Our family has been BUSY for the past few months, in many good ways and a few sad ones. This wrapup of March and April will get us caught up on unschooling news through the end of what would be Ashar’s 11th-grade year in public school, but I can’t promise it’s as complete as it might be! (As always, if you want a more frequent peek at what we do, you can always find me on Instagram and Facebook.)

If you’re new to seeing our days recapped in this format, check out our archive of previous wrapups here for some more info on why we take this approach and some other highlights of our adventures.

Moving

Well, let’s get the biggest news out of the way first: We’re moving! We get into our new house, which is only about five miles from our current house, starting May 10. We don’t sell our current home until May 22, so we have a little time to get things all set up at both places.

This was a whirlwind. You might ask, “Joan, did you have ANY intention of moving this year?” If you did, I might reply, “Heck to the no!” We had JUST started having some family conversations about the value of a place that needed a little less work and that might have a first-floor master for my mother, who is having some trouble with steps, but we had no firm plans other than to start seeing what was out there and maybe get some quotes on what it would cost to do some renovations at our current place to create a more workable space.

Then, while waiting for a meeting to start at work on Wednesday, March 22, I saw a property that had just been listed 15 minutes earlier. It was perfect. I contacted the Realtor and set up an appointment for us all to see it on Friday, March 24; we were all off because it was Ashar’s 17th birthday. We loved it at first sight. After talking things over, we did a VERY quick mortgage approval process and ended up spending Ashar’s birthday dinner at our local sushi restaurant on the phone with the Realtor, making an offer, which was officially accepted on Saturday, March 25, which happens to be my mom’s birthday.

So, if anyone asks what they got for their birthday this year, we can legitimately answer “a house.”

Then came the process of getting our home listed to sell, so we did an awful lot of work on cosmetic things and also packed up about half of our stuff and put it in our garage, plus having a big ol’ yard sale with my best friend.

We also had to juggle showings of the house with Mom, who has the aforementioned trouble with her knees and thus can’t always just pack up and wander around aimlessly on short notice, and, even more importantly, our aging dog, Coby, who is 14 and not in very good health, and who has very limited mobility. Thankfully we only had to have four showings over three days, and then we had an offer finalized a week after we went on the market!

After that, we completed the rest of the mortgage paperwork, and now we’re just finishing the packing. Thankfully (again), we are able to hire movers to actually cart the stuff from Point A to Point B. We just have to get it ready for them.

So we are all incredibly excited and, you know, incredibly tired. Thankfully (again – you’re going to hear me say this a LOT about this moving process, which has gone much more smoothly than we deserve so far), Kaitlyn’s mom will be coming out for two weeks after we move to help with the transition, in addition to what our family of five can do.

I just can’t wait until we’re in and unpacked. I’m the kind of person who will be totally unpacked in two weeks; that’s just how I roll. But it’ll be a long two weeks!

On the unschooling front, a lot of the conversations around mortgages, escrow, commissions and more went into Ashar’s economics credit on this year’s transcript. It was a HUGE piece of learning for all of us.

Books

I know I’m missing things here, but a few highlights:

• Batman Eternal: Volume 1 – Ashar has wanted this for a long time, and our library finally had it available to read!
• The History of the World in Bite-Sized Chunks – Our current occasional family read-aloud. We jump around, so we’ve read about World War I, Alexander the Great, Elizabethan England and a bunch more.
• The Walking Dead: Volumes 1, 2, 3 and 4 – Also a library find. After being obsessed with the TV series, Ashar has finally decided to dig into the comics.
• Serial Killers and Psycopaths – OK, not the most cheerful, I admit. We were browsing through this at the bookstore and Ashar was really interested, so we bought it. She’s been into true crime since becoming interested in forensics a few years ago, and recognized many of the stories involved.
• DK’s The Vietnam War: The Definitive Illustrated History – This one is special. I have worked with DK in the past and received an email that they were looking for photos of Vietnam veterans to share. Kaitlyn’s dad, Paul, served in Vietnam and we worked through Kaitlyn’s mom to get a photo and submit it – and it was included in the inside cover of the book, which we received a copy of but then sent on to Paul as a birthday gift. I am looking forward to getting a copy to keep… as soon as we won’t have to move it.

Rock Band

A big way Ashar has been spending her time lately is in music classes with an amazing instructor, Rod Goelz of Music at Metropolis. Rod’s an unschooling-minded guy who really clicks with Sarah. They work on the fundamentals of rhythm, harmony, vocal and instrumental performance and playing by ear together as part of a series of classes called “Rock Band.”

The playing by ear part is the most amazing to me, because though I am a pretty decent pianist and saxophonist (15 years of lessons on the piano; I should be), I have never been able to play by ear. Ashar’s work with Rod is helping me a ton, and excitingly, we’ve been asked to review a program called Garage Band Theory that focuses on the same thing. More to come on that soon!

Movies and TV

A special note for our newer readers: I’d love for you to check out our post on learning from movies and TV shows. It really explains a lot about why we are such fans!

I also want to give a special discussion in this wrapup to Thirteen Reasons Why, a topic of HUGE debate in the parenting community, for reasons that range from it potentially glorifying suicide to being inaccurate about mental health resources to being too graphic in its depictions of rape and suicide.

Ashar and I have watched it together and really are glad we did. Do I think you should park your 10-year-old in front of it by themselves? Absolutely not. But if you don’t think that show depicts real life, unfortunately, I think you’re mistaken. Our immediate family and friends have dealt with a lot of mental health issues in the past few years, and so much of it was all too real.

