HEAV

Friday after Busch Gardens, Bob dropped me off in downtown Richmond so I could go shop at HEAV, the annual homeschool convention for Virginia. It's huge. I knew I wouldn't have time to shop and go to workshops, so I just paid to shop. I know, that's crazy! But shipping is free, and there are lots of bargains, so it probably does equal out. It is SO nice to be able to page through things. I am hoping that maybe next year I'll be able to go for more than just one day, so that I can shop and attend workshops. Some of the speakers are so good!

While there, I saw a ton of big families--they had like 7 kids! LOL, I guess I just don't feel like we're that big of a family, but when you see a family where all the girls plus mom are dressed in identical print dresses with matching hair bows pulling back their (long) hair, and the boys plus dad are all wearing coordinating solid color polo shirts with khaki pants--well, they just scream out "Big family!" Or maybe "singing group", LOL. We only coordinate at amusement parks, we don't have long hair, and I don't sew, so that's probably the difference. I did see surprisingly few denim jumpers, although there were a lot of ladies wearing skirts and dresses.

I had SUCH a fun day all by myself (well, along with several thousand strangers). I happily wandered through the entire exhibit hall for several hours. I know even Bob would have been bored to tears! I talked for a long time to Amy Barr, one of the founders of Lukeion Project, which offers online classes about the classical world. She and her husband are the teachers, and they are archeologists who have excavated several sites in Greece and Italy. I have seen many threads about their classes on the Well-Trained Mind board, and everyone has raved about them! I think I would like Nathan and Luke to take some of their classes about Roman history sometime. I think they would really enjoy them.

I was also able to look at some things I was considering for Nathan for English next year. If you recall, I was debating whether or not to do Rod and Staff 8 with him, or maybe something less time-consuming. I actually found an 8th grade grammar workbook at the used sale which I think will be wonderful for him. It will be enough review, plus he'll have the writing assignments in our co-op to put all the concepts he's spent the last many years learning.

I also finally signed up for our $35 membership kit at the parentalrights.org booth. They are trying to get a Constitutional amendment passed to stop the U.N.'s Convention on the Rights of the Child. I don't think people really understand the threat the U.N. poses as far as what we are allowed to do in raising our children, so I encourage you to go over to the website and find out about it! Then you can sign the petition! I have meant to get the membership kit for awhile, but I just never did it when I was on the computer. We have some students at Patrick Henry at our church who are working for Parentalrights.org, and I felt bad when we were talking to them last Sunday, and I had to admit what a slacker I was! Not anymore though, LOL. Now I just need to put the bumper stickers and window decals on our vans, and wear our new t-shirt around!

I was excited to go to the used book sale, since it's really big. The one at the Northern VA conference is set up like your usual curriculum sale, with each person renting a table. You really have to search around to find something you might be looking for. This one, however, is divided by subject and grade, although it still wasn't perfect. For one thing, there was no "miscellaneous" table, and it was hard to think of what subject some books might be located. For example, I wanted to find a Classical Conversations Foundations book for someone in our Bible study who is doing it next year (and I can't give her mine because I like having all the memory work there!). I had no idea where to even look for that! It had categories like "children's fiction", "youth fiction", and "adult fiction", but there was no rhyme or reason about how people decided what books were in what category, so I ended up looking at all the categories. Plus, no one was giving anything away! I think you have a better chance at finding great deals when the individual sellers have all their books right there. But it was fun, and I did find some good books for us. I had a list of books we will need for Tapestry of Grace next year, but I had priced them used on Amazon before we went down there. Most of them were cheaper at Amazon, so I held off buying, although I did find a few things.

I packed a peanut butter sandwich and a small baggie of somewhat stale trail mix from the van for me to munch on. I was pretty hungry by the time Bob and the kids picked me up! And tired. I walked around from 10:30 until 5:30, with just a short break to eat my sandwich at lunchtime.

While I was walking and browsing, Bob and the kids were back at Ann's. They toured Meadow Farm, which is a colonial house near them. They also played in the sprinklers and a little pool. Then they got everything all packed up in the van so we could just continue on home once they picked me up. It was a busy two days, but we had a great time! Now it's good to be home, with everyone sleeping in their own beds!