Christmas Tree Hunting

Eden, UT

Our original travel plans included being safely located at a tropical beach location well before winter even began to set in. For various reasons though, we ended up postponing those beach plans and now find ourselves in the mountains of northern Utah completely unprepared for cold. Part of the great purge last spring included most of my winter clothes, so even though we did get to our storage unit before coming here to Utah and were able to grab a few things, some things just were not even available. Like a winter coat or even a warmish jacket. I was happy to find in my lone box of saved clothing a pair of tights that only had one small hole in the foot. The weather has not yet reached terrific winter lows here and the snow has been sparse, but even so we have had to purchase a few things to make it through these couple months. Which is why thrift stores make me so happy. If I am going to wear this winter coat for approximately 4-6 weeks, I appreciate that it only cost me $10. Appropriate winter footwear though is a different matter, not so much because I am squeamish about wearing used shoes, but because size elevens are hard to find anywhere but especially at a thrift store.

In addition to a lack of winter clothes, we realized that we were not prepared to decorate for Christmas. In that same trip to our storage unit in which I gratefully retrieved a pair of tights, we did manage to grab the Christmas stockings, but the rest of our decorations remain stowed away in boxes in a storage unit in Colorado, or, in the case of our 7 foot tall pre-lit Christmas tree, lost to the purge along with my winter wardrobe. Thanksgiving weekend came and went. The college kids came 'home' and consumed copious amounts of an improvised turkey dinner with us. But, for the first time since we moved our Christmas decorating to Thanksgiving weekend, we did not hang stockings or garlands, put a wreath on our door or erect a tree and hang all our favorite ornaments on it. Something had to be done. So, while my friends in Colorado were posting Facebook pictures of their families braving the cold to hunt and cut down a tree in the wilderness, we went Christmas tree hunting too, at a local thrift store.

At the front of the store, behind a row of precariously balanced, donated bikes, was a stack of 'trees,' most still in boxes, many of the boxes sporting copious layers of packing tape representing years of being un-boxed and re-boxed year after year. Erin, Kris, and I began the process of going through boxes, aided, in some cases, by the box knife we found abandoned on the dusty window sill behind the stacked trees. Many were incomplete, but we still managed to assemble at least three and drag them over to a nearby outlet. Not a one of them had working lights. But a store employee quoted us a price of just $10 on one of the trees, so we took it, faulty lights and all. Sadly I took no pictures to post on Facebook and impress my friends with our own tree hunting process, one which involved us knocking over parts of the bike display about a half dozen times.

We bought our little tree all new lights on the way home and spent a half hour cutting wires and removing all the original lights in favor of the new. That was a more involved task than we had anticipated and resulted in lots of little green 'needles' all over the kitchen floor. Three weeks later we still sweep them up. Along with lights, we also purchased a ream of white paper and went to town folding origami birds and cutting out snowflakes. Okay, mostly Fionn did. And by St Nicholas's Day we had a tree ready and waiting for the shoes that are now under it every night in anticipation of chocolate being left, not IN the shoes, because I have been informed that that is gross, even if the chocolate is wrapped, but rather ON the toes of said shoes. When Christmas is over and we are getting ready to move on, our little tree will probably go back to where it came from, or possibly be passed on to someone who needs one and next year we may just head to another thrift store in another town to find our next tree.

"Home again, Safe at Last"

Eden, UT

Prior to selling our house in Colorado, a standard line in almost every prayer: morning or night, at meals or bedtime or whatever, was "thank you for our home." (I know, no 'vain repetitions') I find myself still saying it, but have changed it up to say "this home" instead. I mean, how can you not be thankful for a roof and beds and running water, even if you don't actually own said roof and beds and water. For months this summer and early fall we lived in successive new homes every few days, finally slowing down for a whole thirty days in Cedar City Utah in September and now we are settled in Northern Utah for the holidays before taking off again in January.

Moving every few days to a new 'home' meant learning new things at each place, like which light switches do what (or nothing) and where the toilet paper is in each new bathroom, and also led to some interesting adventures and exposed us to a myriad of decorating schemes and paint colors that frankly we would never have experienced in a home of our own. We started to name the houses according to their primary decorating schemes: the James Bond house, the 70's house, the mermaid house, the hippie house, the cactus house. We have lived in the middle of a California walnut grove, in a small third floor apartment in Idaho, and in a beach cottage in Oregon. Sometimes we had to fill in a one night gap between home rentals and so ended up one night in a fabulous hotel on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco and also experienced a few other less desirable, but equally memorable, hotels.

