The kids have been having a blast taking apart some little games that came with a McDonald's Happy Meal. The games were fun to play, but apparently even more fun to take apart, as Julia keeps congratulating herself for having the stroke of brilliance to take them apart and her siblings whole-heartedly agree. They've been taking apart the games, old cameras and any electronic toys that no longer work for the past couple days. Em got a shock yesterday from a camera, which dh said was likely caused by the capacitor that charges for the flash.

Em and I have begun reading a really great version of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels adapted by Martin Jenkins. The illustrations, by Chris Riddell, are fabulous, and Emily is absolutely entranced. Julia and I are reading through a boxed series she recently bought called W.I.T.C.H.. We just finished the first book, The Power of Five, which the girls are really enjoying. Em and I had a really great discussion about the book the other evening at dinner, analyzing the different characters and the ways they represent their different elemental powers. We were discussing which characters we most closely identified with and why. Hugely fun.

One of Emily's current passions is designing. She loves to design costumes, rooms, whatever, and I was her latest creation. Once she was through, she took pictures and graciously allowed Sam to enter the designing action, who found waiting for his turn absolutely excruciating. I'm sure I was quite lovely, as the children kept assuring me I looked fabulous. My gentle readers, however, may draw their own conclusions. This particular design was for a costume ball the kids planned for lunchtime. We waltzed through the kitchen (our closest approximation of a waltz anyway), trading partners in quite a civilized fashion.

MICROMANAGING AND OTHER FUN STUFF

Well, micromanaging seems an inevitable part of human nature, as my kids have learned little from their own autonomous urges when it comes to our kitten Mr. Buttons. He is just too cute to leave to his own devices, apparently, as they poke, prod, place and generally petrify the poor creature. No amount of, "It looks like he wants to be left alone" can persuade the children to let Mr. Buttons be. A few scratches and a very skittish kitten do little to further persuade. In the meantime, I patiently bandage the scratches and bide my time until the novelty wears off and continue gently to encourage respect for Mr. Buttons' autonomy.

We have recently acquired one of the most fabulous toys ever designed--the frigit. After more than a year-long quest for this toy, which I had seen years ago in a catalog before the kids were old enough to be interested, an online goddess dropped the link in my lap: Frigits. Sam has been enamored with Rube Goldberg machines for more than a year now, and this toy provides exactly the kind of creative fulfillment that the game mousetrap never quite did. Sam has thoroughly enjoyed creating new "machines" by reconfiguring the different frigit pieces, experimenting with pitch and speed. He's made very direct, nearly vertical routes that shoot the marble straight down and very circuitous, horizontal switch-back routes that meander and swirl. Hard to say which provides more satisfaction--satisfyingly different, I would say.

The girls have been writing poems lately, and they've really zoned in on the rhyme and rhythm of language that they've been hearing in song lyrics and the strongly rhyming poetry of Silverstein and riddles we've been reading. They've both offered some samples for me to post on our blog.

Jules:
Daisies are yellow
The Sun is bright
just like my future ahead of me.

Nature is ahead of me
When I go into my heart.

Em:
Pain and suffering is no way to go
As the chimney smoke on the lavender blow.
How can your heart beat when it's beating so slow?

Flowers are blowing and
Flowers are going.
Why can't the flowers just stay when the wind is blowing?

We've also been exploring the sun some more--Em's current online interest--learning about angstroms and light wavelenths. The Sun-Earth Viewer has lots of neat images to click on, showing the sun in different colors based on the wavelength of light. We found a really neat website on frisbee history, an inquiry spurred by our recent family frisbee games. The girls were so excited to find a family connection in the frisbee history--Ultimate Frisbee originated in Maplewood, NJ where dh grew up! Now, that's a small world!

Sam and papa spent the weekend building their first robot together, realizing one of Sam's greatest passions. Dh has been looking for robot kits that would be simple enough to keep Sam's interest but complex enough to be satisfying. His criteria also included that it be a "real" robot not just a remote controlled device. He finally found a couple of kits at Discover This that he felt would be worth trying out, and they arrived this Friday. He and Sam put together the first kit, the "weasel," that can follow walls or a black line on the floor. Sam was in absolute heaven building a robot with his papa! He kept running in to show me the next completed step, the electronic "brain," the wheels. By the end of the weekend, he was doing excited acrobatics over his "weasel," as it followed the black line of electrical tape along the kitchen floor just as it was supposed to do.

THE AWAKENING

While walking through our meadow one evening, we spotted an Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillar dining on some Queen Anne's Lace. (That's him hanging upside down in the bottom left corner of the photo to the left.) We brought him inside and continued to find fresh food for his dining pleasure for nearly a week before we were rewarded by a bright green chrysalis. The picture's not great, but it's so cool to watch the transformation. The caterpillar eats and eats and gets huge. Then, it dumps all the waste food and liquid in its body and begins climbing all around, looking for a suitable attachment point. Once settled, it begins to curl and shrink, resembling a chrysalis shape but still very obviously a caterpillar. Next morning, voila! A chrysalis.

After several days of checking on the chrysalis, the kids eventually forget about it and go about their business. The other morning upon first waking and sitting down on the couch, Julia spotted something black and moving--the butterly had awakened! You can see the butterfly drying his wings right next to the now brown, discarded chrysalis. As we brought the butterfly outside where he could fly free once his wings dried, we got a really good look at the beautiful markings on his wings--the orange eyes, yellow and blue on the top, and the orange on the underside. By checking out the coloring, more yellow than blue on the top, we were able to confirm that our caterpillar had, indeed, been a "he." Now, we look for him while out walking, squinting hard trying to catch sign of color or size that might distinguish him from the other black swallowtails floating through the flowertops.

