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“We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.” - Werner von Braun

Few and far between...

My blog posts that is! We are finding the switch from summer to fall schedules slightly overwhelming especially as we gear up for the big wedding! My sister in law who will be getting married in 6 days, did us the honor of requesting myself as Matron of Honour, the girls as Flower Girls, and Jeff as one of the MC's.
We are very excited, but combined with a week filled with our Early Learners group, origami, swimming lessons, a haircut, gymnastics, highland dancing, a rehearsal, and well you see where I am going with this, it is going to be a full week!

I will try to keep everyone updated as we go but I am finding myself quite exhausted by the evening hours.

We did this weekend, do a bit of an overhaul on the house for which I a quite enthused!
It may not look like much at first glance, but a lot of the small nooks and crannies of the house were cleaned and decluttered. It is amazing how refreshing this type of thing is too me and I strive to do it at least twice a year.
The girls lent a hand as well, helping Dad take the car to the car wash, vacuum, and polish the interior, and by helping me clean up the basement and wash down the play house for it's transport back indoors for the winter months. (I had no idea how artistic they had been with blue chalk this past summer.)

So I will in advance apologize for the vast number of flower girl pictures I am sure I will be posting, and promise to catch up on all the ongoings as soon as possible!

Our favorite cookies...

This is one of our favorite recipes!

I think it was originally a muffin recipe which we adapted after mixing the batter only to realize we no longer owned muffin tins (following the move last Nov.)

The best part of this recipe is that everything goes in one bowl, and even the stirring isn't to difficult as it stays quite moist!

And we can't forget...it includes chocolate chips!

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Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup oil

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

2 cups flour

3 bananas, mashed

2 cups rolled oats

1 cup chocolate chips (generous)

Instructions:

1. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl. Place on floured cookie trays in whatever your preferred size.

2. Bake at 375 F until desired consistency.

The zoo - revisited!

So, I think we have officially decided that this is one of our favorite places to spend the day. We revisited the zoo with good friends of ours and spent the day wandering at whatever pace the kids choose. One of the highlights was feeding the goats and the direct interaction with the animals always produces smiles. The best part is when you run out of food, the goats begin to calm down and you can wander among them as long as you feel like.


The other big hit was the creature show! They had a wide selection of baby animals to show us this time, and we got to learn about and feel a large assortment of animals ranging from spiders to snakes to baby lions (shown below). Aislinn loves to ask questions at these type of things, but always makes me laugh as she gets on a tangent and asks the same question for each animal.

I think this time her favorite was "What do they eat?' She for some reason finds great appeal in holding up her hand.

We finished off the afternoon by hanging out with the fallow deer and feeding them our remaining bag of grain. The girls fell into some quiet pretend play, using sticks they had found for drumming, and creating a "campfire" to roast marshmallows over.

It was a long but enjoyable day and I am sure we will be back multiple times next year!

Our true colours...

I just spent a few minutes browsing over my past blog posts and it all looks so... relaxed and productive. And I feel at this point that I must set things straight. There are many moments in our day that are fun, involved and momentous, but so, so many others that are not.
Now that Tara's vocabulary has caught up to Aislinn's in a lot of ways, the bickering between them has come out in full force.
Never have I heard so many "Your not my mother" comments as in the past 3 days. "Tara put toothpaste on her toothbrush before I did!", "Aislinn keeps throwing her stuff in my room!", "I wanted to go pee first!" Seriously, these comments and so many others follow us through out the day, and my patience varies in almost laughable amounts. At one moment, I will sit and chat and divert attention until we have solved the problem, the next moment I will inform them they must work it out between themselves, the next I will chuckle at the ridiculousness of it all, the next raise my voice or shed a few tears.
Since Aislinn was born, I have never felt so emotionally drained.

Both the girls were exceptionally easy babies - sleeping through the night at 6 weeks, crying only when in need, happy-go-lucky toddlers, tantrum free two year olds (for the most part). But 3 seems to be a whole new thing! Our most challenging year by far with Aislinn, and Tara seems to be following in her footsteps.

