Just life...

Beautiful sunny day.

Laundry load after laundry load on the line.

Kids playing outside with wildflowers

Climbing trees

Running and laughing.

Picnic in the grass.

Swinging up to the clouds and belly racing down the slide.

Digging in the red red earth.

Inside the house is a mess of boxes and half packed bins and piles to donate and piles to mend (I tend to forget about it!)half the curtains are down. the toys are no where to be found. Without cleaning the corners fill with dust bunnies and pennies and used up pens.

But life isn't inside this house we're moving from, it's out there in the sun, the wind the rain and snow.

The neighbours said she was sad to see us go, I have such nice polite children and it makes them so happy to see them playing outside all the time because so few children do anymore.

I'm so excited to see what they think of the stream at the back of our property.

We found our farmhouse sink today!

We also got a whole bunch of shutters for free (they're for the attic).

This sink is designed to have a cover - a cutting board/chopping block cover. I'm stoked, given our complete lack of countertops. It's a 1938 universal utility sink. It cost us 100.00 and came with the legs and all the original hardware.

More spring kids...

Sprout loves all the flowers but especially these ones.

Wild Thing right before he decided if he was going worm hunting a coat would be a good idea.

Nature Girl and her wild carrot root pig snouted medieval damsel Christina. When they say homeschoolers are wierd, this might be why. Christina isn't just any wild carrot pig snouted damsel, Christina is an actual historical figure who fought back against the Church and her family to stay chaste and take vows in an Abbey (a sordid tale where she was promised to a Bishop as a mistress and the Bishop got her parents permission for this by arranging a marriage to a Duke. Christina would have none of it and actually hung from nails in the walls of her chamber to keep the Duke from bedding her. Nature Girl will recount this while she combs her root's hair.

Sprout is developing his own fashion sense, modelled after his greatest idol - Wild Thing.

How we'll be spending our summer

This is our new attic. It's huge. It's becoming the kid's domain.

We'll be insulating and replacing windows and putting in outlets and putting up beaded board and building in bedstees...

The third wing of the attic is an odd very steeply pitched space. But beyond the chimney is a room with a big window. It'll be their fort space.

This is our inspiration shot - our version will be lower (one tier of drawers not two) and more rustic looking (we're doing white stained beaded board walls not painted drywall. I have dreams we can get the floor in shape but realistically, it'll likely end up painted. Between the built in beds we'll be putting closets and Nature Girl will be getting a wall and doorway between her space and the boys. She hasn't really requested it but I think she'll need more privacy soon. They love the portholes but I convinced them that round mirrors will be nearly as cool, and offer more privacy and room for the little closet buffer spaces.

Wild Thing loves red and really wanted a red bedroom. A red attic...hmmmm...horror movies come to mind. When we do the fort space we'll paint the wall of it red. The doorway will be to the side because of the chimney, but you get the idea.


I'm so excited about designing and decorating our space as a FAMILY space, absolutely FULL of our personalities. I'm planning on a huge framed tackboard in the diningroom where I can have a rotating gallery of the kids art work up all the time.

I'm hoping that in addition to the attic renovation and the fence post putting in that we can get a lot of painting done while the kids are in Ottawa. At the very least the kitchen bathroom and diningroom - the rooms that get constant use in a 6 person household. Cause if I don't get to them when there are fewer people in the house I won't be able to!

Here's our new house...

We have big plans for it!

Returning to blogging from the land of the unbloggable

Obviously, I haven't been blogging.

I've always tried to blog about the joyous things in our lives, as a record of our lives, for my kids and far flung family. In the past year I've been wrestling with a lot of unbloggable dark stuff from my childhood and once I decided to confront it, blogging about the simple joys felt too much like a cover.

So I needed to step away.

I'm ready to move on and get back to blogging.

The big news is that we're moving! We've bought a farmhouse with a barn on a half acre with a further 2.5 acres we can use for grazing our livestock. We move end of June! I've set up a blog for it, and we'll move our blog at the same time.

The kids are all very excited, even Darkmirror who dislikes change - he gets a beautiful view of the Gaspereau Ridge and the winery's fields of grapes from his bedroom window.

In the meantime here are a few pictures from my last download from the camera

Wild Thing and Darkmirror cook dinner together once a week (or so...we're working on regularity!). They make "This is why you're fat" big manly bad for you meals - like these insane nachos.

wild Thing, Nature Girl and sprout have given up civilization at bedtime and are sleeping in a gypsy camp they've made in the basement. They're all itching to go camping again!

Wild Thing and his first sandy wet toes of the season. The day I took this he arrived at the beach in a down filled coat and winter boots. The water was about 3 degrees? He had an AWESOME time.

It's good to be back.

Statistics

General Sexual Assault Statistics

51% of all Canadian women have experienced at least one incident of sexual or physical violence. Close to 60% of these women have survived more than one incident of violence. (Statistics Canada, 1993)

6 out of 10 victims who reported being sexually assaulted were under 17. (Statistics Canada, 2005)

In 2000, women made up the vast majority of victims of sexual assault (86%) and other types of sexual offences (78%). (Statistics Canada, 2001)

80% of sexual assaults occur at home (Sexual Assault Care Centre, Women's Care Centre, Sunnybrook & Womens, 1999, Myths and Facts About Sexual Assault,
http://www.womenshealth matters.ca/facts/quick_show_d.cfm?number=65)

54% of girls under the age of 16 have experienced some form of unwanted sexual attention. 24% of these have experienced sexual assault, and 17% have experienced incest. (J. Holmes and E. Silverman, 1992, We're Here, Listen to Us: A Survey of Young Women in Canada)

In cases reported to police, 80% of sexual assault survivors knew their abusers. About 10% were assaulted by a friend and 41% were assaulted by an acquaintance. 28% were assaulted by a family member, while the remaining 20% were assaulted by a stranger. (Statistics Canada, 2003)

However

Victimization surveys show that less than 10% of women who are sexually assaulted report the assault to the police. (Federal/Provincial/Territorial Ministers Responsible for the Status of Women, 2002, Assessing Violence Against Women: A Statistical Profile, p.19)

This number is even lower (estimated to be 6%) for victims of childhood sexual abuse.

It is estimated that over 80% of women who are sexually assaulted do not report due to humiliation or fear of re-victimization in the legal process. (Ontario Women's Directorate, 2002, Sexual Assault: Reporting Issues,
http://www.gov.on.ca/citizenship/owd/english/ publications/sexual-assault/reporting.htm)

There is no statute of limitations on child abuse in Canada, Great Britian, or Australia.

If you make the decision that you are ready to report you should know that charges are only laid in roughly 40% of cases.