Boy have we been busy since my last post. My big girl turned 6 a couple of weeks ago. Where has the time gone? We celebrated with a kids' swimming party on Saturday followed by a small family gathering on Sunday. It's hard to get organized for a party right at the end of the school year, but we managed and she enjoyed basking in the spotlight, her favorite place! Here she is enjoying one of her favorite birthday gifts: A fishing pole of her very own! There is actually a small fish on the end of the line in this pic. The following weekend was the FPEA convention which we attended as a family minus one - details to follow. I always love to go and feel like I'm not strange or different - everyone else there homeschools, too! There were several great speakers and of course the vendor hall was fabulous. DH went to several worldview lectures and enjoyed those immensely. I left the deep thinking to him and went to a session on making lapbooks with Tamy Duby from Tobin's Lab. I'm going to try to incorporate this technique in my girls' coming school year. Looks like lots of prep work but fun, too. Every year there seems to be one thing we buy without really planning for it. This year that "thing" was a pair of violins. We are trying to give the kids more opportunities to explore their musical sides and this looks like a good way to do it. I'll let you know how this progresses. Right now things are peachy, as evidenced by this happy face:  Back to where I said we attended as a family minus one. Our oldest was in Michigan with his Odyssey of the Mind team. They were competing in the World Finals of OM. It was painful to put him on the airplane with his coaches and teammates and not one of us! The kids and coaches were staying together on the campus at Michigan State University, so we wouldn't have been together as a family anyway. He was covered by lots of prayer and sent on his way early Wednesday morning. Thursday the rest of us went to the convention, and then on Saturday night we were able to watch the awards ceremony live via the OM website. I'm so thankful for good technology! Another family joined us in our hotel room as we watched our son's team place FIRST in the WORLD! I jumped up and down and screamed with joy, which caused our youngest to dive under the pillows and scream in fear. Poor thing. That set off #3, so we had all kinds of commotion going on. I'm surprised hotel security wasn't called to our room! We were able to watch our son and his team walk across the stage to receive their gold medals and trophy live online. It was an awesome moment. The following day we packed up and left the convention and stopped at the airport to pick #1 son up on our way home. Here is the official greeting committee, which was joined later by other families and well wishers. We spent anxious moments awaiting the arrival of the team. It was time for their flight to arrive but we just hadn't seen any sign of our crew. Finally another waiting dad asked a departing passenger which flight he had been on. He answered, "From Detroit, and yes they are on this plane." Gee, I wonder how he knew who we were talking about? The flight crew even got off before our guys and joked that they left the kids in Michigan. At long last the victorious team arrived and we were able to snap this happy picture: Do you think the funny hats gave them away? Maybe it was the gold medals they were wearing around their necks or the gigantic trophy they stored in the overhead compartment! We love our goofy world champs  So I finally updated my blog and it was a lulu of an entry. I'm off to check out what all of YOU have been doing! |
Comments
|
|
|
|
|
Posted by
|
|
|
|
|
Posted by SharkyDog
|
|
|
|
|