Life IS Good

Another Life is Good Conference has come and gone. I went back and forth about going so many times considering how close to my due date it was. But as time went on, more and more local people I knew started signing up, so I figured I would get some help with Orion, and at least alot of people would know him this year if he wandered off! And then when Ron lost his job, I seriously wondered if we would be better off selling our registration. I'm glad he kept saying how important it was, and we stuck with our plans to go. Our world was rocked yet again. I didn't expect it to affect such a big change, especially since Ron was already so transformed last year, but I think it actually had an even bigger affect on us this year!

Friday

We made it there bright and early as planned on Friday. Ron is really intrigued by free schools and wanted to go to the chat about conflict being moderated by Scott from the Village Free School. Orion and I got the lay of the land at this time. Or he may have just played his Nintendo DS the whole time LOL. Wish I would have taken more notes as some of the schedule is fuzzy now. But I guess the things that really stuck with me are the important ones anyway!

Right after that was a talk called Learning to Unschool Ourselves. It was good but pretty much stuff we had heard before, so Ron ended up straying away and into the playroom with Orion IIRC. However, I snapped a picture that for me summed up the whole conference!
Sparkly children everywhere and all of them loved and accepted!

Our plan was to get a "babysitter" for some of the talks, and tag team the rest. I had me down to go alone to one called Running From Safety, and I really wish Ron could have been there. I am so glad the main talks will be available on MP3 later! This talk was by Beth Fuller, who runs a group about Peaceful Partnerships, and that was part of her talk that really touched me. She promoted not only unschooling our partners, but our whole family. If we approach the people we are close to with the same kind of respect we offer our children, it is so much easier for them to appreciate and get on board with what we are doing. My favorite image, however, was when she shared her experience nursing her 3 year old in front of her board of directors full of bankers and lawyers and such!

The next time slot had a Funshop for fort building, which I thought Orion would LOVE. Wrong. I guess it is somewhat of a good thing my son is a mystery to me. Life will not be boring at least! He loves playing with big boxes at home. Maybe there were just too many? Or too many people? Or too many other interesting things in the room to look at as it was also the game room? You can get an idea of how hectic the scene was here:
And yes, that is Orion in the foreground much more interested in figuring out Operation.

We had hoped to attend the Teen Panel together, but had no luck in finding a babysitter the first day. We did catch just the beginning as Orion expressed some interest in going to Popsicle Stick Puzzles with his friends Samuel and Eva. That lasted about 5 minutes I think. :) Their mom, Jessica, appeared in the doorway and made a hand motion that made it clear to me Orion had started grabbing handfuls of sticks and throwing them in the air hahahaha. Ron was great and went out with him. I definitely got to be the lucky one with sessions considering I couldn't walk very well! The kids were great, as usual, and showed how mature unschoolers are instead of the homeschooling stereotype of these poor kids lacking in socialization.

We were all pretty burnt out at that point and kindof crashed in the room, taking forever to finally decide to head out someplace for dinner. We ended up at BJs, where I had a yummy Cajun pasta, and Ron stuck to his diet with his second chicken Caesar salad of the day! Orion enjoyed the smiley potatoes along with raisins and applesauce from mama's magic bag. We got back so late, the concert planned for that night was already over!

In general, I was not in much of a picture taking mood this weekend, but here are a couple more from Friday that I don't remember where they fit in the day.

This is the Untrepreneur table, where different kids throughout the weekend sold stuff they make. Orion just went on around back and made himself at home. :) You can't really see it through the box, but he is actually fondling some wool goods.
Not a great photo, but I kept it in to remind me just how AWESOME all the kids at the conference were. This group was all playing with a windup bird (being held by the boy at the left in this pic). Orion walked in to see what they were doing and just kindof watched at first. One of the boys was very carefully listing out the order of the turns, and the little girl in the red dress said, "I think this boy would like a turn too," so they immediately worked him into the rotation haha. When it was his turn, the oldest boy very politely explained how it worked and offered to wind it up for him. As it turned out, the flapping totally freaked Orion out and he kept dropping it, but the point was how amazing these kids are. Total teamwork, nobody arguing, nobody left out.

