2010 my first post this year...

Not writing much these days...huh...in fact not since October 2009! We're having a blast with our unschooling journey...
Rox had a friend over to play today and they buried a poor little possum that we found near our tyre swing and mini vege patch yesterday. We don't know what happened to it, how it died...
They dug the grave themselves. Then played with Cleo the dog. Rox is doing piano with 2 of her friends with me as 'teacher' although it's much too fun. Rox's improvisation today - amazing - I enjoyed listening to so much.
WE're pretty busy too. ROx has horse stuff, Pottery home-ed class, creative dance and dance theatre, there's home-ed group...The Eltham group is HUGE, very active (meets every week) and has kids of varied ages from babies to teens. It's fantastic!
We're heading up to the snow mid August with friends and there's a few home-ed camps that we're going to. It's all very exciting. Am soooo glad we don't do school. Rox and April are very close. They play and work on relating to each other positively every day...i don't know how kids would get the time to develop those relationship skills when most of the day is spent at school...
Both girls have free acceses to TV and Computer whenever they want...and guess what? They don't watch ALL day not even most of the day and sometimes not at all...of their own free will. They go to bed when they're tired. Rox knows when shes tired and chooses to go to bed when she is...and it's not at midnight...usually she's tired by 8, 8:30 or 9pm and gets herself off to bed. In fact she says "i'm going to bed I'm tired..." Without us saying Come on now it's time for bed, get into bed right now blah blah!!!

April has joined a 'Fairy Ballet' class that she loves but I can't stand the parents!!! They coach their poor little kids from the sidelines with rewards and punishments, yelling and insisting their children sit down, do this, do that, blah, blah, blah...! The kids are sweet, very little (2-3yrs) and smart too but their parents are obnoxious and bossy cows. They just sit near the front of the class and yell instructions to these kids. Yelling from afar rudely disrupting the flow and mood of the class much more than their child running around on their toes. I do the class with April, she wants me involved still and although I feel a little self conscious as I dance with her, I enjoy it and we have fun together and she's happy and enjoys doing the magical little dancey things Miss Lollipop the teacher suggests. The other kids run over with joy to their parents (cause their parents are sitting far away uninvolved) to show them their special ribbon or flowers and their stupid parents yell at them to go back and sit down!! Insane. Rude. Why can't they smile and shut up instead....GROWL!
Anyway, I'm being judgemental cause this is my venting blog. I love this blog for venting. I try and see the best in people and situations but after a while it's hard to not feel embarrassed for these parents and I find it hard to look at them in the eye. Not sure what my move is with regards to this situation. These parents act like authoritarian twits so might just have a word to the 'principal' of the dance class, express my concern at the disruptive yelling that's going on and see if she can exert the sort of bossiness/control that these people understand. Really I feel so sorry for the kids....

Blah blah...We are sooo lucky that the parents we know and hang out with are respectful and thoughtful.I mean none of us are perfect but at least we're aware most of the time. It's a bit of a shock seeing mainstream parenting in action. Tragic.

long time no write

Wow it's been ages. I kinda got tired of writing bits and actually literally tired too! Staying up late almost every night was gettign the better of me. There have been some very interesting things going on for us though. Emotional stuff. Sorting out stuff.
I also wanted to put photos of the family guinea pigs here. Actually there are quite a few photos I'd like to put here...

It's getting to that busy time of year. I have gigs every weekend so it's quite active. On the other hand we've had a few lovely weekends!

Darren rigged up a tyre swing for Roxie today. Her lastest passion aside from animals and veterinary activity is Go Diego Go! She loves the show and concepts, got the Diego showbag at the Melbourne Show which included a Diego backpack, safari vest, cap, lunchbag, kaleidoscope etc...! Rox loves wearing the vest and wants to swing on vines and ziplines like Diego rescuing wildlife and cute animals!
After she talked with me yesterday about loving swinging on her monkey bars and wanting to do more of it - higher, longer, different; we decided that the old rope swing needed revamping and got some old tyres and rigged up a high, long rope with the tyre at the end of it. It's very cool!
Darren is so clever that he can just rig things up like that....For Christmas we're planning to rig up a zipline in the front yard, that goes from the platform in the tree next to the sand pit to the tyre swing - which would be great fun for her. (Rox asked for a flying fox for Christmas last year, as well as a trampoline. We got the tramp...so this year we'll do the flying fox I hope!!!)
We had such gorgeous weather today. Warm and sunny. The garden feels very inviting at the moment...

Anway, it's late. I am keen to write about some other bits - the more intense, recent issues. But will do it later on after I've got the photos off the camera and onto the hard disk. Guess what? It's nearly 2:30am... I worked tonight too and have 2 gigs tomorrow... better get some rest!