2007 has been an interesting year for the Smith family. Kevin, our eldest, decided to join the United States Air Force and left for basic training in Texas in January. He is now stationed at Travis Air Force Base in California and is studying and working in the field of Power Production. Concurrent to his training and work, he is taking classes that will earn him an Associates degree in Power Production Engineering (at least I think that’s what it’s called). The military life seems to agree with him and he is doing well in his new career.

We think it is funny that our only full Canadian child is now serving in the United States Armed Forces. For those of you who know our immigration saga, our other two Canadian children, Adam and Stephanie, became United States citizens this year and are now dual citizens of Canada and the US. This was accomplished via acquiring their US passports thanks to a wonderful lady that worked at the passport office here on Guam. Considering the horror stories we have heard about that office, we were truly blessed. The lady was a Christian and we later found out she was transferred a week after our children’s passports had arrived. So God surely had His hand in the situation.

Our driving school continues to do well in supporting our family. Both our Yigo and Barrigada offices keep us busy. Adam and Stephanie are wonderful helpers in both offices and we are thankful that at 19, Adam has chosen to stay home and help us in our business. Les continues to officiate at Japanese weddings (and the occasional local one) and this “side” job has helped pay for medical insurance, among other things.

On top of our regular jobs, Les and I both continue to volunteer our time at Guam International Christian Academy. From January to May Les and I both taught a few classes in the high school. Les taught Guam History, and the senior Bible class and I taught a combined 11/12^th English class and a 9/10^th Bible class. After a too short summer break I returned to GICA to teach the elementary class – this time bringing Cassie and Eric with me to join my class which is a K3-3^rd grade mix, and Stephanie joined the middle school class taught by our pastor, Mr. Calkins. It has been quite the experience going from teaching high school students back to the younger group, but I have been enjoying myself and blogging about the experience on http://tropicalmom.blogspot.com .

In October we decided to pull Eric and continue to homeschool him, as he was having a difficult time settling into the classroom environment. He is excelling back at home and still visits the class on those days when we need him to. Stephanie too, has chosen to attend school part time due to some social issues we didn’t like to see happening in the school. Though GICA is a Christian school and teaches from a biblical foundation, the students are often from troubled backgrounds so there are many “issues” to deal with. But it is a wonderful ministry opportunity for me and I am thrilled when I see God’s hand at work in the students.

Stephanie has been learning piano this year and entertained us last night with her dad’s favorite Christmas Carol – O Come, O Come Emmanuel. She did a fantastic job, despite a nervous stomach.

This year, Stephanie and Adam were able to attend a wonderful production of Les Miserable put on by St. John’s Private school. They had read the novel by Victor Hugo and were intimately familiar with all the songs in the musical. We were also able to take them to a medley of Broadway shows, and another of Jesus Christ Superstar – both performed by the Guam Cantata. Stephanie is showing interest in wanting to perform in theater next year and hopefully will be able to join Guam’s GATE program productions which are open to private and home schooled students.

Adam has wowed us with his first CD – over 20 instrumental songs that he wrote himself. This explains what he’s been doing on his computer, with those headphones on, guitar in his lap, and keyboard at his side all year. We have enjoyed several evening concerts with Adam and Stephanie sharing their musical talents with us. Cassie has obliged us by dancing along to the music, while Eric occupies his time drawing and illustrating his comics. Our children have shown us some incredible artistic talent and proven our method of homeschooling has merit.

We continue to enjoy our beach house and Les has cultivated a beautiful outdoor garden area for our relaxation pleasure. We have witnessed many beautiful sunsets and had front row seats on our private beach to the New Year and Liberation Day Firework displays. 2007 has also been our “get fit” year and Les and I have been actively working on extending our life by losing weight and exercising more. Les is down 20 lbs and I have lost 30lbs. Still a long way to go to reach our goals, but we are feeling better about ourselves and our lives. We celebrated our 25^th Anniversary this year and have agreed we want to make it to our 50^th together.