Back to nighttime... Ron and I were both wondering if the monsters would make their appearance since we were away from home. Tonight's foe was a banana shooting chimpanzee or gorilla. He actually said it was both I think. But the most interesting thing was that he kept talking about how it came out of his head! We all had a very long conversation about putting it back in his head (which he couldn't because it was mad) and then making banana bread from the bananas to make him happy again.

Saturday

The good news is, we snagged a babysitter at the end of the day and made plans to meet her for the 10am talk! I was so glad as we both thoroughly enjoyed Jon's Make Room for Daddy. His writing is SO funny, so I was hoping he would be the same as a speaker, and he didn't disappoint! Parts of it were Unschooling 101ish, but it was done with such humor that it felt super inspiring. I know Ron came out feeling like we should ditch bedtimes, an idea I have been toying with for awhile. Some of my favorite ideas from the talk:
"Kids don't do what you say, they do what you do."
"We had a hard time finding kids who were good at video games but bad at school." Whoa. That was from an article published in Discover! Why had I never looked at it this way before? I know all the best gamers are smart geeks, like my husband. :) I have had a hard time with the unlimited media frame of mind, but this was weirdly a breakthrough thought for me.

I was planning on going to the Dealing With Doubts chat next and we thought Ron would take Orion to the Nintendo DS Funshop. Yet again, our son surprised us by having no interest whatsoever in a hoard of other kids doing the same thing he loves. I do wish I would have gotten a picture, though, of all the kids grouped around the table with their DSs out. The chat was interesting, although the check in took up most of it because there were so many people there! Alison had everybody go around and tell what their doubt was, which was fascinating all on its own. There were several families there struggling with the "radical" way of doing things, and Alison shared that she never considered her family to be RUs. That was cool because I thought just about all the speakers last year were RUs, and I couldn't help but wonder if it made some of the newcomers, or those who had decided to continue with certain limits, feel a little unwelcome or overwhelmed. I feel like we are becoming more and more radical as time goes on, but I would like to hope these conferences are safe places for everyone who is exploring the path.

In the afternoon, it was time for Scott Noelle's talk, Need is a 4 Letter Word! Corina had agreed to hang out with Orion, so we both got to enjoy it fully. Scott seemed kindof nervous at first... and mentioned something about it being because of getting ready to make a fool of himself. I had no idea what he was talking about, but before we knew it, he was donning a white jacket and unbuttoning his shirt. He proceeded to sing one of the funniest songs ever.

The song he wrote was a parody or all the really "needy" love songs out there. It was especially funny to me as I have had the same exact thoughts about lyrics. Aaaanyway, the point of the talk was how to deal with situations where it seems like your needs and your children's needs are at odds. Or maybe your kids' needs are at odds with each other. As always, Scott's ideas are all about changing your attitude and getting to a place of peace with the situation. One of my favorite ideas of his has to do with thinking in terms of "ands" instead of "buts", which can help you get in a more creative mindset where you can think of a way for everybody to be happy.

Lyla checked in with us to tell us Orion was in the pool with Corina, which was great by me because that was right where I wanted to head while Ron went to the SSUDs chat (Secret Society of Unschooling Dads). We had already decided we would go to dinner right after that, and then Ron was going to head out to see one of his friends fight and run by home to feed our poor deserted dog. We were having such a good time in the pool, I totally forgot I should have headed up to the room to rinse off and get ready before the chat ended! But luckily, after two beers and two hours of good conversation, he was in a great mood and didn't care. Yes, Ron drank beer! I can't believe it. He usually hates beer, but he said he really enjoyed these!

He absolutely loved the gathering this year, which was a relief since he left in the middle of it last year because he didn't like how judgmental some people were being. This year he said the group seemed like about 2/3 newcomers, and everybody was being so great. He got the funny experience of being on the radical side of the fence with this group, which is totally opposite from how he felt last year! There were two major things that impacted him he shared with me on the way to dinner. The first was a guy who said something along the lines of, "Maybe we are wrong, and this isn't the best way, but we will be able to say our kids had 18 years of fun, which is more than most people can say."

