Since I've escaped the grasp of dogmatic religion I've done lots and lots of soul searching and research. It's been an incredibly liberating journey! This is an interview with the author of God Without Religion- Sankara Saranam. I really enjoyed it and it reflects a lot of my own feelings.

http://www.godwithoutreligion.com/interview.shtml

A picture taken of me a few years ago, in between bouts of tanning.

It's another one of those weeks where I am digging deep - trying to get down to my true AUTHENTIC SELF and let it shine through. Not the part of me that I let everyone else see but the REAL me!

This week it has to do with my need to tan all the time. Seems like such a silly thing to spend much time thinking about right? For me it's not about how unhealthy it is or even about how it ages you because I really like being tan and I'm willing for whatever the consequence of that action brings. No, it's about being authentic. It's about the stress of maintaining something that I'm not.

Ironically, I got my Yoga Journal in the mail last night and begin flipping through the pages and one of the first articles in the magazine this month is about a woman struggling with a similar issue- going gray. The last two paragraphs of the article express my same feelings over this tanning issue:

"I like the time and money I save not going to the salon every three weeks. I like the energy I save not thinking about my hair. I think about yogic notions of satya (truthfulness) and santosha (contentment) and realize that I still have some letting got to do: of my resentment that society is ageist, that older men are powerful while older women are invisible.

Going gray was letting go of a way of thinking that had become a burden. Yoga is about letting go of whatever prevents us from being our most authentic self. Just like the experience of yoga, feeling good about going gray has been a loosening of the obstacles to healthy, flowing energy. And besides, how long could I pretend to be someone different from who I am, while teaching others to feel comfortable with themselves."

So here I am, in the letting go process. Celebrating me- pale and beautiful. Accepting it. Embracing it. And when every last remnant of my tan is gone I'm going to do a photo session capturing all the parts of my body that I love so when I feel that discontentment rise to the surface I will look at those pictures and rejoice- for this amazing body and all the hard work it does for me.

Summertime FUN!!!

We've been having so much fun this summer. We've had awesome weather that has allowed us to do lots outdoors. These are pictures documenting some of the fun we've been having.

Had lunch with my good friend, Leslie, and her son, Garrett, who were in town for a few short hours, from Fairbanks.

Jared and Kev swimming at Bodgett Lake. We met a rockin' unschooling family that live on the lake and have had us over a couple of times to enjoy!

The girls waiting for their turn to launch off the rope swing into the lake.

Calista is flying!

Kev let go of the rope too soon and landed in the rocks. Lani fixed him up with some good Spidey and Batman band-aids. She was afraid it might give his identity away;)

We went to the Moose Dropping Festival in Talkeetna and spent some time hanging out by the river. Martin and Calista are skipping rocks.

Calista searches for some good skipping rocks.

Martin creates some obos.

Some colorful people hanging down by the river. I just thought it was a cool picture.

Enjoying my daughter's friendship.

Calista and I doing tree pose on a log. I love doing yoga out in nature.

Calista doing tree pose. She was here for quite a while. She has awesome focus!

More yoga!

And more yoga!

We leave our mark for others to enjoy:)

My sister, Robin, and her husband, Richard.

Rylee and Calista having fun when the wake from the boats hit them.

Richard and Rex launched their boats on Cottonwood Lake and spent the day pulling us on tubes. It was a blast!! This is Rex's boat that he built in two months. Very talented guy!

Calista and I take our turn:)

Richard pulling Calista and I.

Rylee and Calista.

Robin and I. They tried really hard to throw us, without success I might add.

Martin and Kev.

See! Roxie IS a lap dog!

Rylee, Kev, and Jared after hours of tubing.

Jared enjoying a first for him. He had a blast!! We are trying to give him a good time during his summer with us:)

Jared and Kev take one last run before we wrap up the day. What a GRAND time we had!!! Thank you Rex and Richard!!!

Summer

It's been a BEAUTIFUL summer! We've had so many sunny days, I just haven't been on the computer too much to have the time to blog.

