a hippie with a minivan

Hummingbirds and bullfrogs….

We spent the day at the cabin on Thursday…

It was a gorgeous day spent with the kids and my mom and my grandmother…

This is the cabin, it belongs to my uncle but my mom stays in it each summer. It has no electricity and no water but it is very functional with a wood stove, a gas stove and a gas fridge…

My grandmother and my mom, fetching water for dishes

In front, there is a small lake, very small but full of life with resident frogs galore…

This guy is one of the bullfrogs that hangs out on the side of the lake near the cabin…

Colin went to pet him and he didn’t even flinch and Colin actually got bored before the frog did..

He lazily got off the rock and headed to a lily pad that he was much too heavy for…

Then swam away….

and then stopped and started floating instead….

near some tadpoles that seemed to be conversing…

I also got some captures of the hummingbirds that come feed in the three feeder that my mom has. They come all throughout the day, starting early in the morning and they will come even if you are standing right near the feeder, so I got my camera and just stood there and within a minute of two, I had a subject…

These are red-throated hummingbirds and the only hummingbird found on the east coast…

and a female…

We found butterflies, got bit by black flies, played darts, tended to the fire and just had a great day…

AQED 2012

Saturday was the AQED (Quebec Homeschooling Association) Symposium.

When I saw that the Quebec author Leandre Bergeron was going to be speaking, I knew that I had to go!

Leandre Bergeron is an inspiration for me. Though I only read his book in the last few years, it was such validation to read someone living my ideal. He rarely speaks anymore as he lives quite far and is now 82 years old, so I looked forward to going to the conference and meeting him. About two weeks ago, I was asked to be an official photographer for the conference also, my only stipulation was that I would not be missing him talk, other than that, I was happy to do it.

I picked up my new camera on Friday evening… yes… I have a NEW camera… a Pentax K-5!!! and then went out for supper with a friend of mine and slept over at her house so that we could head out early in the morning.

The best way to learn a new camera is to dive into it and I could not have thought of a better venue to do so. My morning was spent taking pictures, talking to friends and even talking quite a few times to Jerry Mintz of AERO.

Jerry Mintz

Various pics taken during the day… To see larger just click on them…

In the afternoon I headed to Jerry Mintz’s workshop which was an hour and a half. Jerry Mintz is the director of AERO. Here is a great summary of AERO found on his site.

Let’s not reform education.
Let’s revolutionize education.

Let’s set aside the
decaying and decrepit schools
and education paradigms
of past eras and commit ourselves
to a new understanding of education
that recognizes humans as natural learners
and extends basic human rights to children
in their learning endeavors.

This magazine is committed to advancing the Education Revolution
by printing news and essays from around the world related to issues of alternative education
at the intersection of culture, power, and learning.

He started his workshop by teaching a few kids how to play table tennis, even though there was a language barrier, they had no problem picking up all of the basics and though a few people I think didn’t understand why he was doing it, and left, the rest of us were fascinated seeing the learning process.

He then went on to talk about unschooling, democratic schools, free schools, Summerhill and so many more interesting ideas and projects. We asked him then if he could demonstrate a democratic meeting with a few kids and had a great stories about what he has done with the kids of his school including travelling the throughout North America and even getting to the Bahamas.

After his workshop/talk we headed to see Leandre Bergeron… Seeing him talk was as inspiring as I could have imagined.

Afterwards, we even talked for a while and I took a few pictures with him and Jerry Mintz with the AQED committee and I was able to get some for myself also.

What a great, inspiring day with friends, fellow homeschoolers and great minds.

Sunset

Last week we went out on the bikes with our new bike trailer (I still need to take pics) and headed to the park and caught the most beautiful sunset…

I have mentioned where I live before, a little city about an hour out of Montreal, situated where the Richelieu river flows into the Saint-Laurent river. So if I go 2 blocks to the south, I have the Richelieu River and then about 10 blocks to the North is the Saint-Laurent. Though I miss the mountains that I grew up in, Quebec is also beautiful, and I know that I will miss it when we are gone.

This park is right on the Saint-Laurent and because we also have a port here, and we are up river from Montreal, there are often ships stopped or passing through.

This ship was passing through, most likely heading back to sea from being loaded in Montreal.

The colour of the sunset was so strong that you can see the red reflections on the rocks…

The boys headed down right away to play on the water edge, catching the waves from the ship that had passed minutes before…

It was so calming…

Calm…

Yes, I have been avoiding writing again. It is not that I don’t have tons of blog posts floating around in my brain, and it isn’t that I don’t ever have time to sit down and write, it is just because when I do sit down, the words simply don’t come out.

I feel like I am at a standstill right now. The house is still for sale, our plans are still active but nothing is going forward. I should be advertising the house more but I just haven’t for some reason. There are tons of homes for sale in my area and not many are being sold so I don’t think that it is just our house that is not selling at the moment.

Since things a not moving I decided that it would be nice to plant a few things in the garden and get the pool ready and just keep the normal rhythm and accept that we might have to leave it behind if it comes to that. With those things done it finally feels like summer is here, and that means that we are out enjoying the weather and doing things outside more. I have feeling down lately, so hopefully, thing are going to change a bit.

Another big thing for me is that I have finally touched up my CV. It is so hard to plan out a CV when I have spent the last ten years as a full time mom. What do you write? And yes, I am talking about a CV. I have a degree and I really do love being with people so instead of it just being Simon looking out for jobs, I thought it might be a good idea to do the same and whoever can get the best salary will be the working parent while the other stays with the kids. Though Wilhelmina is still so small, she is big enough that I don’t feel bad leaving her with Simon and the boys for the day, especially of we live in an area where home is close to work and the hours are actually not that long. I also know that Simon would appreciate the time at home also.

It is weird, when things were moving a bit too fast I was panicking and wondering what we would do… Now that things are at a standstill I am still panicking and wondering what we will do…

Hopefully, things will start moving again…

Pumpkin Chocolate Zucchini Bread

Zucchini bread, like banana bread is something that I am often wary about…

I love both of them but what I hate is sitting down and taking a bite of an overcooked, dry piece of zucchini flavoured bread. I want my zucchini bread to be moist and tender inside and have a nice crisp crust all around with tons of flavour. I basically want it to be like a bread shaped cake that you can have for breakfast.

This is that kind of bread.

One of the secrets… ok, ok, it is not really a secret… but the reason it is so moist is the pumpkin… you can replace the oil in many baking recipes with pumpkin purée and what you most often end up with is a super moist cake or bread. Seriously… try replacing the oil in your favourite chocolate cake with pumpkin and making cupcakes (or muffins) They turn out so gooey and satisfying. And, best of all, when you swap out the oil for something like pumpkin (or applesauce) you are also making it a lot healthier…

(can you see how crisp the crust is…but there is nothing dry about any of it)

Pumpkin chocolate Zucchini Bread

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
3 tsp ground cinnamon
3 eggs
1 cup pureed pumpkin (I used 1/4 of my dehydrated pumpkin powder, rehydrated in 1 cup boiling water)
2 cups sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups grated zucchini
1 cup dark chocolate chips

Grease and flour two loaf pans and Preheat oven to 325.
Put flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl and mix with a whisk (quicker than sifting)
In another bowl, beat eggs, pumpkin, vanilla, and sugar together and then add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture and beat well.
Stir in zucchini and chocolate chips until well combined and pour batter into prepared pans.
Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 20 minutes and then remove bread from pan, and completely cool.
(You can find my Banana Bread recipe here)