For just a few dollars, you too can be a farmer...

I am in serious farm dreaming mode lately.  I don't know why but every once in a while my desire for some land and some animals becomes an acute ache.  But since I am firmly embedded in suburbia for now and unable to have more the 6 hens(which I have), I go down the street to Thanksgiving Point's Farm Country and talk to the cows, ride in trailers pulled by retired farmers, and feed the ridiculously cute goats.  It helps for a while but like any unnatural stimulant, I crash after-wards and want a farm more than ever.  I listen to Dolly Parton, peruse rural real estate, and plan future orchard placement and animal housing.  Oh well, I'm addicted.  Someday I'll have the real deal.

Why I homeschool...

"Whatever education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which would be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important: how to live and how to die."

-John Taylor Gotto

A large part of why I homeschool is out of the hope that my children will find themselves as they study and learn.  That instead of heading to college without any clue what they are good at or what they like, they will have spent their adolescence unearthing their talents and skills.  And that in that process they will discover the world.  That they will feel a part of the community - that they will know what contribution they can make - and are able to make one even before they are adults.  I hope that they will learn how to live.  I love being a part of that miraculous process.  A process that may happen in a public school, but in my opinion, in spite of it not because of it.  

Old School.

Last week I bought myself one of these....

and today I got back my first roll of film...

Even though these are FAR from perfect - I'm addicted.  Shooting with a manual focus, manual everything camera on a roll of film makes it so exciting.  It's like a game to shoot a picture and hope that I did it right.  To know I've got one chance to capture that moment correctly.  It definitely ups the ante which totally reinvigorates me!  So, definitely more to come...

p.s.  See the color I just painted my front door?  I love it.