CHEACT Conference

Kora and I made it back last night from the homeschool conference in Austin. Not that anyone in the house noticed though, because we also brought baby Ashlynn home as well. I was greeted with girlish voices telling me, "Oh, I'm so glad you're home, Mama, 'cause I missed Ashlynn!"

Thanks so much for the love.

Because Kelly and I had seen each other a grand total of about 2 hours in the last two weeks, I even introduced myself to him when I walked in the door just to make sure that he remembered who I was.

But the conference went very well. I was a bit nervous about this one because of the baby. She gets very fussy when her tummy hurts and has gotten a little bit clingy at times. But she did wonderfully!

This was our booth in the Palmer Events Center just south of downtown Austin.
Pam, my booth partner, and I were representing Tapestry of Grace, a classical history and liberal arts curriculum.
I have to brag a bit about Kora. She spent Friday and Saturday pushing around the stroller, carrying Ashlynn around, changing diapers, covering her cold legs, determining when she was hungry, and just generally taking great care of her baby sister. When people found out her age they could not believe she was only 11 1/2. She also spent those two days visiting with other vendors, exploring books for sale, listening to some of the performances going on, and making friends with some of the other girls whose families were spending their days up there as well. She told me coming home on Saturday that the conference was fun!
One of the booths at which she spent a lot of time sold fantasy books for kids, and wooden swords that the author made. The fantasy books were set back in historical settings, like the middle ages and the swords were from those time periods. Kora liked them so much that she bought two.
One is a Roman broad sword and the other is a Viking sword.
We were right next to a booth with science info. Pretty cool stuff. Ironically on the other side of us was Sonlight. Not that there is anything wrong with Sonlight, but they are basically one of TOG's biggest competitors. Whoever assigned booth locations has a sense of humor.
Beyond where Kora is standing was a booth which sells Bible story videos. Kora went over there quite a bit (she had many hours to burn) and watched the display television. When we were packing up the booth after closing time on Saturday, the man from that booth came over to me and handed me a video. He told me, "Your daughter enjoyed this so much that I'd like her to have it so she can do the interactive activities." Wasn't that sweet?
Pam and I also had to give a workshop on what Tapestry is and how to implement it. I really enjoyed that. There was around 40-50 parents in there and we had lots of questions afterwards. Last year the authors were in Austin giving all the workshops so this was my first one.

As much as I enjoyed the weekend I am very glad to be home and have my husband home. Hopefully life can get back to normal!