Rollie - Pollie

Tansy and Tristan put on a little skit the other night. They played a rollie-pollie old couple who did a whole lot of toppling over after staged collisions. In fact, that's the script in a nutshell. Yup - Oscar quality performances at our house.

My Nemesis

I married a gamer. He spawned more gamers. I am the only one in my family unaffected by this mutation but I've learned to adjust to their strange obsessions. Our solution - Saturdays are for gaming. Simple. They can play all Saturday after the chores are done of course, if they want (and they most emphatically want).

Tree School

One sunshiny afternoon last summer, Liam decided that he wanted to go to 'Tree School'. Soooo- using ropes, pillows and blankets, I made these cocoon-like seats in our willow trees. I made one for each child. They took their books and sketchbooks to Tree school and spent all day learning in their little nests.

Tansy spent the afternoon reading about Greek mythology. In her sketchbook she illustrated each story in pencil. Tristan thought it would be appropriate to take a book about monkeys to his tree school. She spent the afternoon looking at monkey pictures and pretending to be one.

Exploration

In October of 2006 we took the children to a near by fishing hole to explore the waters edge. We spent that afternoon trying to catch minnows in a bucket (failing miserably) and seeing how big a splash we could make (much more successful).

This was a lesson in exploration. I wanted the children to just explore and understand that they didn't need an outline to learn something. The motto for the day was, "Look. Look. Look. To Look is to know." unknown

It was a lesson for me as well - a lesson in letting go. It was hard to keep myself quiet when I thought they might get soaking wet. I needed to learn to trust in the value of a child's curiosity by sitting back and letting them explore.

Little Rascals

This picture of our 'Alfalfa' was taken a few years ago. No, it wasn't Halloween. After a weekend binge of Little Rascal movies, Tristan decided that he needed to pay tribute to the late Carl Switzer. He spent the whole day in character.

Glimpses -A Typical Day With our Boys

Boys are gassy.

My boys have perfected this fact into an art and a perpetual performance in our home.

Here is a little script of just one of those performances.

Liam is ... flatulent.

Tristan: Ewwwww! Your fart smells like cookies!

Dad: What's wrong with that? Cookies smell great.

Tristan: Not those kind of cookies - poo cookies!