Playing with Fire Day

Inspired by Chanukah, the kids were itching to set all kinds of things on fire. The solution: Playing with Fire Day!  They got to light matches, melt candles, burn twigs and set whiskey on fire till their heart's content. 

Besides just generally having a good experience from being given some freedom they learned a few things. Avigayil learned that when you blow on a large fire it fuels the flames - and if you want to put it out it's best to smother it. 

After multiple frustrating and failed attempts to set whiskey on fire outside, Adin and I learned that whiskey has to be warm to catch on fire. Which makes sense because you aren't actually catching a liquid on fire, rather the whiskey vapor. 

Here's a cute photo of the kids all working together:

And some videos:

Maple Syrup Snow Candy

Here's a super easy and fun candy making project inspired by the Little House series. Seems like there's a variety of ways to do this but we did it a quick and easy way. The girls filled a bowl with some fresh, clean snow. I put some maple syrup in a pan to simmer until it was reduced by half, then slowly poured the thick mixture onto the snow where it quickly hardened into maple candy. It was so simple, exciting for the girls and I got to feel like a homesteader, which I like. 

Melted Crayon Art

Inspired by the blog paintcutpaste.com we tried out this fun melted crayon art. 

Avigayil went for the relaxing, playing, abstract technique. 

Aderet used oil pastels to create the classic rainbows and flowers.

Traditional Chinese Food

We didn't celebrate Christmas today the traditional Jewish way - Chinese food. 

Since there are no kosher Chinese restaurants in the area we made our own. 

All of the kids helped with the prep work - but I only have a picture of Adin and Jake.

Here's Adin chopping the chili peppers while schmoozing with his friend Jake:

Here's the Beef and Broccoli

General Tso's Chicken (which I kept calling General Chow's) 

Spicy Szechuan Eggplant

Warm Cobbler on a Cold Day

It's been a bit of a disorienting day for me; with Gavriel back home, it being a holiday (but not our holiday) and a few other things that are cycling through my head and aching in my heart. With that said, there was also so much good that happened today so I wanted to share it here. 

Even though it was coldy cold outside today I managed to get outside for a walk. I have a goal of doing 60 days of 60 minutes of self care. I know that I'm a much happier and healthier person when I walk, mediate and do a little yoga - yet somehow those things always find a way to the back burner. My goal is to walk for 30 minutes, sit for 15 minutes and stretch for 15 minutes. Really, I hope to go beyond 60 days but thought that was a realistic amount of time to commit to. ***A week later I'm noticing that It's not realistic for me to do all 3 of those things every day but I have managed to walk and/or sit every day***

We had a bunch of apples that were past their prime, so I made a yummy apple blueberry cobbler with a topping of almond flour, gluten free oats, brown sugar and earth balance and ate that for dinner (everyone else had mac and cheese). 

Here it is:

 I also started making a winter hat for Avigayil from this rainbow yarn she picked out last week:

The funnest part of the day was watching Avigayil bang away on her newly put together drum set. She and her friend Gabrielle had great fun starting their band. This is actually the first time she's ever used a drum set - I'm excited to see what she'll do after some lessons.


Another good thing is that that it's starting to snow, and even for this non-celebrating Jewish girl there is something special about a White Christmas.

Little House in the Big Woods

It's almost 11:00 on Sunday night and the kids are just getting to sleep. Gavriel has been gone since Tuesday night so we've been pretty lax around bedtime and wake up time. Avigayil and I didn't wake up today until almost 10am. Thankfully, it's been a pretty easy go of being alone with the kids this time. I think it's a combination of them getting older, homeschooling and me being in a particularly good parenting groove (they come and go so I enjoy them while they're here).  Now that I know Gavriel is scheduled to be home in a few hours, I am feeling my stamina waning, and very much looking forward to a break tomorrow. It's also just not as much fun without Gavriel around.

We had a mellow day today. We all got up late and then hung around in our jammies drinking tea, reading books and playing go-fish until almost noon when we had breakfast. Adin eventually went over to play at a friends house and the girls and I went to buy some honey-comb and go to the library. Aderet, who will be 8 in March, never got our of her feety pajamas. She just squeezed her fleeced feet into her boots and left the house that way. I figured, if she doesn't mind I guess I don't either; we just told everyone it was a self declared pajama day and that worked. 