Our meadow is home to some amazing creatures, which we only hope to increase in the coming years by diligent native habitat management. We plan to increase the number of host plants for insects, place birdhouses and plant native berry plants and winter food for the birds, hang bat houses, put out salt licks for the deer in winter--ahh, we have grand plans. While walking this week, we found an argiope web, distinctive because of its zig-zag writing pattern in the center, and very quickly spotted its maker off in the corner, apparently resting after her exertions wrapping the week's meal. Often called a black and yellow garden spider or garden writing spider, the Black and Yellow Argiope is stunning and somewhat imposing due to the female's massive size. This argiope's abdomen was more than an inch long, and she's been snacking on a good size grasshopper throughout the week. We'll be keeping an eye out for the possible egg sack in the coming weeks.

Living and learning fun--ahhhh, it's starting to feel like home again! Em made one of my favorite statements today: "I LOVE learning! It's just so cool!" Yeah, me too, Em.

Of course, moving to a new area has meant dealing with rounds of colds as our bodies adhjust to new germs. While Em was sick, we were talking about how germs get in our bodies, about how antibodies work and about the fact that once we get one cold we don't get it again because our body has already manufactured the necessary antibodies with which to fight it. We found a cool website that explained it in a way that Em could really understand and had some really neat graphics.

Jules and I are now working our way through a nasty virus. We visited the doctor the other day to be sure Jules didn't have strep--her throat was hurting so and she was on about day 7 of her cold. While there, we talked about different kinds of whales spurred by the orca whale border and Sam's love for the story Baby Beluga--I think he really responds to the "swim so wild and you swim so free" line. We remembered a Smithsonian book we'd gotten once on harp seals (also in the border), which the kids found terribly traumatic because the mothers just abandon their babies after a certain age. (Smithsonian really doesn't do children's books very well, imo. No warm fuzzies there.) Jules was a trooper when the nurse swabbed her throat, and we talked about the differences between bacterial and viral infections and how we'd find out which it was with the throat culture.

Yesterday, the electric company turned off our power for a couple of hours while taking down the lines that run through our backyard to the house; they've been in the process over the last few months of switching over to buried cables. We decided to take advantage of the opportunity and pull out the Harry Potter book we've been talking about starting. All afternoon, we read several chapters--nearly a hundred pages--and couldn't wait to read more. Later in the evening while relaxing in the tub, I found a cool article on sharks in the new Smithsonian Magazine that I'll have to point out to the kids some time soon.

Today, during a commercial break for Looney Tunes, Em turned to me and asked whether or not the sun rotated like the earth. Hmmmm? Good question. I'm not sure it ever would have occurred to me to even ask this question, but I did what I always do: I said I didn't know, suggested who might know and offered to look it up online. We went to ask.com and turned up a really cool NASA site and followed all kinds of cool links, learning about differential rotation and sunspots.

After Looney Tunes, we turned off the tv and pulled out the Harry Potter book again, reading another several chapters while the kids built with geomags. While taking a break for some food (and to give my voice a rest!) Jules pulled out some of her quarters to show us. She had about five different state quarters, which prompted us to start searching our big change jar to see how many different states we have--I think the total count was 26. We had fun talking about the state symbols and why they were representative of that particular state. We also found a couple of Canadian nickels, a 50 cent piece with JFK on it that their great-grandmother had given us, a Susan B. Anthony and a Sacagewea dollar. Many, many connections.

Yes, life is grand and our natural rhythm is falling back into place. *sigh*

MR. BUTTONS AND OTHER MUSINGS

Julia's longtime wish came true last week--she got her kitten! We had talked about getting a kitten when we moved to our new house, and she's been patiently waiting while we finished most of the painting and new flooring. Last weekend we went to the Adoption Day at Petsmart, and she found a black and white kitten who spoke to her heart.

After waiting nearly a week, we picked him up at the pound and brought him home. "Mr. Buttons" has quickly worked his way into all our hearts--even dh has admitted that he's pretty darn cute. Of course, he doesn't seem nearly so cute at 2 am when he's chasing marbles on the bathroom floor and drinking from my bedside water. Ah, having a baby in the house again. *sigh*

We're settling into our new home more each day, and one of our favorite rituals is taking our evening walks through our meadow. The dog loves the walks as much as we do, and forgives all the attention lavished on Mr. Buttons the minute she hears, "Where's your ball?" We have big plans for the meadow to help attract even more wildlife. After the fall cut, I'm going to seed with some native wildflowers, and we plan to build and place several birdhouses along the perimeter before spring. Several of the plants we moved, including one of our butterfly bushes, survived, as did my white milkweed and spicebush seedling. We've seen lots of deer, and we're looking forward to placing salt licks along our walk this winter. With any luck, we'll get some good snow and finally be able to break out our cross-country skis, which haven't been used since our Pennsylvania days. It's good to be home!

SETTLING IN

Well, looks like another two months have passed without blogging. That'll happen when life takes over!

We've been busy settling into our new farmette--5.25 acres in northwestern Maryland. The move itself was difficult emotionally, as they always are, but all in all we handled it quite gracefully I would say. The kids are adjusting amazingly well to their new home, enjoying it more and more as it gets closer to being finished and feeling like home. We're renovating the kitchen, painting and putting in new carpets and floors; you know, all the stuff it takes to really make it ours.

Em and Jules are sharing a room still, though with a bit more room to spread out. They've had fun choosing new bedding and colors for the wall and have put together a truly beautiful room that reflects both their personalities. For a while they went back and forth trying to settle on a theme for their room, and they're so different that it was hard coming up with something that worked for them both.

