a
small
collection
of moments
from our week.
^^^ unschooling is back. bone gazing at the audubon center. ^^^
^^^ a long overdue beauty sesh with my main girl ^^^
^^^ back in pottery class ^^^
^^^ got a bag of doritos; by far the most important thing that happened all week.^^^
hope you enjoy a great weekend.
i don’t know if the person coming out of me later this summer is going to be a boy or a girl. but what i do know is that i want him/her to have matching hotpants buns with darla.
if only they had them in my size too…
from mag+pie
this past weekend was kinda like we just lived this weekend over again. we traversed back to mike’s home town for this annual event, the last county fair in ohio for the year.
so let’s talk about the fish darla got at the fair. no, first let’s talk about the fair. ummmm it was fun and darla got a fish.
there, now we can talk about the fish.
you can see in that pic how happy she is to have her first pet. she’s really, really happy. i trusted darla to hold the fish on the way home. we made it to about 35 min in, less than 10 min from home, when i heard a pop from the back. i used jedi-like reflexes to scoop up the burst bag with just enough water left for the fish to {maybe?} survive. we sped along after that with darla yelling in the back and mike undesiring of pulling over to refill the water. this means i spent the last 10 min of our fun-filled day in complete anxiety that this fish was going to die in front of my eyes. this is a foreshadowing of how this animal is going to exist in our house, me thinks.
we made it. and gilbert winston falbert now lives in a big vase until i can find time to make the rounds to the thrift stores in hopes of finding an affordable tank. and i’m not entirely sure he’s eating correctly. and i can feel myself stressing about this fish already. i know i need to let it all go.
so i’m asking of you and the universe to help me to remember this is a learning experience. and that my girl is really happy to have her first pet and that’s what matters. she’s invested in this experience and has enjoyed taking care of him. she’s learning how to care for a goldfish thus far through youtube. we have plans on checking out some literature during our weekly library trip. so this is a big opportunity for growth.
aaaaand, thankfully she’s really into dead things so when this fish dies in a week it’s not going to be a big deal.
welcome to a week of unbelievably amazing ohio fall weather.
this is another one of those “look at all the cool things we do outside” posts because 1} i try very hard for you to like me and 2} we’re doing lots of awesome things outside. this is pretty much the one time of the year that living in the midwest is a benefit {sorry fellow midwesterners, you know it’s true}.
i’ve read that if you want to educate a child start with food because food is everything. we naturally fell into that a long time ago, as most families do. food IS everything. it’s certainly one of the first things a child comprehends completely. it’s pretty fantastic to see one subject weave itself so inextricably through one little person’s understanding of the world. darla is always motivated to help and learn when it comes to food. she really, REALLY loves to watch cooking and food prep videos on youtube. it’s easy for me to include her in food prep by saying “hey, we got a pineapple this week. let’s look up and watch a video on how to slice a pineapple.” and then she’ll be sitting there monitoring me to see if i do it correctly and giving me pointers. i’d say she’s involved with making the majority of the meals that take place in our house and i can only hope this will carry on into some independence and desire for deeper learning as she grows.
so, in short: if you’re looking to unschool or do some learning enrichment in the home have the kiddos be involved with your food. everything from procuring it, growing it, cleaning it, preparing it and disposing of it is a learning opportunity.
you can see we tackled a pumpkin and some apple picking this week. we roasted the seeds and turned that pumpkin into some bad ass pumpkin chili. the apple picking served as a learning experience for both of us. I had never been to a pesticide-free orchard before. it’s easy to say i don’t want my food to have pesticides applied to them but it’s a bit of a shock to realize that i’ve probably not had that much exposure to pesticide free food. this is a literal put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is situation. well, i’m happy we took on this experience. it took us quite some time to search through the trees to find apples that the pests hadn’t completely ruined. within 2 minutes of apple hunting i had decided that pesticide free food means i have to come to terms with having food stuffs that other organisms have already enjoyed a little. i’m surprisingly ok with that. it feels more like how it’s supposed to be. we’re not entitled to all the food, but we are entitled to share. when i talked to another mom there with her girls about the experience she agreed and said “that’s how you know it’s good. why would we want to put something into our bodies that nothing else wants to touch?”
