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  • I am THAT mom

    I am THAT mom. The one that:

    takes her older girls to Walmart 3 or more times a week just because they want to.

    said no today when she should have said yes.

    is working on saying yes instead of no.

    watches horror movies with her older girls even though they creep me out.

    will fix 3 different snacks at snack time and serve them in a home made tent in my bedroom.

    goes to the library to hang out for hours so my 11yo can have some quiet time out of the house.

    turns up the radio and sings out loud with the kids.

    refrains from dancing in my seat while driving so I don't embarrass my teen.

    yells and wants to quit.

    is working on healing damage done in the past.

    is lucky to have kids who have helped me to see that life is too short for needless rules and fears.

    I'm late to the game on this impromptu blog carnival but I wanted to post. I learned about it from Heather .

     

  • Help from afar

    I'm sure by now everyone knows about the horrible catastrophe in the gulf.

    I have to stay away from the pictures.

    I'm from Mississippi.

    I want to help but funds are not abundant right now.

    I do however, have extra cotton yarn, cotton flannel, two able hands the ability to knit and sew.

    Care to join me?

    Project 8 

  • Playing catch up still

     I'm still playing catch up with my blogging. I have a lot of pictures that have stories but I have not felt very motivated to post.

    This winter Emily wanted to have a lemonade stand. My first reaction was to explain that it was too cold for a lemonade stand and that she would be hard pressed to find any customers. Then I decided that we could just set up a lemonade stand IN the house. One of the benefits of having a large family is having access to a loyal customer base. I mean they are related to you and trapped inside as well. How are they going to refuse a cute 5yo peddling homemade lemonade?

    So she made lemonade and set up shop er stand.

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    Now that it is summer we are going to try this outside so she can expand her clientel.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Easter(almost a month late)

    We were invited to a friends family Easter gathering this year. It was nice to be invited and everyone had a great time. Before we went the littles got their Easter baskets.

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    And the bigs got their Easter stack and money egg.

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    Then we dyed eggs!

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     I made a cake to take to the gathering. Not my design and I can't find the link right now.

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    It was a really fun Easter. The day was so full that it kept me from constant thoughts of my dad. Easter was the holiday that I went home for while we lived in Georgia. I have a lot of great memories of the last Easters with my dad. I'm pretty sure he would have enjoyed the get together we attended. I know he would have loved to watch the girls hunt for eggs. In fact I'm sure he was watching.

     

     

     

     

  • Our New Addition

    Introducing our newest addition to the family!

    Mazie!!!!

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  • "Others may choose not to be in your life because of your parenting choices. The level of freedom and happiness that you are living may threaten their very existence. In their eyes, if they embraced your way of life, they'd be betraying themselves and everything they thought to be truth."---Dayna Martin author of Radical Unschooling

  • Dear concerned parents.....just because my children have less limits than yours and they have the freedom to make their own choices does not mean they run wild, and have no principles. I'm not trying to change you, you can continue on your path. But please keep your passive agressive stories about the future of my children to yourself.

  • Snow, new do, UWWG

    February has been the month of snow.

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    I finally decided to get my hair cut. I also had it colored because I could just not make friends with my gray. It's a cut similar to one of Meg Ryan's many styles. I love her hair!

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    Shortly after the drastic hair change we loaded up our van and headed to the Unschoolers Winter WaterPark Gathering. We had a lot of fun and hope to attend next year. This years featured speaker was John Taylor Gatto. Awesome talk!

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    Lots of play time too. If I knew who brought the tunnel I would make them cookies and mail them to them. The littles loved it!

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  • Rhythm and John Taylor Gatto

    We have been doing pretty well in the rhythm department with a couple of side tracks here and there. It is definitely a work in progress and something that is going to have to be tweaked and adjusted. I have more craft pictures to post but will wait until after we to today's which was supposed to be yesterday's.

    Next week I get to hear John Taylor Gatto Speak!! I am sooo excited. I have wanted to hear him ever since we started unschooling. Everything he says is something I feel like standing up and saying AMEN! to. Don't worry though I will restrain myself. ;)

    So here are a few quotes that I found on this page.

     

    "...‘How will they learn to read?’ you ask, and my answer is ‘Remember the lessons of Massachusetts.’ When children are given whole lives instead of age-graded ones in cellblocks, they learn to read, write, and do arithmetic with ease, if those things make sense in the kind of life that unfolds around them."

    – John Taylor Gatto

     

     

    "Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die."

     – John Taylor Gatto

     

    "By preventing a free market in education, a handful of social engineers - backed by the industries that profit from compulsory schooling: teacher colleges, textbook publishers, materials suppliers, et al. - has ensured that most of our children will not have an education, even though they may be thoroughly schooled."

     – John Taylor Gatto

     

    And one that I found from his acceptance speech for being selected as the New York State Teacher of the Year.

     

     

    It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry.