Sunday, November 15, 2009

What Was Actually Accomplished

After the thing that resembled list-making in yesterday's blog post, what we actually accomplished seemed worth detailing. Firstly, I started work on the cooperative mission statement whatnot, which I'm sure all readers are infinitely fascinated by.

I then got as far as to read the Christmas Countdown list from last year and realize I'd already saved it in a Word document last year.

As I was working on both of those things at the computer and after the Tile Guy finished up with our grouting and ceiling patch, Natalie announced she was going to go get kasha at the store. I said, "Oh good!" and handed her the fruit-and-veggie-laden grocery list, which she sighed heavily at. Then Aleks wanted to go with her. Then Bastian wanted to go with her as well, so I decided it best if we all got ready and went to the store together.

At the Food Co-op, we saw our friends India and George and talked happily about the sleepover Aleks & Bastian had at their house last week, as well as about the upcoming changes in the works for the Co-op. Since the co-op didn't have kasha, we decided to go to the Russian grocery.

In the entryway of the store was this poster. It's some theatre event that I can't quite understand.Aleks was wearing his lion costume. Apparently, this is his usual grocery store attire.
I quite liked this weird Troll guy.
Honeycomb in jars. Jon has told me before about getting comb straight out of the fridge at his grandparent's house (they kept bees) when he was a kid. My parents have also kept bits of comb about for chewing on. Aleks was into it. There were bulk Russian chocolates and candy, the children's favorite part by far.

On the way to the Russian store, Natty got a call from our friend of ours that they were going to be playing soccer at a field between the Russian store and our home. So we went for the pick-up game. I called Jon while we were there to get started on the pizza dough so it'd be ready for dinner, even if we didn't get a chance to make our own mozzarella.

Aleks was way into playing with the big kids.
Bastian tried it out a bit too.

Johnny brought the heat. And the crazy.

Natty in action!
Aleks got filthy dirty by attacking people's legs as a defensive mode. I told him he'd go the way of that girl from the University of New Mexico team who got suspended. The other players didn't seem to need to give him a card at all though.
Examining injuries (from wrestling with his brother at home the night before rather than flinging himself at running adults).

It was a beautiful day.
Anna, in between a wedding and a reception, stopped by to play zombie with Bastian a bit.

We taught Bastian how to do somersaults. I consider it a minor failure as a mother for not having ever shown him before!

Afterward, it got so late we totally couldn't finish the pizzas and instead ran about finishing our errands before ordering take-out pizza while Jon and I ate out with our friends over at Slow Learning.

We may not have finished much of our to-do list, but it was a full and lovely day nonetheless.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Saturday Morning

I see lots of list-making on different homeschooling blogs and that makes a good bit of sense to me. Today I woke up early to get a shower in before the Tile Guy came to re-grout the shower. For a Saturday and for me, getting up early is an anomaly. Showering early is even more so. I almost didn't know what to do with myself. So I made coffee and fed the kids and shooed Bastian off his inappropriate video games to takeover at the computer. There is much to do today.

It's November, which means it's time to think of the rapidly approaching Holidays. There are gifts to be made, the holiday card to design and letter to write (anyone interested in exchanging?), the Christmas Countdown to plan (though I swore we wouldn't do it again after how much it amped the kids up for the holidays, now it's their favorite tradition), Hanna Anderson Christmas pjs to pick out (and decide on the right mark-down to buy them at!), on and on... And there are lots of questions there for you, dear reader!

Namely: What are some good crafts for winter for our Christmas countdown? We can't do the same ones as last year, of course. Please send us links and suggestions!

Additionally, this morning we are
* working on playing
* thinking about the grocery list and new ways to get more fruits and veggies into children who like very few
* drawing


Zombie Family with Zombie Natty on her laptop, where she lives:


Later we hope to
* make homemade mozzarella (after that grocery trip!) for
* making homemade pizza (with Julie's pizza crust tip)
* picking up our local, organic beef order
* Mama has to work on developing examples of mission statements of Cooperative Grocery Stores so as to consider a new vision for our Food Co-op
* Papa and Mama are going out to dinner with out-of-town friends, so that while the kids enjoy pesto and mozzarella pizza, we'll be eating rosemary french fries
* cleaning the house for our potluck for Natty's birthday tomorrow
* finishing up knit swatches for the joint graffiti knitting project going up in Coventry on, er, Monday, perhaps?

Is there time yet for all these endeavors? I must be getting on with it...

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Right Now

1. Monsters of the Sea by Richard Ellis
2. Ornamental Squash from our garden
3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling (mom's reading it for the 7 thousandth time)
4. Sperm Whales and Other Deep-water Life by Sally Morgan
5. Monsters of the Deep by Heather Angel
6. zombie drawings
7. Young Explorers catalog
8. ideas of creatures and monsters
9. Aleks' 53-page World of Warcraft book detailing creatures he's seen in the game and their level (from memory)
10. kale and fruit smoothie
11. bike helmet frequently left in varying places all over the house as Aleks comes in and out and in again to ride and run and think something up then draw a picture and run back out again to ride some more.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Two Developments

Two exciting developments in a single day:

- At speech therapy today, Aleks was first able to say his "r" sound sharply. His therapist had him demonstrate this for me by having him say "car." He really did sound great! I said, "Your brain must have grown!"

- Aleks discovered his first loose tooth while prying Lego apart with his teeth! It's on the bottom in the middle and is just wiggling. He said he was excited to put it under his pillow. I asked him why. He said for the tooth fairy.
I said, "Oh, okay. How much does the tooth fairy leave you these days?"
He said, "A dollar... Or sometimes a trinket."
I replied, "A trinket?"
"Yeah, a trinket."
"Alrighty then. Thanks for informing me."

Dude, Where's My Blog?

I've been so horrible about updating the blog. I have no real excuse other than I got out of the habit. Oh, and my family joined every other radical unschooler on the planet (it would seem) to start playing World of Warcraft. Now I never get a chance to be on our desktop, where all my photos are stored. But the kids are learning to read maps really well, so it's hard to argue with.

Tonight is a rarity where everyone has gone to sleep before midnight and I was here doing some work for the Food Co-op where I'm on the board. I had to kick Jon off the computer to get it done, but I've managed to get off Facebook long enough to pay attention to the blog.

And here, in this rare visit, I've brought you some giraffes. We made these quite awhile ago at an Unschoolers Co-op Day for the website One Million Giraffes. It took me weeks to photograph them and with everyone playing WoW, they've simply sat on the hard drive, awaiting uploading and sending to Norway to help prove to Jørgen that Ola can collect one million giraffes by 2011.

We managed to create 27 giraffes that day, but here's just a few. Please visit the site and submit your own giraffes! Don't forget to mention it on your blog and to all your friends as well. Thanks to Donna, Brian, Ivy, & Miranda for originally letting us in on this. Here's Aleks' giraffe.
A giraffe giraffe.

Giraffe on Fire.

See our others:
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35403
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35424
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35421
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35420
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35419
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35417
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35416
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35413
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35400
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35409
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35423
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35410
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35414
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35418
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35399
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35404
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35415
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35405
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35411
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35408
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35407
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35406
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35402
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35401
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35398
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=35397

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Unschool Outing







Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Voting

For five years, we've taken the kids to vote here. This is the first year we had any problem. Our precincts were all redrawn and our polling location changed, but the poll workers had trouble figuring out our correct location. Eventually, we went to three different polling spots before we were able to vote properly without using a provisional ballot. I suppose the best thing to do would be to start volunteering as a poll worker in order to bring some competence to the table. We'll see about that.

In the end, all the issues that I voted against passed and the online arguing about them seemed to grow worse after the fact.