Archive for the ‘Family Adventures’ Category
Well, today’s big event was the Rattlesnake Encounter, which becomes more epic each time one of us recounts the story. We were walking one of the trails at a local nature preserve—a wonderful place, all chaparral and low hills, where the wind smells like sage. Whenever I’m there (and it had been a long while since our last visit) I wonder why I don’t go every week. It’s my kind of landscape, those rocky, rounded slopes lifting up the blue, blue sky. I stand there like Heidi on her mountain, drawing deep breaths of the fragrant air.
Then something will happen to remind me why I don’t go more often, like OH SAY A RATTLESNAKE WILL APPEAR ON THE TRAIL THREE FEET FROM MY CHILDREN.
Rose and Beanie spotted him at the same time—they were in the lead, fortunately; they’re sharp-eyed lasses and I was distracted by a hot, red-faced, cranky Huck. If this had been the part of the trail where Huck suddenly charged ahead and we larger folk had to scramble to catch up, he’d have been on that snake before any of us saw it. It was lying quite still at first, stretched out across our path. Rose had just enough time to ask “Is it real?” before it twitched, and I took in the triangular head and the rattle and hollered EVERYONE BACK UP IT’S A RATTLER GRAB THE LITTLE ONES!! (I used more exclamation points.)
We edged back a yard and stood watching it. Huck, who’d been begging me to carry him, now clamored to be put down. Not a chance, pal. The rest of us were still and silent. After a long moment, the snake began to move; it slid across the trail into the underbrush.
“This is the best thing that EVER HAPPENED TO ME,” Rose declared.
“I think we’ll just go back the way we came,” I said weakly. Suddenly the trail ahead, curving into a clump of trees, seemed spiked with hazards. Huck was squirming for freedom and there was no way I was putting him back down to run loose on that path.
So we came home and drank a lot of water and ate lunch and played Oregon Trail and weeded a flowerbed and I read two picture books to Rilla.
In Oregon Trail, I lost one of my children to cholera and another to dysentery. Which is ironic, since usually in that game it’s the snakebite that gets you.
Not wild as in running free, but wild as in “Look, kids, a camel dairy! Isn’t that wild?”
Hello, poor little neglected blog. The weekend was much too full of living to leave time for chronicling. And now I could sleep for a week!
The Good Vibrations Unschooling Conference was a blast. Such a fun crowd! Here are a few of the things we got to do this weekend:
*knights and chivalry (Beanie and Jane)
* board-breaking (ditto)
* needlefelting (Beanie learned how and made a lovely new friend)
* drop-spindle spinning (Jane learned how, so AT LONG LAST the spindle I bought for research when I was writing the first Martha book is seeing some use)
* painting and drawing (nearly everyone—there was a wonderful art room set up and you could go create to your heart’s content any time of day)
* “Rock Star Drama Camp” (Beanie attended this most excellent funshop led by the ebullient Amy Steinberg. Later, Amy flagged me down in the hall to tell me Bean’s a natural actress. No surprise to this proud mama who directed her as Feste in scenes from Twelfth Night last spring!)
That’s just a small sample. Flo Gascon, the conference organizer, did an amazing job of putting together a seamless, merry, stimulating weekend—and gracefully weathering the big excitement of the San Diego Blackout.
Some of the talks I attended:
“Zero Tuition College” by Blake Boles, about which I shall have MUCH TO SAY either here or at GeekMom. Fantastic talk. (Rose and Jane also went to a college pros and cons session moderated by Blake. Much food for discussion later.)
Updated: Here’s a link to Blake’s Zero Tuition College website.
“Artodidact” by Brenna McBroom, an inspiring young woman who described her decision to leave college and focus on her pottery with apprenticeships and mentorships. I loved this talk. So did Jane and Rose, especially Rose, who was captivated by Brenna’s pottery (we’d been oohing and ahhing over it in the conference lounge all day, and right before Brenna’s talk, Rose talked me into buying the lovely little pot I kept returning to over and over—I’m so glad I did) and is now burning to take a ceramics class herself. We’ve spent this morning looking at possibilities around town.
“Good Ideas and Bad Ideas” by Holly Dodd, daughter of Sandra Dodd. Holly shared some of her insights gleaned from visiting and/or nannying for many different families around the world.
“Unschooling Lifestyle Q & A”—four veteran unschooling parents answered audience questions. Most of the questions were parenting-focused, and to be honest I always feel a little outside that discussion when it’s from the radical unschooling end of the unschooling/alternative education continuum. I live at a different spot on that continuum and am happy with the way things work in our family. But this talk was lively and enjoyable, even if I didn’t agree with every point made. Heck, the panelists didn’t always agree with one another—that was part of the point, the reason organizer Flo Gascon had structured the panel the way she did: to give a range of viewpoints to common concerns.
Of course the best part of any conference is meeting new people and reconnecting with friends. The hotel had provided a nice big sunny room as a lounge area, and there was always a lot bubbling there. People crafting and chatting, toddlers playing with the toys volunteers had pooled, artisans young and not-so-old selling their wares, and a great deal of laughter. Wonderful, wonderful.