Martin cleared our entire back yard, about 1/2 an acre total. He almost has my greenhouse completed too! I'm so excited! I will probably just do some tomatoes and lettuce since we are so late into the season. I'm just happy to be moving in the right direction. We have our garden plot ready for next year and it's pretty good size. We are preparing to flatten the front yard (there is a big berm in the middle of the circular drive) and get rid of the circular driveway so that the front is all lawn. Calista just wants a place to run in the sprinkler:) The rest of the backyard will have to wait for next year. Martin has plans back there:) He's putting in a T-box and putting green, a sand area for a fire pit, hammocks (I am going to try and put the hammocks in next week), and spool tables, and the rest will be lawn. A riding lawn mower is definitely in our future!

This last weekend Jared and Kev went up to Girdwood for the Forest Fair and camped out for the weekend. They went up there not really knowing where they were going to camp and I expected them to be back home that night. Kev called me very excited when they got there because a friend of a friend lives up there and invited them to camp out at his house. He has a rooftop deck that they pitched their tents on. We went up on Saturday, just for the day, and hung out. All of the following pictures are from the Forest Fair. Girdwood is about 70 miles south of us. It's a beautiful drive along the inlet and you can often see the Beluga Whales breeching, usually more in August and September.

We are enjoying Jared's company this summer! Thank you Ren for lending him to us:) I know his family is starting to really miss him and it makes me feel bad but I think he is having a really good time and we are trying to do as much as possible before he decides to go home. I want to take him white water rafting before the summer is up and I really hope we can fit it into the budget.

One of the music stages.

The kids getting ready to walk to the fair from their camping spot.


The kids pitch their tents on the rooftop deck of a friend of a friend:)

Pitching their tents.

Painting a spool table. We are going to try and get a hold of a few for our backyard.

The teens: Kev, Hope, Kevin, Stacy, and Tom. Not sure where Jared was when I took this picture. Must have been getting some food or something.

Hula Hooping.

Rylee (my niece,on right) and her friend Joslyn (sp?). It was Rylee's 8th birthday!

My friend, Debbie, and I.

Signs of Life

If there was one main thing that I took with me from the conference in May it was this: to be okay with the perfect imperfection and the messiness of life. I tend to be one that likes things organized and clean, which is fine to a certain point, but sometimes I just have to change my perception of all that mess. Earlier today I found myself starting to feel that anxiety around me and I stopped myself, looked around, and commented, "Look! We really know how to live!". Here are some signs of life in our house at this very moment:

ps Calista is going by Justine at the moment.

All the kids had a lego marathon today. Every single one of them (minus Kev because he was working) was out in the middle of this for most of the day today, from Rylee (8 years old) clear up to Jared (almost 16).

It looks like plain old mess but I promise it is a sign of creative kids.

Not too clear, but the sign says "closed". This was part of Justine's face painting business. I have a beautiful butterfly on my face at the moment:)

I think this is a very interesting video and worth taking the time to watch. He is talking about technology but I think it applies to all learning. Unschoolers already know these things because we have seen it happen with our own children- first hand. We know our kids learn when it is relevant to their life, when they are exposed to new experiences and ideas, and when the resources are made available to them

I think what this proves is that children do learn on their own but what they do need are resources. If they have the resources available to them they can learn anything, without teachers and without schools. I'm thankful that there are people who are doing the research and re-examining how we educate our children and how damaging imposed learning is.



I loved these following comments about the video:

"I too, am a home-educating/unschooling parent. I found HITW very fascinating, because that runs along the same theme as what we as parents do with our children. I've heard it being given the term "strewing". Leave something of interest around the house (say, a magazine) and eventually a kid picks it up and reads about it, leading to either discussion, further exploration, if the subject strikes their fancy. We see our role, as parents, as "facilitators", whose job it is to expose them to many things and then follow their leads with what they are interested in.

