Can it get any better?

The short answer... ABSOLUTELY!!



What the heck am I talking about?...The Unschoolers Winter Waterpark Gathering, of course!



I thought last year was fantastic, but this year blew last year's UWWG out of the water! (No pun intended.) The worst thing I can say about this year's UWWG was that it was impossible to be in two places at once. I just couldn't get to all of the things I wanted to do and see! I didn't get the mehendi area at all. I only got to glance at the kids marketplace while going from one presentation to another, but I wish I could have shopped! There were some really cool things there! The kids missed the DS funshop and the Webkinz gathering, and we all missed out on the ATC funshop. I wish I had a timeturner so we could go back and do all the things we didn't get to do! The kids got to do the one thing they were looking forward to most, which was spend lots of time in the waterpark. And I did get to most of the things on my "high priority" list too.

I made it to both of Kelly Lovejoy's presentations. I've enjoyed her posts on unschooling lists for quite some time and was surprised to find that she is exactly as I always imagined her! She's a lovely, lively, engaging speaker and I enjoyed her presentations immensely. Although, in retrospect I think that perhaps "presentation" isn't the right word for what transpired at all. It sounds a little too stuffy for the interactive, spontaneous exchanges that occurred.

I went to the unschooled teens and young adults panel discussion too. Very interesting stuff there, although I will admit to being ever so slightly disappointed that there wasn't a totally unschooled teen on the panel. I sometimes feel sort of like the odd woman out, even around other unschoolers, because it seems that so very few of them have been doing it from the beginning like we have. We've never done highly structured "school at home" either, so we seem to be in the minority even among other unschoolers. It was still interesting though. I'm on lots of unschooling lists and read lots of unschooling blogs, but they are most often from the parents (usually the mother's) perspective. It was refreshing to hear from the kids themselves.

I also made it to Bethany Hagensen's raw foods demo (www.bethanysstory.com). What an inspiring story she had! It was just the kick in the pants that I needed too. I was eating a high raw diet most of the last year but had dropped to about 50% (some days even less!) since the holidays. My health issues were starting to flare up again but I still was having a difficult time getting back on track. Eating a non-standard diet is difficult enough, but I was having the most trouble with the lack of support. I don't know any other raw foodies IRL and my online support just wasn't working for me during the really difficult patches around the holidays and the start of my usual season of depression. I was so excited to see that a raw foods demo was scheduled and made it a top priority. I wasn't sure what to expect since I've never even met another raw foodist, but it was WONDERFUL!! The food was fabulous and the people who have been at this longer than me were so inspirational. Best of all, I wasn't *alone*. I had a room full of people who were high raw, totally raw, transitioning to raw, or interested in eating more raw. I can't begin to express what a boost just being in the same room with all those people eating delicious raw foods was to my resolve. And the healing stories I heard there were just amazing. I had already been eating more raw foods and was motivated even more after going to the program. I've been high raw all week and am feeling great...and I actually *lost* weight while on vacation! How often does that happen? LOL

Cameron was inspired by someone at the UWWG as well. He was interested in stage magic for quite a while, but lost interest about a year ago. Just a couple of weeks ago he pulled out all of his magic stuff again and had been talking about the possibility of learning some tricks for Catherine's birthday party this summer, but he hadn't really done a lot with it. It was like he was waiting for something. Then off we go the the UWWG where we see a young magician perform several times during the week. Cameron was totally engrossed in each and every performance and he talked about them all week long. Then this morning I went downstairs to find him curled up on the sofa looking at magic kits in a catalog. The spark is back in his eyes when he talks about magic and he's planning on spending a nice chunk of change on some new magic supplies in the next couple of weeks. Yay for happy coincidences!

I also led a bellydance funshop this year and I had such a blast! I'm now convinced that there is no better place to share something you love than at an unschoolers convention! It was a totally freeform hour long whirlwind tour of bellydance without any real structure. I decided not to focus on any one style of bellydance but encouraged everyone to do their own thing. We just kind of went with the flow and the interests of the attendees, and it turned out so cool. I have never had so much fun teaching bellydance!

And then there was the carnival with all the cool games and prizes. The kids came away from that with lots of ideas for projects and contraptions to build at home! And there was the dance on the final evening. I think Dave and I enjoyed that more than the kids since we so rarely get to dance with each other anymore. And I can't forget getting to meet so many interesting people either. Some of them I've only known online until now, but now I've got faces and voices to put with those names. I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting at the moment, but oh, what a wonderful time we had each and every day!

