And so life goes on...

So as is obvious, we've just been so busy with living life, we haven't had time to blog.

Since the last blog in August, Aurora and Karma have turned 16 and 15 respectively. Aurora ended up staying with her boyfriend's family in PA for nearly 2 months (just 5 days shy of) and she had a great time but also discovered she doesn't like being away from her family for so long.

Shane has decided the military is best for him, but not the American one. On December 15, he's flying to France to join the French Foreign Legion. He's been staying with his grandma near Amarillo since September, so the rest of us will be driving up there to visit with him and drive him to Dallas for his flight. Keep him in your thoughts for a successful journey!

Oh yes, we scaled down into our smaller place, which promptly flooded and there was mold growing everywhere and the conditions were generally unsafe, so we moved in with Andrea's mom for the time being. Rather than getting another place, we're working to just get an RV and hit the road together.

Aurora and Karma put in a lot of applications at various establishments in the local mall, only Karma has so far gotten a job, though. She works for a cheese steak place and she loves her job.

Andrea is wrapping up her final semester at the local college and will start at University (online) in January. She has decided that pursuing a Bachelor's degree will increase her chances of finding work for pay after we head to Europe, so that's what she's doing. Also, she just loves to learn. :)

Caed is working on teaching himself programming and plans to buy himself a C++ programming book after Christmas. For those who aren't aware, instead of buying each other potentially useless presents for Christmas, we distribute family money to each individual who is then able to spend it in whichever manner pleases them the most. This keeps our consumerism down and helps to ensure that we're not acquiring unnecessary goods.

That's about it folks, we'll keep you posted!!

On the road again

We started our road trip today!! We left Austin at 11:30am and arrived for our first stop in Norman, Oklahoma to visit an unschooling family we met in an online group. We're staying the night with this wonderful family and then visiting the omniplex with them tomorrow before hitting the road again.

We decided to leave the camp chairs and most of the camping gear at home (save for the tent and the sleeping bags), which gave us more space for things like coats--we're headed to the northeast don't cha know. :)

We'll keep you updated as we progress across the country. If you're reading this and would love us to stop and visit, drop us a line!

New Directions

At some point in everyone's life (many points for most people), one feels their whole life taking on a different direction. Here in the Dharma Family, we feel the change coming. We've made many changes and hope to make many more in 2008.

Let us tell you about some of the things we've changed and some of what's coming...

• We mentioned back in November that we now speak to Sam's oldest son fairly regularly. We were on an every other month pattern last year, but we started out this year well by speaking to him both in December and January.
• We have, as a family, decided to wholeheartedly embrace unschooling. We've done a lot of research and realized that so long as each of us has a deep internal desire for personal betterment, this will be successful. We've also realized that if we don't have that deep internal desire, that no amount of school or workbooks at home will change that.
• We still want to open up our own store. We've had to put the idea on the backburner with the housing slump because lenders all over are more hesitant to give out their money. This leads us to:
• We've created a budget. We bought this great book called America's Cheapest Family and we've actually created a workable budget. We've already begun applying some of their money saving principles and plan to start our budget in February. Already though, we've found more money in our pockets just by applying some of their money saving principles.
• We're also changing the children's allowance system to a work and get paid system that is a modified version of the one found in America's Cheapest Family. We are all excited about it.
• We plan to move this year, because we're not happy with where we live now. We're still very unsure about where we're moving to, we'll update you when the time comes.
• Since embracing unschooling, even Sam and Andrea have rekindled their individual desires to learn and so learning is constanly happening around here.
• We're embracing our sister-in-law's desire to unclutter her house. We plan to spend 2008 decluttering our living space.
• Andrea is finally taking charge of her health and saw a doctor today to discuss her lack of weight loss and constant fatigue, among other things. She goes in for lab tests tomorrow.

Well, that's about all of the changes. The last thing that we'll be changing is that we're going to make more of an effort to keep our online followers updated. We belong to an unschooling listserv where everyone has been posting their days and we plan to do something similar here.

That's all for now folks!

Lots of love,

The Dharma Family

Some changes

We're going through some changes on the Dharma front. Andrea has started a new job, which has her out of the house 45 hours per week, again. We'll see how that goes.

Andrea's best friend, who has been staying with us since her separation is going to be moving into her own place next week. This will be a relief for all involved as this little house is just not made to hold 3 adults, 3 kids, 6 cats, and 1 dog.

The kids have begun unschooling. We're testing the waters with all three kids. The premise of unschooling is that children have an inherent desire to learn and so will seek out knowledge when left to their own devices. So far, only Karma is really seeking out knowledge, though Aurora spends time reading and doing math as well. It's recommended that kids take a little vacation and are given time to rediscover their inherent desire to learn. That's where we're at right now. Also, Sam and Andrea are hoping to model good learning to the kids through their own pursuit of knowledge, which fortunately happens quite frequently.

We'll keep you posted.