Do you have those set of friends that you see but once a year due to life’s complex schedules? We had a blast catching up with ours at The Grove just a week or so ago…
Fun with friends…
Lions, Jaguarundis and setting traps…
So we were having this amazingly great winter weather and taking advantage of not freezing our butts off, we headed to Reyerson’s Conversation Area. K literally could have been there ALL day long. He is a true nature boy and was just loving all of the uprooted trees. We had received tons of rain last summer and it appears in the heavily wooded areas, many of the larger long-standing trees had just literally fallen over from the lack of support to their roots. K said he was a lion in the jungle and was instructing D which animal he was to be, and which 
direction to head, etc. It was only after sheer exhaustion (on D’s part that we had to pry him away from what he said was a damn breaking. This massive uprooted try had all of this dry mud on it and he was on a mission to get the roots thoroughly clean… or to “break the damn”. A real riot… Of course, not so much so when his sister was about to pass out from lack of food and sleep and she wanted to head out. Could you believe that a preservation like this one does not allow picnics? I thought it quite odd myself… 
On the way out, however, they were both highly distracted by this rooster who not only crowed at them, but figured he’d just chase both of them the entier perimeter of the fence! These two would run from one end of the coop to the other end of yard and this little white rooster would chase them the whole way. Sheer entertainment for a good thirty more minutes!
After that major run, we had our little *car* picnic and headed over the forest preserves in Glenview. By that point, D had passed out in the car for her little siesta, and I had the luxury of one eye on a book and one eye on our jaguarundi in the jungle ‘setting traps’. To this day, it’s on our ‘to-do’ list to get back over to that forest and ‘check our traps’!
So this is what it’s like…
So, here I am really REALLY trying to “let go”… of virtually everything so ingrained in me, that it’s really become an intense process. But truly inspired by the radical unschoolers I have had the pleasure of reading of and about, and truly wanting this lifestyle to become so natural that I don’t even have to think about it any longer. Just second nature… that would be the accomplished goal here…
This evening I think we are off to a good start. Well, this whole week has been a build up… several ‘build up’s’ of letting go. Of course there have been bits and pieces of every day that I have been really proud of myself, and bits and pieces where I was not the proudest mama in the world. But I do have to say that I am really trying. The funny thing is, I find that all of this time, my husband has always been a radical unschooler, and I have had no clue… not only about the radical unschooling lifestyle, but that HE truly IS an unschooler. (Of course, he would never realize that there is a label for what he does so naturally!)
Anyway… this evening… we’re just hanging out. The kids did as they pleased all day long… They’ve become true ‘grazers’ in every sense of the word. But Kaidin will still say something to eat is ‘some’ meal during his day, but meals are somewhat abolished at this point. And I had the FUN luxury of going to the library to read, while SBJ hung out with the kids before he departed for work. After we drove him to work, we decided to head to Target where we could use our fun xmas gift cards! A good 2 hours later, we did SO great that we left the store with bags of goodies, and only $.03 remaining on one of the gift cards! Not too bad, eh?
At home, the kids ventured into all of their new toys, and watched a movie. I was able to get a few things done, and then felt totally exhausted. Kids, however, were sure that they did not want to go to bed. SBJ calls and is ready to leave work, so we decide to go pick him up… Does not seem like such a big deal, but leaving after 9pm with kids in tote to pick him up somewhere has NEVER happened before. Kids just randomly being up ‘because they want to’ has never happened before either…
D fought so hard to keep her eyes open until daddy was in the car. The second he gave her his loving hug and kiss hello, she crashed… hard core crashed. Kinda cute…
K is still up… hanging out behind me blowing air in my hair… it’s ‘only’ 11:10pm, and he is showing no signs of ever going to bed. Me, on the other hand, can not keep my eyes open…
Box o’ bandaids!
This picure speaks for itself… Who doesn’t love bandaids… eh?The other afternoon…
K got into his dinasour excitment. He goes back in forth between the wild cats and the prehistoric animals… and even more so… the prehistoric wild cats! Anyway, in the past he has always asked that we find audio, online, to hear what certain wild cats (or any animal for that matter) sounds like. He intently listens and attempts to imitate to a “T”…
So the other afternoon he was determined that we find out what a certain dinasour sounds likes. I attempted to explain the entire dinasour-before-man-thing, and the fact that they were presently ‘extinct’ and this sparked an entirely new interest. He (in his 4.5 yr. old mind) did not realize that we would not come across a dinosaur one day. (Too cute.) So then we got into research, looking up various websites that had tons of pic’s about the theories behind extinction…
Along the way, we found this AMAZING site! BBC, has this entirely free, downloadable ‘game‘ that takes you into a 3-D world of dinosaurs! We have played nearly every day since, and he is just amazed at how he can manipulate through this amazing world. It is completely narrative to everything in the age of the dinosaurs you are seeing as well. It makes me dizzy at times, but it is quite fancinating!
Family Homeschool Summer Camp
What a fantastic day! We have this fantastic little group of moms and children who meet Mondays throughout the summer for our 2nd annual Family Homeschool Summer Camp. Today was our “Music and Movement” day and L did such a phenomenal job! She took us on a tour of the world through music. We reached several countries around the world (mapped out on a world map with stickers!) all through music. It was so much fun, thoroughly active and enlightening. We sang in Italian, and German. Danced to Caribbean… played peek-a-boo with scarves and clapped rhythms with spoons and rocks!
To add to it, I biked to class today. So with kids in tow, I was able to get a good 13 mile exercise in! I feel great, and the kids passed out by 7:30pm! Yippy! Time to putz around on the internet!