Em would've liked an Egypt or Dragons room while Jules would've loved a pink and purple Princess extravaganza. They finally settled on a "Rock Star" room, which has morphed into what dh thinks is a very good impression of an opium den. The walls are plum while the bedding is a deep plum and mauve iridescent line from Target. We found a great little chandelier on sale with diamond and grape colored jewels. They decorated lampshades with feathers and glitter, and they have spiral lanterns across the top of their valences. All in all, it's quite lovely.

Sam's cowboy camp room is slowly coming together. He wanted a sky on his ceiling that went from day to night, so we decided to paint it a soft blue with clouds for the daytime sky. We'll cover it with those glow-in-the-dark star stickers that will come out when the lights go off for the nighttime sky. He wants me to paint murals of trees and I'm not sure what else, and we're going to build a teepee in the corner of the room that he can play in.

The dog has adjusted to the move quite well and absolutely loves having all the acres on which to romp. Her favorite part of the day is when we go for our walk in the evening through our meadow, which I must admit is my favorite as well. My heart sings watching my children run through the mown path with wild abandon--I feel as if I have everything I could ever want right in front of me.

Emily enjoyed her 8th birthday at the end of July. We had a hoe-down for friends and family to come see our new home. Dh gave the kids a spin on the tractor, which they all thought was fabulous. Sam, of course, immediately grabbed the wheel--he wasn't riding, he was gonna drive! Even my mother-in-law tried it out. Dh barbequed some pork shoulder, my mom made her famous potato salad, and I made about 2 dozen farm fresh deviled eggs that were delicious! I think the highlight of the weekend was my nephew's sheer pleasure exploring the land and watching the chickens. Despite the fact that he was sick, he enjoyed himself immensely just taking time to walk and watch the ladies. He was in heaven when I gave him a dozen eggs to take home. Apparently, he's been talking non-stop about getting some chickens of his own, much to his mother's chagrin. He'll just have to come visit our chickens more often.

The Quail Chronicles

Besides the move, we have been incubating and hatching Bobwhite Quail as part of a somewhat controversial repopulation effort. We began by building our own incubator out of a styrofoam ice chest. At the bottom of the ice chest, there is a pan filled with water to help maintain the proper humidity necessary for incubating and hatching eggs, which is different by the way. We used an incandescent light bulb as our heat source, which was rather tricky trying to regulate within the one to one and a half degree margins necessary for the embryos. On the top of the incubator we cut out a viewing window and covered it with plexiglass, allowing us to check the temperature and watch during hatching.

As you can see, the quail eggs are quite tiny--that's a regular size light bulb in there. Next to the eggs is a rectangular thing, which is our remote thermometer and hygrometer. Bobwhite quail take approximately 23 days to incubate, though ours took between 23 and 25 days to hatch. While it was cool to make our own incubator, the downside was the lack of fine temperature control and regulation, which meant that I was up multiple times each night for those 23-25 days checking the temp of the eggs. That got a bit old, but I must say that the remote thermometer I splurged on really saved me. I could bring the main unit into the bedroom at night and just check on them with the touch of a button--kind of like hitting that snooze button--not enough to totally wake me up.

The incubator temperature needs to stay between 97.5 and 102 degrees, depending upon the kind of incubator, and the eggs must be turned at least twice a day. The last three days before hatching, we stopped turning the eggs, decreased the temperature slightly and increased the humidity to prevent the shell from sticking to the chick. The really neat part about the whole process, however, was "candling" the eggs as they developed, which simply means putting the egg on top of dime-sized light source that shines through the shell and allows one to see the developing embryo. The kids thought this was great, and even dh was interested enough to check out at least one each time we did it. By the end, the whole egg is filled, and as I candled the couple eggs that weren't hatching with the others, I could actually hear the chick inside peeping. Totally cool.

The chicks began hatching out on the 24th day at around 12:30 am. I know this because I woke up to go check on them just as the first one began coming out of the egg. It was pretty amazing to watch, and I was surprised at the struggle. Birth is not an easy thing. I learned some pretty interesting things during this process as well. The first crack in the egg is called a "pip" and made with an "egg tooth" on the top of the chick's beak that disappears shortly after birth.

The very first pip is the result of a neck spasm in the chick induced by a build up of carbon dioxide within the egg. As the embryo grows, it fills a greater and greater space within the egg, eventually puncturing the air sac in the top of the egg. As this happens, the chick's lungs begin to work for the first time, taking over from the embryonic system that has sustained it while in the egg. There is enough oxygen in the egg sac for the lungs to begin to work, and as the chick uses it up, the build up of carbon dioxide causes a muscle spasm, which breaks the egg shell and allows fresh air to penetrate. After that point, the chick takes anywhere between a few hours to 24 hours or more to begin systematically pecking a circle around the top of the egg, perforating an escape hatch of sorts. Once it breaks a complete circle, it must then push its way out--no small feat for such a tired little thing.

While this has been a tremendous learning experience, it's also been fraught with stress and anxiety. We began with 25 eggs, four of which were not fertilized,and as we incubated the eggs, one either stopped developing or became contaminated, dropping us down to 20. At one point, early in the incubation stage, I switched the bulb to a higher wattage, trying to increase the temperature slightly; within 20 minutes, the temperature soared to 108 degrees, high enough to cook or seriously compromise the embryos. Luckily, I caught it quickly before it likely did too much damage, but it was enough to make me quite upset and feel terrible about it for several days.

