2022

2021 was not the greatest year, but luckily 2022 was much better. It feels like we didn't do anything this year but that may be the after effects of having such a wild 2021. In fact, a lot happened. We took everything at a pace that felt right.

We went to Mississippi and Texas for about a month in the winter. We went to our first Mardi Gras parade (actually a week before Mardi Gras and it was a more family friendly, though still pretty wild, parade in Bay St. Louis and Waveland, MS). We learned to fly a trick kite on the beach in Galveston and went on a swamp boat tour in Louisiana. We saw the massive Saturn V rocket that was never launched at a cool science center just off the I-10. We did a mini adventure into New Orleans to walk around some public gardens and go to Cafe du Monde for beignets. The highlight for me was seeing the mounds at Poverty Point in Louisiana. 

We taught classes at our homeschool co-op....poetry, a comic fan club, and circuits. The kids took lots of classes and made tons of friends. Laurel has been learning all sorts of fiber arts and how to cook things on the campfire. She did a yoga class and even led a demonstration at the end of the semester. Marko enjoyed his first acting and improv class and has asked for more of those. Max loved every class he took, but especially music theory and graphic novels. 

M ran a trail ultra. He ended up going to the race solo...it was important for him to get back out there, but hard for the rest of us to imagine being there while he ran. He had a decent race and felt pretty good, but it ended up being his only ultra this year. He did do a lot of running with his friends early in the morning, and started going out with the running club that meets down the street, and even ran with me and the kids! He headed up an aid station at Rachel Carson and the kids loved helping him out with that. We even took one of our out-of-town visitors up to help at the aid station for a while! I think we'll get out to more races in different ways in the next few years, because it's something I really miss.

Probably the best thing we did this year was bike the C&O Towpath and Great Allegheny Passage from Washington DC to Pittsburgh. Looking back, I bought the train tickets in mid-July for a September 1 departure. Very daring. Our first rides with the kids were only 2 or 3 miles! They constantly swerved into each other and complained about needing snacks. We just kept taking them on longer and longer day rides and got some 20+ mile days in before leaving. I think we were successful in completing the ride because we gave ourselves a very generous itinerary of 10 days to do 350ish miles, which gave us plenty of time to take breaks and ride slow. The rain was epic and the conditions on the towpath were pretty gnarly. There were two challenging detours. It could have been terrible, but it actually felt fun almost the entire time. They now have excellent trail manners and an amazing boost of confidence in their abilities to try new things. I think we'll be doing more self-propelled adventuring in 2023.

Homeschooling is going really well. This is our fourth school year doing it and I think we finally figured out our style. Lots of self-directed learning with a healthy dose of road-schooling and family adventuring, and a sprinkling of Core Knowledge and Brave Writer activities each month. I keep a master list of goals for each of us that are based on what the kids want to learn, the state standards, classes or trips or volunteer opportunities that are on our calendar already and any other things I think are really important to focus on. (And by "master list" I mean I have a piece of 8x10 notebook paper for each person with ideas scribbled on it. Not very flashy, but it works.) Each month I meet with the kids 1:1 to decide what they want to work on and what resources they need. Around the 25th of each month, we meet again to see what they accomplished vs what they need to finish up or push to the next month and we also make decisions at that time about what to revise or even abandon. All fall, we ended up deciding to just carry on with our study of colonial America, which was fine with me and led to a much richer and more nuanced understanding. Anything they want to save gets filed in the portfolio folder or we take a picture of it, and we shred everything else and put it in the compost. This is my favorite part...I love decluttering. It helps my brain think more clearly. I work with each kid individually on "school days" but a lot of their learning is very independent, spontaneous and with each other or with friends. For instance I just went downstairs and the boys have wired up the Makey Makey to some grapefruits and are using them to control a video game. Laurel was working on a painting to fulfill her Girl Scout Tree badge. We watch a lot of documentaries and visit museums as a group and Marko and Max tend to play a lot of games together. Each week they take turns going up to help my mom babysit their cousin, and we also go regularly to take M's mom on an outing to the library. 

Life is good and we are looking forward to carrying on in 2023. 

Holiday Time

Today we had the "Share Fair" for our homeschool co-op. This semester, M and I taught 3 classes...one on circuits, one on poetry and one on comics (inspired by Cat Kid Comic Club). When we put out the work to display today, I realized how proud I was of what they had all learned...everyone a little different and a different amount. Most of the kids came by with a family member or friends to show off their work. Lots of additional kids were interested in our circuits, which all had variable noises and lights. We boxed up the class materials into kits they could take home. 

