Possible Acceptance?

Mary shared the following video at her blog. I wanted to bring it here too. I see so many people who try and fix/change their kids. What a wonderful thought that our children are just perfect in what they are. We can be right there helping them when they want help, yet also accepting of who they are.

Watch the whole thing.

(I couldn't figure out how to put this message in with the video so this is as close as I could get. :)

In My Language

Got snow?

We do now! Yayy!



And we're having fun!

Kyra and Saddi this morning.


Tim and Kyra
And we're very glad that this tree decided to fall that direction~our house is to the left (eek)

a year

My heart is tearing
The snow is falling
I sit here

I think of the joy
The happiness in those hazel eyes
The laughter between the girls

My mind goes back to mommy and the satsuma
The sweetness
The bitterness
The tears
The sounds, the silence
Anger outside in the cold

Breathing now
Sending my love, our love
You are amazing, you are divine
This storm cannot stop my wishes for you

Wishes of love
Wishes of comfort
Wishes of joy, and good memories
Wishes of happiness to come

~my love, our love, to you my friend~

Last night on the radio

I got a call from my father-in-law last night. He thought I might want to turn on MPR (MinnesotaPublicRadio) at 9:00. He had heard that there was going to be a show on about homeschooling/unschooling. He wanted to listen but had something else going on so was going to miss it.

So after our fix of American Idol I let all the kiddos know that there was going to be a show on the radio about homeschooling and maybe about unschooling. :) We tuned in and much to our delight it was all about unschooling and even more to our delight it was Valerie Fitzenreiter and her daughter Laurie Chancey. Valerie wrote the book _The Unprocessed Child_
and we were lucky enought to meet her at the Live and Learn a few years ago.

I thought the interview was great. The host of the show was new to the idea of unschooling but the whole interview went pretty smooth. Great job Valerie and Laurie! Here's the link to the interview.
The Story
If that isn't working, as far as when they do another story, the interview was ran on February 21 2007, if you need to search.

Beckoning Spring

So, yeah, we're pretty ready for winter to end. The last couple of weeks were pretty harsh, -20 to 0 degrees F. Its warmed up now, gonna be in the 20's so we're joyful over that fact! :)

I have to see the beauty in this cold weather. I love the trees when they're frosty, the pine needles look so cool.


Saddi loves the snow and loves to run away from me.... she's over in the neighbors yard here..ah hem.
And Kyra decided it was cool skateboarding in the snow, you can do tricks and you don't fall. (hehe, you aren't moving,, so that helps ;)

Alec and Abbi have been spending time together conquering Final Fantasy X. Alec has beat it before but Abbi has never done the whole thing so they've been having a really nice experience doing that. The storyline is pretty cool on that game. Alec is so excited to get up in the morning just bursting to play with his sister. Its really sweet seeing these 2 hanging out together. Can't believe he's gonna be 14 soon! Wow. His video games amazed me again this week, (yeah, it is continual *g*). He was reading the game guide for Final Fantasy and showed me that with one of the bosses, as you're fighting it, if your level is divisible by a prime number you get hit by this super high percentage of damage. I'm like... whoa, discussion of prime numbers followed. Crazy, mathematical stuff going on in those videos games that a lot of people aren't even aware of. So if your kid likes video games get those guides! It really can enhance their game playing, its amazing!

Tim is in Chicago for the week so the kids and I are going with some friends to Thief River Falls today. They have a hotel casino up there that has a huge water park, so time to go enjoy warm water and tube rides!

I'm not feeling well. I've been sick for a few days now. Thought I was feeling better yesterday but last night was up a lot, coughing and blowing my nose. I'm sure I'll be fine but just sick of being sick. Ya know.

Kyra and Abbi are at my friend Beth's house. They're over there making Valentines, so I'm bummed that I'm missing out on that. Yet I'm feeling fortunate that I have friends who will go out of their way to come and get my kids when I don't feel up to it. Beth met me in town, (half way to her house) so Kyra could go over there, and Patti came and got Abbi later so she could join in the fun.

Alec is still sleeping he had a late night,(early morning) last night. He's been working the past week, very hard, to get his epic flying mount. He succeded last night at doing that. Yayy! He came and got me at about 4:00 and was sooo excited. Its sooo cool,, and so fast! This was a huge accomplishment in the World of Warcraft world. I'll post some pics of him with his new griffon when I get some on this computer. :)

So I'm happy today for my friends and family, both in real life and online.

Here's a picture of my friend Patti with her son, Michael. I love the joy in her face.

Isn't she great? She was Santa for Halloween! Gotta love her!

