Since the magazine is being published more irregularly now, I’ve reflected that change on the site. Every subscription is still six issues, but the average time between issues is about 3 months. As an unschooling mother with an active 9-year-old boy and an ever-growing, highly-demanding business, this change will take a lot of weight off my shoulders.

Also, Live Free Learn Free: The First Year is finally out!! We’ve gathered together each issue from our first year and bound them together into a beautiful book filled with unschooling wisdom from organic learners. Live Free Learn Free: The Second Year will likely be finished within a few days, and I’ll be announcing both of them, along with the newest issue, when everything’s ready.

Finally, I wanted to let you in on a secret I’ve been keeping. The website has been undergoing an enormous redesign. It will sport a completely different look and feel, as well as a new, more intuitive structure. We’re also including more information on unschooling in general, a calendar of unschooling events and cool happenings, an interactive section on unschooling in the news, and much more. Overall, the site will be more community-based and informative, and more easily navigable. We’re all impatiently working to get the redesign up and running, but we have no set timetable, as it’s really a labor of love. Hopefully, we’ll be announcing the new site with the next few months.

We wandered around for a little while, looking at some of the amazing costumes, and we ran into an unschooling family we know from game day. After that, though, Kenzie was ready to leave. No biggie, since we couldn’t buy the book at Book People, anyway, as they were sold out. They had given out all of their vouchers, and we didn’t have one. So, we headed to Sonic to have some ice cream and wait for midnight. From there, it was off to the local Wally World to pick up the book (after standing in a Deathly Hallows line for a good 45 minutes, of course). Kenzie also got a free poster and wristbands for each of the four houses (he’s been wearing the Gryffindor wristband ever since).

Of course, the rest of the night was spent reading (and trying terribly hard not to give away the plot before I was able to read it, too).

Saturday night, we went to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum to watch the midnight showing of The Order of the Phoenix on their IMAX screen. Well, we actually showed up for one of the two 9:00 showings, but both were completely sold out - even a half hour before showtime! So, we walked over to the UT campus to hang out for a while in the student center.

Back at the IMAX, the 3D glasses they handed us were enormous! They covered our entire foreheads! We realized why, of course, once we put them on and stared at the extra-tall screen. The 3D scenes weren’t anything to shout about, but the movie, itself, was wonderful. Kenzie and I were riveted to our seats (which was a good thing, since there were at least a dozen people on either side of us - getting up would have been quite an adventure).

After we made it back home, Kenzie settled into a comfy chair and took up reading where he’d left off. By Tuesday night, he had finished the book. He’s been good, though, and hasn’t told me the fates of any of our favorite characters. Thank goodness.

Looks like I have quite a bit of catching up to do….

     
When I asked him what the show was like (since we’ve never watched it), he said, “Well, I don’t like the costumes. The women were poorly clad. One of them was wearing just a bra and panties!” Oh, how I smiled and laughed.

Bed sharing is such a taboo in the U.S. We’re told repeatedly how dangerous it is to sleep with our children. If they don’t die of SIDS, we’re setting them up for a lifetime of dependence. Apparently, mothers in the U.K. have been getting the same misinformation - until today. Sunday Times reporter Harriet Perry tells the story of her own family’s co-sleeping and debunks some of those ubiquitous myths.

What’s the Big Secret, Mummy?

For more on the family bed:

Ask Dr. Sears.com
The Benefits of Co-Sleeping
Co-Sleeping.org

Once upon a time, I could never have just breezed through tornado season without a second thought. Growing up, I lived in a town that was dotted with tornado sirens. We were under what seemed like a constant tornado watch from about mid-March to mid-June. It was routine to have to file into the school hallway and crouch down against the wall with our heads buried under our hands. And at home, we had our tornado gear ready in the utility room - the weather alert box, the battery-operated radio, a cordless phone, flashlights, pillows, beanbags, and (if I remember correctly) a football helmet for my brother. If my mother had time, she would always pull a mattress off their bed for us to hide beneath.

We lived in Tornado Alley. And not just any town in tornado alley. We lived in Wichita Falls, TX, a town with a long memory of Terrible Tuesday.

On April 10, 1979, 13 tornadoes formed in the region, and 3 of those combined into one super tornado that ripped through Wichita Falls. In fact, we lived in the tornado’s former path, along Southwest Parkway next to Memorial Stadium and McNeil Junior High (a school that seemed to have more “disaster drills” than most others - I wonder why). The tornado’s swath of destruction was an astounding 8 miles wide, causing $400 million in property damage and leaving over 20,000 people (more than a fifth of the city’s population) homeless. 2,000 people were injured, and 42 died.

I was small when the tornadoes hit, and we lived, not in Wichita Falls, but in Seymour, TX (where one of the three tornadoes formed). I don’t remember that night at all, and my mother, being from a small town in Pennsylvania, thought the sirens were to call the volunteer firefighters. We didn’t take cover, but she did wonder how big the fire must have been. Those sirens just kept wailing and wailing.

When we moved to Wichita Falls a few years later, many of our neighbors had storm shelters dug into their backyards, and the people who sold these huge concrete rooms did a brisk business in the town. In fact, a few years ago, before we moved, I almost decided on a house simply because it had one of these shelters. Tornadoes are nothing to take lightly in Wichita Falls.

We were used to it, for the most part. Used to the adults remembering that day, telling us how they had survived, where they had taken shelter. Used to the sirens wailing in all seasons - that first Monday of the month test at noon. Used to disaster drills. Used to that ominous, brown sky.

Now, here I am in Austin. Sure, the sky looks brown and frightening, but I don’t worry too much. There’s no tornado “season” here. Heck, they haven’t even felt the need to erect sirens. It’s kind of nice, really, not to have the threat of giant tornadoes constantly in the back of my mind for several months each year….

Photos of the Terrible Tuesday tornado
Windows Media video and audio files about Terrible Tuesday
Photographs and captions