The last few months have been a little bit of a struggle for me. I feel like the kids are on very different levels in all subjects. There's only three of them, but I feel like I have a lot of strands going on in my head at all times! I decided not to teach any classes in the spring term and volunteer in another way with the co-op because the kids still want to go. I also think I need to introduce a little more structure for each of my kids at home. The year started off a little crazy because M's dad was sick almost the whole month of August and then we went on a 2 week bicycle ride right after that. It was much less crazy than the previous year, so I didn't really think much about it at the time, but we ended up having to be really flexible for a while with a lot of "school on the go." 

We've been doing a deep dive into American history for a while and I'm ready to move on to some science. I have a feeling that most of our  I'm trying to rekindle my crochet skills and work on a coursera on UX design. We have a few field trips planned including a return to Galveston Island. I also want to set up better project space around the house to encourage the kids to work on stuff, and finally call the piano tuner. 

The holidays are upon us, and I'm feeling pretty chill about it. We have a good amount of social outings to see our friends and family, but also plenty of time to be together at home. 

October Homeschool

 We had a lot of pleasant weather in October. It hardly rained and the leaves seemed to stay on the trees for a long time. The ones on our block are finally dropping so I'm out with my rake every day. I put them on the garden beds in a big pile, run my weed whacker through them and then spread them around. I'm finding a lot of dead spotted lantern flies in the leaves, which makes me worried about how many eggs must surely be around. I guess we'll find out in the spring. 

Laurel continued her study of George Washington this month. We went to the Heinz History Center and Fort Pitt Museum, read some biographies and listened to a lot of podcasts...the favorite being History that Doesn't Suck. She's writing an essay on his leadership. She's also been learning how to sew and made her Halloween costume....a dragon based on a character from the book series, Wings of Fire. She sewed horns, scales, wings and a tale onto a sweatshirt...it turned out pretty well and she really did do the whole thing by herself. 

Marko worked on his costume, which was centered around this paper mask of a mountain goat he found online. There were 19 pages of tiny pieces to cut out and fold and glue together! He decided to paint the horns gold. It was impressive when it was done, although not that sturdy. It made it through the damp weather on Halloween but I don't think it's something he can use multiple times. 

Max went as baby Yoda (Grogu) and his costume was pretty simple...a headband with ears on it that he found at the thrift store, a shawl that I repurposed as a cloak, and some green face paint. We haven't done face paint on the kids before and he loved it. 

We also went to Bicycle Heaven, a museum we had seen advertised when we were on our bike trip. It's a huge, private collection of steel bikes in a warehouse on the North Side. The bike from the PeeWee Herman movie is there. It's a working bike shop. Oddly, there was a nail salon as well. 

Marko and Max are working through some social studies units on the miscellaneous things that textbook editors think elementary students should know....latitude, map scale, world religions. Everyone learned about the digestive system, and my mom created a hands on model of the digestive tract for them. 

I bought a new math book to hopefully help Laurel level up. She's not terrible at math and actually pretty intuitive when it comes to practical applications like estimating money or ingredients for baking or sewing. But I have noticed gaps in her math vocabulary during the last two months of working in the Algebra book. Hopefully this supplemental book (called Bridge the Gap: Math) will help. I'm making Marko do it, too.

To be honest, October felt a little flat for homeschool. I think I just really prefer traveling and loved doing the bike trip in September. Part of that joy comes from my ability to focus solely on our kids. On the bike trip, I didn't even turn my cell phone on except a few times in town. We were really focused on one thing and experiencing it together. When we are home there are a lot of other situations that need my attention and our activities are scattered. 

Bike Camping from Washington DC to Pittsburgh

We went on a pretty epic vacation with our kids. I'm still somewhat shocked that we managed to pull it off and actually ride our bicycles, together, from Washington DC to Pittsburgh, over 350 miles! It was also amazing in other ways....we got to spend a lot of time together with M actually taking time off work, we happened to be riding at the absolute best time to be harvesting paw paws along the Potomac, and we met so many cool people along the way. The weather was rather terrible at times, and there were two challenging detours, but mainly we had fun. So, how did we arrive at this idea? And more importantly, how did we get our kids to actually do it?

