Lesson #27 The Red Tent

The Red Tent is something I hope to share with my daughter for many many moons to come...this Red Tent gathering took place at a friend's house in Lexington, Ky. There were about 50 women and it was a beautiful experience. It was wonderful for Evie to experience the empowering beauty of women coming together for the sacred purpose of sharing, creating, crying, laughing, singing, and eating with other women in all stages of life. 

This is copied from our red tent homepage:

"This is a gathering for women in honor of our cycles as women whatever phase of life we are in. You can come if you are a maiden, mother or crone. It's a movement started by Alisa Starkweather based a little on the book the Red Tent by Anita Diamant. Women come together, wearing something red. A sacred safe tent like place has been created with tapestries, candles and we eat, share stories, sing, dance, share our stories, laugh, cry. Each woman adds something to the temple and we together co-create this into something empowering, healing, creative and beautiful. Typically this will be held on or near the new moon. You are encouraged to bring a journal and pen. Please always respect the confidentiality of everyone in the group as we want to keep this a safe and sacred place for women to share." 

Somehow we were not in the pics taken, but I will make sure to take one or two next month. Evie is already excited to go and so am I! 

                               

Lesson #26 First Formal Dance- A Formal Birthday Party!

A friend of Evie's, a lovely and sweet girl, had a Formal Sweet 16 party. Evie and her other homeschool buddies went together and had a great time. It really was the equivalent of a school dance, and that is exactly how it felt when I dropped her off! I really wanted to say something like...now don't be kissing boys outside, but since she would have been like, "MOM!" I didn't....heehe...I am glad she had this opportunity to enjoy this party and I know there will be more!

Her look was very classic and she looked just beautiful!

Evie looking all Hollywood

some of the kids out front of the building rented, Evie in the back to the left

Lesson#25 2012 Holiday Fun

 I have been slacking on my blog...so many things going on the end of the year that I will now have to add after the fact...oh well. That is how the holidays roll right :) This year we are grateful for the time that was spent with friends and family. Evie's dad was here visiting from California for a few weeks, we had friends over Christmas Night and as always spent actual Christmas Day at home together just cooking and enjoying each other and our gifts. It is a fabulous tradition we established years ago. We see family all around Christmas Day, such as the Eve, the day after, weeks before, ect. However, on Christmas Day itself we don't leave our home and it is a fabulous thing. No hustle and bustle just the enjoyment of our own health, good food, and each other. This year we walked in the woods a bit, and created our own giving alter in the woods, thanking the Universe, the Divine, Mother Nature, God, all names of the higher power, for our blessed family and for the blessed day. The pics are a little askew, they wouldn't aline right!

Me in my awesome new coat made of recycled sweaters, playing with Evie's Henna tattoo pen, opening her new elven quiver, and making ornaments with friends

We like to play dress up in the woods...yes we are those weird people and love it! 

Evie with her new utility belt on, our fabulous meal, and me and Mark.

Evie 14, Destiny 15...her comment was, "I am older than you again."

Lesson #24 First Archery Meet of 2012-2013 Season

Evie has been shooting archery for a local private Christian school for 3yrs. She has improved greatly and loves this sport. I love this sport for many reasons. On a practical level it is low-key practices and meets, not 3x a week for many weeks at a time like other sports. Mostly I love it because she can achieve and succeed individually as well as with her team. This was their first competition for the season and her score was 275 out of a possible 300! GO Evie!!

Cool before there was "Katniss Everdeen"-not that we don't love Katniss :)

All of Evie's are in the Yellow

I love that they score each other with a member of a competing team

Lesson #23 Volunteering Saving the Local Library and Celebrating our Library!

