Ridiculous Chocolate Giveaway

I am really excited about this giveaway for a couple of reasons. First, the Jones family is a fellow Christian unschooling family, and they are a family that I really respect and admire. Second (and perhaps even more importantly) their chocolate is CRAZY delicious! It is raw, organic, and vegan, and it's made with just a few ingredients.  If you're a lover of good quality chocolate, you need to try it.

Mandy took some time out of her day to answer some questions, and it's my pleasure to introduce her and her family (and her chocolate ;))

Tell me what unschooling looks like in your family, and how it has changed over the past several months.

For our family, unschooling used to mean a lot of field trips, spending time with a ton of friends, going to our fun co-op, hosting a monthly show and tell at the local library, playing baseball in the spring and in the fall, and then squeezing in some lazy time whenever we had the chance. Since my oldest child, Hunter, was diagnosed with leukemia, all of that has come to a screeching halt. Now we are home most of the time (with an exception of Tuesday and Friday mornings when we take a trip to Vanderbilt Children's Hospital for Hunter's check ups. Over the past few months, our "unschooling" has depended upon what phase we were in with our treatment. When Hunter was in the hospital, I had him occasionally working on his Math U See Primer and keeping up with an occasional episode of Headsprout. Otherwise he spent his time resting, watching television, playing video games, building Legos and listening to his dad read aloud to him the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. My daughter got to hear me read a lot of great picture books but that was about all I could handle during those times. She and I watched a lot of television and simply tried to stay distracted until the boys came home.


Now that Hunter is home, we have settled in to more of a productive routine. We plan our days around the toddler's naps. When he lays down with daddy, we know that means reading time. We look forward to this time each day. We read so many different things and we are trying to remember to pray aloud before we start reading every day. We also keep up with Headsprout and Math U See, going at whatever pace the children prefer. Some weeks they want to do those things, some weeks not so much. We watch a lot of television. We get out the art supplies. We cook and bake a lot. And we are making plans for out of doors activities that we'll be able to safely do once the weather becomes warmer... like geocaching, hiking, camping, and watching dad play baseball for our church on Monday nights. It's been an adjustment trying to get used to staying at home so much but to be honest, I actually prefer this part of our new lifestyle. And I will carry what I've learned about staying home and not being overly committed into our life after leukemia.

What role does your faith play in your homeschooling, and in dealing with Hunter's illness?

This question might better read "What role does leukemia play in your faith?"
I feel like watching Hunter's illness and all of the miracles that have happened along this journey have strengthened my faith in so many ways. I've never had the opportunity to watch God take care of me and my family quite like this before. It's like everything we have needed has just been handed to us from all directions. It's blown my mind. I am so thankful for the amazing way that people have stepped up to provide for our every need. This experience has helped me believe in the power of prayer and the goodness in people. I'd never had to depend upon prayers and people like this before.


As for the role that faith plays in my homeschooling... I unschool because I believe in living life authentically and trying to avoid being motivated by fear. Thanks to faith, I don't worry about tomorrow. I know that it will take care of itself. So I don't worry about my children... I believe that whatever they need to know and experience, God will lay before them. I just need to step back and not get in their way. After all, He knows best. I realize that this is a pretty radical concept but when I take a look around at the world we are living in, I figure the results of my choices couldn't be any worse than what would happen to my children if I followed a more "traditional" method of parenting... and it might just work.


How do you decompress and take time for yourself in the midst of everything that is going on?

Barely! I strongly depend upon about twenty minutes of quiet time when I lay down in my bed at night next to the crib and wait for the toddler to drift off to sleep. During those moments, I pray, breathe, and soak up the quiet. I try to squeeze in exercise occasionally. I like to play Just Dance, Just Dance 2, and the Michael Jackson Experience on the Wii. I also consider cleaning and cooking to be very relaxing so I spend a lot of my mornings bustling about my kitchen doing laundry, cleaning floors... I stay connected to the outside world via Facebook and my blog. I hope that in the near future, I can start enjoying a little more down time because I do feel pretty overwhelmed and exhausted these days.

Tell me a little bit about your chocolate business. Do your kids help out (or will they when they are older)?

