Today

This thanksgiving was like most others. For the last five years Gary and I have hosted our families here at our house and so we are able to hang out in our pjs all morning cooking and cleaning and watching the Macys parade on tv. There is an air of specialness in the air, a frozen in time feeling. This year I vowed to video the kids more because I have been thinking a lot lately that time is slipping by and my babies are quickly turning in to not babies anymore so I videoed a lot today. When family got here we feasted and that was wonderful and at the end of the feast my children hung around with family and then things were quiet and when I went to look for them I found Nora upstairs sprawled out on her bedroom floor flipping through the pages of Curious George and Sadie tucked away in her room listening to Harry Potter 4 and doing a puzzle and Jonah quietly sitting in the playroom with his trucks. I love that my children can entertain themselves without tv and without video games and that they know when they need alone time and are not afraid to go take it at their own liberty. I have always been a person that required a lot of alone time and am always feeling guilty for asking for my required allotment, they know just what they need.
My favorite part of today was at the end of the day when the fire was really going and it was dark and it was just the 6 of us left, in our pjs again in the living room and we all started singing together. We sang many Christmas songs and folk songs which got Gary thinking about Alice's Restaurant and so we sang that song for a little bit but we all wanted the real thing so we came up here where I am now, at the computer and listened to two different versions of Alice's Restaurant, one live and one recorded and then we got to talking about the draft and war and littering and four part harmony and folk music and Vietnam. Then we listened to The City of New Orleans which we found out actually wasnt written by Arlo Guthrie and also comes with a great story that you can find at youtube if you are interested and Gary and I talked about growing up in the 70s which somehow got us back to the kids favorite thing to listen to on the computer which is the soundtrack to Grease.
Unschooling............
by the time I am through with Jonah I will get it but on the way I am stumbling through math worries and future concerns and the frameworks of education.
My favorite unschooled moments this week:
1. When Nora asked Gary and I on the way home from Maine whether trucks and trees have middle names.
2. When Jonah sang the alphabet song in entirety at the Thanksgiving table just because he felt like it.
3. When Sadie told me an hour long story about Charlie, an elderly man she visits regularly with Grampa John during their Wed meals on wheels trips.
4. When Nora told Gary to stop talking to her because he was disturbing the story in her head.
5. When Nora asked (in all seriousness) for the ability to fly as number one on her Christmas list.
6. Every wonderful chapter of Harry Potter 7 that Sadie and I read together.
7. Singing together

There are so many things I am grateful for today. Right now I am grateful for the piece of pie I am going to eat right now while watching the Incredibles on tv with the kids.