Avigayil got excited about buying some honey comb after reading about Pa's adventures in collecting honey in Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I always like it when I'm able to accommodate those wishes. I've been reading the series out loud to all of the kids but there's something especially fascinating about it to me and Avigayil. I think there's something in both of our natures that longs for a life that's quieter and simpler. I find myself so drawn in listening to descriptions of Ma spending a good chunk of her day separating individual corn kernels from their hulls, making straw hats or cooking down pumpkin for pies.

Here's an excerpt from the end of the book that touched me:

    When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, "what are days of auld lang syne, Pa?"

    "They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep now."
   
     But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the fire-light gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

    She thought to herself, "This is now."

    She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the fire-light and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

Master Plan Take 3 - dance between structure and emergent energy

To quickly catch you up if you haven't read Master Plan and Master Plan Take Two...

The basis of Master Plan was we are going to have a highly structured morning with a full on check list and get all of our school work done sitting together at the dining room table in one hour.  What went wrong with that is that my kids all fought for my attention and distracted each other and boy did that hour get long.

So, Take Two - my plan was to work with each kid individually while the other kids had "research time" (time to explore any topic they wanted) on the computers. I worked with each kid between 30 and 45 minutes and then adding on transition time, so that meant that everyone was getting at least 1.5 hours of computer time.  Also, what was meant to be research time quickly became half research time and half game time... and down from there.

The good thing about Take Two was that by working individually with each of my kids they really learned what they needed to do and gained the ability to do it independently. Yeah for little triumphs! The other thing we learned is that the more screen time my kids get the more miserable they are to parent.  They now have 1 hour of screen time a day - usually at night after dinner is cleaned up so that gives me and Gavriel and hour to get stuff done, or talk to each other or just decompress before the bedtime routine starts. Adin usually uses his time to play a game called Stronghold and the girls have been watching some shows (My Little Pony, Horseland, and now Avatar).  We do find that screen time is such a slippery slope and are constantly having to reign in how much and what they are watching.

What was also challenging about Take Two is that we were stuck in the house all morning and I felt that we were not getting anything done besides Math and some basic Language Arts. So, I decided to loosen the structure and let the kids know that they could do their assignments at any point during the day but they had to get them done in order to have screen time at night. Screen time is still the biggest motivating factor for my children. I definitely have mixed feelings about that - the details of which will maybe and maybe not be discussed at another time.

That created a little honeymoon in our home where I felt like we could flow a little better and follow emergent energy and now I feel that we are ready to make a shift again.

This seems really true to me about homeschooling - at least the way it's working for us - we are constantly having to reevaluate what's working and what's not and making tweaks here and there. For me it feels like a dance between making structures and then feeling restricted in some way by those structures so we loosen up and then at some point things start to unravel a bit too much and I start longing for a bit more structure. I do keep fantasizing that one day we will find this magical sweet spot or that the movement back and forth between structure and emergent energy will somehow flow sweetly. However, right now it's still a bit clunky.

Here are some things that I feel need to shift right now:

We need a regular wake up time! Our natural tendency seems to be to keep waking up later and going to sleep later. This does not work for us for two main reasons. 1. Gavriel has to go to work and he needs time in the morning to do Hebrew with the kids. 2. When the kids go to sleep too late Gavriel and I not get enough time with each other.

We need a better line up of fun projects.  I really love the idea of un-schooling where kids will take interested in some subject or activity and I can somehow easily facilitate that in the moment. What seems to be true for our family right now is that we do a little better with some structure. I feel like I need to expose them to things that they might take interest in or they might not.

It's also true that sometimes I will overlook something that they are interested in because it somehow does not match the picture in my head. For example, Aderet is obessed with listening to Harry Potter books on CD (which is it's own funny story because she had originally insisted that even if I took it out from the library she would definitely not listen to it.) Today, I had a plan that we would sit on the couch together and snuggle while we read Little House in the Big Woods and thought of some projects we could do. But Avigayil and Aderet really just wanted to listen to Harry Potter. So on one hand I was enjoying that they were really into something and on the other hand I was having to fight back the voices of judgement in my head that they were just sitting there.



