There was pizza

(the little one being mama’s gluten and dairy free pizza)

and games

(with Little Sis kicking our butts with the railroads)

and finally the arrival of Little Sis’s new manga, (that she has already asked for the next one because she loves it, and being it is made for her age I do too.) and new games,

with Miss Sky finding her first M for mature game (besides Mortal Kombat) that she watched first on YouTube to make sure it would be okay, and a new family game.

Fluxx is a must for any game collection. I love that there are many different types to fit your family, such as Zombie Fluxx, or Family Fluxx but we of course settled for The Wizard of Oz Fluxx (because we our huge Oz fans of the book series and can’t wait for the new movie to come to out on Dvd).

What I love about the game Fluxx is the game rules and goals are always changing so you never know who the winner could be. The game itself is played by following the directions on the cards you play thus always changing the outcome.

Then the storms came.

At first it just rained and there was running around the yard getting soaked and lots of puddle jumping and laughter.

Then this happened

which thankfully fell the opposite direction of the house only taking out part of our fence.

Then this happened,

the other half of the first branch fell(yes the first picture is just half of the branch split in two I think by lightning).

What’s ironic is while the other half of the branch was still up in the tree it looked like it would fall on our garage. So we pulled our van out and moved our grill and kept our fingers crossed it would stay up until the tree specialists came, but NO, nope not us. It fell the complete opposite way on our brand new lovely deck Papa just finished building 2 days before.

Our we the most unlucky? Little Sis doesn’t think so, “mom I don’t think we have lots of bad luck, I think we have lots of good luck. Two HUGE branches fell from our tree and nobody was hurt. They didn’t fall on our house and we didn’t lose power and know what we have lots and lots of wood for winter.”

Little Sis the optimist who always manages to find the best in every situation, I sure could learn a lot from her.

Peace for the journey.

It is SO hard to separate school from “the real world” these days. School has been a part of  our society for so long it itself has somehow become part of “the real world” and when someone steps outside the box they become the ones no longer living in “the real world.”

It then can become very, very challenging when trying to explain that really *we* are the ones living in “the real world” and not the other way around.

This is when all the questions start rolling in ,which I can understand when you choose to do something different you are going to get questions.

“How are they going to learn math?”, ” How are they going to learn responsibility?”, How are they going to be able to make it in the real world?”

I have been getting pretty good at steering away from negative articles or posts about unschooling. I myself know unschooling works and no longer have doubts.

In these past few years I have seen a child learn how to read and learn all kinds of mathematics, some she wouldn’t even have learned yet if she was in school. That’s been easy for me to document. Being that she was 5 when we started unschooling and she was just learning her letters being able to see her progress has been easy.

What about the other one though, you know the one who will be a teenager this year, what is she learning? What is she learning by playing video games or drawing all day?

This is when taking pictures and documenting becomes a little harder.

Take this picture for instance,

what doesn’t get photographed is the time she spent on-line researching Native American, Asian, and Indian artisans. What doesn’t get photographed is the influence Fruits Basket and Final Fantasy played into her researching Eastern cultures. What doesn’t get photographed is all the research she did into geometric shapes and angles that help influence her designs. What doesn’t get photographed is all the time she spends working on the tiniest details over and over until she feels she has mastered it enough to add it in her drawings. Like feathers, from collecting them to finding pictures of them, or drops, or flowers.  Then there is the research of ancient civilizations armor, weaponry and the documentaries oh and the movie research, like trying to hunt down a copy of Taiwan’s Legend of the Sacred Stone, I couldn’t possibly leave those out.

There is SO much more knowledge she is soaking up behind the scenes than what I could ever capture. These are the things that I also get to see that helped me overcome my doubts too.

If I was to measure her learning with other children in school her age she could be behind in some things but way ahead in others( like way ahead). One of the great joys of homeschooling is we don’t need to use school to measure our children’s knowledge. We don’t need to hold to someone else’s standards of what children ages 12 or 7 should be learning. We can individualize our children’s learning around them.

Like mathematics or grammar. Do you know how much time teachers spend reviewing the same concepts year to year hoping those behind will catch on? Do you know how long it took me to explain to Little Sis sentences start with a capital letter? Sometimes she still forgets but I guarantee it will not be a problem when she is Miss Sky’s age. The more she types and writes the more she will catch on and she won’t need to spend days filling out worksheets to remember. It will happen by doing real things in “the real world.”

Peace for the journey.

Indiana’s state flower.

Miss Sky

Finished drawings

some on herself

and watching her favorite video game walkthrough guy pass Batman.

Little Sis

Kingdom Hearts

more Princess Tutu anime, reading the manga online while waiting for new manga to arrive, Germany

and her most favorite Putt-Putt game.

Peace for the journey.

A new poem from Hi Five Magazine (April 2013)

Miss Sky

Netflix

Little Sis

Minecraft

Manga reading plus shopping for more (and Princess Tutu anime with Mama hooked again)

Animal Jam and a summer carnival

Peace for the journey.

Little Sis:” Mom come here and look at what I made.”

She had created an image from Animal Jam using the Scratch progam.

http://scratch.mit.edu/

Little Sis:” I read how to do it from the news on Animal Jam.”

(Little Sis’s note to me)

I love Sandra Dodd’s ,mostly, daily Just Add Light and Stir e-mails. I love getting her inspirational nuggets delivered and usually always start my day reading them before anything else.

