Barbie & Tchaikovsky

Bet you never thought you'd hear those two names in the same sentence. ; )

Did you know that Barbie could inspire a love of classical music? Princess has just about every Barbie movie ever made. One of her favorites (okay, it's Barbie, they're all her favorites) is Barbie in the Nutcracker. Through this movie, Princess has developed a love for Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker music. At the last Scholastic warehouse sale, Princess and I found Nutcracker: The Music Game for the bargain price of $5.

Princess is having a blast working her way through the game, while enjoying the beautiful Nutcracker music. Me? I have to say that I'm having fun with it, too. My favorite part of the game is figuring out which instruments are used in each piece. The box says it's for ages 4-104. The 6 year old and the 45 year old both love it!

Percussion

Princess wants a real drum kit. For some reason the pots, pans and other miscellaneous items just aren't cutting it anymore.

Afghanistan in Pictures

Some bloggy friends asked for more photos from Afghanistan. These are in no particular order.

LK having a baaad day...by the way, everything there is made out of plywood. Nice desk, huh?

Some Bosnian guys who work for LK

Locals working

mail helo

Transport via helicopter for contractors is the only and safest way.

Walls around the FOB are thick.

Building a snowman

Offices...yes everything is plywood and tents.

Full Circle

In the beginnng, when I started this blog, we embraced the (slightly radical) unschooling life. It was working well for us. Princess learned to read without being taught how to read. She is an amazing reader. She learned so much and she loved it.

Then one day I decided to change things. We still kept it pretty relaxed and it worked. For a while. Until it didn't.

I began to feel stressed and I dumped that all over Princess. I have been struggling with this for the last couple of months. The more I pushed, the more Princess pulled away, spending more and more time playing Wii or computer games or Nintento DS or watching TV or DVDs. We've never set limits on these things and Princess has always found balance. But the more I pushed, the less balance there was.

A couple weeks ago I emailed Colleen at The New Unschooler because well, she's not so new at it anymore. Her words were so helpful, but the simple act of emailing all that I had been feeling caused a major shift in me and in Princess. We are now coming back around, full circle if you will, to (slightly radical) unschooling. It works for us. Princess and I are both so much happier. This may not be the path for everyone, but for us it seems to work quite well.

The dog has gone and lost her mind

This is Sophia Rose. Yes, she gets a little excited when people come to visit, but all in all she's a good girl. Yesterday, however, she went a little insane.

While Princess and I were upstairs getting ready for the day, Sophia Rose was downstairs shredding an empty carton of heavy cream. This adventure was followed by shredding a used (EWWWW!!!) tissue. As if that wasn't enough, when Princess and I went out to run some errands, Sophia Rose dug through my basket of stuff, that I take with me almost everywhere, to find a Clif Bar with chocolate in it. She ate the whole thing. Chocolate is poison for dogs. After calling the vet, my dog guru friend and researching on the internet, I determined that the level of chocolate was low enough not to worry.

Did you think she was done? Oh no, no, no! Once the chocolate panic/drama was over and I was finally relaxing, I turned around to find the dog standing on the dining room table!!! What the heck?!?! Can we get back to our regularly scheduled dog now? Please?