Literally everyone thought that our idea was crazy and that there was no way we were going to be able to do it. Haters gonna hate and all that. However, M and I had previously biked an equivalent distance towing 2 of the kids (an out and back to Cumberland, MD), and I have ridden on the GAP many times alone or with friends, and once did the Washington DC to Pittsburgh trip by myself. So, we were very familiar with the trails, the logistics of getting to Washington and what it's like to do a multi-day trip on bikes. M scheduled his vacation days, and I bought train tickets and booked a hotel in Georgetown. Now we were committed. 

The first time I took the kids out on bikes for a group ride, they were constantly swerving into each other, yelling at each other, failing to signal, nobody could make it up a hill, and I think we went about 4 miles. It was terrible and I was worried, for sure. However, we just kept going out, and their trail manners improved. They built up some stamina for hills. In August we made it out for several 20+ mile rides where everybody learned a lot about hydration and nutrition and Sheetz saved the day. In the meantime, we were getting our bikes serviced...there was something wonky with my headset that a mechanic at REI fixed and M took his 20 year old Surly Trucker to a neighborhood bike shop and had it spruced up. We bought a bunch of bags and worked to fit 2 tents, 3 quilts, sleeping pads, food for 5, water vessels, clothing, extra tubes and repair gear, and a stove. This was complicated by the fact that not everybody could actually haul gear, but we managed to make it work, although M definitely had a LOADED bike. 

The train to Washington leaves at 5am, so the night before we biked down to a hotel near the train station. The train ride was long, but we got there in the afternoon with plenty of time to make the 5ish mile bike trip through the National Mall and up the Rock Creek Trail to Georgetown. We stopped for some very expensive ice cream ($8 for a cone!!??) and took a look at the monuments, but it was very hot and we did not linger. When we got to Georgetown, our hotel was right on the Canal. We had time for showers and dinner out at a restaurant before going to bed. The next morning we set out on the Towpath. 

Our plan was to camp along the C&O Canal because we really didn't know how far the kids could go, but we did know there are plenty of campsites...every 5-10 miles along the entire 184 mile path. They don't require reservations and all have water, so we figured we could just go as far as we could go and always have a place to camp. If we got behind schedule and ran out of time, we could always hop back on the train in Cumberland and go to Pittsburgh. But every day the kids rode a little further than what was on our itinerary and despite truly epic amounts of rain, and two difficult detours, we got to Cumberland on the 5th day.  The hotel clerk directed us to the bike wash station and even gave us special towels to dry our bikes off. We were so muddy and smelly but she didn't even blink an eye. Then it was up to the rooms for showers and laundry. We let the kids watch tv and we ordered pizza and wings for dinner. We were pretty grimy after 5 days of pedaling in the heat and 4 nights of primitive camping. Plus the mud (oh the mud). But we had also really gotten into the rhythm of being together, of eating camp food and riding as a group, and sleeping in tents. We had 5 days left to ride the Great Allegheny Passage, and at 150 miles with a lot of downhill, that suddenly felt very achievable. 

The weather was still pretty rainy so we ended up riding part of the way up Savage Mountain - only 15 miles - and stopping for the day at a hostel in Frostburg. We got soaked the entire way. We had the leftover pizza with us for lunch and had to eat it quickly before it got soggy. It was still raining when we left the next morning but the skies did clear when we got to the top and we had a great view. We had our sights set on Confluence, so we kept moving. We camped at the Yough Overflow Campground, which was super nice and had hot showers. The next day we went to Connellsville and stayed at the KOA, with not only hot showers but also a swimming pool! The weather was looking gnarly though, and we had to make some decisions about how to get home. The kids ended up agreeing to ride almost 50 miles from Connellsville to Homestead, so that we could stay in a hotel for our last night (and not camp and ride in the rain). It ended up being a great plan, and we enjoyed another restaurant dinner and a fairly leisurely 8 mile ride into Point State Park the next day...in the rain of course. We then had to get home, which was another 6 or 7 miles, and up the dreaded giant hill. There's just no way around it. But we were all cheering when we pulled into our driveway. 

Along the way we met a French family on a 6 month bike tour of North America, a retired couple who had ridden a tandem bicycle to Maryland...from Oregon, and a disabled veteran who was walking 1,300 miles with his dog towards the 9/11 memorial in Somerset. 