Wool

We've been felting-- dry felting. I bought this felting tool quite a few months ago and have been meaning to get some wool to try it out. When I saw Julie Person's wall hanging I was tempted to try it but still didn't get out. Then we watched Lady in the Water and there were some amazing images at the beginning. I then got out and got some wool. :)

The girls have made these various pieces:


We've made these with scraps from Bemidji Woolen Mills. A store right here in Bemidji that we were able to buy the scraps from for $.90 !


I made this with the person Abbi made :-D (the person is me, so the wall hanging is "Story meeting Kelli")
We're planning on making lots more with wool. I've ordered some needles to work with and some colored wool roving. Can't wait!

When you can't find the red on the thermometer..


And you have to bundle up this much just to get the paper..



And your windows look like this in your bathroom....inside..



This is my friend..

Brrrrrrrmidji

OK, so I hate it when people say that. Really. But this is pretty brrrriffic. :)

Last weekend was Bemidji's Polar Daze and we had to go and check it out.
Especially when some friends of ours were taking part in the Polar Plunge. :D



Yep, they jump in the lake. Although it was warmer that day,, I think it got up to 20 F. :)

The mad dash from the heated trailer to the hole.


We were warm :D
This is Tim's brother Dave, Tim, Abbi and Alec.
I think I need a HOT coffee about now ;)

My weirdness??? ;)

I've been tagged by Mary. I'm supposed to include in a blog 6 weird things about me.

Here are the details: Each person who gets tagged needs to write a blog post of their own 6 weird things as well as clearly state this rule. After you state your 6 weird things, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says "you're tagged" in their comments and tell them to read your blog for information as to what it means. So here goes.

1. I love orange on toast. O.o enough said. *g*

2. I never brush my hair. hee hee

3. I love hanging with teenagers and I LIKE teenagers and DON'T believe teens have issues and life can be amazing with teens. (some of my friends won't think this is weird but the mass majority unfortunately does :(

4. I can watch any of the Lord of the Rings movies over and over and over and I love it.

5. I have brown and blue eyes.

6. I can not flip my tongue over.

There. :)

I'm tagging:
Rue
Abbi
Kyra
Schuyler
Heidi
Julie

Playing, Painting and a PIANO!

PLAYING
We've all been playing a lot of WoW. With the Burning Crusade coming out in 2 weeks and friends getting the original game. A new big interest for Kyra since she's been able to play with her cousins and friends in other towns. :)
And Abbi maxed out her druid, level 60. Wahoo! (She actually caught the moment with a screen shot, which amazed me. *g*)


PAINTING
We've been painting Abbi's room. Yellow, Purple,Green and an Orange/Red are the colors she choose, one on each wall.

PIANO
Yes, we're getting a piano. We're really excited about it since we weren't able to move our old one back here. And now,,, its not only a piano but a BABY GRAND! A friend of ours ended up with one and he doesn't play. So we got a great deal on it and its gonna be here tomorrow. Thanks Jon! Here's a pic of it. Yayy!

Happy New Year everyone!

Happy New Year everyone, may your year be filled with joy!

Here are some holiday images...

Before opening gifts on solstice~














Kyra eagerly awaiting gift opening.















Alec and Abbi got gaming t-shirts :)

Have a safe and happy new year~

Yes, is it Blessed.

My friend Mary posted this picture on her blog titled "Blessed Winter Solstice"
I love it. :)

I had how blessed I am driven home yesterday . And funny I should say driven...
Kyra and I were driving home from our friend Patty's house and decided to go a different way. I'm not as sure about the road there and it was dark and I suppose icey. I think I must have looked down momentarily, but when I looked up I saw a sharp curve that I struggled to make and then a stop sign that I didn't make. I ended up crossing a pretty busy highway, missing oncoming cars, and going into a ditch and taking out a no trespassing sign.

I yelled to Kyra "hang on!" and I'm not even sure how the front right corner of the Highlander got smashed. As I hit the little sign right square in the front. I know I saw an electrical pole and knew I had to miss that our we would of been in trouble. I might have grazed it.

Anyway, we're OK. The airbags didn't even go off, phew. Kyra was in the back, scared but ok.

We were sad that our new hybrid truck was damaged, but we feel so blessed and fortunate that we're OK. So, more money out for repairs, but our wonderful blessed lives are intact.

Celebrating

We've started our holiday celebrations. Last weekend we had my family's get together. Kyra with her cuz Brenna.

Me and my honey. :)
Grandma and Grandpa

And even Saddi!

More to come!

