Framing children's art

A frame makes all the difference for children's art. Putting their art in a nice frame honors their work and preserves it. Because let's face it - stacks of art or art stuck up with push pins is just going to get ripped up, wrinkled, lost, and otherwise messed up.

Does framing it mean you have to keep it forever? I don't think so. You can take it out later and reuse the frame for something else.

In the meantime, look at the nice presentation you can have for their art projects.

A Reliable Wife

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick.

This book is set in northern Wisconsin, but I felt as I read it that it should have been set in snow-bound Russia. It had the feel of Russian Lit, with a toss of Wuthering Heights and a small pinch of East of Eden for American flair.

It is beautifully written, and does put a twist on the whole genre of bleak tragedy that makes it stand out. What is the book about? Well, I will just give you a quote from the book:

It was just a story of how the bitter cold gets into your bones and never leaves you, of how the memories get into your heart and never leave you alone, of the pain the bitterness of what happens to you when you're small and have no defenses but still know evil when it happens, of secrets about evil you have no one to tell, of the life you live in secret, knowing your own pain and the pain of others but helpless to do anything other than the things you do, and the end it all comes to.

Yes, it is a story of a father who needs forgiveness, and a son who hates him, and a mail order wife with a bottle of arsenic in her purse. It is a story of bleak and cold winter.

Enjoy.

Building special spaces

Before, he had special spaces like this:




But now Carbon's dad has started to make good on his Christmas promise-gift of a treehouse. He only had one day off work, and the weather was JUST AWFUL, but he toughed it out and finished this platform for Carbon. The boy loves it! More construction to come, but for now he can climb up there and launch his airplanes, pretend it's a bird observatory, a pirate ship crow's nest, and much much more.

We survived Easter

I love holidays, but Easter is not one of my favorites. It is a lot of work, and problematic in so many ways!

Top 10 Reasons Easter is Not My Favorite Holdiay

1. It is meant to be celebrated outdoors, but the weather usually doesn't cooperate.

2. Easter Dresses are silly and too cold for the time of year. It's hard for me to figure out what to wear.

3. The kids get way too much sugar, so they are hyper and difficult to manage at church.

4. The Christian holiday is a hot potato subject, theologically speaking, for our Unitarian Universalist congregtion.

5. Organizing the annual Egg Hunt at church is a lot of work, and then the kids run and it's done in about 15 minutes.

6. No special foods that I really love. (OK - deviled eggs are yummy but I have those all the time)

7. Did I already list the icky weather?

8. No one ever makes me an Easter basket.


But then again ...

9. The looks of happiness on the kids' faces during the egg hunt are pretty wonderful

10. Spring and renewal and new beginnings are all lovely things, even if they do frequently start with mud and rain and other difficulties.

Getting Ready for Easter

April Small Changes

I'm participating in One Small Change, making one intentional change each month to make our family lifestyle better for the environment. So far we've decreased our shopping and use of disposable plastic, and increased our use of public transportation.

So what is the next step? I was debating between meat and fabric, and they both have big issues. Meat production uses more land than feeding the same number of vegetarians would, and the methane gas produced by cattle actually contributes to global warming. And then there are all the ethical issues involved in how we raise and kill the animals. So there are a lot of reasons for environmentalists to become vegetarians.

On the other hand, cotton may be "the fabric of our lives", but conventional cotton farming uses massive amounts of pesticides. Organic cotton is much better for the environment, but it's more expensive and would require that I seek alternatives for much of the fabric I use.

But after consulting as a family, we are going to go with the meat this month. We aren't going to become vegetarians, but we are going to cut back. Yes, ethically raised meat is more expensive - but that provides a natural limit on our consumption. So most meals from now on will be vegetarian, because we will only eat organic, ethically raised, local meat. I'm not sure how that will affect eating out - I'm not ready to totally give up restaurants, so we'll see how that goes.

Plant-based diet, here we come!

Afterschooling

Today was Carbon's first "real" day at his new school, a small Sudbury model school that is basically group unschooling. He loves the school so far, and it seems wonderful to me as well.

But I'm still not ready to hand over my childrens' education to someone else. In fact, I don't think I would ever, as a parent, be ready to let anyone other than my child step in and take over for me. I think parents are ultimately responsible for their childrens' educations, and that the family is the primary educational unit. This idea is shared by homeschoolers and by afterschoolers.

Afterschooling means that during the afterschool hours families focus on furthering their childrens' educations. Today we did our afterschooling bit, and it looked like this:

3:30 - pick him up from school, and then drive home listening to The Lightening Thief on audiobook.

4:00 - snack and pack

4:45 - swim class

5:30 - drive to Costco, listening to The Lightening Thief again.

6:00 - Costco shopping, eating samples, and grabbing hotdog meals for dinner.

7:00 - Home, and the afterschooling begins! We read part of the new issue of Cricket magazine, did a couple quick addition wrap-ups, read La Ropa and did a game where I sent them off hunting for clothing items in spanish, which finished up with a command to find "pijamas" and put them on.

7:30 - The kids watch The Blue Planet while I make them some popcorn. They keep watching while I work on signing us all up for a community walk to combat hunger and poverty.

8:15 - bedtime stories: Storm in the Night and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

9:00 - both kids go to bed listening to audiobooks