Meeting Jane Goodall - March 2007

Part 2 of my "Cool Stuff Happens" series. RMD did a biography book report on Jane Goodall in 3rd grade. I figured RMD would like Jane and I was right. After her report was completed she told me that one of her life goals was to meet Jane Goodall. So of course I got on the web to do a search on Jane and what do you know - Jane Goodall was speaking at a presentation at Washington State University 3 weeks after that search! We were so excited - we immediately made plans to go and see her. RMD's teacher did not mind at all that she would miss 2 days of school, and the school librarian actually gave us the library copy of a Jane Goodall book and asked if we could get it signed! We drove 5 hours to Pullman, WA and lined up at the Coliseum early - there were no advance tickets and we did not want to miss Jane because all the seats were taken. Jane's talk was mainly about her then new book "Harvest for Hope". As I had read it prior to going to see Jane, her talk was particularly fascinating to me. After we saw her speak, we lined up to have the books we purchased prior to the talk signed. The line was VERY long, and it was about 10PM. We were resigned to stay, though - this was a once in a lifetime chance. We were even having fun in line - having met the mom and daughter right behind us. This little girl had also done a report on Jane Goodall and even brought it to be signed by Jane. While we were chatting with them, an usher came around, looked at RMD and grabbed her out of line. Apparently, he was looking for really little kids to get them to the front of the line so they could get to bed! Because RMD is so short he grabbed her too. Well, we grabbed our new friends and whizzed off to the very front of the 2 hour line! Jane signed our books as well as the library book for the school. She signed our friend's book report too. I was able to snap a few blurry pictures, but it was so worth it! Afterwards we went to have dessert at Denny's with our new friends and then we hit the hay at the Holiday Inn (which, by the way, was where Jane stayed as well!) What a COOL adventure! And, I now check Jane's website every once in awhile. I'd love to see her again!

Oh, and guess what? Jane Goodall was homeschooled!

Hmmm?????

What do Louisa May Alcott, Leonardo DaVinci, Robert Frost, Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Thomas Edison, Ben Franklin, The Wright Brothers, Lewis and Clark, CS Lewis, Joan of Arc, Hillary Duff and George Washington have in common?

They were all homeschooled!!!!!

For a huge list click here.

A Wild Ride

While organizing my pictures into files on the computer, I came across this one and had to post it. In June, 2008, my cousin Pete came out to visit and we headed to see the Snoqualmie Falls. Look who was waiting in the parking lot for his owners!

Time to plan another trip

As much as I try not to overbook the kids, our schedule is crazy this Fall! Here's an example of a typical week of "extra" stuff - not including schoolwork time:

Monday - APD piano 2:45-3:45 PM
Tuesday - Labyrinth Coop 9:00-2:30, APD soccer 5:00-6:30 PM
Wednesday - APD Jazz ensemble 6:00-7:20 PM
Thursday - WAS 9:00-3:00, APD soccer 5:00-6:30, RMD Girl scouts 4:00-5:30 & Choir 7:00-8:30
Friday - RMD Theater class 12:00- 3:00
Saturday - APD Music theory class 3:45-4:30
Sunday - APD soccer game

That's just the regular stuff. Added to all that are the dentist and doctor appts (not many of these, but still...), Outreach meetings or picnics, GS camp - RMD is going again this weekend, my book club meetings... It's enough to make me crazy! So, I need to start planning another trip. This time I'd like to go to the Yucatan in Mexico, for sun,beaches and more ruins! This time Mayan. I don't need strictly relaxing beach time - just time away from schedules!

Missing TV

Well, this post will come as a shock to Pat, but I am actually missing TV - just a little bit. It's kind of fun when the new season of TV shows comes on. I used to like Grey's Anatomy - although we didn't watch it last year. I bet Pat is missing Heroes. I'll actually be glad to miss Survivor - same ol', same ol'. I'm not sure what we'll do when American Idol comes back on though. Some of the shows we can probably watch online - I just got an ad from Amazon.com about their new video-on-demand service. Heroes is on there - the new season, even. And that would really be better then hooking up the cable again - it's nice not to waste time staring at the TV every night. Nice also that the only thing the kids can watch are DVD's that I choose - usually educational!

Cooking up some science

In February, 2008 Rachel was really into cooking. She loved making omelets for me (she doesn't like to eat them). One day she found an egg that just wouldn't crack. How cool is this?!! I had never seen a raw egg peeled before this day. We ended up hard boiling it.

