family snapshots

despite my most fervent wishes, my children continue to age. sigh. rowan will be five this month, and jack is oh-so-13 and a half. he's playing football for the first time this year, and really enjoying it. he's doing well in school and he's in two pre-AP classes--English and Social Studies--which of course makes my humanities-minded heart so happy. he and girls, previously ships passing in the night, have made contact and he spends a lot of time on myspace and the phone, talking to whoever is the friend girl du jour. he's a happy kid, and funny as hell. but growing up too damn fast.

rowan is just a delightful child, 99% of the time. she's in love with learning, all kinds of animals, stories, pretending, and especially "terra terra" as she calls it. we're cooperatively unschooling her since we are both home a lot now. she's just past the birthday cutoff for kindergarten, but she's ready, so we are working on kindergarten skills now.

here she is looking especially fierce, in playsilks,



















and doing "life science" on crawdads in one of the small ponds. we can often be seen, seine in hand, looking and learning about the ecosystem and food web of small bodies of water. everything is awe-inspiring to her, so she's an ideal student. i'm so happy to be sharing it with her.

























there's so much to do here that the kids stay busy--swimming, ping pong, tennis, racquetball, a pool table, a sauna, all right in our building! we really enjoy going for walks in the gloaming, and seeing the stars come out--they're amazing here!

gratitude

i have absolutely no excuse not to start writing here again. i am out of grad school--that death march (no offense to people who have been on real death marches, of course)--and i have plenty of time on my hands.

we've moved to an artist's colony, Terra Studios (more here).

this place is hard to describe; easier to show. there are ponds and bluffs and springs and labyrinths and gnomes and dragons and a bevy of trolls. here are some pictures (and a few more) that show the things about this place that i love, and my little brood in the midst of all this magic.

we have only rent, cell phone, insurance and student loan bills now. next month we'll have an electricity bill too, but all the other utilities are part of our rent. even wireless, which is so nice! what this means for our lives is that we have more time together, as a family.

the theme here is GRATITUDE. the statue you see rowan loving up, above, is an example of a type of hand-made icon that's prevalent here--gratitude statues. the matriarch of terra, who helped her husband make this tiny fantastical world out of pasture and woods in 1975, still lives over the hill on this 110 acres, and she comes down and works in the pottery studios several times a week. she talks about buddhism and psychedelics and serenity and cats. it's impossible not to love her, especially since she looks just like one her peaceful, joyous works--all bright eyes and an almost visible halo. her children live here, or close by, and work and play here too. it's a real community. just what we've been searching for for so long.

i'm so so grateful to be here.