Catching up...

2011 has been an incredible year. Our family was homeless for the first couple of months and stayed with relatives, then found a great old house with a huge backyard and nice landlords! We had a new baby (boy 5) in June who is doing well and growing like a sunflower! My father had a medical issue that had him in the hospital for nearly 2 months and it strenghtened my parents love and marriage going into year 45 together!!! And as we enter the month of September, I am reminded of how much the Fall does me good. Those first northern breezes that cool your skin and promise that summer is almost over. The boys have continued their life-schooling path and are pretty darn amazing! W9 is a wonderful self taught reader who loves math, the science of cooking and design. D8 is into math, science, current events and a bit of psychology. E6 has fallen in love with the 3 Stooges and Pink Panther cartoons and is the comedian of the family. J5 is the philosopher and never ceases to catch me off guard with the deepest of thoughts..."if God made the Earth with people on it, wouldn't he have made other planets with people on them, too?" Then there is A, 3 month old amazing baby, who has captured all of our hearts and smiles with his smile and charm. DH is still the main caretaker during the day while I work outside the home, but we plan and dream of the day when we can combine our talents to work together for ourselves. The chance make come sooner than we think as the university I work for is going through layoffs and we will find out next week who will still have a job. I am looking for the open window as I have made peace with the fact that there is a good chance that my job will be gone. But if that happens, I will spread my wings and jump out of the safety of the nest for the next adventure. The possibilities of life are limitless and the road leads in many directions. I trust in the Tao to allow me to choose the right path for this leg of the journey. We continue to teach and learn everyday from each other and our friends/family. My beatiful friend Kiawitl always inspires me with her life's journey - "so, as you may drudge through earth dramatics today -take the time to look at BEAUTY and then, reassess the situation- is it REALLY worth wasting energy on??? livelovelaughcry- LIFE is Going by us as we breathe....." thanks for the beautiful intentional inspiration, sistar! I intend on keeping up with this blog as a log of life and hopefully all of you will find something useful in these words! Peace & Blessings.

Hard Lessons to Learn

Recently, I introduced my sons to Houstonopoly, the Houston version of the classic board game. My children are 4, 6, 7 and 8 which has them at different stages of viewing world situations. They are great at asking questions and think very sincerely as they consider life around them. BUT it has been amazing to watch the different characteristics of each child as they learned and played the game.

I did modify the rules a bit to simplify things by taking out the house/hotel factor, but I left everything else in order to give them a realistic experience. W8 was very precise with how he put his money and properties out in front of him and D7 sorted his money, but stacked his properties. E6 decided he wanted to watch and J4 stacked his money, sorted his properties and enjoyed holding the stack of money in his hand when it was his turn. W8 and D7 quickly picked up the idea of buying properties to receive rent payments when people land on them. J4 was not interested in giving his money away and was very unhappy to find out that he was expected to pay his brothers anything when landing on their properties. He was very intent on buying a property called “The Strawberry Patch” which was a Houston landmark restaurant for many years and I thought it was cute because he wanted it because it had a strawberry on the picture. J4 is a highly determined boy and he did end up with that property. In the end D7 became frustrated with “landing in jail” and left the game and his opportunistic brother E6 jumped into his place.

D7 insisted that if E6 won that it was a shared victory since “he played for most of the game”. There was a time limit placed on this first game, because as the banker, I had no intention of an 8 hour game the first time round. So at the end of our time limit, we added up all their properties and money and the winners turned out to be D7/E6, J4 and W8. W8 was perplexed as to how after spending a great deal of his money on properties, how he could possibly have lost. We talked about how you never know where the dice may have you land and that buying a lot of properties doesn’t necessarily mean that people will land on them.

They came up with a collective idea of creating a board game that was more peaceful. We’ll see what that looks like and I look forward to watching them work together to create it!

Peace & Blessings!

Busy with life...

Life has been throwing curveballs at an excellerated rate since my last post a little over a month ago. It is always easier to be negative and see all the things going wrong and never the things going right BUT I am working on keeping my mind focused on the positive. It is the best way to show the boys how to deal with adversity. Burying your head in the sand and/or playing the blame game only delays problem solving. Precisely why we unschool...to teach the skills of creatively solving problems and making the best of life!