Why I Won’t Let the Schools Teach my Kids about Food

Over the course of the year 2018, three friends from my immediate circles have announced that they are getting or have gotten weight loss surgery. My friend who’s having hers done soon said to me, “everyone’s having it done these days. It’s so common, really there’s no reason not to!” Despite the willingness of so […]

Two Typical Days

You probably didn’t know this about me, but I live a half hour from a Unesco World Heritage Site. Yeah. Alberta’s that cool. It is, of course, about dinosaurs. Yeah. Alberta’s that much of a desert wasteland. Joking! Sort of. Our climate zone is definitely on the “arid” side of temperate, but Dinosaur Provincial Park […]

Enjoy Summer THEN GET BACK TO WORK

One of the local elementary schools is in my neighbourhood, so I pass by their sign board relatively often. Over the summer, this is the message they had up: And I thought it was cool how, in principle anyway, we seem to have shared values. The difference, I suppose, is in application. Their admonition to […]

5 Things I Appreciate During “Back-to-School” Season

This week is the ninth anniversary of the day I decided not to send my oldest child to Kindergarten. Where do the years go! This year she would be going into grade 7, and my youngest, who wasn’t even born yet at that time, would be starting grade 1. At this time of year, when […]

Flowers

Amy and I will have to give ourselves a collective slap on the wrist–not a single post in all of July! Summer does that to you, perhaps: a big jumbled mess of busy, languid; travel, lounging; visiting, reading–in a hammock. Always in a hammock! Today I biked to a provincial park in oppressive heat, then […]

Lemonade

Let’s get schooly for a moment. Not that I think spending your life comparing yourself to others is a great plan, but when you’re living alternatively, occasionally getting schooly has its benefits. It can help to validate one’s own choices, and help others to understand said choices, by speaking their language. I come in peace. […]

Internet Famous

It’s true, fair readers. You can now say you knew us when because we are about to BLOW UP. Just kidding. But we did have a fun time interviewing with Robyn of the podcast “Honey, I’m Homeschooling the Kids”. She interviews all sorts of people doing all sorts of interesting things, and also us. Have […]

Unschooling Through the Eyes of a Kid

[ Note from Amy: This is a guest post by my 10 year old son. He chose this creepy picture all by himself, hahaha] I think unschooling is fun. I still have lots of friends, I’m as smart as other kids, I spend more time with my family and friends, I don’t have to spend […]

Convince me!

I sometimes regret that my kids won’t have that classic small-town experience of having gone to school with the same people from kindergarten through high school, because in my fantasy-of-school, those experiences will become the basis of lifelong friendships. I see other kids walking home together from school, laughing and running in the June sunshine, […]

The Lesson by the Lake

When we moved here to Brooks, one thing I was excited about was the location of our rental. It overlooked the biggest of the town’s manmade lakes; very picturesque, and it has a well maintained paved path going all around. It’s about 2.5 km, with a nice play structure 1/3 of the way around. In the […]