The other thing went even deeper. He said it shook him to the core the way nothing ever has his entire life. I guess the group got to talking about how many of the dads work at jobs they hate just to support their families. Ron is one of those for sure. Somebody asked, "In 15 years from now, would you ask your son to do the same thing?" Wow. We have had the discussion so many times about what it would take for him to make a major change, and he always comes back to thinking there is no way to afford it. I am always saying we just need to figure out a plan. Well, I think this time he is finally ready to embrace that idea. I felt like he came out wanting it NOW, but that can't always be the case, especially when your wife is expecting a new baby any day. :) I said that even if our kids came to us with a big dream, they would need to figure out what steps to take to get there, and that part is no different than us.

We went back to BJs for dinner as Ron decided to blow off his diet for the weekend and have pizza! This wouldn't be worth mentioning, except... life is good and full of freaky coincidences. During Jon's earlier talk, he showed the two halves of this Kandinsky painting separately, talking about the left half as representing order and the right as chaos.

Not until the end of the talk did he reveal they were actually two sides of the same painting. And then what should we see as we walk into the restaurant....? They have this painting hanging right near the entrance! What a trip! Of course we hadn't even noticed it the night before.

Ron dropped us back at the hotel not long before the talent show was due to start. I had great hopes that Orion would either sit and play with his DS for awhile or hang out in the playroom while I watched from the back of the room. This plan worked for oh, about 3 acts I think. At least I saw the beginning! The night worked out fine, though, because I ran into Mim not long after we left and Orion finally got his chance to run like crazy with Owen. They went up and down halls, stairs, etc., hunting imaginary bad guys while Mim and I hung out in the lobby chairs by the fireplace. Every once in awhile, Orion would come back to me for a quick snuggle, saying he was tired, and then he was off again. It was great. The funniest part of the night was Owen's new made up word. Orion asked him several different questions, but they were always met with the same answer: "Satadedif!" (That is my best phonetic spelling anyways). And the fact it was said in a very proper British accent, as was everything he said. According to Mim, this is a result of watching Dr. Who!

We also ended up being joined by several of our mutual friends, and Mo Troper was even hanging out in the lobby playing his guitar and singing! It made for such a relaxing and homey scene. He had gone back and forth about playing in the talent show, and I thought he had decided not to, but it turned out he got to feel practiced and turned out a great performance, complete with Scott Noelle on harmony!

Another really cute thing happened while we were in the lobby. A boy we met the first day in the playroom came up to ask me to count some change he had. Then he said, "Thanks!" and hugged me. He has been stopping to talk to me and hug me every time he sees me. I didn't know it at first, but his mom mentioned in a chat that he is high functioning autistic. Now I think I know more about autism than the average person, but I also really know nothing. I asked Mim about it, because one basic idea I had was that autistic kids relate more to things than to people, and this kid did not fit that image at all! She said that was right, but once you win their love, there is nothing like it in the world. I said I had just met the kid, and she simply said, "Yeah, but they know." How wonderful for this boy to be surrounded all weekend by people he could feel that way about! When I told Ron about it later, he also pointed out he has been raised totally differently than most kids with autism. Who knows? Maybe he is like that most of the time and some of the ideas the professionals have are totally wrong....

My account of Saturday night would not be complete without mention of the Big Storm. What crazy weather this conference had! I thought we are sure treating our out of town guests to a taste of the unpredictable NW weather! Even the unusual type! Friday had been cold and rainy, Saturday afternoon was warm and sunny, and then Saturday night we get hit with a major electrical storm! It was crazy! A few folks decided to darken the room we have been having the chats in to be the official storm watching room. It was pretty much all dads and kids. :) Orion went in there a couple times. The lighting was striking on the river and seriously lit up the entire Columbia riverbed several times. Then the game room became another storm watching room, but with no adults, the lights were being turned on and off, lots of times. In this room, the kids would go to the window, wait for the lightning or thunder, then go racing away. It reminded me of kids at the beach, running in and out of the waves. Like they were having fun pushing at the edges of scaring themselves.