We hatched out 18 of the 20 remaining eggs, two died shortly before hatch as we discovered after cracking them open. That, too, was a bit difficult to handle. Once the quail chicks were about a week and a half old, we lost several chicks in one day, one after another for no explicable reason--none drowned, none got wet or chilled, none were pecked at, though a couple may have been smothered--a danger when the chicks pile together for warmth. Since then, we've lost four more here and there and are now down to nine. The chicks are now four weeks old and about 4 weeks away from release. It's been really hard losing the chicks, though I know that some loss is inevitable. All in all, however, it's been a great experience to do once; I'm not sure that I would do it again this way. It's a whole lot easier to get the day old chicks in the mail!

EGADS! What happened to April & May?

Whew! Two months have come and gone with no blogging whatsoever? What in the world could keep me quiet for that long, you ask? Must be something catastrophic at the very least.

Not exactly. We've been quite busy, actually, contemplating, setting up and now preparing for a move cross-state. We've had many family discussions about all the pros and cons of moving, done several reconnaissance missions, bought a house, sold a house, ushered through many an inspector and are now, somewhat anxiously, awaiting the closing date and the physical move, though we've pretty much mentally moved already.

We'll be moving to 5.24 acres in Northern Maryland where we can spread out and begin living some of our dreams. I've been wanting to homestead for quite some time, well, homestead-lite, really, and the kids are looking forward to getting more animals than we've had space for in our present home. There's a barn with three 12 x 12 stalls, which will make a great temporary home for our chickens until we build them their own digs, and which will make a great home for Julia's Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats in the spring. Emily hopes to get a horse in a couple of years, so I imagine she and I will be taking riding lessons together next year. Sam's looking forward to getting a puppy this fall and some roosters in the spring--I think his plan is to build up the male population of our little homestead.

Currently, we're having discussions back and forth about what bedrooms will look like, who will sleep where and with whom, that kind of thing. I'm planning my new kitchen, which will have double ovens and a five-burner cooktop by the time I'm through with it. We'll be laying aside some money to put in a pool next spring, which will be fun for everyone, and once we finish off the basement this winter, there'll be lots more room for us all to spread out a bit--a big rec room, a combo office/ guest room, and a stylin' exercise room with a climbing wall, dh's bike, yoga/ pilates mats, meditation cushions and maybe even a sauna. Fun for all, we hope. It helps to be handy and do as much of the work ourselves as possible, short of digging out the pool by hand, that is. I gotta draw the line somewhere.

The kids and I made our own homemade broom from a broom plant that I pruned. They've been having fun playing Harry Potter and taking turns flying around on the broom. They've also made some really cool spears for themselves after watching Troy. Achilles weilds a mean spear, that's for sure! The kids loved watching the mythological world of their Age of Mythology game come alive. We watched the bonus features disc, a National Geographic special on the Making of Troy, and read a couple of excerpts from The Iliad. As chance would have it, Emily had picked up a children's version of The Odyssey from the library, so we got a sense of what happened to Odysseus on his way home from the Trojan War.

This weekend, Jim set up an old CD player in the girls' bedroom, and they've been having a ball listening to all their CDs and feeling quite grown up. Julia put in a disc that had come with a ballerina book Em got ages ago, and she immediately recognized the music from Swan Lake. I was quite impressed. She then proceeded to tell Sam all about the story.

Friday and Saturday the kids and dh helped me get the vegetable garden turned over. There's still quite a bit of clay that each year we work hard to get rid of by taking as much out as possible and replacing it with good organic matter from our compost bins to mix in with the remaining soil. I turned the garden over, the kids helped pull out any rocks and clay while breaking apart the shoveled clumps and Jim hauled the compost. By the end of the day Saturday, it was looking pretty good, and the chickens were loving the compost top dressing, which we'll turn in with a friend's rototiller sometime this week, hopefully.

While we were working on Friday, we found a six-spotted green tiger beatle, which was really cool--an amazingly brilliant, iridescent emerald green. We were able to use the bug vacuum Sam bought at the toystore a few weeks ago to suck it into the magnifying canister and then identify it with our insect book. While I was inside getting the book, Sam let the beatle go, so at first we had to identify it from memory. We narrowed it down to two from the pictures, then used the description of the habitats to determine which it was. As we did, we found the beatle crawling on Sam's jacket, much to his chagrin, and were able to recapture it, and sure enough, those six spots were clear as could be under the magnifying glass.

Then later, as I was moving some rocks around for my rock walls, I found a black widow and was able to suck that up as well for safe viewing. It was beautiful, and it's not the first one I've found in my rock walls, unfortunately. We supposedly have brown recluses in the area too, though I've never found one, and we need to be careful of copperheads, as well. Basically, we're all pretty careful to wear our work gloves when ever we're handling fire wood or rocks. And we scout out our climbing area pretty carefully when we head over there, too.

Slacklining Adventures

We had a blast this weekend hanging around the house. Jim set up a slackline, which we all tried out. Instead of a "tight" rope, it's a "slack" rope, which has a fair amount of give in it, bending with weight. Sam was having so much fun using his weight to bounce up and down, which he thought was much cooler than just trying to walk it.

A slackline is basically a piece of webbing, connected between to points--in our case, two trees. Jim had used some climbing webbing, 'biners and a come-along to set it up, but this time he was able to procure a tie-down used to secure gas canisters at work, which has a clamping device built in to the line. You can read more about the sport at Slackline Brothers. Slacklining is loads of fun and surprisingly difficult. I was amazed at how much my leg would wobble back and forth the instant I weighted it, making it nearly impossible to walk without holding onto someone. I was laughing so hard! Obviously, it ought to become easier with practice, but it's amazing that folks actually walk across canyons this way! Julia was really good at it, not surprisingly. Her balance and concentration are phenomenal!