I continue everyday to enjoy the wonderful moments that spending your entire day with your children ultimately bring, and struggle to work through the new challenges that arise.
I just wanted my blog to show our true colours - many bright and beautiful, and many tinged with gray! :)


-No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I’m not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal. - Bill Cosby


-From their struggles to establish dominance over each other, siblings become tougher and more resilient. From their endless rough-housing with each other, they develop speed and agility. From their verbal sparring they learn the difference between being clever and being hurtful. From the normal irritations of living together, they learn how to assert themselves, defend themselves, compromise. And sometimes, from their envy of each other’s special abilities they become inspired to work harder, persist and achieve. - Adele Faber, Elaine Mazlish

Apples, Apples, Apples...

Today we decided to make use of the apples from our orchard trip, and chose to make Apple Sauce and Apple Crisp. After much peeling and coring, I had the crock pot full and ready to go. In the meantime, the girls kept themselves busy colouring and cutting out pictures of harvest foods I had printed off the computer earlier.

After adding the sugar and cinnamon, we set the apple sauce aside and worked on our Apple Crisp. The girls measured and mixed the topping, and layered the apples in the pan.

Both turned out delicious and Jeff gave the Apple Sauce a thumbs up at dinner - more of a "you can make this again, if it's not too hard" comment.

Below are some of the other things we kept ourselves busy with over the week. The apple tree picture in the middle was my favorite because Aislinn just sat down, drew it and brought it over to me all excited about her work! I love that she is finally branching away from the safety of her people drawings, and trying new things!

The word box seems to be going quite well too. The girls ask me almost everyday for a new word, and Aislinn has been happy to review them and read them to me. So far, because there are so few, she just needs to read the first letter to remember what the word is. Bee and Tree are fun, because it is making her think though the change the double e vowel sound makes. Tara is happily reviewing her letters with A and T coming with no hesitation, and sometimes she remembers the sound of the letter before the letter name which is great as that is what we are trying to emphasize.

We are aiming now to move away from the apples, and have decided to talk about farms, crops and harvesting. The girls are excited about some of the fall crafts we have planned including basic leaf rubbings and nature collages.

I think I might encourage starting a nature book and seeing how many different species of leaves we can find and dry, label and paste. Aislinn found a maple leaf today and announced that is smelled like Maple Syrup. We also compared it to the Canadian flag symbol and hope to find red ones to make our own Canadian flags when the leaves turn. So many things to do, our days are just flying by!

A Day at the apple Orchard...

What a great day!
Today, we met up with our Early Learners group for our first official get together of the year, and what a way to start off. We met at the Orchard parking lot at 9:30(ish) and got together for an introduction to the day. We started by making a graph of every one's favorite way to eat apples. The choices were; as an apple, apple juice, apple sauce, or apple pie. Well, apple pie won hands down, but the girls were true to their tastes, by answering Aislinn - apple juice, Tara - applesauce. This followed with teaching the poem the girls had already learned (posted in earlier post) to the rest of the group, and reading through some information on flower blossoms, the bees part on the making of apples, and apple seeds.

After, as the orchard opened, the kids were set to head in for exploration and play. We started in the petting area, where they had a diverse selection of the common farm animals including goats, calves, pigs, horses, bunnies, dogs, sheep, hens, turkeys, donkeys, ducks, and fallow deer. (I think I got them all!)
Next came a wagon ride through the orchard, apple picking off the Macintosh trees, and a couple taste tests. We then, with apples in hand, made our way to the play area where the kids tried out their bravery on giant slides, their sense of direction in the hay maze, and their archaeological prowess in the sand area.
Lunch followed soon after, and was sped up slightly by the number of bees interested in the kids fare. I thought the kids handled the bee intrusion very well, and no one got overly upset- just ate fast.
We began the afternoon by taking advantage of the shade on the orchard's nature trail and tried out the tepee and rope swing we encountered along the way.
Soon after, many of the kids in the group were showing signs of fatigue, and most headed on their way. I was very tempted to do the same as Tara was starting to drag as well, but decided if we just motored on, we were likely to find our second wind (something I myself was desperately in need of.)
We hoped on to one more wagon ride around the orchard and the fresh breeze on our faces seemed to do the trick. After a nice discussion with the tractor driver, the girls headed back to the animals and spent over an hour feeding the deer and the goats poplar leaves that were scattered on the ground. The goats especially loved them - something I wish we had known before when the rest of the group had still been around- definitely cheaper than the grain dispenser!