Recently our public library came under attack by a group of conservative Tea-Partiers. There was the possibility with enough signatures for their petition that our main library and all other five branches would close until the current debt (including a beautiful new facility in our downtown area) was paid off and a new library board was created. . The problem that this group has is that they say the library tax is "taxation without representation". The library board is made up of a group of five individuals who are not politicians in anyway and do their good service for free, lastly they are approved by the fiscal court. The taxation in question was an increase of 6.3cents per 100$ of property owed (or 63$ per 100,000$ of property) to 6.4cents or 64$ per 100,000$ worth of property. Yes I am talking about 1$. I must add that no wrong doing had taken place. No mis-use of funds, laundering, ethical issues, ect. to bring about this petition, and our library tax rate is one of the lowest in the state!

I am not going to get into the rest of the politics of this issue. The results are more important to me. The feelings felt by most of the community was shock, disbelief, and an outflow of love and support for our public library system. We have a great library. Full of free activities and help for all walks of life. Full of employees who care, quiet places to sit to read and learn, and volunteer opportunity. I really could talk about our library for quite sometime. Personally, for Evie and I, time spent there are some of Evie's first memories. If you asked my daughter where she loved to go, where she felt comfortable, where she felt safe, she would answer, "the library". That would be one of her answers when she was 5yrs old, and that would be one of her answers today. The thought that someone could take away her special place over a few dollars is appalling to say the least.

Evie has been volunteering for the children's department of the library since she was 11yrs. old. The pictures below are of her and the head children's librarian in front of the "Fat Albert Christmas Tree". The Fat Albert Tree symbolizes the need for trees and shrubs in urban areas. On this day Evie volunteered to help decorate our fabulous children's garden for Christmas. She helped in the garden and helped other kids make ornaments for the tree. We also had a Celebration Rally to celebrate the termination of the petition that could have closed the library. The pic of the kids in front of the indoor Christmas tree is a pic of some of the kids at the rally. Since we have a screen printing business we donated 100 I Love My Library t-shirts. I am not "tooting my own horn" here, I just think it is important to teach your children to give where YOU can. We love our Public Library!

Lesson #22 Lomography and other Photography

Yesterday we made our own colored filters for our camera...Lomography. We do not have an old school camera, so we have to hold our new handmade filters in front of our camera lens. It makes it harder to get interesting shots, but we got a few. This was a project we didn't get to during our Physics study of Light and Sound, but one I new we would go back to. After playing with the colors Evie continued in the woods on her own, taking some pretty fantastic photos.

Lesson #21 NaNoWriMo Winner

She did it! Her first NaNoWriMo month and she completed her goal with a couple of hours to spare!

NaNoWriMo is National November Writers Month. You set a word count goal, for Evie it was 25,000 words, and if you complete it you win! There is the satisfaction of completing your goal and aside from all the free help on the website you receive, you also win 5 free paperback copies of your book. Evie has until June 2013 to send off her manuscript for printing. Obviously she hopes to have completed her book by then.

This has been an awesome experience! In October we started working through the free 130+ page young writers workbook in preparation for the writing-athon in November. It was VERY helpful. Evie has dedicated many hours and most days of the month to writing, passing over social events as needed to work on completing her goals. This IS what we did for scholastics this month. A bit of math, a bit of art, a few days with friends, and Nano....it has been a part of our daily lives and conversation for the whole month.

Evie is proud of herself, she is happy to have "reached the freakin' line", as she put it, of completion on her progress graph, and she has learned quite a bit. I have told her from the beginning, with creativity half of the work is just "showing up", just committing to being present for creativity instead of waiting on inspiration to strike. Evie has been surprised by how many words she actually could write in a day when she did just show up to write at her desk, she has learned what time of day works best for her (after 7pm usually), and she is really excited about making daily writing more a part of her life. She wants to be the next Christopher Paolini, the homeschooler who wrote Eragon at age 15. She just turned 14 last week, so she has some time :).

Below is a few pics...notice on her wall is pinned a NaNo Graph for progress, tips, % goals, daily goals graphs, ect....I am so very proud of her for taking on this challenge, and succeeding!

Evie with her Winners Certificate

Sticking her last sticker of completion on her graph!