More of those April Showers!
So, WOW, we’ve sure had a lot of that wet stuff during the month of April. Those of you who have followed my blog might have noticed a distinct lack of blog posts since November last year. My apologies. We’ve been busy bailing. Literally.
Last week, we had another of those torrential rainstorms, and water came into our garage from the East wall, flooding our homeschool room. We pumped 45 GALLONS of water out of it, hauling buckets to the tub as fast as possible. (For those of you who don’t know, years ago I split our garage with a support wall and ran electricity and AC to the back half, making it into a homeschool/game room. The bad part about this is that the garage would get wet during heavy rains. And that just kept getting worse. So, I’m contracting a landscaper to FIX it.
It’s a bit frightening having to bail water out of your own home, and gives us just a taste of the kind of trauma people in West North Carolina must have gone through as waters rose and took out homes and even towns a few years back. Nobody likes to have their home flooded. Especially the animals, who were spooked and hiding under furniture upstairs where the water couldn’t reach. Our cats were quite out of sorts with the new indoor swimming pool.
About the biggest thing that happened in the month of April was that we packed up and headed to Peoria, IL for the PAACH Homeschool Convention. We’d learned our lesson about bringing ALL our books. After the crazy of the MHEA Convention in Memphis, we purchased a small dolly and a set of book tubs. What fits in the tubs goes to the Convention. That’s what my wife told me in no uncertain terms. So, we packed up my books and got on the road. We had fun reminiscing as we drove over the I-55 bridge how the last time we were on it, we were supposed to be headed downtown to see Hamilton, but SOMEBODY wouldn’t let the iPhone navigate.
Lesson learned. I’ve heard of Death by GPS, but the apps have gotten better, and people are smarter too. Heh.
There are some new crops being grown all over in Illinois. In some ways it saddens me to see the windmill farms and solar panel farms all over, because I remember the days when much of the Ohio Valley food was grown here. And much of our own food too. Oh, Illinois still raises crops, but clean-ish power seems to be more profitable, and we likely produce more food than the US can eat. Uh, right?
And the power grown in these farms supplies most of Chicago’s lights. So they tell me.
We packed out the gym with booths. More booths in the foyer and entrance way too. The church was packed out with vendors, and as you can see there were plenty of homeschool families who came by from all over Illinois and the surrounding states.
On Saturday we had two puppet shows, back to back, and the kids did artwork like the ones shown above. In the second session, when the show was over, we had the kids make wordless book bracelets with beads. The older kids helped the younger kids. And we did too. The highlight of the show was when Jester throws a giant rubber spider down on the table in front of Rexx, who is deathly afraid of spiders.
In the act, Rexx jumps up onto his chair screaming, then takes off screaming into the audience, to hide behind the littlest kid in the group. We certainly did this. What I did NOT expect, however, is that every single girl on the front row did the same, screaming in terror about the giant rubber spider.
The oldest girl in the room, once she realized it wasn’t real, started chasing me around the entire building holding up the dangly eight-inch monster. I finally decided the act was sufficient, turned around and took the spider from her after ‘realizing’ it was not real, and then moved back into the script. Tons of fun!
I sold out of several books on my table, and ended up with additional orders I had to fill once we got home. Several families ordered the complete Lynvia series, and when I packed those up I included a wax-sealed letter like the one above. Giving the kids a chance to translate a cryptogram of sorts, with a bit of scripture and encouragement in it.
And here’s a bit of encouragement for you, too. It’s become my life verse, and is beneath every signature I sign in these books:
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jer 29:11 NKJV)