~Happy Holidays everyone~

Mornings

I've always been a morning person.
This is my view from my computer this morning.
Ahhh...

the trees were covered in fresh fallen snow.

Here's out front:


Then just a few hours later.

Kyra IMing with Sierra.















And Abbi IMing with Devon.
















Its all good.

WOW part 2

Destinycloud, Abbi's roleplaying character on WOW. She's close to level 55 now. ( I had to say that ;)

OK, so lots of learning takes place while playing World of Warcraft. I guess I knew that. What I didn't know was how people learn different things. Or how different people find different things to do and learn with the same game.

Alec totally gets into the strategic side of things. He contemplates the armor he wears from the stats (attributes) it has, would it benefit his hunter's performance. He reasons with a very strategic mind.

Abbi, on the other hand, enjoys the game in a totally different way. Her way is a more imaginative way. She did start out on a regular realm. Meaning you talk to people just like you are,, a person at a computer. :) Yet, she quickly found out she liked a role-playing realm better.

When she picked her race,, what type of character she wanted, she picked an elf. She (and I) thought the elves looked pretty cool. And you get to be a druid as an elf. A druid is a cool class for several reasons. First off you get to turn into animals! :) How cool is that if you do role-playing??? You can turn into a bear, cat, porpoise type of thing , moonkin (which kind of looks like a bear standing up with horns) and now with the expansion introduced a healing druid can turn into a mystical tree. :-D The druid is a cool spiritual natural type being,, anyway, she and I were both drawn to the druids.

So, Abbi plays mostly on a role-playing server and has met many friends there. Its pretty interesting, I didn't really understand how it would work but here's how it does:

On your character you can indicate that you are a either a serious or casual role-player, also you indicate if you are looking for contacts. People can then send you a message or just start interacting with you. Some people will just start talking with you (in character,, of course ;), others will read about you if you have rsp. RSP is an add-on in which you can write up some type of description about your character.

An add-on is something you download to your game to enhance your game playing. Abbi's add-ons will help her to remember details about other people's characters or help others to read about her character, oh and one cool add on is she can click on something and it will change her whole outfit *g*. Of course Alec has that add-on too but he does it for different reasons, his armor changes would be for possibly fire resistance or frost resistance changes. Abbi's outfit changes would be ones like --her pretty purple dress or her all black outfit or her silly outfit. Alec also has some add-ons that help him with group play. He's doing raids now with up to 40 people and they all have to have add-ons to help them manage all the people. Examples of the use of add-ons in this case would be you can see everyone's health and mana, or you can see who is doing the most damage or who has the most aggro (aggro being the monster is attacking that person).

Back to role-playing. So someone may read your RSP and use that info, or they may just say something to you independent from that. They might totally bring up something random and you can just go with that. I had one person comment on my staff and I went into what I had done with it or how I found it,, some adventurous story. Its very much like improv. Abbi really gets into some elaborate storylines with other people. Where they'll even end up continuing it for days. There is also a way to talk to these people OOC (out of character) They just send messages like this ((this means I'm talking OOC)), so they can tell if they are still role-playing or meaning real life things.

This type of play really fills her need to act and create, its very cool.

Another way her creativity has flourished from WOW is writing on the role-playing forums. Right within WOW's website there are role-playing forums. Its where someone will start a story and then others can make contributions. Its also very cool. She loves to write very descriptively and loves reading other's writings. I've been amazed at her writing abilities. I never wrote anything like that until I was maybe in high school. She now types faster than me and can probably spell better than me. Which is also amazing to me because when she was 9, only 3 years ago she was asking me how to spell everything. Now I ask her *g*.

Some people have asked if its good for such a young girl to be interacting with others in a place like this. We can't say that she hasn't ran into some jerks. But there have been more nice, generous, fun people than the other. I have seen her handle people who make her feel uncomfortable and I've seen her modify what she does so she meets people who she'd like to play with. She now has a very good friend who she met through role-playing. This girl is the same age and is also a homeschooler. :) They've also gotten to know each other through IMing and their myspace spaces. She is very excited to hear about our unschooling. They have slowly been getting to know each other more and more. They don't divulge personal info very quickly, I've seen how this works. ( She's very choosy about what she shares with others.)

We've had nothing but good experiences with our WOW playing. Fun and learning abound!

Living the life of joy

And today's daily groove by Scott Noelle was right in sync. Maybe he explains why it does work. Makes sense to me. Although he refers to it as the pleasure principle or creative pleasure--that sounds good too.

There are 2 parts, they're short. :)

Here's Part 1 of The Creative Pleasure Principle:

Imagine you're in a choir, singing a difficult piece, and it's not coming together. But you persist, and eventually the ensemble achieves perfect harmony, emanating a sound that gives you chills from head to toe!

