On the Mount

Yesterday, we went to the mountains with the LifeLearners. We had planned the trip a few weeks ago when the heat was getting bad and we all desired to escape it. Funny enough, it was not very hot yesterday and thunderstorms threatened and, I hear, actually dumped rain in some places. As we drove up there, we passed through a rainy spot and the clouds were building above the mountaintop. Oh no, I thought, this is not going to be good. The gods were favoring us, I guess, because we did not suffer even a drop of rain or the threat of thunder and lightning the whole time we were at the picnic spot. It was cool and refreshing, there was water in the creek, the wildlife was abundant, and the company was as stimulating as ever!



I had fun taking this picture of the girls and my favorite tree. The one you see here is actually a composite image of two pictures, since my camera could not capture the whole of the scene. Oh how I love photoshop!


Here are some of the cute little critters we encountered up there. These little guys were totally not afraid to get close to us. One even jumped up on the tree trunk we were sitting on while taking pictures, but thought the better of it and jumped right back down. He was close enough to touch.

This is a picture of the girls and their friend S waaaaaay up high on the side of the canyon we were in. You can click on the picture to get the big one and see them inside the circle I drew around them. Anyway, after seeing how high they got and hearing their excited shouts, I felt the need to go join them up there. On the way up, a big rock got knocked down by another one of the kids, and tumbled past a few of us frightfully close, and came to rest next to the picnic table we were sitting at. I saw it all from my spot on the side of the hill. My heart was pounding so hard and fast from the adrenaline. I mean the rock was bigger than one little boys' head! It could have cracked his skull open. Yikes! Everyone who was climbing the hill headed down and when they were back down, I continued up to reach the girls at the top. I had to rest a few times to get my heart to settle down. Once up there, the girls were so excited to show me how cool it was up there.
After admiring the view, taking some pictures, and getting my heart rate down, I suggested we seek out a new route down. The way up had scared me too much to want to go down the same way! We hiked along the top for a while and found a much nicer way back down to the picnic area. The girls were so excited that we had explored and climbed together. Boy, how a little adrenaline can make you feel so alive! We headed home when the sun was getting low and the temperature dropped. It was a good day.

The Boy Who Lived

Or did he? You'll have to read the book to find out! I finished it today and just have to say that J. K. Rowling is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I did not want it to be over so soon, but I could not help myself.

A told me today that she can wait to read the book until after we have read the second and third books in the His Dark Materials trilogy, The Princess Academy, and finished listening to the Septimus Heap trilogy. What?!?!! She can wait to read the seventh and final book? Considering we go about a chapter a day, that would be MONTHS from now. She even said she wanted me to re-read all six previous books to her before we started number 7, "to catch up on everything". I'm not sure that we will actually wait that long. Or maybe I will just have to sit on her and force her to listen to it!

She is attempting to read HP#1 to herself, although the process is painfully slow and involves me deciphering long strings of letters shouted from the other room into actual words, oh, every five seconds, or so. I know that the process will make her an exceptional reader very quickly, but it might just be easier to read to her for the next few years! The things you do for your kids....

What a Long Strange Year it's Been

View from the trail at Multnomah Falls in OR

Just one short year ago, our life was about to take a drastic turn, hopefully for the better. My dear husband was tiring of his present job and began looking for other employment by contacting a friend who was working at a small firm in the Pacific Northwest. Within a few weeks of this first phone call, an interview was set up and C and I were flying there to check out the area and see if we really wanted to move there. Despite C's caution about the job itself, we fell in love with the area. The company wanted C, and soon. Like by October. We left with a lot to think about. C persuaded his friend to hold them off until the timing was better for him to leave the present job. The plan was to move in the spring. In February, we took the girls there to show them the area and to look for land on which to build a house. The girls fell in love with the area and we were all excited about the big change coming up. We found a piece of land and even went as far as entering negotiations to purchase it. Just as we were about to accept the counter offer, C put the brakes on the whole deal, wishing to be more cautious with our finances and not stretch ourselves too thinly. We could look for land to buy when we got there.