Nature itself shows the obvious, that we as human beings are naturally curious, and seek out what we are interested in and/or need to know. The wonderful talk by Sugata Mitra was a very informative answer to how children learn." ~Ariannah Armstrong
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

" The takeaway is that children learn eagerly and effectively when the content is real and immediately relevant to them and when they have others actively and interactively helping them to master the content in real time according to their immediate needs. Throw into that mix adventure and social sharing and Sugata Mitra has shown us what happens when these things occur together. Additionally, those of the hands-on learning style and those who prefer to observe first are equally well served. Together these things produce a synergy that make the hole in the wall experiment an excellent success story." ~Reid Albecker
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I would urge you (and all of us) to be more careful mistaking the word education and the word school/schooling. It may seem like semantics but I believe if we really made the internal mental shift to articulate the difference and were really good about calling things schooling when they are schooling and education when it is education I believe we would have a platform for making decisions about what to do next.

Education is a radically different thing from schooling. Education is something that comes from the inside - out. Like what you have shown here. What you have discovered in your research is that learning can and does happen without the need for schooling. As is mentioned in previous comments learning is a natural human trait and does not require schooling.

Schooling is schooling - which means that it is NOT education nor will it ever be education. Part of the reason I think this distinction is important is because many people involved in school reform make this mistake. Trying to force schooling to become education is where a lot of problems lie. Almost all of the frustrations that occur when attempting to do something cool with schooling is because of this distinction.

NOTE: It is possible that education might have some element of schooling as part of it but that would be a choice one would make once one understands the implications of that." ~Michael Kaufman

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"It is of an extreme value that we can interact with you here. Thank you for taking your time to chat with us!

I find your work very important. In my opinion it prooves that learning is a basic function of healthy child brain and it doesn't need any formal methods. It is just natural for a kid to explore and learn. So what we have to do is to provide a healthy and prosperous environment for them to learn. Formal education is full of data but often it is deatached from "real life" and does not give you the proper experience (as opposed to knowledge) to deal in real life and accademic situations. Self organised systems can do the opposite - they are not just the simulation of life (or science, technology...so on), they ARE life and science and technology. They already are what we have to learn as children. They are not just raw data to be memorized.

I hope I didn't go too far with this. Perhaps a well-ballanced mix of both is required, but we have to find such a ballance between formal ("data input") ways of educations and self-organized systems. I for one work as menthor of small workshops and I find your experience very valuable for my work, so thanks for sharing!" ~Marjan Krebelj

Conversation with my Daughter

This is how the conversation went:

Calista: She looks in the cupboard for something to eat. "Hmmm, cereal, milk, orange juice. That's a breakfast 'normal' people eat."

Me: "What's normal?"

Calista: "People who sit down at the table, with their family, and eat breakfast and dinner together; who go to school; and their parents work all day."

Me: Thinking- well, we are clearly not normal:)

Calista: "But we aren't like that. You guys let us choose what we do and eat. Sometimes we are doing more important things than sitting at the table and eating together. We are together all the time and sometimes we don't want to be together eating dinner. That's what's so cool about being unschooled"

Me: So what percentage of the population do you think falls under that 'normal' category?

Calista: A LOT!!


Well thank goodness that we aren't normal:)

Quite a few unschoolers have posted this on Facebook. I think it's worth the read.

Unconventional Wisdom: Why Passion Matters

We have this old barn/horse corral on our property that we have been going back and forth on what we were going to do with it- turn into yoga studio, guest house, green house, etc. A couple of weeks ago I finally decided that it just needed to come down. The roof had to be replaced anyway because there wasn't much left of it and it's just an eyesore on our property. We figured we could salvage most of the wood and build something else and maybe keep a portion of the building to turn into a greenhouse. I decided when the building came down that I would use the space for my garden plot.

We made the right decision because as soon as we started demolition it became clear how unstable the building was and there was lots of rotten wood and very dry, cracked wood. The demolition was a blast! And we were able to save part of the building that I will be working on this next couple of weeks to turn into a greenhouse....................after Martin re-builds the side wall to make it nice and stable.

First the roof comes off. Tristan and his friend's Tanner and Hunter took most of it off.

Then the siding and windows.

Tristan lives on the wild side..........as the building is swaying!

Then out comes the studs and posts.

And down she comes.

Crashing down!

And all that's left behind is my future greenhouse.