I laid on the nearest bench and enjoyed a short doze while the girls were happily engaged.

At 4:00, we ran over for one final slide, made our way to the exit and said good bye to a great day. (Both girls slept the entire way home!) :)

A Weekend away...

I was away this weekend, manning the craft show booth and am always interested to hear, upon my return, what the girls and their dad were up to.
I have to say, I was quite impressed when I found out they spent their Sunday making slime and playing Chutes and Ladders with their Dad and favorite Uncle! Slime! It was pretty cool actually, but I was reminded of my lack of food colouring in the house which I am sure would have resulted in pink slime rather than the basic white. (It seems food colouring is much harder to get, as the grocery stores I frequent seem to find it not worth their shelf space. I guess not much of a profit generator these days.)
So, it seems that the activities undertaken were quite exciting, as was the food they ingested. Aislinn happily told me about the Reese Puffs she had for dinner, the whole bag of popcorn happily consumed, smarties that were no longer hidden in the pantry and bottles of Coke that had been "on sale".
Bedtime sleeping arrangements had been relocated- Tara crashing on our bed, and Aislinn on the living room couch!

I'm sure I haven't been given all the details, but what can I say... they had fun, and that is the most important part.
And I... slept in until 8:30, and happily planned fall learning oportunities and activities in the quiet moments between customers.

Agricultural Awareness...

Well, I seem to be having issues viewing the pictures on my blog, and quite frankly, it makes it tricky to organize the post, so since I am a few days behind on all the wonderful activities we have been doing, I will blog without pics, and try to add them later :) Yeah! it's fixed!!

What we have been up to...

Friday Sept. 7th.

We spent the morning with a bunch of families from the homeschool group, enjoying an Agricultural Awareness program put on by a fall fair organization. The kids got to make their way around 10 different "booths" and learn about the animal or organization presented right from the owners themselves. The booths consisted of Alpacas, Sheep, Birdseed, Disease Prevention, Bees, Water Conservation, Cows, Rabbits, Goats and Farm Safety.
The amount of information each person gave was incredible, and the kids got to spend about 10 -15 min at each location trying out hands on material and asking as many questions as they would like.
We rounded out the morning with free pizza and chocolate milk and then made our way inside to check out the exhibits.
Inside, Aislinn and Tara were astounded by the full height of the corn (pics to come) and enjoyed smelling the hay exhibits, comparing the ears of corn and laughing at the largest/smallest vegetable entries. They would make great 4H'ers-- to bad we don't live in the country!

The paradox of blogging...

So, I have found today, that the paradox of blogging is deciding whether to run back inside for the camera to capture the moment, or to sit and enjoy the moment, and hope words will suffice.
Tonight I chose words.

The girls were unusually wired this evening, and as their regular bedtime approached, we decided there was no point pushing for obedience when clearly there would be conflict. We instead took the girls out for some general running around and soccer ball games.
The peals of laughter that followed were well worth loosing out on our own precious free time. There is nothing like the giggles and squeals from two small girls as their Dad tosses them in the air and steals their ball.
We finished the evening with a walk around the neighbourhood to settle the troops, and headed home to shuffle two finally tired kids into bed.

You are worried about seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing. What!
Is it nothing to be happy? Nothing to skip, play, and run around all day long?
Never in his life will he be so busy again.
~Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, 1762

It's something I always have to remind myself... the girls don't share our hurried lifestyle... they need the chance to run and play and choose their own timing.

Plans for the year... (part one)

Through our community homeschool group, the girls and I are involved in an Early Learners Group which consists of 6 families, and 10 kids ranging in age from 2 to 4 1/2. The reason I mention this, is because I have decided to loosely base our learning activities for the year to the themes we have set up within our group. We will be meeting weekly, with the month of September revolving around Apples, Harvesting, and Fall.

For the girls, I have decided to use this opportunity to "strew" (borrowed word from another highly respected unschooler) corresponding material into their path. As I should have known Aislinn took to it like a bee to a flower. I had printed off the small poem shown right and she memorized it within minutes. We also started a word box (letter box for Tara) - basically a index card holder box for each to put in a new word or letter in each day. I hope to use this as a tool in developing their sight word recognition throughout the year. (Or at least as long as it stays fun!)