One of our homes this summer sported a five foot long vinyl sticker cowboy silhouette scene on the wall above the bed.

One night we arrived late to our newest house to discover that our hosts had actually stocked our kitchen for us!

In one place, "two full baths" turned out to be one full bath and a bathroom off the master bedroom that had NO doors and no shower, but a tub that could not be filled with hot water before the water heater wore out. So it was 'showers' sitting on the floor of the tub and ducking my head under the water spout.

In one house the doorknob on the bathroom door was about 3/4 of the way from bottom of the door and it always made me feel short.

That same bathroom door locked on the outside so that one day we were surprised by Ronan suddenly knocking on the back door to get in because he had locked himself in the bathroom, couldn't get anyone's attention and so squeezed out the tiny bathroom window onto the deck.

We experienced our first airbnb that was not strictly a vacation rental, but was actually someone's lived in home (they rent it out when they are on vacation). It was a little weird at first. We had to remove a load of their laundry from the drier. The fridge and pantry were full of their food. It was the first time we have ever had a wine collection in the house or beer in the fridge. But it was comfortable and clean,  the neighbors were nice, and it was actually a really good experience.

There have been so many sinks that do not drain properly and so many dull kitchen knives.

The instruction at one house included permission to smoke pot as long as we brought our own but to please not have any open fires in the backyard as the fire danger was high. We were back in Colorado.

We slept for the first time ever in a camper trailer.

We briefly enjoyed a bathroom sink with rainbow lights that flashed whenever the water ran.

One home had a beautiful hand made African chess set on display and the kids played chess every day.

It has been fun to bounce from one place to the next. When we arrive we explore the new house and find out what sort of kitchen supplies we have and what games or puzzles or even books might be in the house for us to use while we are there. Kris and I search out the best walking path options, Liam hopes for a bike in the garage, Ronan for a nearby basketball hoop, Fionn just wants a puzzle with all the pieces still there. On the weekend we will do hangouts with our big kids and introduce them to all the fabulous and/or bizarre aspects of our newest accommodations. It's all part of the adventure. And we have discovered that wherever we are, we can be at home.

A Museum Full of Airplanes!

Eden, UT

Yesterday we took several hours out of the middle of our school day and went to see the Aerospace Museum on Hill Air Force base. It was something I just found on one of my 'free stuff to do ' google searches that I do at each new place we go to. And it was really amazing. We are well into the traditional school year by now and for one of my sons the SAT is looming ever more near, only three weeks away in fact, so one could make the argument that a field trip just now to look at a bunch of airplanes was unwarranted and perhaps unwise and definitely an interruption to our school day routine, but I think that field trips are always a great idea.

Our kids stood underneath a B-17 bomber while their dad explained where each member of the crew sat and what his job was. (Is it redundant to say B-17 "Bomber?" The B stands for bomber, doesn't it?) Fionnula asked why would someone fly a helicopter instead of an airplane and how did they fly anyway, and luckily Kris was there to competently answer that question because my knowledge on the topic is vague at best. They saw a reproduction of the Wright Brother's 1903 flyer. There was a detailed display about the Vietnam war and specifically POWs. We watched a short video about Gail Halvorsen, the Candy Bomber. We saw one plane that is in the midst of being reconstructed and watched as another that is on display outdoors was being repainted. Liam decided on a new favorite plane. Fionn decided she wanted to learn more about the WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots). And we all learned the name of the B-29 that did the weather reconnaissance over Japan and determined that the atomic bomb could be dropped. Now there is a fabulous piece of historical trivia for you. I know they also read and watched things that I missed.


If I was concerned about following a specific curriculum or scope and sequence, this short trip to a museum was definitely a bit all over the place. But we were mostly thinking that airplanes are cool and free museums are cool and taking a break from math on a computer is cool. The fact that Fionn came home and looked up articles and books on the WASP and that we started to put together a list of World War 2 movies to see was just a bonus.

It's Halloween!!!!