A "Weird" Concert - September 2007

2007 was the year of concerts. In September we went and saw Weird Al. It was actually alot of fun.



(This is the cell phone that got us back stage passes at the IDOL concert! Here it is doing double-duty as a new age "lighter".)

American IDOL Concert 2007

Every once in awhile, really cool things happen to us. Here's one that I have wanted to scrapbook, but since I am 3 or more years behind, I've decided to blog it instead. After watching the American IDOL season for the first time in 2007, the kids really wanted to go to the IDOL concert. Hearing that tickets can sell out in the first few hours, I went online when sales opened and purchased what were supposed to be "best available" seats for the July concert in Tacoma. Well, once we got to the Tacoma Dome, we found out we had really lousy seats. Off to the right of the stage and on the 2nd level. We couldn't see very well and the accoustics were terrible. But, it was still alot of fun and we were happy to be there. At intermission Pat went down and ended up talking to an usher who mentioned that if we happened to move into some of the empty center bleacher-type seats, nobody would really notice.... So we moved! Our new seats for the 2nd half of the concert were great. After the concert ended, we headed back down to the floor to exit, when I noticed that my brand new, pink Razor cell phone was missing! We figured I had dropped it by our old seats so Pat headed back up there to look. While we were waiting for him, a woman came up to us, asked how many people we had in our group, then asked if we wanted 3 back stage passes and practically dropped them in our hands and left before I could even thank her! While this was going on, Alex had headed back up to our new seats to look for my phone, and actually found it! We used it to call Pat to come back down and then we headed to the back stage entrance with our 3 passes. Once we got to the entrance, the usher wanted to see our passes and questioned the fact that we had 4 people and 3 passes. We started to try and negotiate a little girl (Rachel!) coming through with no pass, when the usher just waved us through! (Otherwise, Pat was willing to sit out, while the 3 of us went in.) It was amazing! The kids were able to meet and get their pictures with every Idol except Haley, who left early. Rachel had her program book autographed and Alex had his shirt signed! The highlight for both kids was meeting Blake. (Although he was swarmed - since he is from Bothell, WA). What a cool experience!

Lesson of a Lifetime!

Alex first met David in 2006

Today Alex had the best piano lesson ever. He had a 1 hour private lesson with Grammy Award nominated artist David Lanz! Alex has been playing music composed by David Lanz for several years. (Behind the Waterfall - grandma's favorite!, Cristofori's Dream, A Path With Heart). He's also met David at several concerts and special workshops given by our old piano teacher. David rarely does private lessons, though, so it was quite an honor to be given a personal lesson, right in David's home! Alex played his two current compositions and was given tips by David for some improvements. He told David that he wants to incorporate Jazz into his compositions, so they worked on that as well. David also gave him tips for relaxing during performances. One of my favorite parts was when David said Alex has a gift for music and that he should always strive to use his gift to make the world a better place.

Alex's task for the next few months is to work on compositions and techniques, so that we can arrange a second lesson with David. Amazing!

Here's a video of Alex's second workshop with David Lanz - last year.

First Day at Labyrinth Homeschool Co-op

The kids had their first day at the Co-op today. APD is taking Spanish (if they find a teacher), Writing, Chemistry / Physics, and Journalism. RMD has Spanish (again, if they find a teacher), Musical Theater, Animal Science, Writing and Grossology. RMD loves her science classes. APD says he is going to have alot of homework, but he likes hanging out with his co-op friends. I am most excited about my own classes - weaving and knitting!

Reverse Trick-or-Treating!

While working on a fair trade project for the Justice and Peace Commission at church, I found a really cool website. It's called Global Exchange - Socially Conscious Gifts. The coolest thing on it is a Reverse Trick or Treating Program. Here's what the website says:

Hundreds of groups of Trick-or-Treaters in the United States and Canada will unite to:

END poverty among cocoa farmers
END forced/abusive child labor in the cocoa industry
PROMOTE Fair Trade
PROTECT the environment A pleasant surprise will greet nearly a quarter million people distributing candy at their door, when youth reverse the Halloween tradition to hand adults a sample of Fair Trade chocolate.