Just after 9:30, I decided to call Ron since that is when he said the fights were over. When he answered, I asked if he had been outside yet.... He said no, so I told him about the storm, and said I figured Kona was probably freaking out. Well, that turned out to be an understatement. :( He headed right home and called back from there. She climbed up in his lap and wouldn't leave. She wouldn't even eat dinner unless he sat on the floor with her. We decided he should probably stay home with her and meet us back at the hotel the next morning.

Phew, when Orion and I finally got back to the room, I wasn't sure how it was going to go since Ron has been doing so much of the bedtime duty lately. But Orion was practically asleep before I turned out the lights! He has never gone to sleep that easily in his life! I wish Owen lived closer and could wear Orion out every day!

Sunday

Ron came back fairly early with coffee and chocolate soy milk! Woohoo! The first thing we wanted to go to was at 11, so we went ahead and got all our stuff packed and in the car before that. Then it was time for The Daily Groove chat. It was going so well, Scott offered to stay longer with whoever else wanted to. Our babysitter was done at noon, though, so Orion came in with us. I managed to get a question in about dealing with anger in the heat of the moment, and Ron stepped up to admit it was really a question for him. :) Orion played his DS for awhile, but eventually wanted to leave. That was a bummer, because I would have really liked to hear where the conversation went after that. I got a little bit of it later, but I could see it had a profound affect on Ron, and that he was still processing it.

There was one more talk I wanted to go to called How to use Your Problems as Stepping Stones to Happiness. I was hoping to attend that one together, but Orion got restless again, and Ron went ahead and left with him. It was really powerful, but I think Ron's head was ready to explode from everything else that weekend, so he didn't feel like he could absorb anything else anyway. Most of this talk was based on a process called The Work. I usually don't like stuff like this that is so "self helpy", but this was pretty cool. We filled out a worksheet and did some examples. I kept mine and would still like to work through it at some point, maybe explaining it to Ron at the same time, but for now I think I am going to give his brain a break. :)

There was one last great moment that happened while I was in the talk. Ron and Orion had noticed earlier that all the machines were out of Red Vines. He was very methodical in checking in every machine. They ran into Samuel, who was also searching for them. But Orion had some left from earlier in the weekend, and when he heard they were looking for them, he got out his stash and gave them half. Sweet boy.

So the drive home was... interesting. Ron was definitely in overwhelmed mode. On the one hand, he heard alot that affected him deeply and will be a positive for sure, but at this point, there is so much swirling around in his head that it is going to take him awhile to process it. I have known him long enough now to know it was better to just let it brew. And some of it is a bit depressing for him right now. One of the main thing is his deep desire to switch jobs being in conflict with his inability to do it NOW. The other thing he mentioned was feeling like there aer aspects of himself at war. I think this had to do with some of the stuff Scott said and Ron's ideas of masculinity. I'm sure there will be more talk of this later....

And a couple Orion funnies he brought home. He has started saying a couple amusing things I can only imagine must have been picked up from other kids. One of them repeating what we said with an "indeed" at the end, but my favorite is, "Holy mackerel!"

Retrospect...

I realized a few days after the conference that I spent most of my time talking to people I already knew. Being from the area, it felt like I knew about half the people there! And it was great to deepen some of those connections. But I really wish I would have tried to branch out more and make some new friends as well.

The other thing that struck me is that Orion had an almost complete lack of conflicts over the entire weekend. He still had a few tugging matches over toys, but I don't think I saw him do any hitting (well except maybe with Corina LOL). It is amazing how there is a different vibe with unschoolers that I think he picks up on and thrives on.

Sheesh, I think this was seriously my longest blog post ever! I need to stop now so I can actually get it posted!