Here’s a look at some more of what we watched in the past couple of months:

• Shawshank Redemption – Part of Ashar’s interest in Stephen King’s work.
• 30 Rock – Ashar and Mom finished this series and, surprisingly, haven’t started a new one yet!
• Trolls – I hate to admit it, but it was pretty adorable. And the music is catchy.
• Logan – I cried like a baby at a superhero movie.
• The Walking Dead – Now we’re on a season break, so instead of watching, Ashar is preparing for how to fund a trip to Walker-Stalker Con in New Jersey in December to meet Norman Reedus.
• Legion – Chris and Ashar’s new series.
• Ride with Norman Reedus – So she really likes Norman Reedus. She bought the full season of this herself and binge-watched it in one relaxing day. I loved it because it was a real travelogue of cool places we might want to go or already have been, so that was cool!
• Blank Check – Ashar loves the idea of having a million dollars to spend, but we talked about how this doesn’t hold up to inflation.
• Flubber – Just plain fun.
• The Money Pit – I could have passed on screening this during a house move, but Ashar thinks it’s funny.

We also watched a terrifying video of a tarantula molting, which I refuse to link to but which you can Google if you and your kids are so inclined. Ashar loved it. (Ashar loves tarantulas.) I do not love tarantulas.

Video, board and card games

As always, we like to spend at least one night a week gaming, though with the move that’s gotten a little less frequent than we would like.

Some of the highlights of the past couple of months have included the Simon’s Cat card game; Gloom, a new favorite; Munchkin, always a hit; and Family Feud, which never fails to make me ask “Who are the people they’re asking these questions to and are they for real?”

We also, since we like doing in-person escape rooms so much, bought Escape Room: The Game and did the “Prison Break” episode. That was a ton of fun for the five of us!

Universal Yums

One of the coolest new things of the year has been a family subscription to Universal Yums, a subscription box that sends snacks from a different country each month. So far we’ve gone to Germany, the Ukraine and Italy, and more recently, our snacks came from Israel and Austria.

Israel wasn’t so hot for me, because it contained a lot of sesame, to which I am very strongly allergic. But Austria included a lot of chocolate, and since it’s the home country of one of Ashar’s favorite people, Arnold Schwarzenegger, she was excited! They had pizza-flavored corn snacks, labeled “American style,” which were my favorite.

What’s really cool is that we try to make an evening out of our taste-testing. All five of us try a little bit of each snack, we rate them, we look up facts about the country and we have a good time.

I’m not an affiliate of Universal Yums, but I can definitely HIGHLY recommend it. You can definitely look forward to hearing more about this in our roundups as long as our subscription continues!

Theater

Theater is something that has always kind of been a part of Ashar’s life, but in an… adjacent kind of way? What I mean is, most of her local friends are active in various theater groups, and we go see their shows, and we’ve gone to see a bunch of other shows both in the area and nationally, and we listen to musicals like they’re pop music… but she’d never really been part of any major production.

That all changed in late March, when, as we were, you know, talking about buying a new house, she decided to audition for Peter Pan and Mary, a locally-written play being premiered in May at DreamWrights, our local family theater.

Her preference was not acting – DreamWrights chooses its crew from auditionees, and she got something she wanted very much, a chance to be part of the props team. There were some weird glitches, though – so on callbacks night, she didn’t get a call, and it wasn’t until I got an email a week later that said “Hey, props team!” that we found out she’d be a part of the production. Then, on the first night, somehow Ashar didn’t connect with the props mistress and helped the set construction crew all evening. She was hooked!

She has ended up putting in four or five hours a night, sometimes five nights a week, for the past month or more, and is splitting her time helping the two crews. Her cast’s show debuts Saturday, and we’re all going to see it Sunday. I cannot wait. She’s doing an amazing job, and one of the adult leaders even pulled me aside to tell me what a huge asset she is. I’m thrilled.

Ashar isn’t auditioning for the next play, but I think the one after that, she’ll be back. The break is largely because she’s also taking part in a two-week Shakespeare immersion camp in late June at OrangeMite, our local Shakespearean company. They’ll put on a production of The Tempest, which I think is super-cool, and of which you can be assured pictures will follow in future wrapups!

Unschooling places, projects and odds and ends

Other family news: In a sad update, Chris’s mom (Ashar’s Grandma Mary) passed away unexpectedly March 2. We have spent much of the last two months managing the things that came after that, including Chris needing to work with his sister to sell his mother’s home. “I have so many houses right now,” he says. I felt truly terrible when I broached the subject of moving, but… we’re making it work.

Capitol Days: For the second year, Ashar participated in this 4-H immersion experience to state legislature, including a full mock bill session and brunch with her lawmakers. She loves it.

From ginger to gingerbread: Based on, I think, a display of fresh ginger in the grocery store, we got into an evening-long conversation on how ginger becomes gingerbread.

Art news: I sold my first commissioned piece of art, as well as several other paintings, and I got brave and tried something new – a cold wax painting class. This is where you mix cold wax in with oil paints to change the texture, and you can create some really great stuff with it! I’m looking forward to trying more.

Exercise: Ashar wanted to start using my old Fitbit when I upgraded mine, so now she’s got a step goal and is walking around our neighborhood most days trying to hit it. She’s doing some biking, too, though that’s on hiatus for a little because she had a minor bike crash that left one of her hands pretty thrashed.

The official end of 11th grade: Ashar’s portfolio went to our evaluator and was approved; the documentation was sent to our soon-to-be-former school district; and our records were transferred to our new school district. Ashar is officially done 11th grade! One last year of compulsory reporting to go, though you know in our world, that won’t change much of how we live our lives together. We also included this year’s credits in something that took a LOT of time in the past month, our Ultimate Guide to Creating an Unschooling High School Transcript. Ashar was a huge help in pulling that together!

So what’s new with your family this month? Drop me a comment! I love hearing from all my “blog friends!”