~stradeling the fence~

My mind has been on one thing for so long......renovation. Its been going on for 3 1/2 years now but its really been in the last year that we have done NOTHING else. Being immersed in a project this large has really engulfed both Dad-e-o and I. I am however, glad to announce that we are beginning to think of other things!!! You know what this means??? We really ARE almost done. Things left on our to-do list: fill pinner holes in woodwork, tung oil plugs in woodwork, finish painting the deck (which is 75% done), finish putting on trim in and out, wash windows, install shelving/rods in closets, seal grout in entry, put screens on windows/doors, cover bathroom vent w/wood beam, get eavstrough's installed on deck extension. Other then that its clean up and yard maintenance....thats it!!! Holy Kershomly!!

We've been talking a lot about what we are doing with our future. Weighing heavily in on the subject of moving. We really need to make sure that what ever decision we make is THOROUGHLY thought through...every pro and con weighed, every detail addressed. In so many ways where we live provides us with everything we need. Close friends and family. A community that I have really made an effort to be actively involved in. Work for Dad-e-o as well as a need for my skills as doula and childbirth educator. ( I can hear you thinking, Why would you ever move??) But....the big question is~ Do we want to stay here forever??

When we sell our house we will be buying land. We will build our dream house~ a passive solar timber frame straw bale, as well as Dad-e-o's shop in which he can work from home. I will plant huge gardens, have chickens and a year round green house...maybe even goats if I can get my kids to drink the milk. We do not plan to ever move again. I want to have a nursery in my house in which my children and there children will play. I want to put down serious roots...see my perennials flower year after year. I want my children to be able to frolic in the forest as children and re-visit those forts and pathways as teenagers. This will be our forever home.

And this, dear friends, is why it is sooooo important to us that we make the right choice for our family. We will not be moving later on down the road if we find that Nelson wasn't quite what we'd hoped it would be or if we find that there just isn't enough to offer our children in this tiny little town.

But there has been a shift in my heart....I no longer feel fearful of making the wrong choice. When I look to the future it is with a light heart and an open mind. Being here, in a place where I can think about more then just renovations, I find my heart looking towards various other aspect of our future. I suppose its kind of been like pregnancy. When your pregnant you think about your tiny baby. You obsess over the eminent birth and the rather short post partum period. You might skim over childhood/adulthood lightly but real the focus is the immediate future. Once you give birth however, the child, the amazing, ever evolving, completely unique child becomes the focus. And as time progresses you look back and laugh at how, during pregnancy birth seemed like the culmination of your existence, but now it was just a blip (be it a life changing/soul altering/earth shifting blip) in the vast landscape of parenthood.

So this house is our baby...born beautiful and awe inspiring. And now as we sit here and our focus shifts to everything the will be wrought through the painful birthing process that has been these renovations. (by the way, as time passes you'll come to see that nearly everything relates back to birth in my mind)

well....the purpose of this post was suppose to be the things we have actually had time to think about lately. I guess I will have to wait until later as my time for blogging has drawn to a close this morning. I will however leave you with this.

My heart is full of babies!

more on this when next we speak....or write/read.

~the choices we make~

There are points in our lives when the choices that lie ahead seem to hold in their grasp the weight of the entire future. In all reality every choice we make, no matter how small, has the potential to cause the pendulum of our lives to shift to an entirely new rhythm. Why, then, do these large choices seem to lay so much more heavily on our hearts?


Here we sit....at the precipice of change. Why does it feel like that? Like the "wrong" choice could cause some kind of horrible chain reaction that would leave us shattered in some unthinkable way, falling into the abyss of the unknown.


I know that I am an adaptable women. That I have the ability to create my own reality, and thus find a way to fulfill my needs and the needs of my children regardless of our surroundings or circumstances. Somehow I must find a way to remind myself of this in the moments when I fear making the wrong choice. It may seem as though so much lays in the balance, but I think in truth the one thing I fear is loss.


I fear the loss of something that I spent years working towards. I fear the loss of friendship, companionship. I fear being alone and unsupported, being somehow unable to handle my life and having no one to turn to for guidance.

When I really sit back and think about it I KNOW that the connections that I have made that run deep will continue regardless of time or miles. I know that across time and space I have surrounded myself with a intricate tapestry of loving support. People to whom I have given my heart and who, in return have shared theirs with me.


I feel so thankful for this and I know that once I truly come to the place where I can embrace the idea that these things will not just fall away if my path leads me else where, I will be able to find contentment with this choice and see it not as a precipice but rather a wide open space full of beautiful potential and opportunity for growth.

Now if only I had a pool of clarity that I could gaze into when I have my moments of insecure doubt.

~the freedom of home learning~

This morning it is chilly. I woke up snuggled under my duvet, wrapped in 2 small children who giggled with glee at the coziness of it all. There is something so special about cuddling up under loads of blankets in a room that is so chilly you can almost see your breath. (I know, its august, but at this high elevation Autumn seems to come early). These low temperatures and dismal skies bring me a feeling of comfort. Its time to make pots of hearty soup, ( herb and Chicken tonight!) warm muffins, loaves of nutty spelt bread. I am so excited to actually have time to do these things again! This summer has been such a whirl of activity that I was actually compelled to order pizza a few times...and for me, Ms. make-it-from-scratch, that is really saying something!



