Monday, June 16, 2008

Home at Last!

Phew. What a crazy week! Last Wednesday, the 24th annual Christian Home Educators of Colorado Family Conference began in Denver, so Tim and I (the Publicity chairmen) drove up with the kids and had a great time. I stayed with the children, mostly, in the hotel room and tried to help Tim when I could. The speakers were just spectacular this year. Headlining were Doug Phillips with Vision Forum, Kevin Swanson and Voddie Baucham. Also, Jay Wile spoke and I was quite excited about hearing him too. He's a scientist who writes high school text books from a thoroughly Christian perspective~ pretty rare. I had read wonderful reviews about his texts so I made sure to catch part of his talk about why he is a creationist. Then, one of my kids spilled a drink and another fell off his chair, so we had to find the exit pretty quickly. We also heard Voddie Baucham on family worship and that was just excellent as well. What encouragement for fathers!

Also, my favorite part of the conference is the vendor hall. There were over 200 booths and most were filled with excellent curriculum and books and tapes about family. I kept stalking the Vision Forum booth (I'm sure those nice young Vision Forum men were wondering what my problem was) and drooled over all those lovely resources I read about online and in their catalog. If you aren't familiar with their ministry, click on the link in my sidebar~ you won't regret it. I also found a few vendors carrying resources from Answers in Genesis and loved flipping through their actual books and reading the backs of their dvds. And then there was the CHEC booth and and the Math-U-See people and the people who sell handwriting paper... Because our oldest is only 4 years old and we have most of our Kindergarten curriculum lined up, Tim told me I could buy only one thing in the entire vendor hall. Wow. Decisions, decisions! So many ministries, so little money. In the end, I decided on the Zoo Guide, Aquarium Guide and Museum Guide from Answers in Genesis, sold as a set. The idea is to take these along when you visit all these places and instead of teaching your kids what these establishments want them to know, you teach them about what they're seeing from Christian perspective. I'm already loving it. We don't do tons of formal schooling right now, but we do go to museums, aquariums and zoos!

Last Friday night was the concert featuring the Colorado Wranglers and the Von Trapp Children. (They're the great grandchildren of the Captain and Maria). I must say I really hadn't been excited about the concert and hadn't planned on going. I mean, would they be yodeling? But as the time rolled around, I decided to go and take Dabney and maybe see if there were some of the cheap last row tickets were available. My friend Esther was selling the tickets, and as she was trying to find two tickets next to each other, a lady came up to Esther and I and said she had two tickets that she didn't need and where should she put them? Wow! Esther handed them right to me with a smile. I am so glad we went. What a great time. We've been listening to the Colorado Wranglers since we moved to Colorado and it was great to see them again. Dabney thought it was so cool to see real cowboys. The Von Trapp children were amazing and I was stunned at the beauty of their voices together. (And the only song they yodeled in was "The Lonely Goatherd" from the Sound of Music.) It was great to learn about the real family behind the movie.

We had a great time at the conference, but boy, is it nice to be home with the kids in their own beds and clothes in the closets and dressers not in suitcases. As I type this my laundry is humming away in the washer and I really must go see if the dryer cycle is done. Have a nice Monday!

1 comment:

Rebecca said...

SOOOOO JEALOUS!

I wanted to attend so bad! Thanks for sharing all the good info about it. I love talking and reading about homeschool stuff more than quite a lot of subjects, actually. I was like a pig in mud reading all about the conference!

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