The kids need to get out of the house more.  Once a week the kids all go to Boulder Explore. Adin seems to really enjoy it - especially the social aspect of it. Aderet claims to not want to go at all - and I guess for my sake I want to believe that she likes parts of it. Avigayil is somewhere in the middle. Adin has also been going to a computer class though science discovery, he started in a club that is meant to inspire writing called Druidawn Creations, and he also goes to Judo twice a week and is a Mother's helper for Mitten on the Thrusdays that he does not go to Druidawn. We've been to the Blue Skies park day a couple of times recently which was good as well. The girls don't get out as much but I'm trying to change that. I just signed them up for a homeschool rock climbing class at the East Boulder Rec Center and they are on the wait list for gymnastics. I'd also like to sign them up for one of the Science Discovery classes or some other class.

The basic theme is that I'm ready for a little more structure again. Thank G-d tomorrow is Friday so we can rest into Shabbat and start the whole project up again next week.

Seeing the Good

It's been a few weeks since I've written. I won't be able to catch up on all that we've done here but I'd like to share some pictures and some general themes of our lives right now.

First, the present. I am tired!!! Avigayil has not been sleeping well so last night that looked like be sitting up with her from 4:30am to 5:00am and then her crawling into bed with me - and I don't sleep well with anyone in bed with me. However, I've been getting much better at not taking my grumpiness and spreading it around. Better. I did have a few moments this evening. But I also just had a moment where I turned it around.

 It's 10:00pm, Aderet is sleeping, Gavriel is sitting with Avigayil while she goes to sleep and Adin just finished his shower and plopped himself on the couch to finish reading "Twilight". (On a side note - he told me he thinks it's kind of boring, he doesn't like all the drama). Often (code word for most of the time) I tell Adin he needs to go read in his bed and that I'm too grumpy to see kids this time of night. However, this time I decided to turn on the gas fireplace and sit down on the couch next to him to write. He seemed really pleased with this change which already felt good. Then, I saw that my computer needed it's plug and I said out loud to myself something like, "Ugh, I need to get the plug." At which point Adin immediately asked, "Do you want me to get it for you?". WOW! It was amazing to notice how immediate my mood of spaciousness and generosity caught on.

One of the themes that I've been thinking of lately is that there are no perfect days but lots of perfect moments. Writing this blog has helped me to notice those moments more. I've also started a gratitude journal where I write 5 things every night that I am grateful for - this has been a wonderful practice for me and I can already see the fruits of my labor.

Here are a few pictures of perfect moments that I've been able to capture. There have been so many more.

This is Aderet happily working on a rug made from a hula hoop frame and old t-shirts. If you want to learn how to make it you can go here.

Here's another one of Aderet helping her Abba to change the strings on his guitar.

A blessed moment where Adin and Avigayil both voluntarily chose to get on their computers and write some stories. Adin wrote a really funny one that even had Newtons 3rd law.

This is a video from our trip to the Aquarium. The voice you'll hear is Aderet's.

Why we homeschool

If I had to sum up why we are homeschooling it's here:

Sunday Cooking with Shanna - by Adin

Yesterday Shanna came over to teach me some knife skills. We learned about different dices and cuts. We practiced cutting by making a yummy salsa call called Pico de Gallo with tomatoes, onions, garlic, jalapeno, corn, olive oil, salt and pepper. We made a tomato concasse, small diced the jalepeno and sweet red pepper. 

Then we made a glazed salmon recipe from an America's Test Kitchen recipe.  You can watch the episode to learn how to make it here.

It was great working with Shanna. The salmon was absolutely delicious. The jalapenos completely scared the wits out of me because I had a bad experience with a hot chili pepper. I had been tasting peppers at Mitten's house to see if they were hot. Of  course the second pepper I tried was a chili pepper. I put the tip of it in my mouth and then immediately spat it out onto the ground. Then it got all over my face and then in my eye. It sucked a lot. I had to take a shower in milk. This time it was better. Chili peppers are hotter than jalapeno peppers. 

Naropa Community Art Studio

Our dear friend, Merryl, runs a program, at the Naropa Community Art Studio, on Thursday afternoons and has very graciously invited me to bring the kids. It's an amazing opportunity for the kids to have access to a huge amount of art supplies (clay, paint, pastels - pretty much everything you can imagine) as well as to watch some very gifted adults model how they work with different mediums.

Here are some pictures from this past week:

 Aderet working on her heart plate with her name in Hebrew.

 Aderet's plate with the glaze painted on before it gets fired for a second time.

 One of the artists brings her parrots every week.