Basically, my husband makes it, packages it, sells it, etc. I just eat it and promote it online. My kids do not help out because legally he is the only person allowed in the kitchen while making Ridiculous Chocolate. I'm sure if we find commercial kitchen space and as the business grows, however, the children will help. I look forward to those days. I have a vision for our chocolate and I have every reason to believe we will get there... it just might take a while. Hopefully the next time we catch some speed, we'll be able to keep that going and no other crazy huge life event will slow us down. We are at an exciting point in growing the business... discussing possible partnerships, experimenting with new packaging, playing around with new flavors. It's a fun time to be starting a new, successful business. With the economy so sketchy and the job market being so tough, it's the perfect time to move forward towards self-employment. What do we have to lose, right?

Thanks Mandy!  You can read more about Mandy and her family over at her blog, a bona fide life.  You can also like her Ridiculous Chocolate page on Facebook, and show your support for Hunter by liking his Help Hunter Jones Blast Leukemia page. 

And without further ado,  the giveaway...

I am giving away one pound of Ridiculous Chocolate (40 pieces), a $20 value, to one lucky reader.  The original flavor is delicious all on its own, but the winner may choose their own flavor (awesome, right?!)  In addition to original, they offer:

Peppermint

Coffee

Strawberry

Raspberry

Orange

Maple

The chocolate comes in a special cooler, and it must be kept in the freezer once you get it.  It has a great fudgy texture, and I'm not kidding when I say that this is GOOD CHOCOLATE.

Details 

1)  You need to live in one of the 48 continental states.  Sorry.

2)  Enter once by commenting on this post.  Any old comment will do.

3)  Share the link to this post on Facebook or Twitter, come back and comment again to let me know you've done it, and you'll be entered twice.

4)  I'll randomly choose a winner in one week, and announce it on my blog on Monday, March 14th.

Good luck!

Moving Day

The kids wanting to be moved in the trailer

This weekend, we moved Mom and Dad into their new house, a larger house just a few houses down from their current one.  We made trip after trip, back and forth, stopping only to enjoy pizza, beer, and soda.  (And as a side note, who decided pizza and beer would be the official moving foods?  I don't think I've ever helped with or participated in a move where we've eaten anything else?)  After we got most everything set up, Everett amused himself when he discovered that doing this:

Made his hair do this:

We all toasted with some champagne

And enjoyed the view

From their back patio

That's Sedona in the distance

The boys loved helping carrying and moving - the heavier, the better.  Tegan has been fighting off a cold and cough for a few days now, so she wasn't quite her normal animated self, but she took her responsibility to help with packing and loading boxes very seriously.  And she was, as always, ready for her close-up.

Mom, Dad, and their littlest princess

I'm excited to make new memories in the new house, and to have yet another place to watch the kids grow, play, and explore.

Back when I knew it all

I used to know everything. No really, I did. When I was a teenager, and even a preteen, before I'd had any sort of meaningful relationship or even thought about becoming a parent, I knew, down to the very letter, what I would and would not do as a mother. I knew right from wrong.  I knew where other people were screwing up, and I knew how to avoid their mistakes.  I knew what I wanted, and I knew how to get there.

I just knew.

This is how well all my vast knowledge has served me the past several years....

Homeschooling

I knew of one homeschooling family when I was growing up.  They lived down the street from me.  I never actually met them, but I didn't really want to... because they were homeschooled.  They were, you know, weird and stuff.  I didn't understand how anyone could do that to their children, and I felt bad for them, and for their woeful lack of socialization.  I would NEVER homeschool my children.

We have been homeschooling for nine years now, if you start counting when Spencer was 5 and of traditional "school age".... fourteen years if you go by when we made the decision when he was born.  It was one of the single most important decisions we made for our family, and for our kids.

