Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Let's Pretend For a Moment

This afternoon we headed out to enjoy the sunshine and the spring birds singing.
Considering we live in the Midwest Arctic, snow attire was still necessary.
It didn't take me long to realize that those spring birds were saying,"Why on earth did we fly north so early? It's still FREEZING up here!!!"
I think H is losing hope that spring will ever get here. Did I ever mention this child was NOT meant to live in the cold weather! She did set a new record for staying out in the snow. A much impressive 15 minutes!!! I was ready to come in after 12 so she beat me. It was nice to pretend for a moment that Spring was here.....sort of.

Monday, March 1, 2010

IAHE Homeschool Convention and Our Mini Getaway

So J and I got away this weekend and headed to the State Homeschool Convention. We had a great time. Now we love going to the convention but we also love the "getaway" part. After our first day at the convention we headed out to buy a new camera and then went out to eat at Don Pablo's.
Oh how I've missed you my queso. We have been craving this ever since the one in our area left. It was great to get a queso fix!
This years conference talked much about America's heritage and foundations of Bible truths like always. I love that part of it! It's always so encouraging to me to hear why I'm homeschooling and why I need to continue and for the Biblical basis of it to be taught before you. I know all of that but sometimes it's nice to be reminded.
This is my favorite part of the whole thing. The Vendor Hall!!! We found many great things. J and I finally took the plunge and bought Rosetta Stone. It is such a big investment but they were offering a discount so it was the best time to buy. J and I have decided that we will buy one language over the next couple of years to spread out the cost. J wants the kids to be at least trilingual by the time they enter the 6th grade. We'll see. We bought Spanish this year and Hebrew, Chinese, French, and Farsi are on the list of possibilities for next year. I love that we could get the Spain version of Spanish. My grandma is going to be so proud!!! Once the kids get older we'll let them choose a language too. We also came up with what we want to do for science. Unfortunately we didn't find a curriculum that was exactly what we were looking for so we've decided to make up our own for the kids. I'm using suggestions from curriculum's and piecing them together. A little more work for me but that's OK. I think it will be worth it.
It was a great time away. We quickly learned why the hotel we stay in was so crazy busy. There was an NFL recruiting event going on all weekend and the hotel was the headquarters. We also saw Charles Barkley one night while we were waiting for our car to be brought up. He was one I actually recognized. I'm sure we saw lots of people my dad would've loved to see but since we don't follow sports we had no clue! We also got to have dinner with my Grandpa and his wife which was nice. I can't emphasize enough how important it is for married couple's to take get aways on their own without kids. Of course, the Key's trip will be hard to out do but we still enjoy these mini get aways.