Litha: Our Summer Solstice!

Well, its that time of year again, ahhh... not for us! We are still celebrating Christmas this year, but we're incoporating the pagan holidays into the mix this year. So Litha, is of course, the celebration of the Sun, and in some ways pagan father's day. We celebrate and show gratitude for the sun, the God is in his prime and fatherhood. celebration of life when the Goddess is giving in all her abundance with the summer harvests, and as such a special day of having fun!

This is the Sun Pinyata I made this year, in secret for a surprise for the children (and for all but two days, Andrew):

Inside was gold coins, representing the golden sun and the darkness it hides.

This is the children lining up to do the Pinyata thing:

Our humble Litha Feast:

We had watermelon stars, and melonade, greek salad, sun cakes (they had chunks of chocolate through them see gold coins above, same concept), chargrilled corn, bbq meats, GF treats! The suncakes ended up being not as nice, I sourced those from the Circle Round: Raising Children In Goddess Traditions book by Starhawk, Diane Baker and Anne Hill. We also used their fairy money idea (good for hugs, kisses and time for activities one on one with mum or dad), gifting our representative father and the pinyata.

After we sang and danced around the backyard and we had a really good evening, no I didn't stay up all night! Q.

Rite of Passage: Labyrinth's Menarche

The stories of so many women I've talked to about their own menarches have been, quite frankly either terrorising for a young teen or just plain pathetic. Mine was just plain humiliating. I had a small bleed that lasted maybe a day or two. No one had explained a lot to me, just what I'd read in some 'not like reality' scientifically based puberty books I'd read when I was 5 or 6, so I wasn't expecting a little one to come, and then two weeks later a full on one to appear when I was in class with 30 other people! The blood had soaked through my school dress, and onto the seat. The class was the worst possible choice for such an incident - wood work. My teacher actually laughed along with all the other students. He was probably embaressed and didn't know how to react, but..!! My parents made me go back to school same day and face the humiliation that can only be dished out by pubestants penned into cages can. A girl who I thought was my friend actually threw tampons and pads at me in front of two grades worth of people.

Well needless to say, I want my daughters experience not to echo anything I had to experience, but be a beautiful, welcoming into the world of womanhood. I had been thinking about this for months actually, since Labyrinth had already started Thelarche I knew it was coming. I had guessed it might happen around Dantes birthday and had started to plan for it. I was never expecting it was going to happen roughly a week before Christmas!! (I had also begun preparations for Litha too - now that I'm pagan.)

So she told me that morning it had begun, she was excited about it, we'd actually discussed preforming a menarche ritual and having a lovely meal, I wanted it to be a party with other friends, but that wasn't to be. So, to begin with Labyrinth enjoyed a bath with rose petals through it, and some incense oils infused into the bath. I put around her white, pink and red candles. I left her to enjoy that (I was flat out working on the meal), then I painted her with the best thing I had - face paint! I made goddess symbols, spirals around her body, and I told her she had gone into the water innocent, now she rose as a full maiden. She wore red silk shirt (that went to her knees) for the rest of the night so some of the marks were visable.

I read her a dedication, invited the goddess and again welcomed Labyrinth to womanhood in front of the family, and we enjoyed non-alcholic red wine as a toast. We then ate a red meat roast with salad, with red onions, fetta, red lettuce and tomotoes and fetta. The colours of white. pink and red where echoed through out. I had prepared the cupcakes above, a beautiful red velvet cupcake I can't take credit for - it came from the Zombie Cupcake book by Zilly Rosen (totally recommended.) I just made red icing and put strawberries on top. We later gave her a gift, it was a doll, and a bouquet of red flowers.

Its a memory she can cherish forever, knowing she has parents that love her enough to try and make positive and lasting memories for her!

Face Painting and Bushwalking

Monika is asleep after we had a bushwalk and found blackberries along the side of the trail. It was about a 6 kilometre work. We all realised that it was good but we need to do it more often! It is a lovely walk along the derwent river.

I've been dreaming of building a house that generates it's own electricity and supplies its own water, where we can have a big vege garden with lots of fruit too, and a goat and a sheep and some chickens. I've been researching how to do this and best methods of building etc. So I guess we're going green! But we're saving up and trying to achieve our goals realistically. We're putting in a vege garden right here and we've gone and brought a bananna plant (which we're potting until we get our block of land). I'm keen and I'm even trying to look at ways of generating money beyond the pension. (but that is heavily penalised, let's be honest.)

Anyways, as a result of my researches we decided to go to the Building Sustainable Expo at the Derwent Entertainment Centre on Sunday. Although it just seemed like a whole lot of expensive crap and postulating, there was some gems amongst the preverbial ***. Such as using bamboo which only takes 5 years to regrow after harvesting (not to mention 1/4 of the price). The economically soundness of a huge water tank. As for composting toilets, there wasn't any there. In it's place was an amusing toilet that used alot less to flush. I maintained that I didn't wan't his toilet on the grounds I AM prepared to take out the composting matter and use it on flower beds, and a dry toilet is still OK, and environmentally sound.

Of course the chidren enjoyed the free attention in the form of lollies/face painting, as you can see above... Raven became a T-Rex, Labyrinth a Jaguar, Kai a Parrot and Dante who wanted to be a chicken got something else... naturally Monika didn't get her face painted, she's a bit young yet.

Labyrinth Turns Nine *)

And so Labyrinth is happy as she got her skateboard (and safety gear), a skating reader which includes tips, a new Baby Bratz, a pair of snow shoes and some Bratz books including one which helps her to make her own magazine from Mum and Dad and brothers and sister. As always (as mentioned before in family traditions - to eliminate family rivalry) the birthday child gives gifts to her siblings. Dante recieved a Rainbow Fish riddle book and shark, Kai a Dig n Glow Dinosaur Egg, Raven a Thomas the Tank Engine numbers game and Edward train, and Monika a Splash! book and they all recieved chocolate or chips (as Kai won't eat choc). This all happened early morning, and later we enjoyed a BBQ with beautiful weather at the park as you can see in the photos:

Raven's pic above deserves a special mention... as he suffers from a type of albinoism, he really needs to wear his hat and glasses (the light actually hurts his eyes) and while he'd prefer to stay indoors he has in the past refused to wear his hat and glasses.. so this is most definately an improvement !!

This is the only problem I have with homeschooling (at least down here in Tassie) - there isn't any friends for my poor darlings! I know they are young yet and the best place for them is at home, but she would have dearly loved to share the day with a lovely friend! Hopefully it will happen through other avenues eventually.

For tea we had a visit from Nan and Pop (my parents) who spoilt the children with lollies, chippies and bubbles, and gave to Labyrinth Baby Bratz lil Petz (looks like some kind of mutant plant) and a Bratz Rock Angelz lunchbox and drink set.

They all enjoyed the day, excepting the fact Labyrinth hassled Dante til point of tears over the fact she didn't have to help with chores and he did.

That's it really, Q.