Reunion

Yesterday, my kids had a chance to meet with our home school support group. As I watched them building friendships with the other kids, I wondered if they would begin to experience the closeness that existed between my old home school group: The Lighthouse Fellowship. We usually met every Friday to do some collaborative learning or more often than not- some playing. Which, in turn, gave our moms some time to share their victories and struggles, pray, regain some sanity and realize they weren't alone in the journey of schooling at home.

This past year, from August to November, 5 second generation Lighthouse Fellowship babies were born. And before they were even born, we decided our babies were going to have to have a play date. Three of the babies live in town, one lives a couple of hours away--unfortunately, her momma couldn't get out of work today. But the other little guy came all the way from England!  It was pretty fun to see them all together.

This is as close to a high school reunion as I'll ever get.  And none of these girls graduated the same year I did... in fact, all of them are at least three years younger and some of them I used to baby sit.  I. Am. Old. But that's okay. I loved my time today visiting and meeting new babies and seeing so many people I hadn't seen in years.  And laughing and eating together just like the old times.

These ladies are incredible- resourceful, resilient and just plain fun! They helped us build model castles when learning about the middle age, showed us how to write haiku when learning about Japan, taught us to speak Spanish and make pinatas when learning about Mexico. They read Caddie Woodlawn and all the Little House books to us. They loaded us all into a suburban (4 women and 12+ kids) and took us to the Crayola Factory, Crumb Castle, and the Flint Hills to look for fossils. They miraculously found the jack and changed the tire (back in the days when there was no such thing as a cell phone) out in the Flint Hills when their kids had all but given up of ever returning to civilization and had begun to devise ways of how they would survive in the Flint Hills. They took us to walk the Chisholm Trail--at least parts of it, taught us to tool leather when learning about Native Americans, indulged me when my acting and writing bug hit and let me direct a Thanksgiving play I wrote, and most importantly taught us to love Jesus! They are my inspiration when I think of how I want to school my own children.

Ladies, I had a blast meeting with you all-- thank you for your time (today and all the Fridays before)!