We ate dehydrated meals I prepared at home, Kraft mac, tortillas and crackers, cheese, pepperoni, peanut butter, loads of candy, oatmeal, PopTarts and paw paws! We used our Jetboil to heat water, for lack of a better cooking system. Cooking for 5 is pretty time consuming, but this worked out ok.

We saw herons, egrets, bald eagles, turtles, frogs, toads, cats, and a bear.

We slept in an ancient Mountain Hardware tent and a new Hogback tarp tent. One regret is that although we also carried a sil nylon tarp we didn't have a good way to set it up to make shelter for cooking or sitting under. More line? Extra poles? I'm not sure what the solution is but I'll definitely be working on that before our next camping trip. 

We thankfully didn't have many mechanical issues, but did have one flat tire (in a rain storm, of course). We tried to patch it but ended up swapping out the tube. Maybe the glue didn't set because of the rain? We were lugging enough stuff to be able to stop and help another cyclist with HIS flat tire, and even had a spare tube to give him, since he didn't have the right one. That felt pretty good.

We kept safe by carrying a first aid kit, foil blankets, water filtration, and being first aid/CPR certified and experienced in backcountry safety and risks. We wore helmets. But probably the safest thing was being away from cars. I am definitely up for more rail trail or gravel riding, but I would not take my kids on a road tour any time soon. 

We have a bungee strap called a TowWhee, which I used to give Max a boost, since he's on a 20" bike with 3 gears (just not a fair fight, lol). It loops around his handlebars and loops onto my saddle. It definitely requires good communication between riders. Max still has to pedal and balance and brake and all that so it cannot be used if a kid is totally exhausted or not able to pay attention. We probably used it about 30% of the time. When we were not using it, I just stowed it in a little cupholder that I attached to his handlebars. 

And finally, how did we keep everyone motivated? We knew that we each had different strengths and weaknesses and that we would all be supporting each other...and needing support in different ways. The boys did not ride as fast as the rest of us might have liked. But they were also the best at finding paw paws and delighted in catching toads or playing games. All of us got down from time to time. It is actually kind of hard to be dirty and tired and far from home and very wet. We brought a lot of candy. We took breaks whenever anyone asked for one. When we were actually riding, we could go around 10 miles per hour. If you can do that a  30- 50 mile day is really only 3 to 5 hours of pedaling out of like 14 hours of daylight. We also sometimes rode very slowly for many hours. But we knew we definitely had time for all those breaks and slow miles and we leaned into them and enjoyed them. In one rainstorm, Marko kept pulling over to move turtles off the trail. It's not what I would do, but it's actually a pretty thoughtful act. We spent the days exploring river banks and reading historic signs and telling each other stories. At night, we would light a campfire if we could, and read aloud. We suffered from a lot of bug bites and a few cases of road rash, and nobody can believe this, but we were not sore at all. I think because we never rode too hard, or maybe because it felt like we were constantly getting on and off our bikes. 

Pedaling towards your home is very motivating. Every rotation a little bit closer. Beyond offering delicious snacks, we didn't bribe the kids. The reward was finishing, and doing it together, and we all definitely feel really good about that. 

Soft Launch on a New School Year

"School" starts July 1 for us, and by start, it means we file some papers with our local district and begin logging our activities. Max is joining the official roster this year as he is now at the age where school is compulsory. Our homeschool style has largely become to follow interests, with lots of backwards documenting on my part, and a healthy sprinkle of word study and arithmetic to fill in gaps and promote strong literacy and math skills for everybody.

Max and Marko just finished the Phantom Tollbooth with M and loved taking the quizzes on the SparkNotes website. Max is working on math in Khan Academy, reading lots of Cat Kid and Dogman and learning to ride his bicycle safely in a group and on the street. He is really into making paper airplanes and does a lot of age-appropriate creative writing....lists and plans and notes to us. As long as he keeps writing on his own and shows improvement with spelling and handwriting, I will not do any formal curriculum in that subject. 

Marko is at tree camp this week and doing lots of interesting things like working in the tree nursery and setting bait on wildlife cameras. He reports that they have to write things down in a little notebook they were give, so I'm hoping that will come home and I can do some additional writing with him about that experience. He's getting a lot better at swimming in deep water and diving and holding his breath. Organizing gaming time with his friends, both virtually and IRL, is a priority for him. He reads a lot. Of all the kids, he is the least enthusiastic about anything school-ish, but I'm finding if I observe him, I can see lots of ways that he is developing math and vocabulary skills. He's also very intuitive about geography.

