Thursday, March 30, 2006

We're going to Scotland!!!!




We bought our tickets to Scotland! Wahoo! We will be gone for most of the month of May. I am not exactly sure how all of this is going to get paid for (other than the airfare) but I will be selling on eBay and working extra hard. I can hardly wait! Evie and I floated around for the entire hour we had at home today!

We went to some friends' house this morning. The mom is teaching me to juggle. I got pretty good with two balls today but am having trouble adding the third. We met their chickens and the kids had a great time playing outside in the sand and shooting off water bottle rocket thingies.

We came home for a quick lunch and to work on some of the food I need to make for a catering job I have this weekend. Then it was off to a park day. It was a great group of families, the park is wonderful and the kids are finally old enough to go play in the woods on their own. Evie and some friends dug up beatifully colored plastic bb pellets and flew plastic bag kites. The parents sat around and laughed. There was a fair amount of talk about parents "getting their kids to do things" i.e. practice violin, do this worksheet or that chore. I wanted to download Joyce Fetteroll's site into everyone's head. Joyce says the following:

"If there is one thought that will help you understand unschooling and respectful parenting it is this:

The primary goal is joyful living.
All other goals are secondary.
All decent parents, of course, want their children to be happy. But they assume that sometimes happiness needs to be sacrificed to get something better.

But for unschooling, peaceful parents meeting any goal must also meet the goal of living life more joyfully.

If meeting a goal means sacrificing joy, then find a better way to meet the goal.
It's simple to write, but not so simple to put it into practice! Our heads are full of "have tos." We're full of fears of what will happen if we don't do what we "have to." Getting rid of those "have tos" and fears is hard to do!

The first step is finding something that's better than what you have.
The second step is wanting to change.
The third step is figuring out how to change.
So, as you read along, you may wonder why I suggest that parents basically make life more difficult for themselves. The reason is because I believe it leads to a much better place. And that better place is a more joyful life for our children and our families."

Wahoo, wahoo, wahoooooooooo!

Today was DEFINITELY a joyful day well lived

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