After that, I pulled out some finger paints, and encouraged the girls to draw themselves an apple tree. We cut an apple in half, took a few minutes to dig out the seeds and take a closer look, and then dipped the half apples in the paint to give our trees their fruit. What we did find out, was just how slippery apples get when they get covered in paint and had more fun figuring out how to get the apple from the plate to the paper. As always, this ends in my cleanliness freak -Aislinn- rejecting her project for the safety of the soap and tap. (I have never figured out her addiction to clean hands!) We then returned to label our works of art, and let them dry.

Aislinn's next comment of course was "What do you have planned for us next?"! Probably the last thing an unschooler wants to hear! So as we had accomplished more in the past 45 minutes than I had expected, returned to our happy little poem, and continued the chant (with hand motions) till lunch was ready!

After lunch we headed out to our homeschool group's "Not Back to School" event. An afternoon spent at a the beach of a nearby conservation area. The girls loved the social activities, and were happy to see friends from our Early Learners group to play with.

The kids worked on rock castles and pyramids, and waded through the shallows. Aislinn returned home with a handful of prizes - about 8 feathers to add to her fast growing feather collection. She is getting quite good at remembering where she has found each feather and what bird they come from. I am starting to wonder whether we should look into a scrapbook type system and some labeling. That might be a fun project! She currently has seagull, blue jay and peacock feathers and a bright red one she found which I am not sure of the origin. This might also help weed out some of the mangy looking seagull feathers she brought home today.

We then celebrated our shared mission with cake and juice. It definitely brought the group together in short order and made us feel like part of a greater whole. Such a nice feeling when you embark on such a life altering journey.

I am so far, so pleased with our homeschool group. We are looking forward to many more years of "Not Back to School".

A free afternoon

It's hard to find nowadays, but when we do, we take advantage. A near by park was offering free children's activities today, including free rides on a restored musical carousel and a miniature train both of which we had yet to try -ever! The girls were thrilled.

Play time on the park playground.

Face painting and one last tired train ride. Still recuperating from the 2 hour sing-a-thong the night before!

As summer draws to a close...

We felt compelled to fit in one more beach day, and packed up a picnic lunch (and dinner) and jumped in the car and headed to our favorite summer spot - Sauble Beach. Always busy, but such great sand and water.

The girls spent the day enjoying our "swimming pool". Playing with waterfalls and creating sand mountains with Dad.

And yes, I was there too, just always on the other end of the camera.

We arrived home tired and wind blown, and were astounded once again by 2 wide awake kids serenading us with every known children's ditty the entire 2 hour drive home!

Aislinn's new facination

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life. - John Muir

Aislinn's new topic of interest has become death (and as these things are, Tara's too). So if you would like to have a long in depth conversation about dying, please speak to my 4 year old.

The topic was sparked by sudden death in our extended family. (For which we are extremely sorry as we know how much he will be missed.)
Aislinn decided immediately that when someone dies, they are to be remembered in our heads, and loved in our hearts. And that it would be ok to miss them and even to cry.
This prompted Aislinn and Tara to question me on my own mortality, and what I had set up for them "when" it happens. We talked openly about the term orphan, and the number of orphans in other countries, and that myself and their Dad would do everything we could to be around for them until they were grown up... possibly even becoming Grandparents ourselves (and what that entailed).
Throughout the discussion, the girls were quite happy to include their comments like: "Well mom, you have to be alive long enough to teach me to drive", and "So that means that (carefully omitted senior member of the family's name) is going to die soon because she has so many wrinkles...pause...but we will remember her too!

It takes conversing with a 4 and 3 year old, to bring out the humor in something that is normally not so funny!

But in a more serious manner, I am astounded by the level of understanding Aislinn has in these topics. She shows a true empathy for how one must feel, and strives to dig as much information from me as she can. We have gotten as far as how your heart stops beating, and your blood no longer flows to your major organs, and how your blood will stay inside your body unless you are cut. (On the anatomy end of things.) What happens after a funeral, how your body is buried and decomposes - concepts I never would have imagined myself describing to a kid so young.

I have even reached the point of not being worried if someone close to her or quite frankly if I were to pass away as she already shows coping mechanisms stronger than most adults I know!

A creepy feeling really... you always think your kids will need you forever....