bip

i want to start this post with a shout out to larabar. about a month ago they announced that they were retiring pistachio and if you went to their website you could register to win a fare thee well pistachio prize pack. which i quickly did, and won! i love larabars. they have no more than eight ingredients (all of which you can pronounce) and are gluten free, dairy free, soy free, vegan and kosher. they are so delicious. try one. don't think, try. below is a picture of my prize pack that arrived in the mail today. it included 1) a uber cool rubber band with the larabar logo that will be worn by me as a bracelet. 2) a larabar pistachio tee shirt, also cool. 3) a larabar logo sticker (love it!) and 4) 4 DELICIOUS pistachio bars. i can't for the life of me figure out why they are retiring this flavor? i must believe that there are other incredible flavors on the horizon to make up for pistachio being gone.




it is already really hot here in central texas. this morning i sat out with my mom at her place (kinda like a retirement village, but with some younger people lightly sprinkled here and there) having a community garage sale. luckily we were in the shade as we listened to roger miller sing "king of the road" way to many times. at a quarter to 11 i told my mom that i was done (no one had come by in a while) and began to pack up, once again convinced that the effort put into a garage sale is not worth the profit or maybe my stuff sucks?

my personal goal for this summer is to try new things. i am really bad about not wandering out of my comfort zone, but i am ready to change all that. our town is pretty small and not very progressive. thank god austin is just down the road! i am already committed to hooping classes on saturday's in round rock. brennah, kamrynn and kassidy have graciously agreed to go with me. if they like it, there are enough of us to form a family hooping act. i will let you know if we decide to take it on the road.

there are other things that i would love to delve into, amature photography is one. i would love to be able to more beautfully document our family times. i am looking at several certification programs for natural/holistic health. in september i am going to train to become a birth doula. i would also LOVE to attend rethinking everything conference if we can come up with the bucks to fund a family of our size. i want to try vegan for a month (no cheese....will i survive?)

if i am going to impart a love of learning for a lifetime to my children, i need to model it.

1995

Close your eyes,

Have no fear,

The monsters gone,

He's on the run and your daddy's here

Beautiful,

Beautiful, beautiful,

Beautiful Boy,

Before you go to sleep,

Say a little prayer,

Every day in every way,

It's getting better and better

Beautiful,

Beautiful, beautiful,

Beautiful Boy,

Out on the ocean sailing away,

I can hardly wait,

To see you to come of age,

But I guess we'll both,

Just have to be patient,

'cause it's a long way to go

A hard row to hoe

Yes it's a long way to go

But in the meantime,

Before you cross the street,

Take my hand,

Life is just what happens to you,

While your busy making other plans

Beautiful,

Beautiful, beautiful,

Beautiful Boy,

Darling, Darling, Darling Nate.

saturday soapbox

when i was a child i played outside. i would wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, put on my seafoam green, ultra short sports shorts, a shirt and no shoes and head out the door. i would magically reappear at lunch, ravenous from play. with my appetite sated, i would be back out the door, my mom telling me to be back before dark.

i would freely roam my familiar neighborhood. sometimes alone, sometimes with a pack of other urchin children. most times these hours of open abandon would be on (bare) foot, others on the back of my purple bike with the banana seat. there was little to no supervision, no boundaries, no limits to how far i could go. i just had to be home by dark. i remember it as a magical time. free and innocent.

this afternoon tim and i were sitting on the front porch watching my brother tim's (my brother and my husband are both "tim") kids and mara playing in the sandbox husband tim just made and set in our front yard. everyone was playing peacefully after being admonished gently to not dust sandy hands off over each others head.

i am embarrassed to say that we don't know our across the street neighbors very well. it is a rent house that has a pretty high turnover. normally tho, we do make it a point to be friendly with the people around us. so, as we are sitting on our porch preaching peace, here comes the across the street neighbor.

the reason for her visit was to report to us that she had been researching sex offenders in our town and wanted to let us know that we have several that live mere blocks from us. she even had a hand written list of the accused to prove her case. she said that she knew that our girls (referencing the twins) are always outside and that if it were her girls that were roaming the streets, she would want to know. we politely looked at her list, told her thanks for the information and that we would pass it on to the girls.

i am so not about fear. i am not about living in fear. i am not about putting fear into my children. i am about information. i am appreciative that my neighbor is concerned for the safety of the kids in our hood. i will remind the girls that there are people close by that could do harm to them. what i wont do it keep my kids in the house in an effort to protect them from the bad people. bad people could be anyone, not just the sex offenders. i wont scare my children out of their wits, making them completely phobic to come out from under our wing for fear of some horrible, terrible demise that must surely be awaiting them right out side our door.

talk to children. let them know that everyone is not kind. that everyone does not have their best interest at heart. that there are people out their who will hurt them. push play on "stranger danger" and rewind/repeat often. don't live in paranoia. with all the bad that is constantly thrown at us it is easy to forget all that is wonderful about our world. a world kids need to get out and live in. would i sanction kids leaving the morning with only "be back by dark" as their only guidance? no, probably not, but i am not going to over parent either.

hair and omelettes

i have had my dreads close to four weeks now. and it is a love/hate thing. i love not having to "fix" my hair. prior to dreads, i didn't exactly have a taxing hair routine. i washed my hair. i blew it dry. i put some stuff in it (not expensive stuff, more like mid-low priced). then i would straighten it with my mid-low priced straightener. i never got my hair cut every six weeks. counting the frequency of my hair cuts in months would probably be more accurate. needless to say, i have never been a hair girl.

