summer riot

It all goes so fast, summer.  There's little rhyme or reason to this sharing today, other than an attempt to Not Miss!  We are embarking on a huge journey today - today! what am I doing??  Oh, that is a good question! I'll tell you.  At the start of this week my husband heard me voices all of the worries I had about getting ready and about being in the car for nine days straight (well, almost straight) and he said, Would you do something for yourself this week? Would you please put "be happy" at the top of your list of priorities for the week? Maybe let go of "Clear away that pile of stuff on the back porch" and be happy?  So, this sharing makes me happy. So did the blueberries we picked this week, and the time we had with friends and the walk I took to the garden with my girl and the craziness of our front yarden...I'm ready for our trip.

harvesting garlic!

painting garden sticks

See you on the road!

big heads, flowers trees and masks

One of the best things about gathering for a learning coop is meeting new and interesting people, and this spring we were fortunate to meet homeschooling dad and local artist Matt Wedel who - gasp - makes his living as a sculptor! He generously invited our group to his home and studio for a field trip a few weeks ago.  After greeting us with a wonderful talk about how he is lucky enough to get paid to do something he really loves to do (it was as much a pep talk for the grown-ups as the kids), he took us through his barn-sized studio.

Large heads awaiting painted faces

Matt works BIG. Big heads, big bodies, big "flower trees".  His studio and kilns are built to accomodate size.  Wet clay is so heavy that only a couple of inches can be added at one time, so he has several pieces in the works at any one time. 

The kids loved being in the studio; they were so careful around the fragile, unfired pieces.  Me, I would have been a wreck with 20-some young kids and their parents wandering through my works of art, but Matt embraced their enthusiasm and didn't seem to worry at all.

Gold glaze is expensive and a bit risky,
as it will disappear if left in the kiln too long

The glaze room looked like an apothocary or a wizard's potion room with its bins of minerals and compounds.

After seeing where the clay is mixed and where the sculptures are built, we saw the huge kilns that are used to fire the large sculptures.  

glaze cones for the kiln indicate the temperature

When the tour was finished, Matt gave each kid a flat round of clay and a simple form to use to make a mask.  

We pinched, rolled, and learned to reshape the rounds...

At some point in the summer they'll be fired in the kilns and returned to us, transformed!

summah...

Isn't that the coolest beach find? A long-nose gar fish...We are in full-blown summer here. Tomatoes, basil, peaches and blueberries, beaches, hot afternoons, napping...summer.  Our summer this year is full of trips and visits, and what I am noticing is that we are handling the transitions into and out of these events a bit more gracefully than in previous years.  Yes, yes, we still have meltdowns. All of us. But they aren't as long or as fierce.  Maybe we are growing...

Yes, another photo of the long-nose gar! Really - look at those teeth! They are so fabulous, growing right out of the mandible! They're sharp-sharp! 

The girls and I have mostly kept our busy out in the world; when we are home we are cooking together, puttering in the garden, listening to stories (Lemony Snicket, Harry Potter, Rump), reading stories (Mother-Daughter Book Club, Olivia Kidney), and writing stories.  Eliza has been writing stories in Google Drive for the past year, and in the last month discovered Storybird.com.  She writes every day that we are home, sometimes for several hours at a stretch.  The stories are getting a bit longer and more complex; time was that they were mostly a vehicle for new name creations and lengthy descriptions of each character's wardrobe, but now they involve interesting characters with friend problems, family problems, and the occasional wicked spell.

Eliza loved her dance experience so much this year that she's been taking a class this summer as well, a  modern intensive.  She's asking to take two...or three...or four? classes this fall.  Love it! They also have had a monthly writing class, which is a continuation of the weekly poetry class we started in February.  

I love these two; they are at such amazing ages right now.  They are so enjoyable to be with, so smart and funny and when well-rested and well-fed, they are very kind and considerate! (I remember a mnemonic from when they were small: HALT.  When one of them (or both!) were feeling out of sorts, I'd go down the mental list: Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired? I've been thinking of this list lately, and applying it to all of us...Dang, it helps!)

Such fortune is mine to be with them in these long summer days...