That's a dramatic example of creative pleasure: the feeling of coming into alignment with your heart's desire.

Creative pleasure is a universal principle. It's related to the Law of Attraction, by which similar thoughts and experiences are drawn to each other. As thought and desire come into alignment, pleasure is felt and creation unfolds.

You could say that atoms and molecules "feel pleasure" when they come together to create higher orders of complexity and intelligence. Thus, the Creative Pleasure Principle informs all of nature, from the smallest flea, to the tallest tree, to the human parent and child.

Today, notice that you feel better when your thoughts are aligned with your desires — when you believe you can have what you want.
*************

And part 2:

Since the Creative Pleasure Principle informs every level of creation — matter, body, mind, and spirit — the most natural way to create a wonderful life is by simply "following your pleasure."

Being pleasure-oriented empowers you and your child to co-create a mutually satisfying relationship. Children are innately pleasure-oriented, but they can become "dis-oriented" by the anti-pleasure aspects of our culture.

Some parents think that if they were totally pleasure-oriented, they'd abandon their children! This arises from confusion between authentic pleasure and pseudo-pleasure — the shallow pleasure of aligning with the distortions of the dominator culture.

One such distortion is the idea that suffering earns you the "right" to feel good. A parent who believes that may feel "good" about attending to personal desires at the child's expense: "I suffered as a child; now it's MY turn to get what I want!"

Thus pseudo-pleasure perpetuates the win/lose, dominator culture. Only the authentic pleasure of aligning your thoughts and actions with your heart's desires can create a win/win, partnership culture: "My child and I can BOTH find satisfaction... I don't know how, but there must be a way."

Today, as you make parenting choices, wait for the feeling of authentic, creative pleasure before you take action.

********************

I think if we breathe and take the time to get to know our kids, it can happen.

Pause, find that mindfulness and (maybe) groove, you can find a joy and so can your child.

We can forge a partnership with our children and I really think joy is the way.

Just making sure

I just wanted to make sure people know that I don't justify Alec's video game playing on the sole reason of how much he's learning. (I actually wrote that out for some people who might like to see the "schooly" or "academic" type of learning that can go on while playing.) I know deep down that what he chooses and what keeps his attention and gives him so much joy is the right thing for Alec. :)

Really, it is the joy. Like Pam Sorooshian said one time "if its not fun, we probably don't do it" . It might sound somewhat flip, but its so true and anything but flip. This choice of ours to live this way was a well thought through decision. What a wonderful gift to give our children right now. This opportunity to find what speaks to their soul.

Learning through World of Warcraft (WOW) Part 1

My mage :)

OK, so just to warn you, this will be a long one *g*.... and technical. This is a hard post to write because there's so much information, but I'll do my best and take it a step at a time. Just like Alec does when he's leveling his characters. :) (Oh and most of this makes sense to me from him explaining it to me)

This is just a touch of what type of thinking/learning goes into playing WOW.

For those of you not familiar with World of Warcraft or WOW, it is a MMORPG (Massively Multi-player Online Roleplaying Game). Meaning you take on the role of some sort of character. And you also play with lots of other people who are sitting at computers just like yourself.

This will be an extensive explanation of playing the game. You really don't have to play this seriously but I'm going to go into this depth because this is how my son has played it. When he plays a game its pretty thorough, every detail is important to him. I will also touch on other things we've learned from the game in following posts.

First off, you have to choose which type of realm(world) you want to be in, it depends on what style of play you like. These are the types: Role-playing (RP), Player vs Player (PVP), regular (our choice with the characters mentioned later) and RP, PVP together.

After choosing what realm you're going to play in, you get to then pick your character that you want to play. These characters have certain qualities and certain classes that they can be. For example, Alec picked a dwarf because he wanted to be a hunter(class) and dwarves have the highest agility stats starting out. Agility is a good attribute for a hunter. You can also be a night elf hunter but the dwarf will have 24 agility and the night elf only has 20. (I'll explain that later.) I knew I wanted to be a mage so I had the choice between gnome or human, I chose human. She's prettier. *g* Stats aren't as important to me ;) We also have other characters--my priest, hunter and druid are night elves. Alec's warrior is a human and his shaman is a Tauren. The Tauren are a race on the Horde side.


