Hanging out with Family & Friends

We've had some great fun hanging out with the family and our friends these past few months. The week after Christmas we went over to my friend's house to exchange presents with the kids. Both Jared and J love pirates so that was fun.

We also went a few times with J to the Max for their Bounce Days.

 We checked out a new place,  Jumps N' Jiggles. This place is so cool. They have an indoor carousel that you can go on unlimited times with the price of admission ($5). Wherever the kids go, they always find instant friends. They found a little boy they became attached to and loved playing with him on this helicopter play equipment.

We went to see Steve's dad play volleyball at the church.

We also made a few visits to their granddad at the church. Jared always wants to hold the dagger set someone gave Larry from Pakistan. Then we usually head down to the gym for paper airplanes and floor hockey.

We were also able to meet Steve at his job once this winter. He left early and we headed to the mall for a train ride.

A big part of our winter has been the kid's weekly gymnastics class. It's great because it's just a few minutes away and only lasts a half hour. For the most part, the kids seem to like it, although they don't do so well when the coaches have the kids standing in line too long (who would?)

And we've celebrated a few birthdays, too. We had a party Steve's dad at their house in February and for my sister's husband the beginning of March.

New Dreams for a Home Education Mom

I'm going to be sprinkling pictures of my kids throughout this post, but really this post is about me. I don't really talk about myself on this blog because I've envisioned it mainly as a place to share what the kids' learning lives look like and to share resources and ideas with other families who choose to opt out of the institution of school.

With all my heart I believe in the necessity of interest-led learning for both children and adults. I believe that giving my children the freedom to discover the destiny that God has for them by themselves, with gentle help along the way from me and Steve, will allow them to be self-directed, love learning and develop an amazing focus and attention on what really matters.

The hard part comes when I think about all the time, energy, and commitment that I will need to invest in the next decades plus to come. I think I've become a little discouraged because lately I've been thinking about my own unfulfilled dreams. Then, through listening to some great podcasts, I've come to realize that I need to be working on my dreams, too, and not just helping my children reach theirs. If they can't see a role model of someone working hard to reach goals and dreams, how will they know how to do it themselves?

Thankfully, I'm blessed with a great mother and mother-in-law who take the kids once in a while so I can get errands done or go to appointments. A few weeks ago I decided to finally let them take the kids for a whole day so I could just work on ME! This is something I've NEVER done.

So, the kids went off with my parents in the morning and, as you can see, had a fun-filled time visiting the mall, working on computer games and drawing.  Then they switched of to the other grandparents for the afternoon. And I spent hours writing, and writing, and writing. I spilled all of the dreams, goals, and ideas I have out of my brain into a journal and did some major planning for the year ahead. I even finally started up a new blog, which I've thought about for awhile, called Cash Contests for Creative Moms. Check it out if you'd like! I love this blog, but I did not intend for it to be a money maker.

So, this year, along with wonderful hopes and dreams for fun adventures with the kids, I also have some things I want to work on for me - writing projects, photography projects, service ideas, blog work, and planning for an ultimate year around the world trip.

How do you balance your dreams for your kids with your dreams for yourself?

Yorktown Mall with the Family

On Oct. 4th we met Steve's mom, sister, brother-in-law, and brother, sister-in-law and nephew and nieces at the Yorktown Mall. We rarely get to see them throughout the year, so it was a real treat, especially for the kids, to see them.

Even though Steve's nieces are 12, 10, and 7, Jared and Alexa love them to pieces (they love Steve's nephew, too, who is 5, but I think they like the fact that the nieces pick them up and carry them around).

While we ate, they ran around the tables and had fun looking out the window at the cars in the parking lot below. It's so nice to be around family who has kids who can be just as loud as ours and not  feel like we're constantly getting funny looks.

While we were waiting to ride on the train, the kids ran around the pedastals.

For the kids, the best part of the evening was riding the train. The first time they rode this train they were 20 months, so it's fun to see how each year they grow the train seems smaller and smaller.

Fritz's, Lego Art, and Fountains

One of the most fun days we had in Missouri was when we went to the Crown Center in Kansas City and ate at Fritz's restaurant. We had never been to a restaurant like this before, and since Jared loves trains now, I knew this would be perfect. You order your food at a phone next to your table. After your order is placed, you watch a railroad track that runs above your head. As the train moves around the track, it drops off orders at the various tables.

