Winter Fun....

This week we had a small winter time adventure visiting friends. Since the snow had come down in mass quantity, I decided was too lazy to dig out the car, so we would walk to the train and take it to downtown Evanston to visit....

Along the way they were able to play in the snow and it was quite an adventure! Kaidin's plan was that we were all Otzi (s) the Iceman and we were hunting and trying not to freeze. I told him that I was not to pervy to mumification by freezing but I would be the scientist that found him. He said that was not fair ; ) and that we all had to be Otzi!

So off we went. What is a .8 mile hike to the train took us well over an hour to accomplish, but fortunately out of sheere fun not misery! ; )

Along the way we had polar bears chasing us, searched for food to eat... and just tried to stay alive. Kaidin dug many burrows along the way, though none quite big enough for us to crawl into. ; ) Dahlia found us food; blueberries, pizza and "salok" (your guess is as good as mine!). After many different aversions along the way, finding good nourishment, some friendly polar bears assisted us in finding the train. We were saved! Great job staying alive guys!

Once in downtown area, we grabbed a snack and went to visit friends for the afternoon. It was a lovely day. Since the bitter cold was setting in, we taxi'd it home. These pics are from when we finally reached back home again.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Dahlia tells me today that she would like to be the person that helps the people ride Silver (the pony she fell in love with this Fall.... aka, horse trainer!

Kaidin says that he is going to open a store called "Everything Bionicle". This store will have every single Bionicle known to many, thousands of different parts, masks, comic books, chapter books, movies and games all about Bionicles.

I teased, "I'll be your spokes person, I could do your commercials!" And I spit out a few lines about "coming on out to Everything Bionicle where we service all of your Bionicle needs!".... to which he says, "mommy you'll be way too old to do that commercial for me by that time"!!!

Musings....

So during the morning today, or maybe it was early afternoon as we were sitting munchin' on something together at the table. Kaidin and Dahlia were telling jokes to each other.... At first everyone was in stitches and truly enjoying.... minutes later Kaidin tries to get a bit serious and says, "I'm going to teach you that Dahlia". And she looks at him totally confused. He says, "I'm going to teach you how not to laugh at someone's funny joke." I pipe in, "Why?" He says, "because that is what the big kids do. They try to pretend your joke is not funny to them, so I am practicing not laughing just like the big kids do."

Just hours later Dahlia, Shea and I are cruisin' back home from G'ma's after dropping Kaidin off for a special afternoon. Music is on, it's kind of quiet, and Dahlia says, "Mommy guess what?" "What is it?" I ask. She says, "I can sing with my eyes closed! Whatch me." Of course, driving (ugh the things we should not do while driving!!!), I glance back and she has her eyes closed and she's singing. I revert my view to the rearview mirror and every other second she just slightly opens one eye a slit to look to 'see' if she is singing correctly. The most hilarious thing I could ever imagine!

Precious moments.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

Here is this year's ornament that went out earlier this week! Wishing everyone a happy holidays and hope everyone received in one piece!

We've had nice couple of days. The kids convinced me to celebrate xmas all month long so they opened a xmas present yesterday. I thought I was picking out a good one to give.... but ended up being a nightmare (for me, not them!). It was this huge blow up jumping thing. Like an inflatable trampoline with walls. The inflation was what just about killed me in the process. We were going between a battery operated inflater that did not have the right spout to adjust to the nozzle, so it would be blowing a LOT of air, and only inflate 1/100000 of the darn thing. And then while we were out yesterday I decided to get a foot pump that had all of these adjustabl nozzles. Thought I was being smart and clever about this purchase only to figure out that the *%#*! nozzle did not *hold* on so I was not physically inept to hold the nozzle AND push the foot pedal with a foot. Instead, I had to hold the nozzle and pump with my ARMS. AAAUUUGGGHHH....

Ok... SO over my whinning about it they did absolutely LOVE it. They bounced around in it all evening/nite and again today. Even Shea totally loves to climb in a get thrown around like a tumbleweed. So it was well worth the agony on my end! ; )

AND....

