My Carpet!

I got it today! It's the magnificent flying carpet.



And here's Abbi and me. This is her epic flight form for her druid.


Mother and daughter flying together, nothin' like it.

Playing is good

I missed my girls the last month with them both off on adventures. First Abbi for 2 weeks in Maryland and then Kyra for a week in Tennesse. Now they're both home and we have a friend staying with us. So the fun continues :)

Kimi is here playing


And we're expecting Christine and Shawn to arrive tonight.

Ren shared about Kyra's stay but I just can't help but put these pics up.

The joy in these faces.


I just love it!


And the fact that she got to enjoy the snow... well, what a treat for us Northerners :)




A couple of reasons why she had a great time.



Imagine that.. even the parents have fun!

Thank you sweet friends!

In case you missed it

This is why we love Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and John Williams for that matter. All of these musicians are amazing, of course. Can you say chills?

And watch Yo-Yo Ma's face, awesome :)

A Great Day

Our hope, our dreams, and our spirits are rekindled.

I, for one, am excited for the next 4 years of our country.

Good luck, Barack Obama, we're thinking of you on this day.

Last week

What we've been up to:

We went to the Atlanta History Center. There was an awesome Jim Hensen exhibit there, love Jim Hensen :) There were lots of other things there too but the muppet king was our main point of interest this time... oh, and Madeline and her boys. And I met another unschooling mama that I've been wanting to meet! Kimba, from Atlanta, she has beautiful pink hair!

Madeline, Gillen and Jesse met us at the Mall of Georgia where Kyra always has to ride the merry-go-round, Yay! and we went to the movie Tales of Despereaux. We really enjoyed it, just beautiful animation. Afterward, they came home with us and stayed the night.

Here are the boys watching Alec while he's raiding.




Alec was so cute. (he'll love me saying that ;) He got both boys all set up with laptops right in his room so they could all play. I've loved watching Alec with the younger kids, he was talking with me about how excited Jesse was about WoW. How he'd go on and on about it, (kind of like someone else we know ;). Madeline and I saw how patient Alec was with Jesse while we were at the museum earlier that week too. It was very cool.

After Madline and the boys left, Alec, Kyra and I then headed up to the Chatanooga area to see another family. Yep, we then visited with Mindy and family. We love visiting them up on their mountain :) They're set back in the woods which makes me feel like I'm right at home. Mindy brought me in to Chattanooga and showed me around. I had never been in to the heart of the city before. It was very cool. She was very excited to share the coffee roasters right there and we had fun checking out the fair trade store! It's a funky downtown and I like it a lot! Later we played games and talked WoW and just enjoyed hanging out with our friends.

Friday afternoon we returned from Chattanooga, did a few things around the house and then early Saturday morning Tim, Kyra and I headed up to the Johnson City area. It turns out that Steph, Nic's mom was making a trip down to Bristol, VA with a friend; so we were able to meet her and get Abbi! yay! We missed her so!

She had a wonderful time up in Maryland. She snowboarded, visited the new Newseum in Washington DC, played games, met new friends and showed us all how wonderfully independent she is. I'm learning how to handle kids being gone, do I call? do I not call? Am I worrying too much?

Oh, and now Kyra is away. She's staying with Ren's family and gets to see Laura's too. Several other families live up in that area and they've been wonderful in sharing their lives with us.

Life is good.

It's winter? and blog talk radio

More weather talk from me... (sorry) It's cool here this morning, 31 I think. I put Bemidji in my yahoo weather search just to see what the temp was there... -32.

Wow.

and on an unschooling note~ Ren and Laura were guests on a blog talk radio show yesterday. If you'd like to listen to it you can right here and also at Ren's blog.

Great show you guys, it was amazing the range of topics that were covered!

Goings on around home

I have perennials greening up! Oh my gosh, I can't believe it. I was out looking around the yard and my mums have new growth at the bottom. Crazy.. but cool. I've been told that I'll get 2 blooming times with a lot of my perennials. Wow! Nothing like flowers growing in January!

Tim's been busy. Besides going back to work after a nice long vacation in December he decided to kick it into gear in regard to our basement.

