Happy Easter!

Easter was mostly a work day for us, but we paused to make some luscious foods and have the traditional egg hunt.

I really love this picture with Jalen and Sierra searching diligently as the wee purple egg sits quietly in the foreground waiting to be discovered...can you see it peeping from the greenery, a mere whisper of color?




They show off the bounty. Not much surprising in it as they were the ones that filled the eggs!
Trevor and Jared will be quite absent from our pics as Trevor is more often gone from home than here and Jared is not thrilled about being in front of a lense any longer. Nor is he hugely impressed with the egg hunt but he appreciated the mini-Twix bars we saved.:)



Dying eggs with fingers...

leaves some really oddly colored finger tips.



But the eggs are lovelyish as usual.


Especially stuffed in the mouth of a silly seven year old who enjoys being in front of the lense very much.



The neighbors brought over a fluffy coconut cake which was promptly decorated with all available candy.


Tica enjoys her dessert, some dandelions picked in our rambling yard. She gobbles them up so quickly it's hard to catch a picture. There is something quite amusing about a rabbit chomping up flowers. Save some for the bees Tica!

InHome conference

Behind on blogging, that's the story of my life. So here's a quick catch-up on what I was doing March 7th and 8th at least.:)

I traveled to Chicago for the annual InHome conference, an eclectic gathering that makes some comfortable room for unschoolers and unschooling speakers. I got to meet and hang out with Mary Griffith, who is charming and uber friendly.



I also caught up with my good friend Steve Cooperman who poses here on "bourbon street" (part of the very bizarre resort we were at) with Sierra's beanie baby. She sent her little unicorn with me to have adventures and bring pictures home (he's still threatening to kick your butt at Pirate's dice Sierra, so look out!).

The unicorn caught up with Laura, someone I've chatted with online only. It was great to finally meet her in person and have a cuppa on the day after the conference. I was pleasantly surprised at how many folks from the lists showed up, even a couple from the old Unschooling dotcom days.




We ate decadent desserts...
(Yes I take pictures of my food. Wouldn't you if it looked like this?)



....and cheered at the talent show.
This is the Pat Gocek fan club, they were lotsa fun and they really didn't care that his guitar had lost a string.:)



This was a brief moment, but I got to hold an 80lb. boa just before it went home for the night. It was a beautiful animal.



Unicorn gets a peek inside the cockpit on our way home to the mountains (you can see her in the middle in between the two pilots).



The best part about flying away to Chicago to speak at a conference? Coming HOME of course!

Home to my tea cupboard (can't you just smell that lovelyish Orange Dulce?)



Home to my baby plants. I'm aching to put them in the ground but it's a bit early for most of them yet....we did have snow yesterday after all.

Home to these fabulous peoples who make life interesting. They dove right into the Zome Tools I brought home from a vendor at the conference. He was from the Czech Republic and was loads of fun to chat with.


They built shape after shape, then later started putting the glow-in-the dark Astro-logix pieces together. The Boomwhackers and art supplies were a big hit too. It's always fun to infuse our lives with new and interesting people, experiences and tools.

Oh, and if you're planning to attend the Live and Learn conference this fall, Sierra, Jalen and I have worked out a very brief song using the Boomwhackers so we'll definitely be entering the talent show.;) Look out!

Beautiful tribute art

I really want to post about the InHome conference and the experiences I had there in Chicago last week, but I can't find Sierra's camera at the moment and pictures tell the story better.

In the mean time, I want to share something really, incredibly, amazingly beautiful and touching. My friend Robyn Coburn made this very special doll in honor of Lisa Heyman. A doll by Robyn is not only a work of art, but infused with her energy and vision. Go check out her IggyJingles blog to see the doll, then stop by her ETSY store and order something special for you too.:)

I'll get the blog thing rolling again this week complete with some new pics. The exciting news in my life right now is the fact that I have two bee nuc's due to arrive March 27th. I've got two weeks to get my hives ready! Ack. I'm babbling like a lunatic about bees and their behavior. It's been quite a learning adventure thus far....each new thing I learn leads to about 20 new questions.

Happy trails everyone.....