MY FAMILY ROCKS!
I entered our family in the Rolling Stone/Hyundai My Family Rocks Contest alas we didn’t make the 12 finalists but I think we rock anyway. Here is my essay to accompany our picture:
Colleen and I met at a dance and we’ve been rockin’ ever since. Our love of music and dance is shared with our daughters. Ambiana started fiddle lessons at four and her sister Jakobi loves nothing better than to trade verses from the Sound of Music songbook with her. Together they have made a video of themselves singing the Occupy Lullaby and posted it on YouTube. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DMfKdJzWB4) and before bedtime we end each day with an 80’s dance party.
We home school our daughters so we can have the freedom if we want to spend a month in Hawai’i like we did last winter hitchhiking around the Big Island and camping on the beach, eating mangos and papayas for breakfast, teaching our daughters to boogie board and snorkel while I swim with the dolphins and Colleen perfects her passion fruit cheesecake recipe on our backpacking stove.
That’s the way our family rolls. Our car has 275,000 miles and it is only nine years old. We are just as comfortable pitching our tent at thruway rest stops as at national parks. While some would see a wedding in Phoenix as a fly in three day weekend we turn it into a three week road trip adventure driving there and back in 22 days and along the way exploring Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, soaking in hot springs in New Mexico, visiting Dorothy and Toto at the Oz Museum in Kansas and because we have read the books aloud to our daughters at bedtime, visiting the Little House on the Prairie in Missouri.
Back home in Vermont we do our best to live locally and act globally. We reside on a 10 acre homestead and to reduce our carbon footprint have chosen to live off-grid powering our home with a combination of solar and micro-hydro power. We chop wood, haul water and compost our poo into humanure for our organic garden. Our home for now is an old hunting cabin while I build by hand a timber framed straw bale house.
We believe strongly in community. I work for a neighbor who has started a raw chocolate business and bike to work. Colleen is a social worker and manages the community garden in our small town. Each summer, through WWOOF-USA, we host folk who are interested in a sustainable lifestyle, trading food and a place to stay for labor and the exchange of ideas. Colleen hosts a playgroup once week at the local school bringing together mothers and their young children to play and share resources and every other month I call a traditional family dance in our 100 year old town hall.
Ambiana loves the limelight and at those dances she often grabs the mic to tell a joke. Her favorite: Why did the vegetable band break up? It didn’t have a beet! That can not be said for our band of family; we may march to the ‘beet’ of a different drummer but that is exactly why my family rocks!
SNOW!
Winter came in early December for a weekend before it warmed up again and it all melted. The picture above of us jumping was taken after all this snow!
Ambiana enjoys the new fallen snow.
Our pond
some early season x-country skiing
Jakobi on her skis
Hanging the bird feeder
The Winter Tree
With gaelen up with us before the solstice, we went and harvested our Winter Tree which we decorated with popcorn and cranberry strings and peanut butter seeded pine cones on the 21st when we gathered with friends to honor the longest night and the shortest day.
Jay Peak
On the 24th we headed up to Jay Peak to spend the night and enjoy 2 days at the waterpark with our friends Howard and Shaylin and their kids
Jakobi on the yellow slide.
Howard has some water fun with the girls
Shaylin and Howard
Jade goes down the yellow slide
Liam!
Jakobi
On the 25th I spent the day snowboarding while the girls ice skated. Afterward we met up to take a tram ride to the summit.It was free with our lodging.
The top at sunset.
Sabian Symbol- Sagittarius 15th Degree