on the personal side of things, mike and i passed the three years of marriage milestone. woo hoo! i’m going to be honest, it’s been a do-whatever-we-can-to-get-by-day-to-day kinda year for us. but sitting there on our anniversary i thought “yeah, i’d struggle through another year to be with this man.” of course i would rather it be a year filled with success and winning the lottery, buying a road home and gettin’ the hell outta dodge kinda year but if it’s another year of eeking by then i’ll gladly do it. that’s my best and real description of love and dedication in marriage at this point. i wish i had something really romantic and inspiring to write for you, but i just have this dose of reality instead, which is, in its own way, kinda romantic.
so that second pic from the bottom is a game we invented this morning called hellen keller where we blindfold darla, spin her around and then challenge her to find different items while blind. it was really quite fun and i’m thinking this is going to be a great activity to have in my back pocket for the homebound winter months.
i hope you enjoyed the look at our week. i’m going to experiment with this week being a week + weekending edition. there is a lot going on with these beautiful fall days. thanks for checking in with us.
the air felt smooth and warm. the smell of frankincense was heavy in the air. the house rang with the clear notes of the bell. i walked in a line with 4 women and 3 children exploring each corner in the house. my intention was clear in my mind. i asked, as we moved from room to room, that every good memory be sealed up in the hearts of all that had been there. i asked that any bad energy flow from the house and dissipate. i asked for peace and serenity within those walls for all that would come after.
this was my first experience with cleansing a house. please don’t confuse this with cleaning a house and get grossed out by that last sentence. this was a cleansing. it was entirely different.
the energy cleansing of our dear friends’ house was an amazing experience. i kept looking at our little ones, as they had their energy cleansed, and sent up little prayers to please let them remember this experience always. they were so tuned in and curious during parts of the ceremony and i hope it will make a lasting memory for each of them. so many memories are within those walls. many of them already forgotten by the kiddos.
i felt so fortunate and honored to be a part of such an occasion.
it is weird to have such an emotional connection to a house that was not even your own.
but then again, if you’re doing it right your home will feel like home to everyone who enters and these people definitely do it right.
i watched kiddos grow from babies to toddlers to kindergarteners in that house. there’s a magic there for me that cannot be described. and now our friends have moved on, really, officially. while they still owned the house it was easy to pretend that someday they would be back but it is permanent now. they have moved on and i am still here, stagnant.
when the ceremony began the house felt different. the consistency of the air felt patchy, fluctuating from cold to hot. meg summed it up post-cleansing: “my house felt chunky.” it was crazy to feel the transformation that took place with the energy inside the house. you may not believe, and that’s alright. you don’t have to.
i’m so thankful for the experience, the friendship, the memories, the ways people and life continue to expand my consciousness of the world around me. it’s sealed up in my heart now in a way that it wasn’t before.
thank you, friends.
was last weekend badass, or what? we had beautiful, beautiful temps and weather here in ohio. i feel like we hit up every festival in town. there were a ton. we attended columbus arts festival for the first time, munched at el camino before the grand opening of my new part-time gig at columbus furniture revival {which is really pretty and amazing and pretty amazing. i had some pics to share that i somehow deleted}. darla “got frondly” with people at the luau at the hills market downtown. {sadly, i cannot take credit for that pun. that is courtesy of michael wright.} we stopped by the moonlight market for some crazy good pie and then on to the SoulFood festival down at the columbus commons where i was PUMPED to see Color Me Badd. And by attending, i mean riding our bikes around the outside of the commons b/c it was so expensive. sadly, we were too late and missed CMB. it was hard to be too crushed with how beautiful the rest of the day was but i do feel my life is a little incomplete now.
hope you had a good weekend as well. june is shaping up to be just lovely, isn’t it?
momjeanz 