Breastfeeding

I have three specific breastfeeding memories from when I was younger.  The first was when we were visiting some friends who had a house on a lake.  I really don't remember who it was, because I can't for the life of me remember anyone who actually lived on a lake?  Anyway, we were at this house on the lake, and we went down to the water, and there was a lady there with a little girl and a baby.   She must have lived next door, because it was private access, and you really couldn't get to where we were without going through any of the houses.  So essentially she was in her own backyard.  She had a bikini top on, and she was breastfeeding the baby.   It was normal and beautiful and natural, and... shocking.  I found it shocking.  I just couldn't believe that someone would nurse a baby right outside like that, where people could see her!  And because she was wearing a bikini top, she was entirely exposed.  To my highly evolved and knowledgeable 10 year old brain, she might as well have been naked.  I would NEVER be so crude.  The second person I remember breastfeeding was very discreet.  I didn't see so much as a millimeter of skin.  She was sitting in the same pew as me at church (at church!)  and she nursed her baby on both sides, and then burped him as she listened to the sermon.  I thought it was great that she was breastfeeding, but by golly there was a time and a place.  I would NEVER nurse a baby in church.   And finally, there was the mom at the birthday party.  I think I might have been married by then.  It was a party for one of Mike's little cousins.  A little girl, maybe 2 or 3, came running up to her mom, who scooped her up and started nursing her as she sat and chatted.  I was flabbergasted.  She was walking!  She was talking!  She'd just had birthday cake!  And she was breastfeeding?  I would NEVER breastfeed a toddler.

With the exception of the very beginning, when I was still getting comfortable, I have never been one to make a big deal out of "covering up."  Never really used blankets or anything, especially not behind my own house!   Breastfeeding moms show much less than what you see walking down the beach anyway.  And if sometimes a squirmy baby exposed more than I'd intended (I've accidentally flashed more than a few people).... eh.  We've all got 'em.  I've nursed my babies in stores, in restaurants, in churches, at baseball games, in offices.  Anywhere they were hungry and I could find a place to sit - and sometimes when I couldn't.  As for the distasteful notion of nursing a walking, talking toddler:  I have four kids, and have happily logged a total of around 11 years of breastfeeding, and counting. Again, one of the most important decisions I made for my children, and my family.

Parenting

I must have done some of my best judging thinking in church, because a lot of these observations were from the same pew where I saw the breastfeeding mom.  I remember a family with little boys, and the boys would always come to church with their hair all messy and slept-on.  Why wouldn't their mom take the time to comb their hair?  And one of them looked like he was in perpetual need of a trim.  Why wouldn't she take him for a haircut?  There was the little girl with the crazy clothes.  Wild colors and prints that never matched.  A princess dress over jeans and snow boots.  Or tights with shorts over them.  Or a dress AND a skirt.  Crazy.  My children would always be neat, pressed, and combed.  My children would wear adorable outfits that always matched.  And they certainly wouldn't be screaming like the three old in the pew behind me.

The first thing I really remember reading about parenting was an article by Dr Sears in a magazine in my OB's waiting room.  It was before I had Spencer.  It was the first time I had heard the term "attachment parenting," and I thought it was ludicrous.  Wear your baby?  Sleep with your baby?  I scoffed and tossed it back down on the table.  Maybe someone not quite as enlightened as myself would like to read it. 

I would NEVER.

Spencer's hair is sometimes longer than mine, because that's the way he likes it.  Everett's is getting long too, with the exception of the short chunk he cut out of his bangs, again because he wanted to.  Some days it's combed, and other days not so much.  Tegan has long curly crazy hair that is tangle-free maybe 2 days out of every 7.  Some days it looks like I combed it with a blender, and I can't remember the last time she had perfect little ponytails.   Her track record for matching clothes that make sense to anyone but her is not much better.   She likes putting together her own outfits, and she does it with gusto.  I generally manage to make sure she has a clean face when we're in public... unless she's eating as she goes out the door, or in the car, or in the parking lot.    BUT SHE'S HAPPY.  They all are.  And I decided a long time ago that their happiness and our relationship is far more important than keeping up appearances.  We don't battle over clothing choices, don't battle over hair styles.  


And yes, that was my daughter screaming that ear-piercing scream at Valle Luna on Monday.  She was over-excited and over-stimulated and well, sometimes three year olds forget about things like using "inside voices."


So I'd like to publicly apologize to all those moms that I mentioned (and to Dr Sears, whose books I did eventually read in their entirety once I actually had a child and lo and behold, my instinct told me to sleep with him, wear him, carry him, and do all the other preposterous things that Sears espouses.) I get it now.