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So you see, even an ordinary meal of burgers and fries and turn into something extraordinary. Of course it also helps that your cousin in there to enjoy the fun, too.

After eating, we saw a remarkable exhibit of Lego Art at the Crown Center. The artist, Nathan Seaways, has created an amazing exhibit titled "The Art of Bricks" which will be on display through Sept. 7th. Though the kids are not really into Legos that much, I think they still enjoyed looking at the creations. The adults were pretty awed, though.

They had lovely little fountains across the street from the Crown Center. The kids had wanted to run through the water, however, that day turned out to be really chilly, so we all had to settle for just looking instead.

Jared's first professional haircut

May 9

Well, today we were going to go to Steve’s brother’s house to celebrate their kid’s birthdays. Three kids have birthdays in April and one in May, so we usually combine the celebrations into one day. However, we received news that their son, Johnny, who is five, was knocked off a slide and broke his arm in two places. The breaks were so bad that he will need surgery this Tuesday.
So, needless to say, the celebration is off for now. I feel so bad for them now. I would be going crazy if it was Jared. I remember being so scared when Jared gashed his chin open at 20 months when he tripped and fell on the wood floor in their bedroom. Thankfully, they just sealed up the cut with a type of glue, but it came close to needing stitches. So, we used to time to take care of errands like buying the cousins birthday presents at Toy R US (Playmobils and a DS game), picking up some perfume for Steve’s mom for Mother’s Day (the kids loved sitting on those little vehicles you put money in and they vibrate or move back and forth. The thing is we never put money in them and they get just as much fun out of crawling in and out of them and pretending to drive them. They even had a yellow school bus there which Alexa and Jared loved to call their Magic School Bus), and getting a haircut for Jared.

Jared was sooooo adorable when he got his hair cut. It was the first time getting it cut at a professional hair solon. The girl who cut his hair (who is my hairdresser) made a big fuss over him and she had an assistant watching who also made a big fuss over him, too. He just ate up the attention. He particularly liked the Oreo she gave him at the end. She was kind enough to give a cookie to Alexa, too. Both girls keep commenting how quiet they were, which is funny since they are very active children. However, in new situations, they tend to freeze up, get very quiet and observant, and stay that way until they get more comfortable. Steve and I have given Jared haircuts in the past, but his hair is so curly that we usually end up chopping it up badly. It’s really short and I miss the longer curls, but now his hair will grow out more evenly.

We picked up some things at Jewel for dinner and then Steve barbequed a pork rib dinner for dinner. As a little pre-treat for Mother’s Day, I choose some spinach dip and Hawaiian bread to go along with the meat and sweet corn. It was a nice evening to play outside, so they we able to run around quite a bit before dinner.

Jared did better with his bath today. The kids have always liked taking a bath since they were babies; however, Jared has recently started crying when he goes in the bath. We try to make it extremely quick, and then when it’s over and I’m drying him off, he starts screaming to go back in. He’s always had many extremely strange quirks. Like, if you go up his nose to wipe a booger out, he cries to have it put back in and won’t stop until you do. This morning while outside with Steve, he was throwing a temper tantrum because Steve took the car out of the garage. No reason other than he wanted the car inside the garage. They don’t really understand fully the concept of why yet (and I’m so excited for them to ask me all the why questions! Seriously, not sarcastically), so it’s difficult when you ask them why they are upset for them to explain. Other quirky things: he need his shirt sleeves to be absolutely straight when his coat is put on, a few years ago when he still drank from a bottle, if you gave him the bottle, he’d throw it on the ground and scream, and then you’d have to replace the nipple with another nipple before he’d take a drink. It didn’t matter which nipple you’d initially put on either.

Alexa has a few quirky things too. Lately she loves to eat dried pasta. She’ll just sit with a box in her hand and much away for a long time. We also call her our little tattoo artists since almost every single day she need to decorate herself everywhere, I mean face legs arms, hands, everywhere, with markers. Jared used to never want to draw, but in the past two months he seems almost obsessed with drawing as much as Alexa, who has always loved to write and draw since about fourteen months. I can’t wait to in which other ways they develop into unique people.

