I'm That Mom

I'm that mom that let's her kids watch TV and play video games to their heart's content. I also do not have parental controls over the Internets. They've all been huge learning resources in our home, as much as they've been entertainment. I believe in broadening their horizons, not limiting them.

I'm also the mom that is not the least bit threatened to know that, as a homeschooling mom, I didn't teach them a thing. They learned it all for themselves.

I'm also the mom of very long haired boys. I DO believe it is up to them, and they DO have a say-so. I care how they look, but I care more about how they feel.

I'm the mom of kids that like to use cuss words. I'm happy that my kids feel safe to be themselves and express themselves however they want, and equally happy that they are choosey in who they allow to hear those words.

I'm also a short order cook. I show them how to make most of their favorite things, and put these things within their reach, but I also realize it always tastes better when Mom makes it. So, yeah....I'm THAT mom.

I'm also the mom that sat and listened and talked with a nine year old girl at the pool the other day, and within five minutes she asked me, "Can you be my mom?"

I remember many times as a kid saying, when I'm a Mom I'll never "X", or I'll do "Y". Of course then I would just hear, "What until you're a Mom! Then you'll see!"

I'm happy to say it is possible to be.... THAT mom and still have great kids.

** This post was inspired by Ronnie's spontaneous blog carnival idea inspired by Flo's post.

*** Leave it to unschoolers to start an impromptu blog Carnival

**** Cause you can't plan shizz this good

***** I'm also that mom that is last to join the party

Mobile Blogging

Once I got broadband internet from Verizon I thought my days of sitting in the truck hunting down wi-fi were over, but in an effort to not go over my monthly limit I find myself in the library parking lot uploading a huge file. While I have an hour to kill I read blogs, email, twitter and facebook on my new Droid cell phone so I figured I may as well round off the list with blogging from it!

Texas Wrap-Up

So….we left Texas about a month ago, and we’re getting ready to leave our next location so I figure I better get  crackin’ on this blog here. Being away form the blog for so long has made it that much more difficult to get back into the groove, but after reading an old journal from twelve years ago and re reading this blog from the last three years it’s made me realize how important it is to record some memories and preserve our story. In my old journal I wrote directly to Jake (who was eighteen months at the time) and when I read it to the kids the other day they were entranced….they LOVED hearing it and because of them, I vow to keep this this thing going. I also plan to write our story all the way from the beginning, but that’s going to require me to get rid of the TV’s first. And maybe get a cook and a dishwasher.

So where do I start? Let’s see….we did finally make it to The Stockyards. Woop-dee-doo. We were at The Watergardens before that and that was much more my style.

It’s a park in the middle of downtown Fort Worth and it has this Big Pool as shown here, along with a Quiet Serenity Pool and another one full of sprinklers. I went with another unschooling mama, Missi, that we met on park day and naturally we had to break the rules and let the kids play in the water, but only until we were told to get out. We’re law abiding like that.

I dreaded another one of the unschooling moms hair, Angela, and then because she looked so awesome in her dreads it gave me the courage to get my own. Needless to say the dreads did not make me five foot seven and stick skinny, so they only lasted a couple weeks.  Angela and Missi threw me a birthday party and I had one of the best birthday’s ever! Usually we’re on the road en-route to somewhere or Joey is on a job so I rarely even get a cake let alone a party. I’ll never forget what they did, and how much it meant to me.

Aside form the very few encounters with the outside world, we spent ninety nine percent of the time on the Acres. One of my hobbies was googling myself and damn! was I surprised to find my pictures being used all over the web! For articles on catching an alligator at summer camp, to hitchhiking, to national parks, to how to build a chicken coop, to how to take pictures, to how to weld and even for an article on out houses. I’ve since put a copyright dealy-majig on my photos so they can’t be used anymore without my permission, but now googling myself just isn’t the same.

There was a lot of kite flying on Windy Green Acres and Joey schooled us on how to fly a kite with a broken leg.

There was also a lot of Bocci Ball going on. That was definitely one of our favorite games we played together, and as much as my brother tried..he just couldn’t beat me. Oh yeah, I said it.

Of course our favorite thing was playing with the chickens. WHO KNEW chickens would be so much fun?

Jonas decided as long as there was an animal in the picture with him, he would let me take his picture. I’ve decided I’m going to keep a frog in my pocket . Just in case.

The summer was beyond HOT. I never went to another unschooling park day, and the kids did spend most of the day inside. I know my parents probably thought our kids did nothing but play video games but that’s just because they were in bed at 1am when the kids were riding their rip stick and roller blades, or catching toads and feeding them june bugs, or jumping on the trampoline with a sprinkler. They were just smart enough to stay out of the heat.

 

We ended up spending TEN months in Texas! Ten MONTHS! In the last twelve years we’ve never spent that much time in one place. It reassured me that I don’t need a stick house, but it’s made the rest of the family want some land of our own again. Jonas even asked for a house for his birthday. Jewel still wants a big bathtub and a trampoline, and Jake just wants to live in Hawaii, as does Joey. It looks like I’m out voted but at least for now we’re still in the bus and hitting the road. If we do end up getting a house again, it’ll be just like when we had a house in Iowa: We spent the summers at the house and the winters traveling and working. So the way I see it, if they want a house in Hawaii ,it’s kinda like the best of both world’s and I can deal with that.