Greeley, CO

Over the weekend we went shopping for Halloween costumes. Primarily one Halloween costume, because one teenager is boycotting the costume thing altogether and the other says his quidditch hoodie paired with a pair of sweatpants counts as a costume. Fionn has been sure what her costume for this year would be since at least last Halloween, possibly earlier since I know she maintains a list of future Halloween costume plans. Early this month she put together a detailed list of requirements for said costume and has been carefully hoarding things like cake decorating tips and cardboard tubes, and pestering her brothers for the use of their belts and her father for the whereabouts of duct tape. Because she is determined to be a convincing Tusken Raider. You know, the Sand People from Star Wars, only in our house no one other than I calls them Sand People, because the proper name is Tusken Raider and my children are politically correct Star Wars fans.

Halloween has always been a big deal to our kids. Years ago I used to spend the last week of October slaving over a sewing machine to produce all the requested costumes. Somewhere along the way we switched to a deal whereby mom made two new costumes and everyone else was responsible for coming up with their own. Lately everyone has been responsible for their own, so Fionnula has been making her own most of her life. I have been worried about the execution of this particular costume. Worried that Fionn's expectations are beyond anything we could possibly reproduce with a trip to the thrift store, a few odds and ends, and some duct tape. But while she did make a few sacrifices in the end, her costume turned out fantastic I think. And after my first trip ever to an official Halloween costume store I am just so thankful that my daughter not only wants to be a Tusken Raider but that she is disgusted by the sexualized Snow White and 'Pirate Queen' costumes that were on prominent display there.

But Halloween isn't only about the costumes. There is also a lot of anticipation about the family celebration. For lots of reasons, we have never been big on the trick-or-treat thing, though my older kids can remember a couple attempts at it. For one thing it is typically cold and miserable in Colorado on Halloween night. So we have had to come up with our own traditions that don't leave our kids feeling deprived of the trick-or-treat experience. We have tried a few different Halloween night activities in the past. Its a good night for a pinata as there is an abundance of pinata sized candy available this time of year. You need an indoor pinata venue though if its snowing outside but conveniently we had access to school gyms for years when Kris was a principal. Little kids in Halloween costumes dancing in the living room to Thriller was once a standard, but its hard to get Ronan and Liam to still participate in that. What has stuck, and been our Halloween evening tradition now for years is the treasure hunt. Its so popular that kids at college will get on a hangout call with us so they can participate even though they won't get any of the treasure! This is not an average treasure hunt. Kris spends hours putting together the clues and they include complicated riddles, palindromes, number puzzles, scrambled letters, rebuses and brain teasers and even make use of youtube videos and music scores. This year it will be held in Grandma's house which should add an extra level of difficulty, not to mention Fionn's extremely limited vision through her Tusken Raider costume.

Unschooling our way

Greeley, Colorado

With 3 children left homeschooling I would say we are extremely relaxed in our approach. While I consider our methods to be unschooling because we are pretty far removed from the institutionalized, subject based, school-bell-driven techniques of the typical public school, others would say we are not. My understanding of the generally accepted definition of unschoolers is that there are no outside influences or requirements on what or how a certain child learns, but rather the adults are there as a support to help the child find resources to learn when and how and what the child chooses. While I am fascinated by this approach to education, it is not exactly what we do. We call ourselves 'almost unschoolers,' and have in fact had periods of time of varying lengths over the years when I would say we were true unschoolers. But we have settled pretty comfortably into a world where we make a few academic requirements of our kids and then allow them to be largely in charge of the rest of their education.

This hasn't always been our style. In fact the first book I read on real homeschooling methods was a classical homeschooling book. I tried a lot of what was in that book. Initially I spent a lot of time planning, I figured how many chapters from our history book we would need to read each week in order to finish it within the desired time frame. I was dedicated to making sure we covered all the traditional school subjects and we had a schedule that detailed when we would do our math and when science and when history and when writing.  We read some great books together and we did some fun projects too, but I found myself feeling overwhelmed trying to fit it all in each week and frequently frustrated when we had to skip an art project or a hike again because we hadn't finished the planned history or science lesson.

A few things led to me slowly relaxing my control over when and what each of my children were learning. First, I constantly felt like we were running behind and trying to catch up with a schedule that I had inflicted upon us. At the same time, I was realizing that while one child was thriving with a schooling method that was heavy on reading and writing, others were floundering. My husband was also reminding me that school subjects were a creation of the school system that were more about making evaluating students convenient for educational institutions and were not, in fact, real. Science learning isn't actually separate from math learning and reading learning and so there really isn't any reason to teach them separately in different sessions during designated slots of time. And finally, my oldest two took college entrance exams and were tested on exactly two things: English and math.