 Avigayil in action.

 Avigayil had a really hard day and I think her painting captures that perfectly. But I love that the girl in the painting still has a smile.

Khan Academy

Adin and I have started to watch a Khan Academy video during his learning time. I'm going to keep a log here of what we watched - and possibly in the future our insights on what we saw. I have to say one of the things I love about homeschooling is how much I'm getting to learn! So far Adin has also really enjoyed the videos.

Electoral College
Deficit and Debt Ceiling
11/2/12 SOPA and PIPA

Making G.F. Cinnamon Rolls with Avigayil

Avigayil and I made G.F. Cinnamon Rolls today from the recipe on the package of the Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Pizza Crust Mix. 

YUM!!!!

Gymnastics - By Avigayil

I  CAN    ALMOST    DO     A        HEADSTAND           BY  MY SELF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i   have   ben   practicing        for        6   weeks  maybe  7  months          i   do not no.       o.k.    and          i am         going       to          gymnastics                     1    week     later!        I  KILLD MY BACK    AND   MY   NECK    & MY CHEST   i  could not bend   down ^crunch! ow that hurt  a lot.    but we got  are   allowance

Daily Notes - Sunday 10/21/12

Today felt like the first relaxing day in a LONG time. We went away for Shabbat but had to clean it really well on Friday as other people were staying in our house while we were way. The amazing part about that is that we got to come home to a CLEAN house!

Gavriel had to be up and out of the house early this morning to help out with the culling of the older chicken flock from the Jewish Community Farm.  Gavriel learned Shechita last year and I think this is his 4th time being involved in a slaughter. The rest of us rolled out of bed closer to 9.  I got the kids dressed and fed and brought them over to the shul where the shechita was happening.

On a side note; last year Gavriel had brought home about 8 shechted chickens that still needed to be plucked, soaked, salted and rinsed.  The kids and I along with Jules, our live in nanny, plucked the chickens and then Gavriel and I did the soaking and salting.  After that experience it was very clear to me why people prefer to buy their meat from a package in a store rather than be "closer to their meat". Since then Avigayil only wants to eat "store chicken" - and to be honest I really understand.

I thought that I was only going to be dropping Adin and Aderet off at the shul but Avigayil decided to stay as well as their good friend Laini was there.  While Adin and Aderet went over to check out the processing Avigayil kept her distance. I got to go home and take care of some things in the house and they hung out there for a while and jumped in piles of leaves. Our friend Bruce Shaffer took some pictures so I hope to be able to post them here soon.

Eventually they came home, had lunch and played with Laini for the rest of the afternoon and Adin and his friend Tovi took off on their bikes to the Valmont Bike Park.

I had a chance to go to the  Book Worm to sell some books we were ready to let go of and get some new ones. As I'm starting to write more often I bought myself two grammer books: Woe is I  and Eats, Shoots & Leaves.  That way I will know for sure if I was meant to use a colon, semi-colon or comma in the previous sentence after the words "grammer books".

We ended the night we home-made gluten free pizza and Madagascar 3. Well, Gavriel was teaching a class to post Bat-Mizvat girls, the kids watched the movie and I re-organized the bookshelf in the play room. I think I pretty much got the Madagascar plot down from numbers 1 and 2.

It's now almost 10 pm and I'm sitting in Avigayil's room with her hoping that she falls asleep soon. More on Avgigayil and her sleep later...

Our Master Plan (Take Two)

The Chagim just finished less than a week ago and we are all slowly recovering. Laundry is getting done, routines and schedules are being created again and tomorrow we are hopefully going to see if we can tweak our "Master Plan" a bit to work a bit better for us.

It really wasn't working for me to be working with all 3 kids at the same time. I like the idea of all us all being able to sit down for an hour and get it all done but it became clear really quickly that right now all of my kids need my individual attention and are not that skilled at working independently. 

The new plan is to stick with our morning routine - but instead of the kids doing 1 hour of minecraft time after that they will have 1.5 hours of research time. 

I'm hoping that I will be able to spend about 45 minutes with each kid while the other two have their research time. This is basically watching approved educational videos. 

Oh, another thing I'm aware of is that I really can't sleep until 8:30 or 9am and expect the morning to go well. So my new goal is 8 am and I'm hoping that will be more than enough sleep. 

I'm also really hoping that the kids will start going to sleep earlier and waking up earlier. 

