Did I Mention She Can Read?

Remember when I said less than a month ago that E was not ready to start reading yet? Well, I can't say what day it was recently, forgot to mark it down for all posterity, but she came to me one evening carrying the Bob Books. She asked me to help her read them. So I did. Only I did not have to help much! She easily made it through the first 4 books before tiring of it. Today she picked up one of them and looked at a few pages. I heard her say to herself, "Yup, I remember how to read!" So much for my predictions, huh?

$282.34

That is the total amount of money we raised for the World Wildlife Federation this weekend at our yard/lemonade/bake sale! The stuff for the yard sale was free; we only accepted donations for the animals. We made fliers and C and the girls walked around the neighborhood to put them on all the neighbors doors. I invited the Life Learners to participate and a couple friends donated stuff and came to help during the sale.The girls helped with making signs for our set up, which included the big donation jar above and the sign below. People were very generous and kind and we had a great time.
The girls were very pleased with our total! It was fun counting it out and making predictions on how much we raised. There is not even very much stuff left over to get rid of. One trip to Goodwill should do it. It was quite a good experience all around and I recommend doing this to anyone. Something about offering your stuff for free gets people digging deeper in their pockets and nobody can resist kids selling lemonade and cookies. And the best part of this is no pricing of everything and no haggling! Just point 'em to the donation jar.

Fearless

The last few days, E has been watching the movie Aquamarine, about a mermaid who comes ashore and gets help from two young teen girls to find love before her Daddy makes her marry someone she does not love.

I love this one scene where the girls are at the mall and the mermaid stands at a balcony and yells, "Heeelloooo!" When the two girls give her an embarrassed look, she simply asks, "Why live life unnoticed?" I love that! To go through life unnoticed seems like such a waste to me.

I am working on my fears about potential notoriety because what I want to do with my life could lead to a lot of people noticing me. And I don't want that to hold me back.

I wish I was as fearless as E when it comes to this stuff. She has no problem doing exactly what she wants, when she wants to, with no thought to what others will think. I wish I was not so quick to be the "voice of reason" (i.e. fear) for her when she wants to do something that will get her noticed.

How much of her spirit has my fear already crushed? Yikes! I think it is time for a little balcony yelling around here....

Beautiful Day

We had a magical day Tuesday at Spring Mountain Ranch State Park with the Life Learners. On a whim, I suggested that we bring bubble making stuff. Several moms did and the kids had a great time blowing bubbles and running to pop them. I had fun getting in on the action trying to capture some good photos. The one above is my favorite one of my kids. They also got out the parachute and had fun lifting and running under it, and bouncing balls high into the air on it.

I got under the parachute to try to get a picture of them all around me as they went under, but my lens was not wide angle enough. Where is a fish-eye lens when you need one? I do like this one of A though.
This one above shows of the colors of the beautiful day we had to great effect. We could not have asked for more perfect weather. The kids had fun playing with their friends in the wide open natural spaces, finding bugs, pretending to be fairies and goofing around.

Us moms had some amazing conversations and we did not want it to end, even though the sun was setting behind the mountain and we were getting cold. The rangers came by with an announcement that the park was closing and we had to leave or get locked in for the night! So, we rushed out, sad to have to end the magic so abruptly.

Sounds Like Unschooling to Me...

"Ask not what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive . . .
then go do it.
Because what the world needs is more people who have come alive." Howard Thurman

Dangerous Ideas

Poking around the Internet this morning I ran across an article, HERE, and had to share. I implore you to go read it and then do some more reading if it was new to you. It was not new to me, but the need to share it has become new to me and is building in need day by day. First a little test:

Humans belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community. Daniel Quinn

How does that feel to you? Sound about right? Well, that is the dangerous idea I refer to in my post title. Mr. Quinn goes into detail about just how dangerous an idea it is, so go read the article. Why? Because you might change your mind about that statement and that is the point. The future of our species depends on it.

Here is an excerpt:

"People often ask me if I have any hope for our survival. What they really want to know, of course, is whether I can provide them with some grounds for hope.

I am hopeful, because I feel sure that something extraordinary is going to happen in your lifetime--in the lifetime of those of you who are three or four decades younger than I am. I'm talking about something much more extraordinary than has happened in MY lifetime, which has included the birth of television, the splitting of the atom, space travel, and instant, global communication via the Internet. I mean something REALLY extraordinary.

During your lifetime, the people of our culture are going to figure out how to live sustainably on this planet--or they're not. Either way, it's certainly going to be extraordinary. If they figure out how to live sustainably here, then humanity will be able to see something it can't see right now: a future that extends into the indefinite future. If they don't figure this out, then I'm afraid the human race is going to take its place among the species that we're driving into extinction here every day--as many as 200--every day. "

Out of the Mouths of Babes

This morning we were watching the new Charlotte's Web from Netflix and A says, "Pigs are intelligent". E pipes in, "Smart, too!"

Good Times

I have been so bad about keeping up with our lives here and so, once again, I attempt to make it up with lots of pictures. I have a bunch saved from our past few weeks and will give you a quick run down on the goings-on around here.

E and her puffles. We went to the store and bought these white clothes, then came home and dyed them green to match .
A and her puffle. No need to dye anything here; she happened to have a shirt to match.
For a few days the girls played with hard boiled eggs. They were their babies. We made diapers and they carried them in the sling.

One day at park day, the ice cream truck came. I jumped right past the inevitable begging by saying to the moms, "Let's do it!" So we did.


A and her first batch of cookies, made almost entirely by herself. Yum!

We had a surprise visit from my good friend Flo and her crew. They only had basically a day and a half to spend with us, so we chose Red Rock as the most worthy place to take them. The girls showed their friend C the coolest places to climb the rocks and search for waterfalls and we made a few obos (stacks of rocks) along the way. Back home: trampoline jumping, dancing under the disco ball, gymnastics demonstrations, Diet Coke and Mentos experiments, fort building under the dining room table, and good conversations.

E and C at Red Rock.

A girl and her kitty

Part Hippy

Lately, A has been telling me who she is. She says she is part hippy, part comedienne, part tom-boy, part artist, part fashion girl.... I asked her why she was part hippy and she told me, "I am desperate for world peace and desperate to save the animals of the world." She seems to be all about defining herself recently, comparing and contrasting herself to her sister and friends. She is figuring out Who She Is. I love that at eight years old she is interested in doing this. I'm not sure I have ever looked at myself so deeply, at least not until very recently in my life. And I know I have never been so free to define myself without judgement, as she is doing. I'm sure the fact that her days are free to be filled as she sees fit helps to give her the time to venture into this self-exploration. And the fact that she lives without constant competition with her peers helps her to do this with no fear of judgement or criticism from others. I am so proud of her and a little envious, to be honest. How wonderful to get to be wholly yourself at so young an age!