It was not meant to be. Soon after this, C made the decision to turn down the job and our plans were sent back to square one. By this time I had found people to replace me as leader of the Life Learners, starting preparing myself emotionally and logistically for the move, and had done a ton of research about the new area. To say that the change of plans was a shock is putting it lightly. I truely mourned the loss of the plan for a good month or more. On the surface, I appeared to be rolling with the punches, but inside I was sad. I resolved to stop trying to plan the future. When C told me it was time to move and where we had to go, I would do it. I would make where ever we went Home. I have had a lot of practice doing that and I knew I could do it again. We accepted that another summer here in the desert was inevitable, so I found a new pool for our backyard to help us survive the heat. I did not step down as leader of the LVLL, but enjoyed all the new help I now had to run things. I tried really hard to forget that I had declared myself DONE with this place and strived to see the good in living here.

And now? Well, we have a new plan. This time it does not revolve around the job, as it has for pretty much my whole life. It revolves around dreams and plans and goals for the whole family and our whole life. I get to go Home. It will take us a few years and a detour through the DC area, but eventually we will find land and build our forever home on it near my hometown. My children will grow up close to the land and close to family. They say you can never go home again, and for the last 15 or so years I have lived my life believing that, perhaps to make myself feel better. But now I know it IS possible. Life is GOOD.

Paradise Found

The last week of June, we spent a glorious seven days with C's family in one of the most beautiful places I have been lucky to see: The Gulf coast of Florida.

This is the view from the beach access boardwalk, one block from the house C's Dad rents for all of us. Ain't it purty?

E on the beach. The water really is that color. Really, it is.


My A boogie boarding in the gentle surf of the Gulf Coast.

Left to right: E, A, cousin H, Uncle C, Cousin R. One , two, three...JUMP! Fun at the beach house pool.

My girls in the water on another beautiful day. A just looks so grown up somehow, to me.

The girls with their twin cousins, putting the finshing touches on the sea turtle I made for them.

As the kids wash the sand off in the water, our sea turtle, Crushina, finishes laying her eggs. The next day, she was gone. Some of us thought it was high tide, but I know better. She buried her eggs and went back to the sea.

The last day of vacation, we all drove north to a place where we could rent tubes and canoes and float/paddle down the Blackwater River. Here we are "putting in", A first, cousins M and H, then E. The day was beautiful, the water refreshing, the scenery tranquil, and the company fun!

A and her cousin R livin' the good life.

There was a rope swing halfway down the river, so we stopped, had lunch on the white sand beach of an oxbow and had some fun on the swing. That's A above. She did not climb the tree and jump. She launched from the shoulders of Uncle C, standing just out of the shot.

E did the same. She did not quite understand that at some point you were supposed to let go of the rope. Daddy got in the action as well, except that he just jumped from the tree into a very deep spot of water.

Parting shot: The family on the beach after dinner one night at a beachside seafood restaurant.

p.s. Happy now, Stephanie?

Long Lost Pictures Part II

Here you go, Stephanie! Yes, we took this trip waaaaay back in May. You can see the first half here LLP Part I. Here is the second half of our trip to San Fran: Here we are hanging out on the peninsula between the Yacht Harbor and San Francisco Bay for a good look at the Golden Gate bridge and to look for Starfish and crabs. Success on all counts!

While there we saw a cool sailboat out in the bay. And sea lions, too.

At the end of the peninsula is a neat piece of artwork called the Wave Organ, which would have been really cool if we had been there during high tide. It was fun to listen to, anyway.

After lunch at this great pizza place, we headed to the Exploratorium, located at the Palace of Fine Arts. To show the scale of the structures there, the circled spots in the picture above are the girls. The museum itself was awesome!

This is an exhibit of some chicken embryos, LIVE chicken embryos, in various stages of development. You could see the hearts beating! So cool.

I took more good video than pictures and I don't know have any way to get video up here on blogger yet, so you will have to go yourself to see how great it was! But here are the girls playing with iron fillings and super strong magnets.

Late afternoon, we headed to Pier 39, driving down Lombard street on our way there. Back in 1994, when C and I first met, we took a trip to San Fran and he took a picture of me by this sea lion statue. Here is me and my girls doing the same 13 years later!

