Introduce yourself!

[Dana Hoffman Ellis]

Feel free to jump in and introduce yourselves!

I'm Dana, in Bellingham. I'm a coffee roaster and mom to *3* now! Just had a baby 2 months ago today! My kids are Lauren, 16 in a couple of weeks, Otto, 10 1/2, and little Miranda Grace. I've always unschooled, after having gone to college to be a teacher and realizing I *never* wanted to put my kids into school!

I am getting married to Paul, the love of my life, in September, so I'm busy making wedding plans right now...besides that, what takes up my time is roasting and drinking coffee, hanging out at the farmers market, reading, cooking, taking gobs of pictures of my new baby...you know, that sort of thing!

Lauren enjoys reading, writing, musical theater, ancient history, cryptozoology, and selling tie-dyes at the farmers market.

Otto enjoys drawing, deviant art, video games, listening to music, hanging out with friends, swimming, and spending the money he makes at the farmers market (the selling is just a means to an end for him!). He also designed the wizard picture on our list.

Miranda enjoys pooping, sticking out her tongue, nursing, looking in the mirror, and does NOT like the car seat.

[Trisha Cronin]

Hi Jennifer,

Just wanted to say hi from Olympia! As far as I know there is no widespread unschooling community in this area -- if you find one let me know!! I have two boys, Deacon 4 and Evan 2. My intro's above. There's also Aidan in Olympia. We do have a homeschool park day -- which Aidan could tell you more about, I've only been twice. As far as I know they're pretty much all relaxed homeschoolers.

Trisha

[Jennifer Landauer]

Hi Trisha,

When is the next park day? We visited one in Olympia but it didn't go so well. There were some older boys that were picking on my 4 year old which I wasn't used to seeing at a homeschooling park day. Of course being summer they may not have been homeschoolers but I was really put off. I also didn't know anyone and wasn't sure which group to approach.

Would love to try again because my kids really want to make friends in the area.

Jennifer

[Trisha Cronin]

Hi Jennifer,

They're every Tuesday, at 1pm. I think that they're now meeting at Bigelow Park, the other park they were meeting at has some broken equipment. I'll email and see if I can find out for sure. I've wanted to try going again, too. The first time I went I didn't know which group to approach either! I've been a couple of times since then (and actually talked to people) but it's difficult for me to keep my motivation up when it's a whole group of people who know each other and I don't know any of them!

Trisha

[Jennifer Landauer]

That was my problem too! Everyone was talking (and seemed nice enough) but no one would talk to me. I'm not a shy person but not quite brave enough to just march up to a big group of strangers and introduce myself. We should meet there so atleast we would know one family!! I miss our unschooling park days in Texas. Sigh..... We will just have to start our own and I'm sure more families will find us!

[Mama Cass]

Hello friends!

My name is Cassie (Mama Cass) 38, and I live outside of Ellensburg, Wa. Who I am now, is a FAR cry from who I was in my 20's! I am loving being a stay at home mom, unschooling my two awesome boy's, Canyon, age 5, and River, age 3 (just turned yesterday!), they were born at home in the water. After dreaming it for over 5 years, I've recently started my home business selling my herbal blends. For a few years, I was a lay midwifes assistant (she is my bestest friend:), and was blessed to attend many a homebirth, and know that one day, when my boy's are grown, my path will lead somewhere in the lay midwifery area, once again. I also still do pregnant belly masks! My husband, Mike, 36, is a letter carrier, and my supporter of this crazy house! I am aso the proud birthmom to my first born, Sam, age 8, who lives in Oregon with the wonderfully loving parents I chose for him through open adoption. Though it's a very bitter-sweet situation, it's a beautiful story!

Canyon is our Lego Master of the house, loves playing his PS2 (MaterNational, Open Season, Spongebob), loves Spongebob, and now likes all the cartoon network superheroes cartoons. He is a great superhero, flying through the house with any cape mom can makeshift (she is in the process of making them both their own cool capes!), jumping off beds to make a cool pose. He loves making up "cool moves", and throwing the POSE after each move, I am often called to take a pic! He has his own language, I call it "Canyon-eze", and he loves to sing with his own words to songs. He knows enough sign language to chat a bit, it was his first language! He is also pretty "curious" about anything...to the point of destruction....he'll pretty much break anything, always has....I say he's going to be the greatest mind in invention!