Our shift away from a more traditional approach was not sudden, but each of these considerations led to a slow transition. I went from making lists of required reading to lists of books to choose from to not making any lists and just letting them read.  I stopped insisting that at thirteen years old they start, and work sequentially through, a specific general science book, and just left the books on the shelves and let them take down whichever one interested them whenever. We did, in fact spend one full year as true unschoolers. One child became an expert on all things NASA. One built Rube Goldberg projects all over the house utilizing wooden train tracks and orange match box car race tracks and dominoes.

Two things made us step away from complete unschooling. We wanted them to be prepared for college entrance exams and felt that that required a more formal approach at least with math. But more importantly we felt that it was unrealistic to allow them to expect to never have to do anything not of their choosing. So we settled comfortably into our almost unschooling methods. We expect each of the kids to read, to write, and to practice math regularly. Not daily, because we are frequently out doing things, but regularly. They read anyway. I am usually ok with counting journaling and emailing as writing. Math is a little more formal as they each are expected to be working through khan academy.  The rest of their learning is up to them. Though I do encourage them to be learning something.  And The 'almost' part of almost unschooling gives us some leeway to crack down somewhat if we feel that the 17 year old is going to need to take SAT prep a little more seriously if he is to have any chance of reaching his own goals.

It is difficult though to separate school from family life and family life does have a few additional requirements that I don't consider to be academic, but do consider to be an essential part of their education: daily scripture study, church attendance, cooking, cleaning.  Maybe my eleven year old has no interest in learning to clean a toilet but I still expect her to take her turn cleaning the bathroom.  When Kris and I go on an afternoon  walk and I leave behind  instructions on how to finish dinner preparations or even ask someone to prepare a part of the meal on their own, it doesn't really matter a lot to me if they chose to learn to shred chicken or bake corn bread.  One could even say that when we take everyone hiking in the mountains or send them to the park to play frisbee for a bit that we are making some of their learning choices for them. Again, calling ourselves almost unschoolers allows us to make these decisions and not feel as though we are betraying our educational philosophy.

Our home is not an academy of intense learning. Most days they do their scripture study and math and then spend an inordinate amount of time reading Harry Potter, or playing chess, or writing stories, or drawing, or tossing a football in the yard. But  I noticed earlier this week that Liam is watching Crash Course biology. Fionn routinely uses all our note cards to take meticulous notes from stacks of library books. I resist the urge to take over and tell her how to take notes or what to do with them. She occasionally gives me a paper she has written and she can spout unusual facts about trees and snowflakes. I make book suggestions and sometimes they read the books I suggest. I read history out loud to them sometimes because I love history but I do not ask them to write anything or produce any proof of what they learned. We go hiking. Kris took Liam and Ronan on a tour of an airplane factory. They listen to and discuss the news and are way more politically aware than I was as a teenager. Occasionally someone will get seriously engaged in a topic. More often they sort of jump from one interesting thing to another. But this is working for us now and if we begin to feel that it is no longer serving us we will make the changes we think are right then.

Still Exploring in Southern Utah

Cedar City, Utah

This was our last week in Cedar City, Monday we head back to Colorado to meet another returning missionary, to visit Grandma and Grandpa for a couple weeks, and to get all our teeth cleaned. We had already done the big sites here that were within a reasonable distance and our options for adventures this week were: to go back and explore further in favorite places we had been, to commit to 3 hours or so in the car to get to destinations a little further off, or to find more obscure locales in which to adventure. With the encouragement and advice of Cheryl and Rob (or maybe Ron?), who we spoke with briefly in the hot tub at the local pool, we chose option three. Did I mention we purchased a one month membership to the Cedar City Aquatic Center? Well we did, and it has been fabulous and not only because of the travel tips provided by locals in the hot tub. Though I have to admit that, while I did get in a few laps here and there, most of my pool time was pretty lazy stuff.

So, this week we saw:

An abandoned iron pit mine, affectionately referred to by the locals as "2000 Flushes," because of the bright blue water that filled the pit when the mine struck underground water. As is becoming standard out here, the road in was a relatively rough dirt road that google maps did not even know existed. The plan was to hike down into the mine a bit and get closer to the water. The reality was that there were multiple groups out shooting nearby and there were so many spent shotgun shells on the ground that it was impossible to walk without stepping on at least some. The place was used as a convenient dump and just down the hill from where we stood were things like broken microwaves and a burnt out old car. And also there was a dead cow. For reals. So, in the end we took a picture and left.