Laurel is starting 7th grade and working on her sixth grade math book to keep preparing for pre-algebra and higher level math. When she feels like she is ready, we will enroll her in some kind of accredited algebra class. This might not be for six months or a year. She writes a lot for fun, and enjoys meeting monthly with her aunts in a virtual book club. She is currently working on building a list of literature to read through with them this year. We will use some Brave Writer Arrow guides as well as Core Knowledge Series assignments and prompts, and maybe some Spark Notes. Some of the titles I'm excited about include Atlas of the Heart, The Nerviest Girl in the World and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. She started riding horses again and is working on jumping at a canter. 

M is ramping up at a new job, doing a ton of house painting and other home maintenance things, and learning to build circuits from scratch. I'm working on a Coursera course on UX Design, and recently completed my safety certificate in flat water boating for Girl Scouts. Now I can take the scouts out on a lake in kayaks or paddle boards without having to hire a guide. 

As a family, we're working on planning together more. As the kids get older it's easy to just go off in a million different directions and get busier and busier without really having a purpose behind our activities. FOMO is a strong force, and there are many things competing for your attention these days. We know that having rest days built in and lots of "margins" between social situations is key for our health and happiness. "Lovingly holding each other accountable" has become a catch phrase. Writing things down a marker board helps us to 1) set a reasonable number of action items in a day and 2) finish what we started out intending to do. 

What are you doing out there anyway?

What are you doing out there anyway?

Sometimes, I just want to exchange pleasantries with a stranger at a gas station pump

Browse the local authors shelf at a library I’ll never go into again

Collect acorns that look so different from the ones on my street, but will sprout into magnificent oak trees nonetheless

Watch a sunrise over a different urban roofline

Order beignets instead of crullers

This time, we couldn't stop staring at the bridges

Marveling at how many there are, in every direction, crossing ravines and valleys, bays and marshes

Wondering if they were new or just recently painted

Holding a collective breath as we crossed, and they held fast every time,

Safe passage through our curiosity

Home looks different through traveler’s eyes

That scent will hit you when you turn the key and open the door for the first time in a week, a month, a year.

But pay close attention, because it only stands out for a few short minutes.

You can see your life as a stranger would, which mostly ignites gratitude, but may also spur you to finally patch that crack in the back stoop, move the chair to a better spot by the window, exchange pleasantries with a neighbor you’ve known for a decade at the gas station down the block. Bask in familiarity. Appreciate that the market has your favorite brand of milk. Enjoy the incremental change of a sunset from the same spot each evening.

So what am I doing out there anyway? Is it for the adventure or the homecoming?

A Year of Experimentation and Recovery

2021-2022 school year was pretty wild. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other and repeating, "You are on time for whatever the universe has in store for you." Sometimes it felt like we were standing still, stuck in a weird loop, Groundhog Day-style. Other times it felt like life was changing way too fast, and that all the stuff that happened last summer was just a dream. 

We gave the kids a huge amount of free time and autonomy this year, with mixed results. Everybody learned and grew enough, and I am entirely unworried about that aspect. They also made a lot of friends, which was probably one of our biggest goals. Managing social time continues to be a challenge with the pandemic. I appreciated the very clear communication that our homeschool groups have around this issue. People have varying degrees of risk tolerance and everyone seems really respectful of this. The culture is to be very transparent about your possible exposures and allow people the opportunity to give consent to the contact they want to have with you. Often times this meant gathering outside and wearing masks. I miss having people over for tacos, though. Or spontaneous visits from neighbors for a cup of coffee. Nobody stops by unannounced.

The main downside to the autonomy was a chaotic home environment. We had a lot of friction over chores and use of computer/game systems. Our kids do a lot of things together, but they are three years apart, so there are definitely differences in what they can each contribute. For instance, Max cannot reach inside the washing machine to get the clothes out without basically falling in. Laurel can use the oven safely. Marko is the most awake in the morning. He doesn't get up super early, but is extremely efficient in getting things done within a few minutes of waking. 

We have taken Rest seriously this year, leaving Sunday as a day free from work and in general giving people the option to stay home or sleep more or read in bed or whatever they feel like they need, listening to their own bodies. I have seen a big shift in M taking days off running or sleeping in or playing video games after work or whatever he needs to do to chill out instead of always pushing himself. 