40% off and Sales Tax

Yesterday we went to Old Navy to go clothes shopping for the kids. It was 40% off if we used our Banana Republic card. So we had a discussion about percentages and a brief tutorial on how to calculate them.

In order to figure out how much we were spending we also practiced rounding up.

Later in the day Zayde brought Adin to Bicycle village to check out the bike that Adin has been saving for. He called me from the store to find out how much was in his bank account and did some mental math to calculate how much more he would need to save in order to get the bike.

We then talked about the fact that he would also have to pay sales tax. So we calculated that - and he negotiated with Zayde to get him to pay for the sales tax.

This afternoon Adin was able to take his money from Chanukah and birthday savings and working as mother's helper for Mitten and buy his dream bike! I'm so happy for him.

Thank G-d for Cattails!

Cattail

Avigayil was having a hard moment so I got her and Aderet out of the house to go to the park.
We found some cattails that were going to seed. The girls and I had so much fun breaking them open and running leaving a trail of white fluffy seeds behind us.

I was really wishing that I had a camera with me to document it.

I just got an iPhone today (a few days later than the cattails) so I would be able to have a good camera with me at all times in order to document these moments of super fun spontaneous learning.

Daily Notes 10/18/12

I'm going to try to keep notes at least a few times a week on what we do.  Even if it's just a few lines.

Today was our first day of trying our new schedule - which is me working one on one with each kid for 45 minutes while the other kids get a total of 1.5 hours of screen time. Right now they can use half of that for minecraft or other approved entertainment and the other half has to be some kind of research. The video time is definitely one of those things that keeps evolving.

In any case - I first learned with Aderet.  She had not eaten breakfast yet so that kind of slowed things down but even so we were able to do 3 pages of ETC, a page of math and read a Bob Book together. She had already done her Hebrew in the morning. During her video time did some minecraft and then watched an episode of How Things Work. She told me after that it was about corn and all the different products that can be made from corn. She was particularly excited about using corn to make oil for mechanical purposes such as drilling.

Then I worked with Avigayil. She wanted to do IXL math so I signed her up for that. She practiced for 15 minutes. She also did several pages of ETC. I started putting some of her ETC words into Spelling City but she was pretty done at that point. For video time she watched an episode of America's Test Kitchen as well as the How Things Work episode with Aderet.

With Adin we had a conversation about goals. We talked about how we could incorporate writing into his life in a way that excites him and practically works for him. He liked the idea of writing blog posts and he on his own initiative wrote his first one today about buying a new bike (which he ended up doing - I'm sure pictures are to come). He did not have any math as we were unable to coordinate with Safta that well this week. We watched an 11 minute video from Kahn Academy on the Electoral College and talked about it. Adin thought that the Electoral College was the stupidest idea ever and wondered who came up with that idea. I probably learned that at some point but did not remember. I'll have to look it up.  For his video time he watched America's Test Kitchen on how to make Pizza (which he was very excited about) as well as Myth Busters (which was about how germs spread).

I guess that was more than a few lines!

my new bike (almost)- By Adin

Hello people!!! If you're reading this I probably know you. Any how my name is Adin. I have been saving up money for a bike. The bike I want is $449.99(450.00). It's expensive because it has hydraulic brakes, 6" shocks,  a  13" frame, and 24" wheels. I'm  probably getting the today at Bicycle Village.





               THANX
                               

Our Master Plan

Today was the first "official" week of our second year of homeschooling. Kind of. The truth is I really subscribe to the "always learning" model and our schooling is an eclectic combination of traditional school at home and unschooling.

Here's a bit of our schedule as it looks right now and some points about what feels like it's working and what needs some tweaking.

8:00 am - Wake Up!

Everyone starts to wake up. Well, Gavriel wakes up sometime closer to 7 and Adin sets his alarm at 7:45. By the time I wake up which is usually closer to 8:30 Gavriel and Adin are already davening Shacharit together.   I have to say that getting to sleep in and have my kids sleep in is probably the best part of homeschooling. I actually go through my days without the chronic fatigue that I used to live with and I love not waking kids up from a deep sleep to shove them out the door. LOVE IT.

The kids each have their own morning routine check list that they do.