Let's not forget the Kalahari itself! It was as awesome as it was last year and then some. Cameron struck out with a friend and rode many of the rides that he wasn't ready to ride last year. Catherine isn't quite big enough for most of the rides, but she was perfectly content to spread her time in the waterpark between the Lazy River ride, the wave pool and the spray grounds. The weather was kinder to us this year too. Last year it was so cold outside that they had trouble keeping the waterpark warm enough. No problems with that this year though. It was like a warm summer day inside the waterpark, and if you were there at just the right time of day you could even bask in the sun through the overhead windows. Ahhhh!

We were all sad when it was over. It goes by far too fast! But true to form, by the time we were on the road home the kids had already started the countdown to next year. UWWG 2010, here we come!

Light Bulb Moment

Catherine made a neat discovery this evening while we were reading bedtime stories. She discovered a very powerful word - the word "I". Not only is it a letter, but it's a word all on it's own too. How cool is that!

We are spending the week at the Unschoolers Winter Waterpark Gathering in Ohio (which is *AWESOME* by the way!). We brought a few new books to read while we're here, because we don't go anywhere without books. Cameron brought Fablehaven to read on his own, Catherine chose Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, which is her current favorite book. We also brought the Faraway Tree series from home. And both of the kids wanted to get the Skippyjon Jones books to bring. We all love Skippyjon Jones, so I surprised them with several Skippyjon Jones books and a Skippyjon Jones stuffed animal. Skippyjon was the favorite the last couple of nights, but not tonight.

Cameron was down in the arcade with a friend. Dave went down the street to the store because we already used up the 5 gallons of drinking water we brought from home. Catherine and I found ourselves with a little "girl time" on our hands. We danced around the hotel room in our pj's for a while, had a snack, then settled into bed to read some books. She picked Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. We read it through just like we've done dozens of times, but tonight she noticed the alphabet in the front and the back of the book. She started looking at them and pointing out the letters that are in her name, then other letters that she knew. She talked about which ones were big and which ones were little. Then she noticed that the big "I" didn't have the serifs on it. We talked about how sometimes the big I has those little lines on the top and bottom and sometimes it doesn't and talked about how without the serifs the big "I" looks just like the little "L". We talked about those letters for a while longer and then I noticed something different about the way she was looking at them. She was really studying them, and then there was this sudden *explosion* of understanding. I don't know what the exact trigger was, but I could tell she just *got it*. She understood what I was doing when I read to her. WOW! That realization was so POWERFUL for her, and the amazement in her eyes was absolutely priceless.

She closed her book and studied the front. Suddenly those letters "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" had *MEANING* to her. They were *WORDS*. She ran her finger across them over and over, saying the words again and again, imprinting them in her mind. I just watched her for a while, then she started playing with the words and I joined in. We covered up the "m" in "Boom" and that made a totally new word! What a discovery! She covered up every single letter in each word and wanted to know what it said *NOW*.

I told her that that "I" that she was looking at earlier was a word too. I told her it said "I" as in "I went to the store". She repeated that phrase over and over, letting it roll around in her mouth, then *CLICK*...another light bulb went on. I could *SEE* it and it was amazing! I happened to have the book I was reading lying on the table next to the bed, so I picked it up and showed her how in my book the big "I" had the lines. She gasped and said "Mommy! They're EVERYWHERE!!" She sat there for a good 15 minutes flipping through my book and pointing out every single "I" she could find. ("There's another one! And another one! Look, Mommy! There's one on this page too!") She couldn't get enough! Then she noticed a lower case "i"...and another...and another. She noticed there was an "i" in the middle of the word "Chicago" and wanted to know what it said. Then she wanted to know what words followed that word "I", so I read those sentences to her and she repeated them, running her finger over the words as she did.

Right about that time, Dad returned from the store. She yelled "Daddy, Daddy! I want to show you something!" and proceeded to show him how she could read the words "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" on the front of her book, and the word "I" in my book as well. Within a few minutes she had moved on and started working on the jigsaw puzzle we brought with us. It was such a *BIG* moment, yet she took it in stride. I, however, am still reeling from the "bigness" of it.