I'm about to do some planning for the next school year, which will actually just sort of roll over on July 1 without much notice to anyone, because the further we sink into this home education thing the less we pay attention to things like "school year" or "grade level." 

Natural Ebbing

Monday afternoon and the house is silent, but for the ticking clock and the periodic swishing of paper pages. We went out today, to drop off recycling and tidy some things in the camper, a quick stop at the grocery store. We went to the rock climbing gym to boulder, and finally the library. The rain has been falling steadily since mid-morning, with an occasional snow shower mixed in. Even though we did errands by car and not on foot, just the dashing from the curb to the door was enough to soak us through, and now everyone wants to snuggle up and dive into their stacks of fresh library books.

The fact that we can feels a bit illicit on some level. Like we are getting away with something. After many years of Powering Through, it occurred to me that I could just....not. Nothing bad happened when I took a break. Ditto for the kids. 

Snowbirds for Life

We loved our winter trip to the beach. Flying kites and hunting for seashells is better when it's not super hot. Everyone wants to go back next year. The most stressful part was getting home. We had some problems with our car and the weather was (as is typical in March) stormy. It was 75 when we left Galveston and actually started snowing on us as we pulled in to our parking spot in Pittsburgh. 

On the way home we went to the earthworks site at Poverty Point in Louisiana. This was one of the places I found online months ago when we were thinking of traveling through the area. It turned out to be a fantastic stop. The walking tour was really comprehensive and the rangers gave demonstrations and helped the kids complete Junior Ranger badges. The museum had tons of interesting displays as there were a lot of spear tips and pottery at the site. Since then, I've discovered that there are other mounds/earthworks in Ohio, and I want to plan a trip to look at them. The archeological discoveries at these sites are always evolving and I love learning how the story of the human history of our continent is changing. 

Since we've been home, a lot has come up about what our next steps should be. We signed up for a homeschool co-op this spring, so we are here for the time being, but what should we do after that? 

To the Edge of America

Back in early summer, when our road trip was the Best Thing Ever, M and I started looking at places in Florida to visit over the winter. We love being home for the holidays but winter always gets a little old by February. You have to book campsites far in advance, but we were ready to commit to more time on the road. Things got turned upside down a few weeks later and we spent the next six months recovering from the medical, mental and financial upheaval. But then, things kind of just went...back to normal? And since we have the homeschooling, remote work and camper all lined up, it seems silly to not take advantage. Florida was booked up, so we headed to Mississippi. It's warm and there are miles of white sand beaches, great birding, delicious seafood, carnival parades and really cheap camping. It's called the Secret Coast here because this is where the pirates hid all the treasure. Hurricanes have flattened a good number of towns on the Gulf Coast, and the sea is creeping ever higher. The town has optimistically rebuilt their park and put in a massive wave pool to attract visitors, but the road that runs along the coast is falling down in places. Many, many empty concrete pads hold spaces in between shiny new houses raised on 10 foot pilings. Rising sea levels are acutely felt here. Tomorrow's forecast includes a warning about coastal flooding. The tide will be a foot higher than usual and some roads will be underwater. The weatherman from the New Orleans station didn't bother to say which ones, he just laughed and said if you are in Waveland or Biloxi you'll know which ones to avoid. I'm not sure this park will be here in twenty years.

But for now, it's just high enough for us. We drove 1,100 miles in 2 1/2 days. It was really cold when we left so we didn't even dewinterize the camper until we got here.

Now we are playing outside happily for many hours, reading a Dart book, looking for pirate treasure, bird watching, drawing times tables in the sand, holding poetry teatime and learning about carnival season on the Gulf Coast. 

When the Earth Crumbles Beneath Your Feet

Yesterday morning when I got up, I heard a ton of sirens passing in front of my house. The roads looked very icy, so at first I assumed car crash and went about my business. But then there were just too many of them to be that. My neighbors were posting on Facebook about weird noises and a strong natural gas odor. Then somebody said a bridge over a creek collapsed and I was trying to think of where that could be. When I saw the first picture, I actually jumped up and ran around the house because I was so shocked at the image of pieces of Forbes Avenue laying in the ravine of Frick Park. True, the bridge does cross a creek, but it's at least a hundred feet high and probably 500 feet across! When you walk across it, you are looking down at the tops of the tallest sycamore trees. We more often are looking at from below, because the trail passes underneath. My kids liked to scamper up the steep hillsides and tag the underside of it. Yeah, it was rusty, but what isn't in Pittsburgh? The image was horrifying because so many of my neighbors and friends and kids I know travel on that bridge. During a normal rush hour, cars would be backed up at the light across the whole span. A lot of school buses pass through that intersection. Thankfully the winter weather + Covid closures kept a lot of people home and only a few cars and one bus fell down in the collapse. 