I also love the preparation for the coming school year that seems to dominate my head space these days. This year both Alden and Willow will be joining us in more official "morning lessons". Because we are "unschoolers," (as in we used no set curriculum, but rather do what interests the kids, shifting as their needs/interests shift) I find that the best way for me to facilitate our children's learning is to designate the morning as mama and kids time. Basically this means that during the morning I am all theirs...no chores, laundry, yard work, phone calls, visitors....nothing to distract me from my guys. I used to just leave it open but I found that it was so easy for me to get lost amongst my to-do list and chores, and them amongst the play loft and yard that we would get to the end of the week and find we hadn't accomplished half of what we had wanted to. And so morning lesson was born. We leave our afternoons open for hikes, lessons (skating, riding, music), visits to the library, play dates, etc. It works really well for us. I think we all have a hunger at this time of year for the calming rhythm that this season brings.



This year will be a bit different in that there is a good possibility we will be spending a big chunk of the fall travelling. As soon as our house sells we are loading up a travel trailer and heading across Canada. This is so exciting! Last year we spent the autumn studying Canadian history/geography/politics and this year we get to actually LIVE what we learned! How cool is that??!! We are planning to take our time and visit all the historical/scientific/natural land marks along the way. I soooooo love the freedom that home learning allows us. Lets take it to the road, into the tangible.....living our learning in a way that neither the children or Adam and I will ever forget!

~all you need is love~

just a quick note to say....

I love my fam so darned much. I just saw pic's of my sister's new homeschooling room. (who is also mama to a whole heap of kids) my sweet nephews and niece all taking part in the action...baby D delicious and playing with flour.
I'm going to bed feeling so happy and smitten...with silly Beatles songs about how "all you need is love" running through my mind. mmmmmm...so true!

love is all you need......

~Sighs of Contentment~

We have been working hard.....really hard.....I am tempted to write fricken, fricken hard, simply to express the level of craziness to our hard workin'. Dad-e-o and I have been, as many of you know, working on our house in preparation to sell. This complete remodel has included taking down walls, rebuilding spaces, building the cabinets for the bathrooms and kitchen, building and installing all the doors and windows, laying hardwood floor and tile, painting....oh...and that lovely and utterly disgusting task of drywalling, plumbing and electrical work, lighting, creating a new bathroom, building stairs for the deck as well as a roof extension and railings...which in turn required painting, landscaping.... I must be forgetting something but you get the idea. We have done this all ourselves and 90% of it since March. Needless to say we are getting a wee touch exhausted.

But...we are nearly done!!! The excitement that is building is electric. Soon, so soon, we will have sold this house. We will be on the road, traveling with our beautiful children across Canada for around 2 months. When I look around this house I find it almost hard to believe that WE did this. Designed and created such a exquisitely beautiful space. There is no doubt in my mind that this house will sell as soon as it hits the market. And when it does....AWAY WE Go!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway...the whole purpose of this post was to write about my blissfully relaxing day yesterday. We took a break! (I can hear all you jaws hitting the floor) yes, we, as in dad-e-o AND I along side our children. After spending the morning hard at work painting the deck (me) and working in the shop (Adam) we put down our tools, rinsed of the sweat and headed off to the Garlic festival. Our intention was only to stay for the duration of my performance (did I mention I'm a belly dancer?) and then head back home and back into the grubbies. The performance was awesome! Astrid, Celine and I shimmied our hearts out in the blazing sun....wow, was it HOT!! Afterwards as we were driving home Dad-e-o declares that we need to go to the beach. Its far to hot to work outside anyway, he says. Alright...I'm in.....whoops of glee and delight from the back seats tell me that the troops are thrilled with the idea so home we go to put on bathing suits and grab towels and snacks.

We decide to check out Green Lake, which turns out to be a fabulous choice and only about 45 min from home. The beach is sandy, the water clear, and, you guessed it, green! We spend an afternoon blissed out in the sun, refreshed by the water and the simple pleasure that being together brings. Man, I do sooo love my family! We hadn't been there 5 minutes and Mr. Bop had a jar filled with fresh water shrimp and some kind of crazy water beetle....my budding biologist.

As the slant of the sun shifts everything to orange we head home. Everyones need for water and lovin's fulfilled. I can hear sighs of contentment as we drive, sand between our toes, hair and tangle of wind and sun. And I wonder if we would be so thankful, so truly grateful for this gift of an afternoon, had we not been working so hard for so many weeks.

Next we just need to remeber the camera!!......although I'm sure the image in my mind will stay with me as long as my heart beats!

~A tune of their own~

And so begins this account of a wild and crazy life. A life filled with the squeals and screams of small children, the barking of a dog who takes her job of guarding the children very seriously, the sound of construction as we remodel this house and prepare to sell, and, always, melody.

I am filled with melody, filled beyond full to overflowing, unable to hold it in. I sing all the time, tunes from childhood, old gospel, crazy jazz, opera, funk, R&B, folk, blues, roots. I make up words when I can't remember how its "supposed to be sung". I improve and scat, and hummmmmm. This is a gene I seem to have passed on to my lil' guys. I hear their voices. Sometimes distant and sweet, lilting on a breeze. Sometime bold and loud, obnoxious, infectious. Its amazing how there voices can, at times, drive me beyond insane. When a lyric becomes so incessant ("I like big butts and I can not lie" for instance.....thanks Shrek!!) that I it replays even in my dreams. Or, better yet, when I am at the grocery store, by myself, and I'm not only swaying (yes, the baby is at home and still I sway) but I find myself humming that o-so-catchy tune. ((sigh)) ah well, at least I have infused them with a love for music. I am sure as they grow they will continue to broaden my musical horizons.

I wonder I'll be humming in the grocery store 10 years from now??