We've been fighting off some kind of bug, though none of us has been out right sick, just a bit off-kilter. The girls have been playing with "paper dolls," coloring and cutting out historical figures from some of their Dover coloring books that we've picked up on our travels. They've been coloring in dresses from Colonial and Civil War eras, and even Sam's been getting in on the action.

We've also been watching several DVDs from the library. We've watched Little Women and Sherlock Holmes Mysteries, both of which have given us lots of opportunity to talk about those historical moments. The girls loved being able to watch Meg and Jo get ready for the dance in Little Women, comparing the dresses to those that were in their coloring books. They were outraged that the teacher hit Amy, and we all cheered when Marmy made her speech about keeping her home.

Sherlock Holmes was fun, though a bit on the scary side for the kids. We had seen Jackie Chan's Shanghai Knights first, which made all kinds of references to Sherlock Holmes, even portraying a character supposed to be the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, showing "how" he became a knight. Pretty funny all of the connections, and we laughed about the tall-tale nature of Shanghai Knights.

We watched Master and Commander, which was an amazing movie, packed with historical information. The kids were fascinated by life on board a ship, and they really identified with the character Lord Blakeney, because he was so young. The Napoleonic Wars serve as the movie's backdrop, creating another Napoleonic dot for the kids, which began with the movie The Count of Monte Cristo, connecting to the apocryphal story of Napoleon shooting off the nose of the sphinx, connecting to this movie.

We tracked the journey of the ship on our world map, adding yet another journey to those of Pocohantas, Amelia Eerhart, our own and others. We talked about the birth of Natural History, represented by the doctor's fascination with the Galapogos Islands, and Lord Blakeney's desire to follow in his footsteps as a "fighting naturalist." This led to discussions of biology, evolution, Darwin, and much more. The next day, we found a bug in the house and were looking it up in our book, when Em found a picture of a bug that disguises itself as a thorn--just as Doctor Maturin showed. I love this!

After the movie, we visited the Master and Commander website, which is filled with interactive information. The site has even more information about life on a tall ship, a captain's log, a detailed map of the journey, specifics about the different ranks and responsibilities. It's just amazing what's available these days!

Of course, we've also been doing other things this week as well--lots of claywork with sculpey, lots of painting--including arms and faces! Yesterday, Sam and Julia pulled out all of our cardboard slated for recycling and began building. Julia made a really cool dollhouse while Sam worked on a castle. At one point, Emily pulled out a measuring stick the kids had been given at the local hardware store, and they all began measuring each other, how high the boxes were, etc. Two days ago, the weather was glorious, so we spent most of the day outside, soaking in the sunshine and listening to Harry Potter on CD, drawing and playing. Life is one grand learning adventure!

TV OR NOT TV, THAT IS THE QUESTION

We've had cable television for almost 2 years now; prior to that I was tv-free for nearly 10. And now, after 2 years of unlimited access to cable channels such as HGTV, Disney, The History Channel and Cartoon Network, my family--yes all of us!--have made the decision to give up cable. But what brought us to this point?

When I went to grad school, I made the decision not to have television in my life, the mountains of Central Pennsylvania and a graduate student salary aiding my decision. With so much work, I felt that I would carefully weigh the decision to watch a two hour movie in a way I would not turning on the tv. Thus began my blissful life without the "plug-in drug," causing me to miss the entire Seinfeld and Friends eras, shamefully unaware of the cultural references shared in the grad student offices. Did I miss out? Yes and no. My life was rich in other areas, and let's face it, I can now enjoy all those missed seasons of Friends on DVD--they're all new to me!

So what does this all have to do with our Unschooling adventures? Well, what to do with that 20th century entertainment box is a perennial question for child development experts, educators and, by extension, Unschoolers. The big question becomes does television expand or limit one's world?

Over the past 2 years, we have all enjoyed free access to the channels and information brought to us by cable tv. We have enjoyed "Bloody Rome" week on The History Channel, "Landscape Challenge" on HGTV, and my children have discovered shows like "Kim Possible" and "Teen Titans." Cable television has expanded our interests and our world, even when I haven't always liked the ways in which it's been expanded. Even shows like "Ed, Ed and Eddy" and "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy" have offered us insights and information.

Never once has television limited our world or our lives. Critics talk of the addictive or passive nature of television, but our experience has born out neither of those criticisms. There have been days when the kids have watched, enthralled, and other days when they have never turned on the tv. Always, the shows have fueled their imagination and curiosity, informing their play, their art, their questions.

Why then choose to cancel cable? The question for us has been one of economics. We now have the option for DSL instead of the cable modem, a switch which would cut our monthly bill by $70. The question for us was whether the shows we watched were worth $70 a month to us, the answer to which was ultimately no.

The children had just as much a say in that answer as we did. We talked over all of our options and decided to digitally record as many of their favorite programs as possible, nearly all of which are reruns any way, before cancelling cable. This way, they will have these shows available on DVD whenever they choose to watch. We also have joined Blockbuster online, which will allow us unlimited movie rentals each month, many of which offer their favorite characters. We decided that the difference between these options and cable was not worth the nearly $60 a month it would cost.

We will still enjoy our favorite shows, "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race." We will still get Fox and PBS. We will still have many options available, all of which enrich our lives. And, we will have an exta $60 a month that will make saving for our December trip to Disneyworld that much easier, eliminating the need to sacrifice little luxuries like gameboy games and chinese take-out. We will still have trust and freedom, but more than that, we all have had the power to decide what works best for us as a family.