We've lost another tooth!

I don't have a head shot yet b/c this happened just after we had returned from seeing the Nutcracker on Ice this evening. Great performance, by the way. I had heard that Robert Crown does a great job with the ice shows, and those reviews did not fail. We really enjoyed the show. But, yea, when we got I was trying hard to get that tooth out for him. It was just dangling there and really I was wondering if it'd fall out and get swallowed while sleeping! (OK, maybe a little mama paranoia, but really... I was worried!). I was not doing such a great job, so I recruited Seringe to do it who simply said, "oh, it's just attached right here, " and took the floss-thinga-ma-jigger and pop that tiny little thing went flying about a foot in the air and landed on the backside of my hand. Pretty hilarious. Kaidin was like, "what just happened?" We all had a great chuckle out of that one.

Ah.... which reminds me. The tooth fairy is expected this evening!

Tooth count!

We have lost tooth number 4! Thanks to lil' sis' taking an arm to the face, we had a very bloody lost tooth episode this evening! She was so proud of "helping" that she wrote a note to the tooth fairy to let her know that she was responsible for Kaidin's tooth falling out. She drew a picture of lot's a little fairies, wrapped it in an envelope and put it under her pillow. Kaidin was kinda annoyed.... maybe feeling like she was stealing the thunder. But he is quite happy that danglin' little thing is finally out! He is sure that he's going to get an early xmas present b/c of it! I, frankly think that an early present would be quite fun. The anticipation of waiting till the "big" day.... it's killin' us all! And, frankly, why shouldn't the holiday be celebrated more than just ONE day in the year! There is just too much fun around the holiday to have it all bundled into a single day!

Anyhoo.... here is the newest 'mouth' pic:

And other pic's..... Shea is truly cruisin' now. He's crawling everywhere and pulling up on things to practice that upright position. He loves when Dahlia or Kaidin help him "walk". It's quite cute. Other pics are from our visit to the Field Museum this week. Even Shea had a blast crusin' around with big brother and sister!

Random Thoughts

So, as usual, I can report that life has been very full and busy at the Jarjusey home. We just wrapped up the Christmas ornament/cards that we send out each year. It was quite unusual this year having to do an ornament with 3 photos!! I found myself reflecting on the last 7 months and realizing, "wow we really do have three children"! It's funny.... not that you don't really know this as a reality.... but there are times you get very accustom to him hanging on, worn and just taggin' along that he's just a part of me, the action and family life. But then the other afternoon, he's sitting on the floor playing with random things (it's funny that at this age 'baby toys' are not the item of interest! They need things like the 'big kids' have!).... So he's sitting there, about 2-3 feet close and I am SEEING him. Dahlia was attempting to trade one item for another and he was not having anything to do with this trading business. His personality is showing, growing and just filling the home with fun. He's going to be a real spitfire that lil' one. He's got quite a spark and you can see those wheel churnin' as he intently watches Dahlia jump from the highest point off the couch!

So the ornaments went off in the mail today, so can't quite post the pic of the design this year, but I think they were fun and sparkly. I hope everyone enjoys. My intent project got Dahlia engaged in making her xmas presents as well. However, today was a bit of a catastrophe. I was sure I would assist her with the hot glue gun.... but that did not really stop the contact of the glue to skin on her thumb, and we had howlin' and whalin' I have never ever heard from this child! Yipers! I am shocked that the mirrors did not shatter or an EMT end up on our doorstep! She's doing quite fine after the fact, but that incident definitely nipped her interest in working on presents today. She's postponed till the shock from hot glue wears off.... (probably some time tomorrow! ; )