I was also briefly panicking because M was in the park, as he often is at that time, running with his friends before work. There is no way someone could make a complete recovery from multiple organ failure just to get crushed by a bridge in his neighborhood park. Right? RIGHT?? Anyway, he was fine, but had to take the long way back to our house, because police were closing everything off, due to the natural gas gushing out of the pipeline. 

Our street was closed all day while they figured out what to do, which I guess is put up some Jersey barriers and hang a few detour signs. Car and bus and bicycle traffic is going to be really negatively impacted, as this was a major four lane road in and out of my neighborhood, plus connecting all the suburban commuter routes from the neighboring boroughs. The bridge fell directly onto the main path that goes through the whole park. 

There were helicopters buzzing overhead all day and night, and it made national news, mainly because the President was already on his way to make a speech about infrastructure. But I imagine it will quickly fade from everyone's minds, except those of us who live here and will have to look at this pile of rubble for a long time, and be reminded of our collective priorities and fragility.

Marko is nine!

Wow, we have big kids in our house. Marko turned 9 years old today and I love how self-sufficient he is with many things. He has a really sweet personality and is thoughtful about including others and making sure everyone is having fun. His best quality is just always being so true to himself and knowing who he is. He spends a lot of time playing with Max these days, but also has made some good friends in the homeschooling community. He loves playing Minecraft, doing art projects, building with Lego, reading about Greek and Norse myths, fart jokes, and being cuddled at night before falling asleep. For this next year, I hope for him to continue to meet new friends and find things he is passionate about. 

January Homeschool

 Snow day! It snowed a ton on Sunday night so the kids have been digging snow forts and sled riding nonstop. The city actually closed all the schools today so our neighbors can even join in on the fun.

For January, I had a few things I wanted to prioritize. The first thing was to somehow connect over activities we could all do together. I downloaded a two week calendar of prompts from a blog called the Natural Learner and invited M and the kids to do them with me every morning. They were pretty simple little things for the most part. One day we painted name art using masking tape. Another day we each came up with a question that we would like to be asked about ourselves. My favorite activity was creating scratch n sniff art with salt and essential oils. There were additional prompts for the adults to pay focused attention to the kids and add more physical contact, if the kids desired it. For example, holding hands when you walk, or snuggling on the couch while reading. 

The second thing I wanted to kick off was project time, or self directed learning time. It's not that my kids never do projects they come up with on their own...they actually have a lot of things going on at any given time, and M and I are also very self-directed with our projects and how we learn to do them. However, it didn't feel very integrated with our homeschooling. The kids often talk about the workbook or textbook or copywork type things we do as being more recognizable as learning experiences, even though building a circuit from scratch or programming their Spheros to navigate an obstacle course are just as good, if not better. The projects were lumped in with "fun" stuff that could be done after you did a workbook page of math. My hope was to formalize our project time by dedicating a certain amount of time where they could work on stuff and I could be available to help them if they needed it. I also wanted to honor and respect the work they were doing by creating some kind of routine check in where they could talk about their work. So far this month, we have done a good job of setting aside specific time to work on projects. I am doing a good job of working on my own projects and being more transparent with my process behind them. M already serves as an excellent example of a life-long learner. He is never without a project, actually. Currently, he's trying to build a synthesizer. (From scratch!) The trials and errors are pretty endless, but he persists. 

We are also spending a ton of time playing outside with friends, especially when there is snow. Disney+ is giving us lots of viewing material for the times we want to cozy up. 

Laurel and I just finished reading a graphic novel version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the new Rick Riordan book, Daughter of the Deep, which draws heavily on cultural references from Jules Verne. We had our monthly book chat with her aunts. 

I'm going to do a reading assessment on a homeschooling friend in a few days, so I'm brushing up on my assessment skills with the kids and giving them tests this week.