The remains of an old mining town, creatively named: Old Iron Town. As far as ghost towns go, it was pretty sparse in actual buildings, but there was a short little trail weaving around and through the ruins and explanatory signs at each to help those of us who don't know what an arrastra is (basically, its a mill).   There were the remains of one house and a handful of industrial remains, like a chimney from the foundry, a mill for grinding sand (the arrastra), and most impressively a huge furnace for making charcoal to heat the iron. All pretty cool stuff, but I think our kids were most impressed by the jack rabbits they spotted out on the edges of the site. Those were some big bunnies.

Lava tube caves: Utah's Mammoth Caves, which are just holes in the ground from the outside but huge caverns once you venture inside. The only real caves I have ever been in before are Carlsbad Caverns. These are no where near that size, but they also are not artificially lit, so once we went through the opening and then around a corner it was completely and totally dark. We all had flashlights, but they lit only a little path right around us, even standing near the opening still, the light penetrates only a little way into the cave. We turned all of our flashlights off a couple times just to experience the intense darkness. Supposedly there is a way out at the end of the main cave, but we didn't go that far, the further back we got, the more the floor was littered with large lava rocks that made walking difficult, the drippier the walls and ceilings became, and the lower the ceiling was getting with still no end in sight, so we turned back to the entrance. One of the side caves, Ronan did climb all the way through, the last quarter crawling on his belly out the other end, but the rest of us again went out the way we came in.

Lava Flows. Pretty much the whole canyon was full of lava, and we stopped at two great places to view the immensity of it all. First at a canyon overlook near the caves where groves of aspens were looking spectacular in their fall foliage against the lava rock landscape. Next we drove out along possibly the scariest dirt road yet at the bidding of a tiny wooden sign reading: "Lava Flow," to view acres and acres of lava rocks as far as we could see.  I sincerely never expected to see lava anything in the Rocky Mountains of Utah.

Short Trips near St George

Cedar City, Utah

Thursday we went to a few more places on our 'short trips' list. There is no official list, its in our heads. But there are a handful of things we have read about or seen pictures of that we want to go see but which are not all day trips on their own. Thursday happened to be a day that we needed to go back to St George. Again. Because Cedar City has no Costco. Or Target. Or lots of things. So it seemed like a good chance to also see a few things that we had a vague idea were near St George.

First was the Glitter Pit. Or Sparkle Mountain. Whichever name you like, it is part of a once abandoned gypsum mine. I say 'once abandoned' because everything we saw online said it was abandoned, but signs at the actual site would indicate that that is not accurate and that it is indeed owned and the owners have all rights to the gypsum located there. It was however empty when we got there with no indication that anyone was actively mining it or taking precautions other than a sign to keep anyone from at least exploring the pit. So we did. The dirt that has been dug up and then piled in hills all around the pit it was removed from really does glitter and sparkle in the sun as it is absolutely full of loose pieces of gypsum. It looks like piles of broken glass. And down in the pit, the red rock wall is broken up by a huge vein of pure white gypsum. Funny that on the wall it looks bright white, but the small pieces when separated from the wall are clear like glass. All this sparkling beauty and it turns out that the main use for gypsum is in dry wall of all things.

After exploring the mine pit for a while we headed off to stop number two, the Warner Valley Dinosaur tracks. The glitter pit is just barely over the Arizona border outside of St George. The dinosaur tracks are near Hurricane Utah. As far as I can tell the only route to those dinosaur tracks though is a long dirt road heading north from pretty much where we were. It started out relatively friendly but became increasingly rough as we went. There were several places where the road is obviously at least occasionally under water. It was a super pretty drive though and we barely saw another soul the whole way. Luckily the dino track site is marked, so we parked and walked out to it. Dinosaur tracks in red rock ground. Exactly as promised. Somehow it is especially cool to see them there on the ground as compared to seeing a piece of rock with a print on it in the museum.

The last visit of the day, if you don't count hamburgers and Costco I guess, was the Brigham Young winter home in St George. Its exactly what it sounds like. A tour of an old house with some church history thrown in. We met missionaries from Texas and Canada and Ireland. And learned that pomegranates can grow in St George, a fact that I am sure has contributed to Kris's desire to live there. They have palm trees, it doesn't snow, they grow pomegranates. Basically it is paradise on Earth.