Kaidin is a bit under the weather. We had a great weekend with him and his ever-growing projects. He has started his own blog which is quite cute. He is learning the logistics of it, and has ideas each day of what he wants to add on it. We currently have a new bionicle that needs to make the protocol list online, but this was deterred today b/c he's not feeling so hot. He's got a chest-thing, sore throat-thing. Hope he's on the mend tomorrow... I can quite honestly say that he's not the easiest sick person. Each time I hear even a little sniffle from him I wince. ; ) He's the type that feels that if he downs some motrin and drinks a cup of water he should be "POOF" ~ all better. UH.... I really can't explain more with out being mean so I'm going to forgo the explanations and descriptions. Bless his heart. I feel horrible when he's sick and I wish him healthy vibes QUICKLY! ; )

The hermits have become an ever-growing disappointment in our home. We seem to have initiated a daily 'dead check' in which we dig them all out of their little burrow and put them on or near the food and water dishes. Then we wait..... "Who will get up and walk back to the burrow?" We constantly ask each other each day. We wait and wait and no one moves. So we decide that if we move away, they may be brave enough to run for the hole! Sure enough, I'll be cooking (or some desperate act of "house cleaning") and someone will run shouting, "Spiderman is NOT dead yet!" Whoahoo! We all are thrilled that at least one is alive.... then low and behold, we have one more! And yet another....

But that's where it stops. We are sad to announce the passing of Patrick today. It was a very slow and traumatizing death. He progressively was falling out of his shell and attempted to pull himself back in time and time again. It looked as though he lost a couple limbs as well. UGH, so sad and depressing. Dahlia finally announced that we had to put him out of his misery. We 'buried' him (in the trash can). So we are down to only three. I really have no idea what is going on, however I can only suspect it has something to do with this youtube video that shows how these poor creatures are yanked, pulled out of and put (not gently) back into different "prettier" shells to probably sell better. It's a very sad thing to think about, and had I known this before hand, we would have not purchased them in the first place.....

So xmas stuff is nearly all gathered and collected from all corners of the earth. I am very very proud of myself b/c I have found lots of kiddos favorites for super duper cheap. Great deals on craigslist and ebay, and even found some really fun stuff on freecycle. I have more than doubled my savings this year and grown ups in the family gatherings have all agreed not to purchase for each other. What a miracle.... I've been asking for this kinda deal ever since our day of children dawned us. It's relieving to have so much complete this early on. I know each year before I had said I'd wanted to be this prepared but it would be 3am the night before and I would still be trying to figure out how to get every last thing wrapped, and dinner for several cooked!

I was reading through several other random blogs the last few nights. As I have started Nakita Baby, I have been looking for inspiration and thriving on creativity of others in attempt to drive more traffic to my site. I'd love for things to take off, but it's been feeling quite daunting as of late trying to poor creative juices into this project each and every night committing to some portion of 'business development' when I'm just plain POOPED....

I have been exploring not only how to generate new avenues for myself, but also as a way to gain some advertising on both my business side of life, but also the 'job' side of life. Work has been pushing lots of self-generated advertising and inquiry lists that scoping out the WWW has become a life-consuming project! If I'm not on developing business, I'm on looking for was to advertise CCAP.... and somewhere in there, I need time to just play online as well!

No, but it's been fun, exciting and really I've come across some amazing blogs out there! It' quite incredible to see how much is out there and how interesting it is to read about people going through similar life-stuffs....

I just need to find a little balance. I'm finding it hard to figure out how to fit sleep into the picture! ; ) Afterall there is way too much to enjoy out there, how can one sleep? Waking at 6-7am after just a couple of hours a sleep, assuring myself that I'll get a nap in that afternoon with the baby. Yea sure.... in between each added project to the list of projects, added on to the other list of projects! How DO homeschoolers get it all in? I am so curious about this?

And speaking of homeschoolers, I read this incredible blog entry of a friend about finding a Tribe. It was quite beautiful and I never did write to her or tell her how it affected me.... really got me thinking about life, friends, family.... the people we have in our lives and reflecting on how vitally important a Tribe truly is. It was a lovely entry Nancy and I thank you for taking the time on that one! I will certainly chat with you about that at some point in time!