Modeh Ani
Wash Negel Vasser
Wash Face
Brush Teeth
Brush Hair
Clean room (including making the bed)
Put way laundry (*I'll share about our laundry system some other time)
Eat Breakfast
Clean up Breakfast
Daven
Hebrew (or for Adin Bar Mitzvah Prep)

Right now the girls are using the Berman House Hebrew Through Prayer  curriculum. As I was finding the link I also saw that they have some interactive CD's so I'll hopefully get some of those as well. 

Adin is working on getting the prayer service down and his Bar Mitzvah. I wanted to get him some of the Yesodot Haloshon workbooks that they used at DAT but I was amazed to find they have an incredibly archaic ordering service where I have to send them a check! By mail! So, I did what I usually do when faced with something that takes more steps than I want it to: freeze up and take no action at all (yes, I'm working on this). I may still order them but I also may just see if Berman House has something that is suitable for him as they are much easier to order from. 

Amazingly they mostly do this all very well as they are extremely motivated for the next part of the day.

9:30 am - Minecraft!
(ideally but today it was @ 10am because Gavriel helps with the Hebrew and he was out tutoring and did not get back unitl 9:30)

At this point they get 1 hour of their favorite computer game Minecraft (I'm sure you'll hear more on that later as well).

I try to use this time to get some of my own work done and/or prep for the rest of our homeschool day.

10:30 is snack time and story time. 

This morning they had some junkie pudding but it motivated them to get off the computer, made them really happy and I convinced myself it at least had some protein in it. (I originally bought the pudding on a whim at Costco as a bribe for the kids to take with them to the new Boulder Explore program that they just starting going to once a week on Tuesdays... but it seems to have sneaked it's way into other days of the week as these things always do. (*this is one of those areas where I do a little pendulum swing trying to find the right emotional health of being flexible with food and the physical health of getting as much nutrition in them as possible).

Right now we are reading Story of the World - which is a history curriculum. Right now we mostly just read the story and Aderet enjoys doing the coloring pages. We also have some two Usbone world history encyclopedias that I bust out and open to the cooresponding pages and check out the maps. There are also suggestions of complimentary books we can get out of the library so I plan on strewing those around so if anyone is interested in learning more they can.

11:00  One Hour of School 

This is the part of our day that feels the most like traditional school and also is the most challenging as I'm working with 3 different kids on different materials at the same time. Today I think it went as well as it could have for the first day.

All of the kids are using Mammoth Math  for Math curriculum. Right now Adin is doing some finishing up/review of 5th grade and I've started both of the girls on 2cd grade as they are really on the same level.

For Language Arts the girls are working through the Explode the Code workbooks.

So, I got busy and have not finished this post but I'll hopefully get to it later...

Aderet and Abba Davening

Long Lake Hike

Aderet found this very cool caterpillar. Turns out it's a Spotted Tussock Moth.

After we got home from the hike we did some research on Teddy Roosevelt and his work to establish the National Parks. That brought us to a really quirky history cartoon called Histeria that the kids really like.

Everyone spent sometime drawing in their journals.

Curious and Curious

I feel a bit nervous trying to write the first entry for our new blog to document our second year of homeschooling. I say homeschooling because that is what has inspired and given space to this venture but really I'm hoping to create more seamlessness between our learning and our life. 

I used to be an avid writer of papers, letters and journals and I have not written much besides grocery lists in years. So, part of this blogging experiment is for me to find my writers voice (and hopefully other parts of myself) again. 

The first name that I thought of for this blog was "finding our way" (but that was taken). I turned 40 this year and questions of personal identity are bubbling over. Who am I? What do I really believe? What's important to as I move into the second half of my life? What are the core values that I want to pass onto my children and how do I go about doing that? How do I support my children in finding their own voices and cultivating their strengths? So this blog is partially to share with family and friends bits and pieces of our life but also as a mirror for myself. I'm curious to see what creative connected whole might emerge from the puzzle of pieces we lay out here. 

Curiosity is the goal here. Many years ago a mentor of mine told me to, "stay curious as long as possible." I've always thought of that in terms of how to show up when dealing with a particular complicated or challenging situation. But the truth is, this whole being alive thing is really a complicated, challenging situation. 

I also like that curious has two meanings. One curious being: eager to learn more, and the other curious  being: rousing interest because of novelty or strangeness. While at other points in my life I've worked very hard to make everything line up and make sense at this point in my life I'm prepared to be both curious and curious.