Farm Party

This past Monday was the Fourth of July, as most of you already know. Last year my friends over at Green Toe Ground started a new tradition. They decided to combine their birthday celebrations and the celebration of the Fourth into one big shindig. It went off without a hitch and this year proved to be even better. I was glad to be here to help with preparations and party down.




Here you can see Nicole sporting her temporary radish tattoo and getting ready to change into a newly silk screened Green Toe Ground t-shirt.


Here you can see Nate Allen working on the spit roasting of Buster the pig. Early in the morning Gaelan and some friends got together and slaughtered the pig. Then Nate stuffed the pig with chickens and lots of fresh thyme. I made a huge batch of Colonel Neff's sauce and brought it over to the farm figuring that we'd serve it up with the finished pig. Nate thought it was delicious and decided to use it in addition to his own hot sauce goodness as a finishing baste.

I decided that I wanted to come up with some activities for the kids to have fun with. Here's Ian with his cork boat getting ready to race it down the rapids. We also had bubble blowing, face/body painting and water balloon throwing.



For the farm fashion show, Ashely who used to work for Sweetheart bakery put her artistic skills to work and painted me a beautiful cornucopia that covered my whole upper back. It was so beautiful and I really appreciated her taking time out from the party to do it.

And here, in purple glory are the t-shirts we screened using the beautiful hand made screen that Tara (and Joe) gifted them last year. The underwear served as 1st prize for the winner of the farm olympics. There was live music, swimming, dancing, laughing, fireworks and a blast had by all.

progression of a cake

Riley's cake

This week I had the chance to share in bringing a big smile to a young girl's face.


My friends Lisa and Doug made the cake and the buttercream icing in the morning. Then later on in the afternoon I showed up with Ian for fun and frosting. Ian and Riley played furiously while Will rotated between Curious George and chasing the others.

Lisa and I mixed the colors into the icing and shared in the decorating process. Riley came by and added her touches too and she was so excited.

Here's Lisa spreading on the strawberry buttercream we mixed up for the center layer.

I wasn't able to be at her party, but I was lucky enough to get a piece brought over for me. They did a great job on the strawberry cake. A delicious treat.

Our homeschooling life

Homeschooling is such a blessing. Each day I take so many opportunities to help Ian learn, grow and play. I think there is so much more to school than just sitting at a tdesk doing book work, although for us workbooks are part of our schooling. However schooling for us also includes cooking meals and working with recipes, clearing garden beds and planting seedlings, caring for our dogs, and remembering to play, a lot. Also since we moved three times in the past year, it was easy to make education a simple part of everyday life.

Imaginative play is one of the most fun parts of our day. We go on challenging aventures, where we meet mysterious peopl, battles dragons, fend of sea monsters, and rule the kingdom with fairness and kindness. You can see the kids at ACE had a blast creating their very own Chinese dragon using muslin and markers on the day we talked about the Chinese New Year Celebration. Above you can see all of use sporting the "Olympic" medals we "won" after learning about the winter olympics that were in progress at the time.

As part of our schooling Ian is involved with a variety of outside activities that range depending on the season and his interests. Currently we meet once a week with other at ACE (Athens Cooperative Education) which right now is comprised of a loosely planned activity based on a topic and lots of outdoor play. He also particpates in a fantastic class at the Georgia Botanical Garden called Garden Earth Naturalist Club where he has had the chance to disect owl pellets (see image --->) and make his own personal worm bin.

Right now soccer season is getting going and he's excited about the first game which is tonight. He's glad to play soccer although in all honesty, sometimes things get away from me and I wasn't in time to sign him up for little league this year. It's lucky for me he is such a "go with the flow" sort of kid.

This year we aslo joined a local chapter of the Earth Scouts which is a group based on the principles of the Earth Charter signed by over 80 countries focusing on human rights, the environment, local economies and other important issues of our time. We've been to the local recycling center, created butterflies to add to an exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art which remembers the children from the holocaust, did projects from reclaimed materials, planted seeds to grow a little garden, visited a local alpaca farm, among other things.

Last week he participated in his first big homeschool event last week. Here in Athens there is an event called the Omni Fair which offers homeschoolers the chance to share what they have been learning about or what they are interested in. Ian created a diarama using all of the dinosaurs from his collection. He designed the diasplay and gave me precise instructions about how he wanted it to look.

All in all we've been having a blast this year with or schooling and I just thought I would take a minute and share that with ya'll. So, here's to you for whatever works for your family, whichever methods help your child/children succeed, it's all good.

Birthdays

Six year old snuggles are simply a great way to start the day!

Every year that goes by we age. What age does to us is similar for all; we grow taller, longer, wider, etc... our mental abilities increase (hopefully) we learn how to relate better to others (possibly) and we gain more knowledge about ourselves. This I guess is more refelctive of an adult growing older.

When a child grows older their changes are impossible to miss. My boy turned 6 this month and it seems to me that these past 6 years, ok 7 including pregnancy have simply flown by so quickly. At least at first without retrospection that's how it seems. However when I really take the time to think on the flight of time, I relaize how very many experiences I have had the opportunity to share with him. each one comprising varying amounts of time from a few seconds, to a few hours, to the entire 6 years since birth.

Amazing!

Each experience for a child is still new to them. I take for granted the skills I have learned and known now for most of life. Simple tasks like tying my shoe laces and enjoyable tasks like reading are all second nature to me and yet for my boy, he is just embarking on those.

For his birthday Ian requested an Incredible Hulk theme. However as hard as Jeanne and I tried we could not find one piece of Incredible Hulk anything for decorating a party, no plates, napkins, cups, hats, stickers, or even a coloring a book.

So I thought I might as well do my best to capture the essence of the Hulk onto a cake.

A year or so ago I started noticing these "cupcakes" in the grocery store. essentially they were cupcakes that had been set out into a pattern and then iced to look like a full cake. I'd been dying to try it and so I was excited to have my chance at it.

I asked Ian what he thought about that idea and he smiled his bright smile at me and said, "Can he still have big arm muscles?" When I assured him that Hulk could still have his arm muscles he was all for it.

So, here you have it: The Incredible Hulk in cupcakes complete with the requested arm muscles and all.

I made these cupcakes with a modified chocolate cake recipe and I used my favorite once a year (well maybe twice) icing recipe that came from Stick Boy Bakery in Boone, NC. Funny, vegan cupcakes with buttercream icing priceless.

Sweet Child O' Mine

...and I am not referring to the wildly successful GnR song from ages ago. My boy has been really into listening to books on CD lately. We started with the very traditional Henry Huggins and have pretty much worked our way through Beverly Cleary including timeless classics like Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and Ribsy and also adding other childhood favorites like Judy Blume's Freckle Juice. Now he's on to whatever we can get our hands (for instance Hank the Cow Dog) and he just loves it. Spending practically hours at a time playing and listening. Lucky for me the library is such a fantastic resource.

The truth is I was starting to feel a bit guilty about the amount of time he was spending alone just listening and playing, although I could tell he was really enjoying it. So yesterday I asked if he would like for me to come up with a project or activity for him to do. He of course answered , "No, I'm enjoying playing mom." However about 30minutes later he came to me ready to create something and asked for popsicle sticks, glue and paint. I set him up with a nicely covered area and off to work he went using his imagination in an unfettered way and came up with all sorts of really neat items including (and this is all boy and fantasy) a very special dagger and one for daddy too, a wooden painted raft, and the one that I thought was the coolest a name plate that he wants to hang on his wall when we get somewhere that we can, "make holes in the wall."