I am finding myself a bit lost in the unschooling-homeschooling life. I had one revelation that certainly helped me unwind and feel SO much better about life, our family, our current 'stage' and everything. I ran into another fantastic mama at a homeschool gym who filled me in on a little secret about 7(-ish) year olds. OH, this was a conversation that was SO needed that particular day at THAT particular time. I have no idea how she knew I needed to even discuss this, b/c the topic came up pretty fatefully. But yes, this conversation helped me 10-fold in my current 'status' as a home-mama, but I feel like even having that enlightenment has not assisted me with my feeling a bit lost with out a tribe. Or maybe I have not identified people as such.... just yet....

I have noticed just how unschooly we really are lately. I suppose I never was (maybe never will be) brave enough to use 'radical' unschooling to describe our home and our family, but it is something I aspire too, most definitely. I feel like I have too many hang ups from my upbringing that I still desperately try on a daily basis to deschool myself of and move on to greener pastures. I suppose one day you come to a resolution with in yourself that you have done better or aspire to do better and pride yourself in how great your family's relationships are because of it. Afterall, you do totally love to spend each waking moment together and pride yourself on the relationships ever-growing, right?

OK, so really, the unschooling topic came to mind due to the Tribe-topic previously mentioned, and I have realized just how radical unschooly we tend to be in many senses of the description, and how what I thought was balanced in relationships we have, just really may not be. I don't know if I'm getting that out clearly. But I suppose the deep sole-searching question in finding a Tribe that helps you feel connected to a community is, "How (very) much do you need to have in common with your Tribe for them to be just that (your Tribe)?"

I suppose I could delve deeper into explanation of myself by giving one single example in our lives.... saying, Kaidin is a reader, but he's certainly not fluent. He, in fact, would term himself as a non-reader b/c he needs to be perfect in something before he will claim otherwise. So the fact that he has to sound things out and can not just fluently pick up a book and read a full page of text as quickly as mommy can, deems himself a non-reader. But for 6 years, I think he's fantastic. So.... of course we spend a great deal of time with other homeschoolers, all of whom are of various philosophies, and definitely not all unschoolers, and I worry and question as to whether this affects him. To hear his friends read something out loud in a group of people? I suppose he'd say something to me if it did bother him? I often wonder if I should ever bring it up in a manner that delves into his feelings on the topic, but he tells me when other things bother him, so I'm really not all that concerned.

Ok, so if neither of us are concerned about it, then what's my problem, right? Well.... simply, I wonder if it affects friendships or relationships b/c I don't 'force' him to read, or force him into much of anything other like reading, writing or math (many aspects of our lives for that matter). Does following this type of lifestyle in our family affect the relationships we have outside of our family? Would we feel more connected to an outer community if people we spent time with followed much of the same?

Oh... the "what if's" in life.... you could go on and on. You could worry yourself into oblivion with those. So really having blurted this all out, I've come full circle to remind myself that 'yes' all of our family and friendships are so very special to us.... and what's even more special is that we (our immediate little clan) feel that we are doing just great as we are. I suppose outside relationships could or would grow deeper with these very core and heartfelt ideas about life, but then again.... our's are ever-growing and changing... every day! What is now, may not be a few months from now.... or even years..... oh I could go on and on at this point.

It's most important that everyone here is at peace with who they are and what they love, their passions they follow and their creativity they indulge in endlessly. There are no limits to stopping your passions to sit in front of a book to "learn how to read".... or to add numbers together. It's all a part of life, a life which we are very very at peace with. It's lovely to have that feeling because many people struggle constantly, and it's not an easy thing to shake. I still work on it from time to time. But man the strides I have taken in the last 5 years.... It's all a blessing. Who would have thought.... but yet here we are!

It's done!

The first ever family trivia adventure game is ready! It's been in the works for several weeks now. The kids and I have had this on-going project for quite some time, but it is finally complete and ready for our first test run! Grandpa has the priviledge of coming over tomorrow to give it the unveiling with us! We are all so excited about this project and only look to grow and develop it further. It's such a fantastic family fun kinda thing to do! It's occupied MANY hours in our home! ; )

Updates to come soon!