River loves art. Any art, in any form, he is always needing to create art. He is my messy, messy man....he takes an average of 3 (or more) baths a day...long ones...he loves water (along with his brother). He is my extremely sensitive soul, to animals, and to anything other than love, or warmth. We have to be very careful of raising our voices (when he was an infant, I could NOT call to Mike for things...River would begin crying) around him. He reads my mind, which freaked me out a year ago, but it's old hat now. He loves Caillou, Spongebob, Veggie Tales, and learning about planets, and always asks, when a map is in front of us, "where are we", "where do we live". He still needs naps.

Being a good mom, doing the best I can for my children, with them, is my greatest goal!
This is a novel of sorts, sorry bout that, but the world of unschoolers is where I feel my most comfortable, what an awesome assortment of people! I'm still new to the unschooling path in our lives, but I feel like I've been warming up to it since I was pregnant with Canyon! I can't wait to attend our first conference!

[Chessa]

Hi all, I'm Chessa, mama to Silas, 2 1/2 and happy partner to Chad for 5 years. We just moved to Seattle (West Seattle, to be precise) in June 2008, so we're still getting to know the area and figure stuff out. We lived in Portland previously, so we're not totally ignorant about the Pacific Northwest, but we were in Detroit, MI for 4 years in between so it's been a reacquaintance.

I'm a SAHM to Silas, although I have training as a librarian. I LOVE books and to read, particularly science fiction and urban fantasy. I'm a big fan of cooking and eating, drinking assorted hot beverages, and watching movies when I can keep my eyes open. ;)


Right now Silas is really into wolves, playing fire and police rescue and doctor, figuring out some of the Wii Sports games (he's really really good at batting practice!), playing tennis with a full sized racket and nerf balls with his dad in the basement, singing songs, playing his guitar, and bowling. And he loooooves to be read to, and has just started wanting to "read" books to me and his dad. Oh, and he's really into helping me grind coffee beans in the morning and putting stuff in the microwave. When the weather is nice he looooves going to "swing-slides" as he calls it. Too awesome for words.

We are pretty new to the path of RU, but it feels so true for us and we are so excited to be learning from everyone here, reading books (I just finished Parenting a Free Child: An Unschooled Life by Rue Kream and I *LOVED* it!) and trying to keep up with prolific email lists on the subject.

I don't really know any radical unschoolers in the area, although I did just get signed up for the Seattle Homeschool Groups SmallFolk list (but we can never make any of their playdates because I swear every single one is at naptime!). I know another mom who plans to homeschool, but not sure about the unschool angle.

I look forward to getting to know you all! Is anyone planning to attend the Life is Good Conference in May? We've never been, but we really want to go!

[mommy aimee]

hi! This is Aimee, our family now lives in Raymond WA ( pretty close to all you Olympians). My husband and I are unschooling 3 radical kids! DEVO age 8, Kismet age 4, and Royal age 3. My kids need playmates pretty bad. Is there anybody close to us?

[michelle dawn gregg]

Hi my name is michelle ,I live with my husband steve and our 10yr old son nehemiah he will
be 11 in oct we live in spanaway , is there any others out there that are close to us ? We only
know one other unschooling family by us . Nehemiah loves nerf wars ,video games ,coumputer
games, making videos for ytube and any kind of tag games outside he also loves playing guitar.
Would love to meet others that love this life .Nehemiah would love more friends even some he
could talk to on the computer. I would love to meet others also that get what we are doing.
Michelle

[Laura Z]

Hey there, I'm Laura originally from Connecticut, dh is Stephane (he's French :)), and dd Caitlyn is almost three (we had her in Argentina). We are not in WA right now, but we're sort of checking there and Portland for a possible relocation. We're in Miami right now where we returned to last fall after leaving to go to Argentina, then to NC, then San Antonio, Savannah and finally back to Miami.

I'm really interested in finding out more about who's up in that area for a support network and exploring the possibilities of what living up there would offer (farms, hiking, ocean, mountains, city, people etc). so if anyone wants to give me their thoughts please feel free to email me at movingtoargentina @ gmail dot com

Well that's it for now, I'll just keep on a lurkin and a readin ;)
Laura