I have a handy husband. He decided to do all of this himself. This is his first time dry walling and all that. It looks pretty darn good and will only get better.



He's really excited to dry wall the extra bedroom that we're going to finish because he found new tools that really make fillin' in those gaps between the dry wall a piece of cake. And they were on clearance! (and if you know Tim you know how excited he was about that ;)


If you look past the Foosball table you can see the bedroom that's next to be finished.

I helped some, picking out paint and painting.

Here's the room in progress. Can you guess what it's going to be? Do you see the platform he built? Clue: there aren't any windows so it'll be perfect for ......


We can't wait!



Alec and Kyra have been keeping busy and enjoying some time home. Kyra is done with her art class and was very excited to get all her art supplies home.

She promptly drew this elf riding a dragon fly yesterday. She really likes pastels. I love how she blended the colors and I love the water behind the elf.


Alec has been playing some new games that he got over the holidays and what's really cool is that some are for x-box live and they're cooperative. So not only can he enjoy a new game but he can play with his cousin back in Minnesota and with Abbi and Nic up in Maryland. All four of them were playing the other evening and having a blast. Alec's also still playing drums with Rock Band, he reconfigured the set and working on getting the brain working. It's a little complicated because how you have the cymbals and drums tilted affects the sound. The brain I'm talking about is an electrical unit that makes his drum set that he got to play Rock Band sound like a real drum set. So you can play it without the game also.

And, of course we're all missing Abbi. She had a first last week, she learned to snowboard! She enjoyed it but said she was bruised a lot. She sent us a picture of her knees over AIM and we all collectively said ..... "OW!"

A visit and gone to visit

When you hang out with friends, what else would you do but

write on each other





and


braid your boyfriend's hair!

photos taken by Abbi Smith, Thanks Abbi!

The Smiths (Abbi's boyfriend's family) stopped by on their way home from Florida. The Haworths had wanted to visit with them too so they joined us for the fun. We had a really nice afternoon. Drawing on each other, doing Nic's hair, watching football and lots of talking were some of the goings on.

Then around dinnertime we said good-bye and Abbi went with them! She'll be gone for about 2 weeks. They live in the Maryland/DC area so lots of stuff to do around there! She was so excited. (me on the other hand....I'm happy for her, but I'll really miss her and I don't know what to do with myself.. all these independent kids!)

Happy New Year Sun!

I'm not much a night owl and having some flu/cold sickness circulating through the house lately doesn't help. I did stay up long enough to say Happy New Year to the fam and see the peach drop (on TV).

Bringing in the New Year here in Georgia was a little different from what we were used to in northern MN. The peach drop I mentioned was supposed to bring in 100,000 people... gulp. I first asked Tim, "was it 10,000 people that are going to be in downtown Atlanta?" as I watched Dick Clark's Rockin New Year's and Atlanta's Peach drop. He informed me it was more like 100,000! Wow. Pretty much the population of the 2 cities where I grew up... crazy.

Then as I was closing my eyes and laying down to bed I could hear the fireworks going off across the lake. Opening up my blinds I could see through our trees multi-colored lights flickering in the distance. That was cool. Also cool were the happy sounds I could hear downstairs.

Alec talking to his cousin on X-box live. And Kyra and Abbi typing happily away on their computers.

I didn't get any photos of the fireworks last night but I did snatch some snapshots of the New Year's sunrise.



Where's that sun? There's the lake. (and it's not frozen, which I know you all know but I have to keep telling myself that!) These are taken from our back deck.


There it is! Happy New Year Sun!



I'm much more of a sunrise girl.

New Year's Resolutions?

This morning I was thinking, should I do a blog post about resolutions? Or my lack of making resolutions? I was wondering why I don't ever really do those and I opened up my e-mail.

The daily Om was there and made me feel better about my feelings toward them.

I like this. It's written by one of the co-founders of Daily Om.

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

New Year's Resolutions: The Two Lists
A Message from DailyOM Co-Founder Scott Blum

I was fortunate to spend time with an enigmatic man named Robert during a very special period of my life. Robert taught me many things during our days together, and this time of year reminds me of one particular interaction we had.

