Well-Rounded Lunacy

Lest you think we live a strictly earthy existence 24/7 outside amongst the chickens, water barrels, and garden beds, I wanted to offer a peek inside our life and the wide range of activities in which we engage.

Here are the results of some downtime I had to create handles for the kids' new water bottles. Of course, my youngest wears his almost constantly, which is fine except when his taekwondo instructor objects.

This picture was taken at our Science Co-op when the kids were learning how to un-mix mixtures. That'll make you think!

My daughter's turned out great with the spiral stripes. She now calls it her watermelon bottle. Now I want to make her a hat to match, but that would break the rules. This year I'm attempting to finish ALL of my on-going, in-progress, started-with-no-end-in-sight projects BEFORE I start any new ones. I was down to two knitting, four quilting, and two beading projects when these two mini crochet projects just showed up out of nowhere. They're not my fault, really.

See how flexible I can be? This is the recent result of our daughter's hair highlighting session. We try to tread lightly on the earth, but it seems to get more difficult the older the kids become. Unfortunately, trying to talk a pre-teen (she wanted me to tell you she was 12, but she's really only 11 and 354/365ths years old) out of something that helps pollute the earth when all her friends are doing it is difficult indeed. And since we recycle our greywater (well, most of it) we had the hardest time admitting there was no useful way we could reuse her rinse water. Nasty stuff.

She had to earn school credits to pay for it, which wasn't difficult with such an incentive as this. These credits have been established because they're an easy way to trade schoolwork for "funwork" which usually translates into time on the computer, phone and/or watching television (realizing we don't have cable or even local channels - only VHS tapes and DVDs, mostly from the library). In this instance, she chose haircolor in, luckily for me, a very "natural" color which even Daddy can live with.

And here's one of the coolest things we've seen in a long time. We were the lucky guests of a friend as she celebrated her birthday at the World Famous Lipizzaner Stallions show. What a special day. Very nice.