We're getting crushed by a snow storm today--we probably have about 8 inches out there already. It's a wet, heavy snow, which you can see by the way it's coating my rose trellises and the birdhouses. The kids have been out playing and sledding, and the poor puppy has baseball size iceballs caked in her fur.

Just two days ago, we were outside enjoying the sun and warmer temperatures. The kids played spy/survivor out in the woods behind our home, running around the wetland streams and communicating on walkie-talkies. They played out there for the better part of an hour, having a blast with the independence. It's great now because the leaves are off the trees, so I can still keep an eye on them. I'm wondering what we'll do when the leaves come out, along with the poison ivy...

When they came in, Sam took a nice long tub to warm up, drained it, soaped up the tub and walls and proceeded to "ice skate" for an hour, assuring me he would hold onto the railing to stay safe, which he did and had a ball in the process!

The girls read through Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom together, which I'd read to Julia that morning. They were both going through, working it out and going through the lower case and capital letters. When they were through, they pulled out their "Survivor" jug, in which they keep slips of paper with names from present and past episodes. The girls sat on the couch and sounded out the names, with Em helping Julia with the different sounds. At one point, Em discovered that Julia had writen down all their names as well, and she was a bit indignant that she could now get voted off the island. ;)

When they were through, Sam and Julia played, while Emily made herself a pad of paper by stapling some scrap paper together. She asked if we could write some words together with me writing them in lowercase while she would write them in caps. We went through a series of about 8 or 10 words, playing around with rhyming sounds and word families.

The kids had a great day, which they topped off by playing with some Crayola model magic, creating a kind of currency with it, which they then used to play store. They put on their gis and practiced their karate moves for a while. They capped off a great day by camping out in the living room on the sofa cushions. Yes, life is good!

Yesterday morning, the kids played with Sculpey on the back deck, making coil pots and letters. We baked it with the windows wide open, and the kids painted their creations in the afternoon. The girls have been really into figuring out words, playing around with the magnetic poetry words on the fridge and sending emails. Email accounts and online games have been big motivation with the reading. It's interesting watching the girls learn together, with Emily, older, having the stronger skills, but Julia, younger, having the greater motivation--the same way they potty learned. Guess that shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

LIFE'S A MUSICAL AND OTHER MUSINGS

We've been to a couple of musical theater productions in the past few months, and we've rented some musicals to view at home over the past several months--The Sound of Music, Cats, West Side Story, Camelot--that compliment some we have at home, including Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Moulin Rouge (bits and pieces). Emily now spontaneously bursts into song wherever she goes. It's amazing to watch how she incorporates the lyrics and choreography into the things she's doing, like raking leaves with me or playing with one of her dolls. It's a wonderful reminder that even the most mundane parts of life are worth singing about!

The other evening I was in my room putting on a DVD, and Em walked in and told me,

"I know there are 60 minutes in an hour. Because if a half hour is 30 minutes, then 30 plus 30 is 60! I knew that because 3 plus 3 is 6."

She figured out time for herself by extrapolating what she already knew and using her understanding of fractions and math. Pretty cool!

This weekend we've been participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count through Cornell Ornnithology Labs. It's such fun--I do love my birds! We were able to count the following birds during our observation hours:

Carolina Chickadee
Carolina Wren
House Finch
American Goldfinch
Downy Woodpecker
Red Bellied Woodpecker
House Sparrow
White-Throated Sparrow
Northern Cardinal
Tufted Titmouse
Dark-eyed Junco
Blue Jay

and near the feeders:

Robin
Red-Shouldered Hawk
Turkey Vulture

Unfortunately, we didn't see some of the other species that occasionally visit our feeders such as the Northern Flicker, Eastern Bluebird, Mourning Dove and European Starling. We submitted our checklists for three of the four days and plan to participate in Project Feeder Watch throughout the year as soon as we receive our kit.

I'm sitting outside on my top deck typing this, enjoying the glorious weather we're having before the temperatures drop again. The sun is about 65 degrees warm on my face, I can hear the birds singing all around me, the delicate music of my waterfall flowing, and I see the antics of my silly chickens who are loving the warm weather almost as much as I. Julia is up early this morning and has several of her "animals" outside to soak in the sun. I've now had stuffed doggy and kitty kisses galore.

We had a lovely Valentine's Day. The kids were so excited and planned our celebration all weekend. At 4-H and throughout the week, we made Valentines to take to a local Senior Center, and with the scraps, the girls made confetti for their family celebration. Julia worked all week making special Valentines for everyone in her family, givign them to us and mailing them out.

Sunday night, Emily decided that she wanted to give gifts to her siblings. She worked so hard to fill two boxes she pulled from the recycling pile with gifts she thought her siblings would enjoy. She gave her the new bridesmaid outfit for her American Girl Samantha that she'd asked for this Christmas to Julia, who really loved it. She also gave her one of her tutus, her crown, a dress for Belle and one of her Teen Titan figures. For Sam, she put together a box with a new Winx Club DVD, her Teen Titan vehicle for Robin that he loves and some other small things. When she was satisfied with her gifts, she wrapped them and brought them upstairs for Sam and Julia to open Valentine's morning.

During the week Julia had made herself a fort out of a big box that we had in our recycling pile--the only large one there at the moment and one that Sam desperately wanted. For Valentine's Day, she made a Valentine heart that said "Love Sam," pasted it on the box and gave it to him as a gift. She couldn't figure out what to do for Emily, and it really didn't occur to her to give things she already had. Finally, she decided to make some special Valentine's for Em and to give her a rainbow unicorn she had drawn. Sam gave Emily one of his Rescue Hero animals Sunday night, because he couldn't wait another day.