Sometimes a post will come and even though I know, to my knowledge at least,  she probably doesn’t have super powers that feels like it was meant just for me. Like today’s post about “Clarity In Motion” which she talks about the flow in unschooling. (You can find a link to her post and sign up to get her emails over on the right under my Blogroll links)

I am realizing I have come to that place in our journey into radical unschooling that I no longer feel the need to keep notes. I have come to that place where I can see learning happening everyday in everything we do. When we sit down and flip the TV on to watch a sitcom (I have really been getting into the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show of late) I know we are going to learn something new.

For instance I am discovering the wonderfully talented Gracie Allen and seeing a different side of George Burns I had never known. The girls are discovering fashion and design and what it might have looked like to live back in that time period.

So it is only natural that my blog change as we do and this is where I have found myself stuck. It just doesn’t feel natural for me to take pictures and list everything we might have watched or done anymore. Like we played Apples to Apples this day and read Corduroy that day. For me now it is just a part of our life, it is how we live.

Tomorrow we meet our hog farmer and pick up our order and we may run and get supplies for a Papa project that may keep us busy for a while. Then we probably will play a game or watch a movie. Who knows? One thing I do know is the girls will be learning something from it.

I guess what I am taking the long way around to say is that’s why I don’t feel like writing much these days. I am not really sure what I want to write about. I do like my blog. In a way it is like a baby book. I know I enjoy looking back and seeing how much the girls have grown since I’ve started writing. I know I enjoy reliving memories of Miss Sky in drama class or a trip to a new place we had never been before.  I enjoy seeing  the girls art work evolve. I know it is just a matter of me finding my new groove.

Until I do , peace for the journey.

Though I have not felt much like writing lately I was thinking a few shots here and there couldn’t hurt. So here is what Miss Sky has been up to so far this week.

(We still are working on planting the girls flower garden this year and with the weather looking like it might finally stay above freezing I am thinking very, very soon.)

Peace for the journey.

I have been enjoying my time working out, trying out new recipes (without gluten or dairy), and loosing all kinds of weight (can’t wait to go shopping for new clothes and will add before and after pictures I’m sure) oh and reading, yes me (anyone into the Game of Thrones series?). But honestly what I have been enjoying the most is spending time with my family without the need to take pictures and keep track of everything we are doing.

Like last night Miss Sky and I watched Nature on PBS about the Harpy Eagle and it felt so good not thinking about if this is for “school” or not. It feels like I am on summer vacation for once.

Always planning I have been, always worried if we were doing enough I have been, now we just do. I’m sure I will pick up blogging again, I do miss it but for now I am enjoying just rolling with it.

I have been gluten-free for a whole week. I have already lost 5 lbs around my middle, my sinuses and eye sight have cleared completely. My energy level increased dramatically and headaches? Yeah gone. Since being dairy free, still was having some bloating (and some other personal problems that feel a little weird for me to share )so when he mentioned dairy yesterday I was like yep that makes sense (was eating yogurt daily to help with protein), I feel like a different person. The dark circles and bags under my eyes are gone, I look younger and my skin is clear. A different person I tell you.

I am amazed, amazed how something so little as gluten can make someone SO sick. Then I am angry, angry that foods you think are healthy for you could cause so much trouble. Angry that gluten, like corn, here in the US is in almost everything. I read celiac disease has doubled in the last 15 years and 18 million people suffer from it, some like myself don’t even know it yet, I wonder why when it is in everything.

I know this new journey of mine will not be easy, good-by favorite Chinese restaurant , but after feeling the way I did and feeling the way I do now I am up for the challenge.

While I was in bed ,so weak that I could barely walk, I had a lot of time to think, think how thankful I am to have found radical unschooling. How thankful that Papa and I do not force the girls to finish their plates, how thankful I am that the girls are learning to listen to THEIR bodies not someone telling them what they should or should not eat. How thankful that I do not make the girls eat 3 meals a day (I have one who likes to graze throughout the day).There is a good chance that one of them could have celiac disease too and they are learning now how foods make them feel. How on earth could I know what is good for them? Only they can be the judge of that.

Peace for the journey.

After being tested to make sure my liver was functioning properly I was sent home with the advice to make an appointment with a GI doctor. Well to make a long story short I go in for an upper endoscopy next Tuesday. I would be scared as hell if I had not gone through this with Papa already and  know what to expect ( it is the same doctor who performed his procedure too and I like him).

He will be testing me for Celiac Disease, something I was pretty sure I didn’t have. Gallbladder feeling like it was about to pop out of my back and side, yes. Celiac Disease? I mean no hives no allergies just terrible migraines and indigestion.

Today has been 2 days of being gluten-free and finally my stomach does not feel like I swallowed a watermelon and my appetite is even getting better (Easter was not very fun this year I am afraid ). Today I have finally been able to stand up and walk without getting light-headed (I thought I was dying, dramatic I know but really I did).

I will be taking a break from blogging a bit as I regain my strength (still pretty weak from not being able to keep foods down for a week, um toast?) and prepare for next weeks tests( not to mention everything that needs catching up).

The girls have been very brave and taking great care of me while Papa went back to work (need to keep our insurance). I think Miss Sky has the stomach, liver, gallbladder and intestines functions memorized. I guess me getting sick was a great introductory into the human body.

Peace for the journey.