Our pet menagerie has continued to flourish. Currently we have 11 cats, a rabbit, a guinea pig, a finch and a parakeet. The animals are a constant source of entertainment for us, as well as a lesson in responsibility for the children.

2008 promises to be another good year as we continue to work our business and seek the Lord’s will in our lives. Who knows, maybe this will be the year we can do some traveling! I sure hope so! As always our door is always open for those who want to come and enjoy our tropical paradise.

Love Colleen, Les, Kevin, Adam, Stephanie, Eric, and Cassie.

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Sat, 01 Jul 2006

Unschooling Thoughts

We have been complete Radical unschoolers for the past year. We actually started our unschooling journey back in 1998 when our oldest son, Kevin, was driving me crazy by his refusal to do the school work *I* thought he should do. He had his own agenda, and it did not include doing what mom wanted him to do. I basically gave up with him and told him "fine, teach yourself then" and that's what he proceeded to do. He taught himself lots of things over the next few years and has never suffered for my lack of "educating him". We discovered that this "child- led learning" could also be called "unschooling". I began to research and study the whole unschooling concept and realized that it really fit our whole philosophy of homeschooling. Really, who makes up the rules of what children should learn and when? And how relevant is some of the things we force our children to learn in school? Since deciding we were unschoolers (sometime in 1999) we have gone through many changes in our life. Both my husband and I spent time working in a Christian school. We ended up putting some of our children into the school during this time. I "unschooled" myself in librarianship and learned how to organize and set up a library. My husband "unschooled" himself in the sciences and taught high school physical science, biology, and chemistry. He also did a stint as a history teacher, economics and speech teacher as well as his personal favorite bible. I substituted for high school english and Math. Spending time in a school setting further encouraged us in our unschooling philosophy. Now we have entered the state of radical unschooling. We provide for our children a rich educational environment. But we don't force our children to write, study, read, learn. And guess what? They do it anyway! Stephanie has been teaching herself French. Adam has educated himself in opera and music appreciation as well as reading classics that have been turned into muscial operettas (Les Miserables, Hunchback of Notre Dame). The little ones, Cassie and Eric, have learned about penguins and foxes. All I have done is provided the necessary learning tools when the interest was shown. My children are social (in their own way), imaginative, articulate, and amazingly bright for their ages. Unschooling works.

Posted 20:45  No comments | Post a comment

Catching Ducks

We've finally settled into our new beach house in Anigua, Guam. It's a beautiful location, large yard for the children to play in full of mango trees, banana trees and coconut trees - and our own private beach. The house is small, yet cozy and reminds me of the beach houses near Lang bay in Powell River, B.C. Along with a beach house comes all kinds of wildlife. There are the hermit crabs who sport the shells of the snails you can also see in the yard. Roosters, chickens and their chicks roam freely throughout the yard belonging to no one in particular. Our 10+ cats are thriving in the freedom to climb trees, roam the beach and chase the chickens. Two ducks live next door and frequent our yard to share the rotten mangos with their little ducklings...which is the reason for this blog! Ducklings are so much cuter than baby chicks. They are yellow and fluffy and waddle around on their little webbed feet pecking at mangos and peeping at their momma. Eric, my 6yo, is enthralled with the ducklings. To his surprise he was able to catch one yesterday evening. He was so excited that I was afraid he was going to squeeze the poor thing. He really wanted to keep it for a pet in his bedroom. He put it in an old lego bucket that it wasn't able to hop out of. Kevin, our eldest, was over purusing through our books looking for something to read and pulled out the "story of Ping" and said "here's a duck book for him". Eric was just trying to figure out a name for his duck when I showed him the book and he excited agreed that "Ping" was a perfect name for his duck. Once he figured out he could catch a duckling, it wasn't soon before we had two ducklings in the bucket. As the sun began to set I quietly informed Eric that the babies needed to go back to their momma for the night. I really expected an outcry at this but he was willing to let them go. This morning I found out why he was so willing...Before anyone was up I heard the creaking of our wooden floors and quiet steps of a little boy sneaking out the back door. I heard giggling out in the yard...guess what the little rascal was up to? More duck hunting! Yup, now that he had this new found skill (catching ducks) he decided the thrill was more in the hunting and catching than in the keeping!