Rock On!

“This isn’t going to be some big romantic trip”

Now why would I think that? This was the first time we would be childless and we could take as much time as we needed. I must have missed the part where I would be driving the entire time. That’s all we did, drive, eat, sleep. Eat, drive, eat, drive, eat, sleep. Repeat three more times now.

Since our electric plug adaptor adaptors were stolen, and they’re a rare Canadian breed, we went without electricity the whole time. Also since I didn’t winterize before we left, we didn’t even want to find out if there was anything wrong with our water system until we got down to Texas, so we also went without water. And then, since I forgot to shut off the propane when we left in October, we were also out of propane. As if this all wasn’t joyful enough, our shit tank is still FULL. Five days of this, and no showers, ummm..yeah, not so romantic.

On the final day, our last two hundred miles, out of eleven hundred, I spotted diesel for only $1.99 and since Joey didn’t have his radio on I decided to pull up on his right (where he was making a right turn) and alert him to tell him to turn his radio on, and look..Cheap Gas! Only he didn’t see me and continued on with his right turn, right into me. Because of my brilliance and desperation to save a dime, we now need a new corner panel and lights for the truck, and the bus was seriously scraped between the front tires and the front door. I’m actually trying to forget the whole ordeal, so moving on…..

The kids did great with my parents, and really didn’t even miss us. I cried when we left thinking our plane might go down, and Joey had a talk with Jacob that if anything were to happen to us, they’d be living right there with Grama and Papa, and they DIDN’T have to go to school unless they wanted to. We like to cover our bases. :) My parents are really great for watching them and more surprisingly, respecting our wishes. I know it’s not always easy for them, especially when the kids stay up until four or five in the morning, or want mac and cheese at eleven at night, but they were super. Thank You, Mom and Dad!

In my last post I wrote so nonchalantly about First Class. I don’t know why I do that. It was actually kind of a big thing for me. I’ve always wanted to get bumped up to First, I hear about it all the time, but I’ve always been too chicken to ask. Since we were completely alone with this agent and there weren’t people waiting in line I felt brave. This is exactly how it went down: “Ummmm…uhhhh….I hear about people getting bumped up to First Class all the time…ummm…uhhhhh…..how could we do it?” I finally worked up the nerve, and then showed my ignorance by being on an airline that doesn’t even offer it. I just felt a need to clear that up.

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My Mom said Jewel told her she missed Dad the most.

Because he’s funnier.

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I discovered Windows Live Writer before I left, and I just knew it was the answer to my blogging dilemma. Then I decided it wasn’t because I didn’t always have an internet connection to blog while I’m traveling (with Live Writer I can be offline), I really just needed something interesting to blog about.…THEN I invented Mind Writer. When I’m driving I come up with the BEST blog posts, now if someone could just figure out the mechanics of Windows Mind Writer, I’ll be all set. In the meantime, for some real family adventure involving poop icicles you should check out Bluebird Family while they make their way up to Alaska. One storm at a time.

Happy Travels!

Full Circle

When we left Phoenix back in 1998 to journey across the US we had a desktop PC that we couldn't take with us. A friend from La Leche League mentioned that her husband had a laptop that he never used so she'd see if he'd sell it to me. That day I got my first laptop, and for only $100. That was before wi-fi, but I had already been hooked by electronic mail. Around the same time they invented something called getting your pictures put on floppy. They must have invented that just for me, I know it. With my old ancient laptop I would share my pictures, with some snarky remarks here and there, by preparing the email, saving it to send later, then shutting it down (because the battery wouldn't last two minutes). Then I'd walk into the campground office, usually disconnect their phone line to plug it into my laptop then start the thing back up and hopefully thirty minutes later it would be sent. We kept up this type of family communication regularly for years, until my Uncle Carl died. For some reason not getting his Fish Fry Friday updates caused something in all of us to stop. My Mom and cousin try to keep the groups (I eventually got my Dad's side of the family on board) alive but for whatever reason people just aren't sharing anymore.

Then along came weblogs. Now these were for writers, but I tried anyway. Lately I've gone back to my old style, pictures with comments, and I'm getting a lot of nice comments, but the ones that mean the most to me are *Thanks for sharing*. That feels really good, maybe because I don't have a big social circle on the road, or maybe it's because I didn't really hear that too much from my family, the ones that I thought would enjoy seeing my shit. It hit me that none of my original email circle reads this, which makes me now feel like I was bothering everyone and wasting their time with my babble, or maybe even annoying them. Gah! Now I know that the people that read this are here because they're actually interested. Thanks! Because of this I promise to keep improving.

My Uncle Carl always encouraged me to document our travels more permanently, so here's to you Uncle Carl. Thanks for the inspiration!