Things I did today (besides that thing I promised I wouldn’t mention this time):
* took a walk with Scott
* took a walk, later, with five of the kids
* read The Ear Book to Huck for the dozenth time this week
* and also that gem, Brave Georgie Goat
* tore my hair out, a little, over some travel plans I’m trying to arrange for Jane (totally worth it)
* dropped Jane and Beanie off at a friend’s house to swim
* played a fierce round of Munchkin with Rilla and Rose (Rilla kicked our elven patooties)
* read more Bat-Poet to Rilla (and Rose listened in because it was the part about the cardinal, her favorite bird)
* spent a perfect half-hour doing dishes while Rose, Rilla, and Wonderboy drew pictures of dolphins for me, and Mahalia Jackson poured out her soul over the speakers
* did not read any of my own books-in-progress
* did not get as much work done as I meant to
* ate scrumptious chicken stovetop-grilled to perfection by my husband
* and some rather excellent three-bean salad leftover from yesterday, which was actually four-bean
* finished an episode of Next Food Network Star (but we’re still a week behind)
* said, after dinner, “Rose, would you mind watering the garden for me?” and AT THAT VERY MOMENT the heavens opened and rain poured down through the still-shining sun
* received the copy of Letters from New York I’ve been eagerly awaiting
* and will (just maybe) read a little of tonight.
So wait, it’s July all of a sudden? I need to do some quick June notes.
* Brief trips to Phoenix (with Rose & Bean) and Pasadena (with Jane)
* A day with Kristen and my amazing goddaughter
* Shakespeare Club performance of scenes from Twelfth Night:
oh those kids made me proud!
* The Penderwicks at Point Mouette
* Lots of game time for everyone, including The Floating City and Glitch
* The Bat-Poet with Rilla and her stuffed bat, Bitty
* 84, Charing Cross Road
* New session of speech therapy for Wonderboy
* Jane started a C++ class online
* Huck’s hair went curlsplosion again
* The sunflowers are forming buds
* Hollyhock bloomed AT LONG LAST (we waited three years)
* Monarch caterpillars on the milkweed
(first spotted today, so technically a July note)
The bonnet side view, since you asked:
The light wasn’t great, so the ribbon looks washed out; it’s such a pretty blue with wheat stalks on it. The hatmaker said he has a special fondness for any ribbon depicting wheat or rye.
That batwing plait around the edges is to swoon for, isn’t it?
We found out about the steampunk/Victoriana con by chance: a Facebook friend mentioned it Saturday morning. So quick on the uptake am I that I at first interpreted “in SD” to mean in South Dakota and had a moment of “aw, too bad, I would love to go to something like that.” Then it dawned on me that my friend who lives in San Diego was probably posting about an event in, go figure, San Diego.
I mentioned it to Scott and he agreed that it sounded like a perfect mother-daughter Mother’s Day adventure. He stayed home with the little ones, which was part of my present. We arrived too late to sign up for the Mother’s Day Ice Cream Social, but as it happened, after we tore ourselves away from the tempting vendor hall and were headed toward the bits-and-bobs room, we encountered a Victorian gentleman bearing a box of slightly melty ice-cream bars: leftovers from the social which he was quite desperate to unload on sweet-toothed passersby. This made Rose and Beanie very happy.
The high point for Jane was meeting Kaja Foglio, co-author and illustrator of the Genius Girl comics (which have won numerous awards and look wonderful)—and discovering that her son was the model for a character in Aaron Williams’s PS238 series, which all my girls adore. Scott was Aaron’s editor on North 40. I love it when our worlds converge this way.
The mechanical butterflies were on display among many other marvels in the Curiosities and Inventions room at the Gaslight Gathering, a Steampunk and Victoriana convention the girls and I attended this afternoon. Loads of fun: the costumes were every bit as fabulous as one would hope. We’re determined to have our own garb for next year’s gathering.
My hastily snapped photos don’t do these outfits justice. They were spectacular.
Even better than the clothing were the gizmos, trinkets, and wondrous creations. We sighed over cunning little pocketwatches and brooches, gear-necklaces and carved bone bracelets. We admired a very fine propeller-chair to be used for in-flight repair of dirigibles and peeked in at a make-your-own-carpetbag workshop.
My favorite part was a long chat with a maker of straw hats. He comes from a family of “strawbenders” and had a booth filled with the most gorgeous boaters, bonnets, and bicycle hats. It is possible that one of us succumbed, under extreme pressure from her daughters, and treated herself to a delectable blue bonnet trimmed with brown batwing plait. But I’m not naming names.
On Saturday I took the three oldest girls to the San Diego Science Expo at Petco Park. Throngs of people, dozens of nifty hands-on exhibits and activities, a mental overload of Very Cool Stuff. My favorite part was when we’d made it about halfway around the circuit inside the stadium and came to a large ring of booths in a park just outside, and Beanie and Jane were practically cheering with enthusiasm: Look at the guy making smoke rings with that gizmo! Look at the motorized robot-car built out of Legos!
And Rose and I were like: OOH, LOOK AT THAT BUILDING OVER THERE THAT SAYS CANDY FACTORY.
Hey, candymaking is a science, right?
Sadly, the Showley Bros. Candy Factory is no longer operational, and the plans for our next field trip died a-borning.
I took my camera to the Expo but neglected to take it out of my bag. I did snap one quick pic of the smoke-rings guy on my cellphone (which happened to be in my hand because I was googling the Showley Bros. Candy Factory).
The smoke rings didn’t show up in the photo, but I do believe that’s a bit of Beanie’s hair in the lower left.