"Now that you are becoming more aware," Robert said, "you need to begin to set goals for yourself so you don't lose the momentum you have built."

"Like New Year's resolutions?" I asked.

"That's an interesting idea," he smirked. "Let's do that."

By then I was used to his cryptic responses, so I knew something was up because of the way his eyes sparkled as he let out an impish laugh.

"Tonight's assignment is to make two lists," Robert continued. "The first is a list of all the New Year's resolutions you WANT to keep, and the second is a list of all the New Year's resolutions you WILL keep. Write the WANT List first, and when you have exhausted all of your ideas, then write the second list on another sheet of paper."

That night I went home and spent several hours working on the two lists. The WANT List felt overwhelming at first, but after a while I got into writing all the things I had always wanted to do if the burdens of life hadn't gotten in the way. After nearly an hour, the list swelled to fill the entire page and contained nearly all of my ideas of an ideal life. The second list was much easier, and I was able to quickly commit ten practical resolutions that I felt would be both realistic and helpful.

The next day, I met Robert in front of the local food Co-op, where we seemed to have most of our enlightening conversations. "Tell me about your two lists," Robert said as the familiar smirk crept onto his face.

"The first list contains all the things I SHOULD do if I completely changed my life to be the person I always wanted to be. And the second list contains all the things I COULD do by accepting my current life, and taking realistic steps towards the life I want to lead."

"Let me see the second list," he said.

I handed him the second list, and without even looking at it, he ripped the paper into tiny pieces and threw it in the nearby garbage can. His disregard for the effort I had put into the list annoyed me at first, but after I calmed down I began to think about the first list in a different light. In my heart, I knew the second list was a cop out, and the first list was the only one that really mattered.

"And now, the first list." Robert bowed his head and held out both of his hands.

I purposefully handed him the first list and held his gaze for several seconds, waiting for him to begin reading the page. After an unusually long silence, he began to crumple the paper into a ball and once again tossed it into the can without looking at it.

"What did you do that for?!" I couldn't hide my anger any longer.

Robert began to speak in a quiet and assured voice. "What you SHOULD or COULD do with your life no longer matters. The only thing that matters, from this day forward, is what you MUST do."

He then drew a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and handed it to me.

I opened it carefully, and found a single word floating in the middle of the white page:

"Love."

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

So, on that note, wishing you all Love in the New Year!

Heroes?

We've been watching Heroes this last week and loving it. Did you know that if you have x-box live and netflix subscriptions you can now stream thousands of movies and tv shows instantly? No, I'm not an advertisement but we were able to watch Heroes episodes back to back! Quite awesome :)

This morning I was sent a video from my father-in-law that got me thinking along the lines of Heroes. If you aren't familiar with the show there is someone in it who can fly... (and of course I suggest that you watch the series because the first season is incredible *g*)

Check this out... flying

this is in Norway. My dad's family is from Norwary, so yes I am Norwegian, but I don't think I could do this...

Happy Holidays!

It must be that time of year again...

And what else can you do while assembling the Death Star?

But watch The Star Wars movies

Other goings on during our gift openings:

The girls singing a song Logan taught them. I don't know what it's called but it has some lyrics like..."Hi my name is Joe. I've got a wife, 3 kids and I work at a button factory." It's hilarious. You end up singing and acting out pushing a button with different body parts. OK, so it's hard to explain, but fun to photograph.

And you must have dancing...

drama

and... Taa Daa!

Even Saddi got a new toy!

Content puppy

Kyra posing in her new Qacei hat that Santa brought. Nothing like your hair matching your hat! Awesome!


And Abbi made us Aebleskiver this morning with her new Aebleskiver pan.

Aebleskivers are danish round pancakes and oooh so good!






We like them with maple syrup, or berries or powdered sugar or just plain. They were yummy!

Joyous holiday wishes from our family to yours!

Inspired by the most recent house concert that the Lovejoys hosted:

These are a few of my favorite things...

just hangin'

Danny and Carrie

Yes, a bit of swimming. It was close to 70 for a bit :)

teen happiness

fun with friends



sweetness



lights

We all had an awesome time.