Most of our characters are on the Alliance side, but there is also the option of playing with the Horde side. These 2 sides can battle and you can choose to be on either one. The horde side is a little scarier looking, yet its debatable whether they are the "bad" guys though. ;)


OK, so Alec has a dwarf hunter and starts to level him. Which means you pretty much run around killing things, (different mobs) which gives you a certain amount of experience points. You also do quests which give you experience. Quests can be running errands, helping out a npc (non player character/a character in the game not being played by a person) or a lot of times looking for a lost person *g*. A LOT of map reading, which I'm not so good at ;) my kids help me. :)

So you get experience and you level up. Math coming into play here- you want to know how much exp (experience you need to get to level 2) You have 30 exp but you need 300 to get to level 2. Also you want to know how many monsters you have to kill to get to that next level--lets see you get 50 exp for each kill and you have 270 points left.. do the division, and voila. That's pretty simple but when you get up in the level 50s,, sigh, you need like, (I just looked and I need 173,900 exp to get to level 55 and I'm at 77,992) You do get more exp per kill now but it take a lot of work to level up in those higher levels.

Next would come equip (how Alec terms it) it would include your armor and weapons and different ways of making your hunter better. As you are killing these mobs (monsters) you will get drops from them. You kill a certain monster and they might drop any of the following: a piece of armor, weapon , a crafting material, money. You might be able to use the item, you might not. A hunter can wear leather, and at higher levels mail. My mage can only wear cloth.Certain classes use certain types of weapons also, like Alec's hunter can use swords, axes and bows or guns. My mage can use staves, wands and can get trained in a sword too, (I just found that out!) So you look for certain things. Also as you are looking for drops you want to look at the stats or attributes on the items. Like right now my wand is this:

Wand of Biting Cold
67-125 Frost Damage
(64.0 damage per second) speed 1.50
Equip Increases damage done by frost spells & effects by up to 16.

This wand is good for me because I'm a frost mage. I raise my frost talents with skill points. (I don't even go into skill points in this blog post ;))

My wand right now doesn't have any added attributes though. I think I could have +Mana regeneration put on it or +Spirit but I can't afford it right now. :)

Attributes would include these things and certain attributes are better for some classes over others. A list of Attributes:

Strength-Modest Improvements to Melee Damage
Stamina-Higher Hit Points
Agility-Minorly Increases Chance to Dodge
Intellect-More Mana, Raise Critical Hit with Spells
Spirit-Improves Hit Point/Mana Regeneration

(Hit points are your health points, and Mana is your magic points. Not every class has mana, but all have hit points.)

A hunter would want agility(having this attribute will raise your chance to get a critical hit, dodge and increases damage done at range and in melee) so you'd look for armor with +agility, or you might even want some +spirit too so you can use your special skills with markmanship. :) This is where it gets complicated for me,,(well there are other places too but this is one *g*) Alec will advise me on what armor is better for me, as a mage. He ends up advising quite a few people on what pieces (armor and weapons) are the best choices. I see him getting tells(messages) all the time, "bro, what piece is better?" hehe..

Here are my mage's Attributes right now:

Strength 29
Increases Attack Power by 19
Agility 33
Increases Critical Hit Chance by 5%
Stamina 93
Increases Health by 750
Intellect 296
Increases Mana by 4160
Increases Spell Critical Hit by 5.82%
Spirit 229
Increases Mana Regeneration by 34 per sec
Armor 758
Reduces Physical Damage Taken by 13.16%

Lots of math here too because you can also alter the stats on your equip with enchanments, enchantments are enhancements that can be added to things. Like you can have +15 agility put on a back piece or you can have +30% added damage bonus on your weapon. So as you are evaluating your equip, all these things come into play and it will ultimately play into how much damage you do or how well your character does in the world of Azeroth. :)

You can get your items from drops but you can also get your items from the auction house (the AH). That is the way you can make money,,oh yeah,,here's more math. You usually will have an amount of money on you, you can find money on the mobs you kill or you can sell items you find to make money. Using the AH is an amazing learning experience. You can put up items, you set the low bid price, you can put in a buy out price, and then you wait. Lots of economics principles going on here. People will put things up for just a bit lower to move things quicker or not put in a buyout price at all, if its really rare,, they'll let people bid it out. You are actually bidding against other players and interacting with these people. (Socializing)

As you get higher in your levels the equip, obviously, gets better-- usually cooler looking too,, keeps you wanting to level. :)

So, lots of math going on,, lots of evaluating, remembering what means what--- it's amazing.

Just a note: Most of this knowledge was gathered by playing and researching online. Alec can spend hours reading about how to make his equip better and also how to bring down the mobs. The stategies to be successful at these higher levels is pretty complicated. You do a lot with big groups, 20 man and 40 man. More on that later...