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Tue, 27 Dec 2005

Maggie

Maggie is our blessed little girl who went to live with her heavenly father on November 1st, 2005. I wish I had a picture to share with you. But, alas,I do not. You could look over at our photo page and see pictures of our other children and imagine how beautiful Maggie would have been as we tend to "clone" our children (they all look alike!) I've been wanting to share Maggie's story with the world. It's been so hard though. But here goes. Maggie was due on December 23rd, 2005. She was to have been our Christmas baby. Our sixth blessing in our quiver full. (9th baby, as she was preceeded by 3 babies lost through miscarriage/stillbirth). Throughout most of my pregnancy I had no problems. Never one to suffer through morning sickness, my biggest concern was to not gain too much weight. In the last few weeks of October I began to experience swelling in my feet. It got so bad that I could barely walk. My doc told me it was "normal" as I had been on my feet alot doing substitute teaching for high school english at GICA. I had wanted to get an ultrasound to find out the sex of our baby for the past two months but had yet to have one scheduled. Finally, my doc consented to an ultrasound at 32 weeks. On November 1st I went in to have the ultrasound. For the past week I had been a bit concerned because I didn't feel much movement from the baby. That, and the swelling in my feet, made for many sleepless nights for me. During the ultrasound the tech was pretty silent and only asked about 3 times if this was my first ultrasound for this pregnancy. His asking this made me a bit suspcious. He also couldn't tell me if I was having a girl or a boy because of the baby's postion (back up). When it was over I was left to wait and worry for about 20 minutes. Finally I was told to go see the Radiologist who wanted to discuss the ultrasound with me. Before I could get into see him, I was told my OB doc was on the phone for me. Dr. Shieh told me there was something wrong with my baby. And that I needed to terminate the pregnancy right away. Now he is not one to do an abortion so I just about flipped at his use of the word "terminate". What he meant was "deliver" the baby ASAP. Doctors should really learn to choose their words carefully! My husband, Les, and I went to the doc's office where we were told our baby had "fetal hydrops" - which meant severe swelling in all her tissues. The chances for survival were extremely slim. Immediate delivery was the only option - preferably by C-section as he didn't feel she could survive a normal birth. Eight natural births and here I was finally having a C-section! From there everything happened so fast. I barely had time to get the word out to our pastor and friends for prayer. I was so scared. Doc asked me if I wanted to get my tubes tied while he was in there. After everything I've gone through - nine pregnancies, a miscarriage and two stillborn babies and now this - I knew that it was time to "close the doors". Such a hard, momentous decision to make. Margaret "Maggie" Elizabeth entered the world just after 5pm on November 1, 2005. She died peacefully in her daddy's arms just over an hour later. I never got to hold my sweet baby girl while she was alive. I was able to touch her with only one hand. Her body was so swollen from the edema. She probably weighed a good 7lbs from all the extra fluid. She had blonde "peach fuzz" all over her head. She never opened her eyes, but I imagine they were as blue as her brothers and sisters were. I was wheeled to the recovery room and by the time I was brought to my room she had already passed. I held her still body for another hour before I finally let her go. I examined her little body, counting her fingers and toes. On her left hand her fingers were webbed between her middle and ring fingers. On her right hand the webbing was on the same fingers but only up to the first knuckle. I don't know if she would have had any other problems if she had lived. I've tried to research what the webbing was a sign of, but haven't been very successful in finding out. If anyone reads this and has any ideas I'd love to hear about them! Email me. We decided not to have a funeral for her. To this day I don't know if this was the right decision to make. I have no final resting place where I can go visit her. Maybe we should have done this. We were worried about the cost, both emotionally and financially. I think decisions like that shouldn't have to be made so soon after a child's death. Both Les and I were in a state of shock that took several weeks to leave us. Reflecting on this issue now I wish we had more family on Guam that could have helped us with this. So that's her story. She will always live in our hearts. And we know she is with Jesus and our other children, and that someday we will be reunited.

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