new altered box idea. :D

That will be our next project.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is a link to the Live and Learn Conference that we'll be attending in Sept. This is our 4th one and we love it. :D

http://www.liveandlearnconference.org/

Have a great day everyone~

The 4th

We had a really nice 4th. We went for a bike ride at Lake Bemidji State Park.

While at the State Park a butterfly found Abbi. We decided that the butterfly got tricked by the henna flower tatoo. ;) It stayed on her hand for about 5 minutes, a tiny little tongue licking her.

We also learned some new things about erosion and sluice ways. I never knew what a sluice way was; its a man made waterway path made for logs to travel from one place to another. Right within Lake Bemidji State Park there's an old sluice way that is believed to have been used to transport logs from a smaller lake to the mill on lake Bemidji. The Bemidji area was/is a huge logging area.

Then we relaxed at home. Jumped on the tramp, enjoyed a fire, played some Yu-Gi-Oh and discovered that we have raspberries growing all around our yard! We are so excited,, we love raspberries!

It was a good day.

This is a tiered garden I've been working on in the back. If you look farther back in the woods, that's where the raspberries are that we just found.

dum dum suckers and spelling

yeah you can learn spelling with dum dums. We had been to the 4th of July parade and Kyra was eating a dum dum sucker that she had gotten. She comments "I have to save this for Hayden, he's saving them for a backpack". Hmm,, I had forgotten that you could do it. She asked me to find the website and we look it all up: http://dumdumpops.com/

You can save the wrappers and send them in for different things. Also on the website are printable activities and other things to do online. Kyra printed out a bunch of the puzzles and coloring pages. She did a word find that included all the flavors of the suckers and then after she found all the words, she stands up and spells out all the words. Kind of like spelling bee style, she was really proud. But the spelling didn't stop there, then Alec starts spelling different words.

"Give me a word,, any word" he repeated over and over to us. lol So we start to ask him words to spell. He's a pretty good speller, really good memory.

I just thought it was pretty fun that it all started from a dumdum wrapper. :)

Visitors :)

We have Diana, Hayden and Britanny (Diana's niece) visiting us now. :) We're all happy to have them back here with us. So fun to be with our unschooling buds.

Last night we had fun playing Halo, toontown, listening to new and old music, working on all of our My Spaces. :D Several of us have My Spaces now and we're really having fun with them. Abbi continues to amaze me with her abilities to create, figure out and communicate. She's been helping Diana and me figure out the whole layout process and such. Adding music, videos,, all sorts of stuff.

Diana and I sit in awe of these cool little people,,(some not so little anymore ;) We also sit and miss Hannah. We still have such a hole amidst us, and it will always be here. We try and remember the happy and fun times,, how can we not, she was such a fun, happy kid. I love the picture above, wanted to share. :D Its Hannah, Hayden with the most awesome grin, and Kyra

Today we're hoping to hit the lake if its warm enough. Some other things we're gonna do while they're here: sculpture walk, pick strawberries at a local farm,,(you get to eat as many as you want while there ), do more Mehndi (henna painting on the body), watch movies (we always have list that we want to watch together, Crash is on that list, we watched it here last week but we want to share it with Diana) Tim is going to hang Buddhist prayer flags in our woods, sit, enjoy a fire, go on the rides at the water carnival,,, Life is Good :)

Ohh and remember our babies? (the caterpillars) we now have 3 chrysalises and 1 very fat caterpillar. :) We'll take pictures of them when they come out, about 2 weeks. The 2 that were always by each other have made their chrysalises right beside each other.

Twin fawns

Just wanted to share a pic of the twin fawns that have been hanging around our yard the last week or so. Wish I could have gotten closer.

They're so cute. Saddi our dog goes wild in the house but they just calmly walk around.

Here's one thing we love about being back in Bemidji.

Henna

We just love henna. :) (Above, Kyra is looking at all the patterns for ideas.

We've been doing henna tatoos for the last year or so. Ever since Diana introduced it into our lives. thank you Diana!

Today we're attempting to apply some stencils that I got in a henna kit. Beth gave me a gift certificate to the local co-op and I got this cool kit with it.

We're having some difficulties though. Can't quite get the prints to come off on us. Tried oils and fingernail polish in the attempts but still no luck. I'm thinking we might need to get some tracing paper or something.

The henna stuff has been so cool for us. Just as were doing our first ones with Diana, last year, we also had watched the movie Kingdom of Heaven. And right in that movie the princess' maids were doing henna tatoos! So its been very cool to read about the history of henna and all the customs that include henna. We never knew that henna was an important part to so many different cultures.

I'd love to be able to do some of the more intricate work that we've seen in books and on people. For now we'll just stick to the simpler patterns and freehanding it. We are getting better all the time though,, learning to use our pinkies to steady our hand. ;)

We have our babies! The babies we have every year. :)

OK,,, so they're caterpillars but they ARE babies.

Every year we go out and hunt for milkweed plants to bring home some Monarch caterpillars. We all love them and sometimes we get a bit obsessive with them. :) One year we had to bring them over to a friend of ours to babysit them while we were gone. ;) We've raised them, several times, from egg. :)

This year we cut a plant off and got 3 pretty good sized ones (about an inch long) and then one tag along I didn't see til we got home (about 1/8 inch) lol

Every morning we go and find some fresh leaves for them and then also squirt a bit of water on them to imitate the morning dew. (I don't quite get out there that early,, the dew it dry.)

The picture above isn't very clear,, sorry, couldn't get the camera to take a very clear one that close. On the left there are actually 2,, looking right at each other, you can't really see the one under. Then on the right is the little one and another big one. It was funny, this morning I went to take out the old leaves to replace them and 3 of them were all on 1 leaf. :) Awwww,,,, togetherness.