When Monday morning came, the girls waited until Sam woke up, and then they spread their confetti and opened their gifts, and they were all so pleased. After opening her gift from Emily, Julia wanted to give some of her treasures to Em and Sam as well, so she ran to put together two more gifts. She gave Sam her William doll from Williamsburg and her spy wallet that she'd bought at the Franklin Institute that Sam had been wanting so badly and which she truly loved. For Emily, she gathered some of her Barbie's together to give.

It was so incredibly beautiful to watch the joy and generosity flowing out from their hearts for each other, like the beautiful story The Gift of the Magi in my very own home. It truly was the best gift of love I could have received for Valentine's Day!

At lunchtime we took our Valentine's over to the Senior Center where the children really brightened their day. We don't make a big production out of it, just pass them around the dining hall, wishing them well and stopping to chat with those who feel like it. It takes maybe 20 minutes of our time to do and gives so much to our lives and to the Senior's as well.

When we came home, I made Sam's Valentine gift--a Jedi cloak, which he adores. We made some Valentine sugar cookies and ran out of time in the day. I made the beginning of the girls' Valentine gifts yesterday morning--skirts for their Oriental outfits. The jackets I'll tackle this week, but the girls are thrilled with the skirts and wore them to bed last night. It's a real lesson against perfectionism for me: I look at the skirts and see all the mistakes but the girls see only the luxurious brocade beauty of them. Learning to see with the wonder and joy of children's eyes is a lesson from which we all could benefit immeasurably! How lucky I am to receive this lesson with an open heart from my beautiful children--the greatest teachers I have ever had!

Wednesday was Chinese New Year, which we celebrated with some friends at a local restaurant. The kids had a blast learning more about their Chinese sign, which element they were--earth, fire, water, wind or metal--and most of all, eating the buffet! One of the gals who organized it made sure that there were New Year party favors for all the kids, which they got to take home. The Chinese dragons were a huge hit, as were the snake dragons.

When we got home, we popped in a documentary we had borrowed from the library on China, and the girls and I watched a bit of it, learning some things about the Revolution. But, it was kinda boring, so we turned it off after a while and put something else in. The kids played on my bed for hours with those snake dragons, making letters out of them and taking turns guessing what it was supposed to be.

Jim was out to dinner with a guest speaker from work, so he didn't get home until late. The kids and I had a liesurely dinner, and the girls made themselves oatmeal for the first time. It was so cute to watch them standing at the stove in their aprons. Em even had to put on her Colonial dress for the full effect. Too cute! Afterwards they made some chocolate milk, and then started playing a game in which their "mother" would not let them talk to each other, so they had to write notes. For the next 45 minutes, we all wrote notes back and forth to each other, using a combination of pictographs, squiggles and real words. They never cease to amaze me with the things they come up with!

Thursday, we spent a glorious morning outside at the Battle Creek Cypress Swamp with our 4-H Gardening club in preparation for the Great Backyard Bird Count, birdwatching and just enjoying the weather. Cypress trees send up "knees" from their roots that help the tree to breathe, a great shot of which I got in the morning sunshine. We saw several birds, mostly by the feeder at the Visitor's Center, but a few during our walk.

When we returned from our hike, we spent some time in the Visitor's Center reptile room, where we got to see several black snakes at various stages of growth, a copperhead and even got to hold a corn snake. There are so many things for the kids to explore and learn about in the little hands-on museum there, from paw print identification to a see-through beehive. It's a wonderful place to explore!

While Jim was away in San Diego, the kids and I made our own "litmus" paper from boiling red cabbage. Simply chop up the cabbage and boil it for a few minutes, and you have an instant home test for acids and basics. We tested all kinds of things from vinegar and lemon juice to baking soda. The colors turned an incredibly vivid color, and the kids had so much fun watching them change and trying to change them back again. Once we'd done all the tests, the kids decided to try to neutralize the results, turning the pinks and blues back to the neutral purply color. This was, of course, great fun as the acids and bases reacted, sending purple fizz everywhere!

After a week away, Jim was much missed, and the kids had great fun reconnecting with Papa. Elaborate wrestling games were the order of the day, as Jim donned the dragon costume and Sam, brave knight, rescued his princess sisters. The dog, of course, couldn't resist joining the fray, though it's hard to say what her role was supposed to be. I believe by the end of the game, she had taken on the part of Shrek's donkey.

This morning, we went to see Freedom Train , a Theatreworks musical about the Underground Railroad. The kids and I really enjoyed the production and felt it did a good job balancing the harshness of reality with humor.

When we got home, we pulled out a multi-media kit on the Underground RR that Emily had picked out about a year or so ago at the National Civil Rights Museum giftshop. We watched the video and listened to some songs, both traditional and more recent. Afterwards, we read biographies of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, from David Adler's Picture Book Biography Series. This is a great series for younger children--some good detail, but short enough to read in a single sitting.

The kids spent the afternoon playing underground railroad, and after dinner, Emily did an improv musical number. Just one more way Unschooling parents KNOW their children are learning:

I'm so tired from workin' all day,
Scrubbin' the floor and
Moppin' the floor.

No more doin' what Master say,
Oh Grandmother Moses,
Oh Grandma Moses,
Show us the way!

Just look toward the Northern Star,
Your only compass is the Northern Star,
You'll go through water,
Push through the bushes,
Grandmother Moses will be your guide.

Follow the Drinking Gourde!
God will find your way.
God will know you say
No more scrubbin' floors
No more dustin' ceilings.

Just follow the Drinking Gourde!
Just follow the Drinking Gourde!
Just follow the Drinking Gourde!
Now, you know what to do,
Just follow the Drinking Gourde!