I could go on (vaccinations... circumcision...) but it'd just be more of the same.  I.  Knew.  Everything.  And it's served me well, don't you think?

I try to never say "never" anymore.  I try not to be the judgmental and close-minded person that comes across up above.  I don't really like that person, and I don't think I'd want to be her friend. 

Yes, I don't think I would be friends with my former self.

And the irony is that now of course, I freely admit that I know nothing. But I kind of like not knowing. I like examining my beliefs and ferreting out why I believe in them (if I do, in fact, believe in them after all) I like following my instincts, even if they go against everything I previously thought to be true. I like researching. And researching and researching and researching, until I'm ready to move onto something else. I like discussing, examining, and learning. I like listening to well thought out and well articulated opinions, even when they differ from my own.

I like being able to look back on old things I've written, even if they're embarrassing, because I like seeing how I've grown. (Which is why I try to never delete blog posts and the like. For better or worse, they were my truth at the moment) I like being able to admit I was wrong, to admit I screwed up, to admit... again... that when it comes right down to it, that I don't know anything, and that everything of value that I HAVE learned, I've learned from my kids.

And that is someone I'd want to be friends with.

Arizona, Visitors, and Coming Full Circle

Every time someone hears that we used to live in New Hampshire, they ask the inevitable - and fair - question:  "What brought you to Arizona?"  And with few exceptions, my answer is a little bit different every single time.   Not because I'm unsure, but because there were just so MANY reasons, both large and small.  And what I've come to realize, and need to start telling people, is that the truth is really no more simple or complicated than this:  This is where our path has always been leading us... way back before there even was an "us", way back before I painted that southwestern landscape picture in high school.  

This is just where we're meant to be for now.  Will we stay here forever?  I don't know.  What I do know is that as we're approaching our sixth year, we have not even an inkling of being led to move somewhere else, a feeling that surfaced well before year number six in both Worcester, MA, and Andover, NH.  

When we moved, even though it was a positive move for us, there was some major external yuck that surrounded it.   There were strong reactions, and stronger words, and we ending up leaving with some severely hurt feelings.... and we were not alone.  It took some perspective that only time could provide, but I eventually came to see the situation from all sides.  And it just felt lousy all the way around.  I wished for a long time that I could delete it all, that I could go back and erase entire conversations, entire emails, entire periods of time.  I wished that I could forget, because I hated knowing that something that was originally so exciting for our family had gotten mired in such negativity and sadness for multiple parties.  

Fortunately, there's sometimes truth to the cliche that states that time heals all wounds.  Time did in fact heal the wound.  The feeling of sadness about the way we parted ways with New Hampshire inevitably became replaced with feelings of happiness about our new life in Arizona.

The only reason that I am thinking of it now is that last week we saw Mike's brother and his family for the first time since we moved here 5 1/2 years ago.  His parents have been here several times now, and his youngest brother came out two years ago, but Joe and Allison had not been here yet.   Although we'd all more-or-less kept in touch through Facebook (the blessing and curse that it is) I felt like we'd never truly "complete" with his family until we'd all actually SEEN each other again, in person, in a positive setting.   

And it really was a great visit.  Even looking from the outside you could see that.  

We went to the zoo

 Went off-roading

Went to the AZ Museum of Natural History

 Hiked in the red rocks of Sedona

Watched the newly acquainted cousins play and play 

Made cupcakes and cookies and pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream.

Went out to eat

Stayed up late and laughed.  A lot.

Beyond all of that though, it made me feel as though we'd come full circle.  It made me feel as though we'd simultaneously moved forward, and moved back.... not back to the way things were when we moved, but back before that, back before we'd even decided to move, back when things were simpler.   Back to those days a hundred years ago when we'd all hang out in Mike's parents' backyard on Sunday afternoons.  Only this time we all brought six more years of maturity, six more years of parenthood, six more years of perspective.  We got to watch our children meet for the very first time, and we got to catch up - for real, not in the way you catch up by reading 140 character status updates. 

We did much-needed things you just can't do long distance, and I'm forever thankful that we got that opportunity.   It only took five and half years.

Tiny Paxton

Second full day of their visit.

My favorite place ... the middle of the desert. Off-roading. Exploring. Appreciating.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by Soule Mama