At Pier 39, we watched the sea lions, rode the carousel, bought some souvenirs, and had dinner at Bubba Gumps, which was lots of fun. We watched the sea lions some more as the sun was setting. I think A could have stayed there forever! Left off our plans were a ride on a street car, a meal in Chinatown (we did drive through it on our way out that night), a drive across the Golden Gate bridge, and a visit to Ghiradelli's. Next time, I guess!

Where My Parents Failed Me

Growing up, I enjoyed a relatively good childhood. We were not rich, but were not poor either. My parents were not tyrannical authoritarians. We had fun. I remember having what others around us might have called intellectual discussions at the dinner table. Oh, and the food on the table was cooked from scratch by my stay-at-home-feminist mother. Yes, you heard that right. One of her life goals was to get the world to see the value of raising children and to actually put their money where their values were. To have mothering count in the GNP. But I digress. This is not about my parents successes - I AM a stay at home mother who knows her worth, even if I am not monetarily compensated - but their failure. One I am coming to terms with now and figuring out how not to pass it on to my children.

My parents made some life choices that went against the mainstream. As I mentioned, my mother did not work in an age where more and more children were being raised by daycare workers and TV during the latchkey after school hours. Whenever we could, we grew our own food and always cooked from scratch while our friends in school had twinkies in their lunchboxes and had tasted Hamburger Helper, sometimes more than once a week. Shopping involved getting only exactly what you needed and only if it was on sale. No hundred dollar pairs of Jordache jeans for me. My polos were the kind that did NOT have the right number of buttons (ten), or even a cute little alligator or pony embroidered on them. Our house was filled with lots of cool art supplies, books, interesting curiosities, most acquired from yard sales and the Salvation Army, or the sale bin at least. I often wondered how the family down the road who lived in a trailer (white trash) could afford to have a satellite dish and three new ATVs while we only had four tv stations, on a good day, and barely a bike for each of us, most of which were handed down. It was obvious my dad made more money, but I never understood the difference in lifestyle.

And there is the failure. Where I even noticed our differences, I rarely understood the reasoning behind them. Oh, sure, the dinner conversations touched on all matter of topics of interest to the environment, the evils of blind faith in institutions like religion and government, the need to give back and be grateful for what you have. But, still, I grew up to join the military despite my almost-had-to-move-to-Canada-to-avoid-the-war father. I fell into the trap of the mainstream culture, valuing entertainment and stuff over the lives, human and otherwise, that were sacrificed in the production of those diversions (If you did not read the article I posted below, read it now).

I have been able to make choices I know now my parents would never support because they failed to impress upon me the reasons they would not support them. Maybe they did not know what I know now, and they did not have such gravely important reasons. Maybe they believed more deeply in letting people be to figure things out on their own, than they did in being sure we understood what they understood, whatever the cost. Maybe they tried and my brothers and I could only "get it" to various extents, but not the whole picture. I don't know.

What I do know is that my children will know why I do what I do. They will be active participants in our family decisions about how best to live in this world, helping us to balance all the various and often conflicting rationales for choices. This will mean that they will need to know things that I did not know until much later in life (with some motherly restraint applied, of course) so that they can make informed decisions along with us.

I will have to balance this "need to know" with a healthy optimism about life. We will focus on what we can do, how we can live, and why it is so important. I do want to protect them from the despair I have felt in the last few months, at least until they have reached a certain age to be able to handle it. Not sure what that age is, but that will reveal itself. I know for sure it will be sooner than 35. In the meantime, we will continue to strive to live closer to our ideals, showing our daughters how good that life can be, openly sharing our reasons and our mistakes, involving them in the process as much as possible.

This is one sin of the father and mother that will NOT be passed on to the daughters of the daughter.

All this is not to say I don't forgive them, of course!

You Might Want to Rethink That iPhone...

Before you buy that spiffy new piece of techno love, or any other like it, read this article. Please.

A Little Something to Tide You Over...

...until I get back to post about our trip to the beach.

This video was very apropos after some conversations I have had this past week concerning the state of the world and what to do about it, if anything. Follow the link below the video to see other videos by the same guy that go into more detail and explain further his argument.

Interesting Argument About Global Warming - Watch more free videos