It may look like a big spoon,
But it's the way to freedom.
Oh Moses! Oh Moses!

Oh Moses, please guide us to heaven.
Just guide us to freedom.
Just guide us to freedom, please,
You know what I'm talkin' about.

No more listenin' to Master say.
Send secret notes.
Say secret passages.

Go ahead and walk through streams
Carry your own young when they're so tired.
Go towards freedom.
Go or die.

No more words to say,
No more whips; no more cryin'.
Go on an Underground Railroad.
Go on an Underground Railroad.

It is a trail of houses,
Moses led more than 300 people to safety.
Women aren't weak!
Stand up whether you're black or white!

Just to be free!
That's what matters!
Now, you should know what I'm talkin' about:
Freedom!
Freedom!
Freedom!

We've had a full and exciting week! So much happening and so relaxing at the same time because it's all happened at HOME!

Our 4-H Gardening for Life club met at our house last Thursday to build bathouses. Each family measured and cut their own materials to assemble at the club meeting. The girls and I chose to build a Bat Attic, which we will place on the south side of our home. We talked all about different kinds of bats, what bats do for our gardens and what we need to do to attract bats to our yards. After building, we read Magic Schoolbus Going Batty and played an echolocation game in the yard. We really lucked out with the weather. It was beautiful and nearly 70 degrees out! Not for long, though...

Jim was home much of last week due to the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday and the Inauguration. The kids and I watched the Inaugural parade on the television and listened off and on to the different pundits and commentators. The best part was when Sam looked up at the military processional as the parade began and asked, wide-eyed, "Is President Bush going to war again?" The Washington Post ran a neat section on the Inauguration that included a spread on the best and worst quotations from past Inaugural Addresses. The kids and I read through the different quotes and talked a bit about them and their historical contexts. Emily's favorite president is still Abraham Lincoln, though she's coming to admire John Kennedy as well.

The other night, Emily made her own math "worksheet"--too funny! She drew pictures on the left and wrote out the equations next to the picture. So, 18 chocolate chip cookies minus 2 equals 16 chocolate chip cookies. 18 slices of cantaloupe plus 3 slices of cantaloupe equals 21 slices of cantaloupe. 1 flower plus 1 flower equals 2 flowers. 1 computer plus 2 computers equals 3 computers. And, 1 television plus 3 televisions equals 4 televisions. She's still writing her 3 backwards, but I'm guessing that will naturally work itself out as she begins to write more. As it is, she recognizes it when she reads it without a problem, so I'm not worried. Afterwards, she proceeded to ask her father for a page of double-digit calculations and worked through those.

Last night while we were snuggling in bed watching a movie (I was, not surprisingly, reading a book), Julia pulled out the Bob's Books and began reading out loud next to me. Before long Emily joined her and the two of them were cruising through the books, reading outloud simultaneously. It was quite the cacophony, but they seemed happy enough plowing through them on their own without any kind of audience, which surely did more towards furthering their reading than reading "for me" would have!

We read some wonderful Jataka tales together about the Quail King and cooperation and the Bull and kind speech. The girls are really enjoying the tales, though they are sometimes upsetting as bad things happen to the characters. Julia's favorite story is "Birdsnest," which is about a monk who likes to meditate in the top of a particular tree. He gains the reputation of being very wise so that the governor of the province undertakes a two-day journey to ask him what Buddha's most important teaching is. Birdsnest tells the governor that Buddha's most important teaching is "Always do good. Never do bad." The governor gets very angry at the simplicity of this advice, shouting that he knew this when he was only 3 years old. The monk replies, "Yes, even a 3 year old finds this very simple to understand, but the 80 year old man finds it very hard to do."

This week we watched the movie Seven Years in Tibet and talked about the history, politics and religion found in the movie. It became one more dot in our connect-the-dots learning about Nazi Germany, as the war serves as backdrop to the movie. We talked about Communism and Colonialism, Principles and Ethics, Geography and Technology. A very rich evening spent together. Earlier in the day, we'd watched a History Channel special on Ancient Egypt, another one of Emily's ongoing passions. It was cool because the beginning of the special talked all about Imhotep, architect of the step-pyramid and villian of the Warner Bros. cartoon, The Mummy: Quest for the Lost Scrolls. Which, in turn, connects to the new Yu-Gi-Oh movie we rented last week that is all about Egyptian God cards and Anubis.

Connections, connections, connections!

We went to the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore this weekend as part of our celebration of Julia's birthday. What an amazing place! This was, believe it or not, the first time we'd been there, and it was wonderful! The kids had so much fun, and dh might even have had more! The Rube Goldberg machine was great and right up Sam's alley--that's one of his favorite things. He must've sat there and watched it for a good 15 minutes solid.

The kids had a blast exploring the dinosaur room where they went on a dino dig, reconstructed a dinosaur skeleton, created a virtual timeline and measured different dino footprints. We compared carnivore and herbivore teeth and examined some fossils for evidence of dino feathers!

Here's Julia working out her upper body strength with a little help from a pulley system. Julia, especially, had a great time in the physics room, considering her recent scientific discovery at home. She had been trying to run across the room at home while balancing a bean bag on her head, which she got pretty good at. She continued to become frustrated, however, because once she stopped at the other side after successfully balancing the bean bag the entire way, it would suddenly and inexplicably fly off her head. Objects in motion, tend to stay in motion! So, exploring the momentum exhibit held special relevance to her.

After the museum, we went over to Pizzeria UNO to celebrate Julia's birthday, and oh! how she was shining when the wait staff came out to sing especially to her! My sweet, sweet six year old!