The chocolate will be accompanied by a card informing recipients of poverty and child labor problems in the cocoa industry, affecting mainstream candy enjoyed at Halloween and around the year, and how Fair Trade certified chocolate provides a solution.

Parents of last year's youngest participants raved about how Reverse Trick-or-Treating transformed Halloween into a meaningful event when youthful activists can give back to their neighbors and to cocoa growing communities. Read more reactions in our newsletter article here.


This is right up my alley! Every year since the kids started trick-or-treating, I've had a problem with both handing out and collecting a ton of junky candy. A few years we opted to give out junky Oriental Trading toys in lieu of candy, but that didn't seem right either. Now there's an alternative! I think RMD will go for it. Stay tuned....

First Homeschool Week

I don't plan to do a homeschool blog post for every week, but this week was our first and it was pretty productive.

RMD made it through 4 math lessons, 5 vocabulary lessons, 4 grammar lessons, 2 outlining lessons, many Critical Thinking exercises, 3 history lessons (we are studying England - late 1500's), created her Timeline book, restarted piano lessons with Alex, began learning about Bach and the baroque period and spent at least 1 hour a day reading. She also prepared for our Mother-Daughter Book Club meeting on Friday (Wise Child by Monica Furlong was the book).

APD completed a similar amount of work, and also his science work for Labyrinth.

In addition to all this, they helped me turn 27 pounds of tomatoes from the farmers market into sauce. We went to the Fair on Wednesday - planning to see rabbits of which there were only 6 - and of course riding the rides and eating cotton candy. They also spent all day Thursday at wilderness class.

The best part is to see them having fun doing their work and also doing it together! It's amazing how well they get along while homeschooling. This was definitely not the case when they were in school full time. And it's not always the case while homeschooling either. But, it really seems that time together creates a cohesive bond. Just one more homeschooling advantage!

The first day of school

but not for us!

Here's how we spent the first day of school for most of the kids in our school district - climbing to the top of Little Si!

I found a good blog

For some reason this morning, I decided to try and find articles about tween / teen cell phone use. (For the record - I see no point in a kid having a cell phone until he or she is driving or at least in high school...) See this article for a good discussion about the issue.

Anyway, not much in the way of cell phone articles that I agree with, but I did find lots of articles on an interesting Blog site! Here are some of them:


Millionaire Mommy Next Door - Affluenza

Millionaire Mommy Next Door - Parenting With a Purpose

Millionaire Mommy Next Door - Changing the World

Millionaire Mommy Next Door - Shadow, Apprentice, Find a Mentor

MMND - Demystifying Investing

It's All About Me

Someone (a non-blogger, I'm sure!) asked me who exactly I did my Peru blog for and why would I want to continue to blog now that we are home. The answer is - they're for me!!! Now, I actually love the fact that anybody that wants to, can read about our trips and my daily random thoughts. Especially my mom and friends afar that I don't see often. But, I would blog even if nobody read them. The daily stuff is just fun. I went to a journaling workshop last year with a friend - it was given by our favorite retreat center leader, Dani. Dani said everyone should try and write 1/2 hour per day. About anything we wanted. She held a 6 week long series of workshops on it, but I didn't go because she lives about 1 1/2 hours away. But, I always meant to start writing, and now I have. And the trip stuff I really love. It's a new form of scrapbooking. Part of the fun of scrapbooking for me was always telling the story - and I always wrote it up on the computer, even though all the scrapbooking magazines said to do it by hand to be more personal. I just always found that my stories were too long and I could more accurately document my scrapbooks if I typed everything. The problem was, none of the stories ever were done in real time fashion because it is so time consuming to get out all the scrapbook supplies, order the pictures, arrange them, crop them, choose the paper and all the fancy, cutsy stuff, you get the idea... So, I am now 3 years behind in scrapbooking with no timeframe for getting anything done. I don't even really want to continue, except for the fact that my hundreds of dollars of scrapbooks and materials call my name every so often. I DO, however want to continue to take pictures and write down the memories of our fantastic trips and now I have a new way - Blogging! It's real time with the added bonus that anybody that wants to can share the fun. But really, it's all about me.

The Plague Strikes Again!

Here's an interesting article published 8/30/2008 - The Plague Threatens Ferrets, Prairie Dogs

Just goes to show you learning about the plague is still relevant.

I also found another interesting book to introduce to the kids. It's called Outbreak - Plagues That Changed History