Summer 2008 Part 1

Well, it’s been almost a year since I’ve posted to this blog. I had really good intentions of at least posting weekly updates, but it has been more difficult that I had imagined. I’ve written periodic notes to myself so I have at least some idea of the highlights of the year, still I am very disappointed as I know that I have forgotten many things we have done over the year. My goal is to keep a pretty detailed record of my children’s (and I guess you could say me and my husband’s as well) learning journey while they still live with us.
Anyway, I will attempt to at least write posts covering some of the things we did this past year.

Camp – One of the bigger things we did this summer was go to a camp in Wisconsin called Silver Birch Ranch. While I’m not a big camp person, and we wouldn’t have gone if Steve was not playing guitar during the week for the worship services, still it was fun to see the kids experience a lot of new things.

We had our own little cabin with three rooms and a bathroom. Jared wound up getting a cold sore so he couldn’t suck on his pacifier at night, which made for some pretty sleepless nights. Actually, he has only slept entirely through the night only a handful of times each year since he was 6 months old, but only waking up one or two times is a real treat for us! We finally got him off the pacifier a few months after we came back from camp. I had misplaced the only one he had left and by the next night when we had found it, we just said it wasn’t coming back. I was expecting his usual tantrum, but surprisingly he took it in stride.

So back to camp. When we first go to the cabin, the kids ran around the small space shrieking and dancing with year other. They were so excited to be sleeping in a cabin. We’d wake up around seven thirty and walk to breakfast. Then they’d have a place to drop off the kids while we had a morning service. We were only away from them for about two hours, but I hated being away from them during our vacation. Most people left their kids there the entire morning. In fact, the first day we went to pick them up after the service, we didn’t find them there. They would take the kids on little outings like on a pontoon ride or pony ride, and we wouldn’t know where they’d be. I guess they aren’t used to people picking up their kids so early, so we had to remind them to let us know where they’d be.

After lunch we would all take a little nap, and then afternoons were we could have fun. Steve took the kids out on a kayak and we all took several rowboat rides together across the lake. There was a little beach area the kids had fun at scooping up sand and wading in the water.

One afternoon after our nap, we raced over to the go-kart track and barely made it there before they closed down. Jared had so much fun riding with Steve, and Alexa and I drove together. She cried halfway through the ride because her helmet keep falling down over her eyes (they didn’t have one small enough to perfectly fit a 26 ½ month old!).

Another fun thing was going to the mini-golf course at the camp. I wish I could figure how to post pictures to this blog (a big goal for this next year) because they looked so cute with their little golf clubs. Alexa met a little boy about six months older than she and he loved to say no and mine when he was around her. Little did I know that she would soon start that up (actually Jared, too) within a few months. There was a playground there we would go too everyday as well.

Another big trip was Missouri. We went to Kansas City last year, too, but this year was even more fun as the kids were talking more, played more with their cousin and basically got into more stuff. One fun night was when we went next door for a barbeque at Steve’s aunt’s next-door-neighbors. They are originally from an island in Greece. We had some pretty great food, and the kids loved running through a sprinkler. Jerry (the husband) gave Jared a kid’s orange smock from Home Depot to put on, and helped him make a little birdfeeder which we took home with us. They had a small fountain in their front yard, so the kids walked around that and dipped their feet inside.

We went to a huge sports store when we were there. Some highlights were watching the coy in the pond, looking at a huge aquarium tank filled with exotic fish, riding up and down the elevator and buying some great fudge.

We celebrated Steve’s grandmother’s birthday when we were there. We drove about a half hour a way to a Mexican restaurant. As usual, the kids barely sat still. Steve and I had to take brief bites while they ran around the restaurant. They are definitely on the very active end of the spectrum.

There is a pond across the street from LeeAnn’s house that we like to go to when we visit. The kids loved throwing rocks into the pond (an all time favorite activity this summer and still seems to be pretty high up on their list), watching the ducks and running along the road.

One afternoon we also rode on a Carousel at the Mall. They had been on one at the zoo once before and really enjoyed this one too. One nice thing about kids this age is they are easy to please. The mall has these toys where if you put money in them they would either vibrate or rock back and forth. The kids just loved crawling in and out of the play vehicles without us putting any money inside.

There were a lot of other things we did around the house and such when we were there, but I didn’t write everything down, and I’m trying desperately to catch up before their third birthday, so I’m just gonna end this post and move on to another part of the summer.