now that i am no longer working and have (baby) dreads, i spend even less time on my hair. having 4 other girls in our home, they were more than happy to take my brand new blow dryer, the mid-low priced straightener, my brushes, and even the cheap product off my hands. i replaced those items with 1) my bottle of almond liquid dr. bronner's, 2) a bar of knotty boy dread shampoo, 3) a various array of bandanas and head wraps and a slew of heavy duty ponytail holders. i wash with either or both soaps every 3-4 days or until i just can't stand my scalp itching anymore. good bye conditioning, brushing, straightening, drying, and good riddance to caring.

all that seems so positive (to me at least) what could possibly be the negatives? uhhh, i live in texas. it's hot. it's may and we are already hitting the mid 90's. my head is hot. there is also the aforementioned itching. dread's have zombie tendencies and like to eat their neighbors, so i have to make sure everyone is separated and playing nicely. you don't even want to see me with out the head wrap and the rubber band. as my brother put it "melissa, your hair is really fluffy". it's beyond fluffy, it's enormous (that's what she said).

i am cool with the negatives. the positives far out way them. to not have to deal with my hair is groovy. it is time i can spend doing something else that is far more worthwhile, like julia childs showing me (via youtube) how to make the perfect omelette. julia, i followed your instructions and my omelette turned out perfect, thanks dreads and thanks julia.

looking up

things are starting to look up around our place. we have had kinda a tough year, but we got some very much needed very good news on friday. a heavy weight has been lifted off my chest and i can breath again!

as i wrote earlier, many changes are afoot. tomorrow morning will be our third sunday at our new church. we have been attending vista community church and really enjoying it. it is casual and laid back. the worship band is amazing and the preaching is relevant and applicable. the best part is no one looked at us twice when we entered last sunday. we are pretty non-conforming and that attitude extends to our physical appearance.

we let everyone, including mara, choose their own clothing. mara decided that she was most comfortable in her skinny jeans, ugg boots and a red and white stripe tank top. i wish i had taken a picture. she marched right up to her sunday school room and went right in. not one person commented on her choice of outfit. my brother has also been going with us and that has made it even better.

tim is out of town this weekend. we aren't apart very often but, i know he is enjoying a little break. little breaks are nice. i am looking forward to him coming home in one sleep!

learnin'

homeschooling is nothing new to us. we homeschooled for a number of years until we had a family catastrophe that caused the children to have to enter public school. when i began to rethink how our lives were being played out, bringing the kids back home was at the top of my list. kamrynn and kassidy having typical junior high angst was the straw that broke the camels back on that topic.

in our former homeschooling life we used a very popular literature based curriculum. it was this particular curriculum's catalog that i immediately requested when the decision to bring the girls back home was solidified. as i was pouring over the catalog, i quickly remembered my particular school at home achilles heel.

i LOVE the idea behind using books to teach. i love to read. i love to read aloud to my kids. my kids love to listen to me read to them. perfect fit, huh? here's the kicker, i am HORRIBLE at consistency. i have the worst time ever at following a laid out plan, even the ones already scripted for me. i also struggle with keeping a daily schedule. i am a very free spirited person. i also have adhd (no, i don't medicate, adhd is what makes me uniquely me). schedules, lesson plans, scope and sequences, scripted lessons, and just about anything that resembles traditional learning is not for me. i abhor any kind of busy work, workbooks, research papers, penmanship for penmanship's sake, and repetitive drills of any type.

then god himself opened the sky above and allowed me to see through unfettered eyes exactly what he had in mind for our family. tim and i were watching tv one evening and came across "radical parenting" on discovery health. to be honest, what got us watching was the promise of a segment on attachment parenting (ap). we are an ap family and were glad that the positive message of ap was getting some media time. what intrigued me most though was the portion on unschooling.

my curiosity was piqued. up until that fateful night, i had only heard about unschooling and i hadn't heard that much. the next couple of days i googled all the info i could on the subject. i ordered some great books and perused unschooling blogs. and right now i am gleaning all the information on the process (or lack there of ) of unschooling. the unschooling ethos matches our family/parenting philosophy very closely and because we already embrace ap, we are pretty much already unschooling.

i can't wait until the kids are done with school so we can begin to begin de-schooling.

everything changes

this last year has been a roller coaster. up, down, up, down, way down, loop d' loop. there have been many factors that have caused this amusement park quality of life to reign at our house. the factor i want to blog about is the one that i am personally responsible for.

writing this, i am on the cusp of 36. by cusp i mean three days away. to some, i will still be in my mid-thirties. to me, i am in my late thirties sprinting towards 40. a year ago this month, i started having a great awakening. it began with my health/weight and spiraled out of control from there. i don't know if it was a midlife crisis, but it was something. i needed change.

so, change i facilitated. i have lost weight (and am still loosing), quit my rat race job that made me feel so disconnected from my family, completely altered the way i eat, am on the road to spiritual recovery, accepted wholeheartedly what my outward appearance has always wanted to be, reduced our living to the bare minimum, and embraced simplicity.

i am so excited about where this new path is going to take us. tim and i have so many dreams and thoughts that we are kicking around. dreams that will help us to live even more simply, more freely and more naturally. peace.