Friday (1-17-14):
My fabulous sister homeschools their kid(s). Right now that's just Deanna, but over the last year that has included 2 other younger ones most of the time. She's a brave soul! I homeschooled our kiddos in Thailand, and used the Sonlight curriculum for 3 year olds, and put all my early childhood knowledge to use. So, we usually had fun art, music, tons of books, and sensory activities...sometimes during bathtime! I am one of the least commital people you'll ever meet, except when it comes to God, marriage, and family. Everything else, I tend to be fairly flexible. That's how I feel about schooling. I know for at least kindergarten, I want to home school Kees. A big part of that is the fact that we are ALL still adjusting to America. After Kindergarten, we'll re-evaluate, and just because I home school Kees doesn't necessarily mean I'll home school Kora (for Kindergarten). Every kid is different, and, like I said, I'm non-committal. That being said, there's a lot I love about home schooling. Number one being, my kids are already growing too fast and I'd love to have that extra time with them, plus I LOVE teaching.
Okay, I'm digressing...the point of that whole spiel was to prep for the awesomeness that is my big sister, she's committed, to everything, all the time! And home schooling is no different. She's amazing! She was planning to attend a home school conference in Norman, OK, and she not only invited me, but paid my way!!! Pretty good birthday gift I'd say, and that might as well count for next Christmas too!!!
The conference, Winter Summit, started on Friday and finished up Saturday evening. I spent the early part of Friday prepping for the trip, running out for necessities, so Doug wouldn't have to get out with both kiddos. I also bought a few snacks because I have an irrational fear of starving if I'm away from home. I brought Triscuits, cottage cheese, yogurt, and peach lemonade.
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| Unofficial home school at Grandma Sheryl's house. We're working on patterns, color recognition, counting, sorting, and fine motor skills, not to mention sharing. |
Doug and I, plus the kids, picked up Taco Bell on our way to meet Kristee at the hotel. It was SO fancy. Not sure why I didn't get pictures, I'm such a lazy lard!
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| First session, I may have annoyed my sister by eating all the snacks they gave us in our welcome bags and looking stuff up on my phone. No matter where she goes, she deals with ADHD in those around her. |
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| I DID get this picture outside our room! |
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| They gave us this journal! I feel like I won something on the Oprah Winfrey show. |
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| After the conference was over for the day, I facetimed my little lovies, they're the cutest. It's amazing how you can be begging for a "get away" and within an hour miss your kids so bad it hurts. |
Saturday (1-18-14):
The hotel had an incredible breakfast spread! I had an omelet to order, but the line was pretty long. They only had one guy doing all the made to order stuff, which included: pancakes, waffles, AND omelets.
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| My omelet was yummy, I had spinach, cheese, and jalapeno. |
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| I was bored in the breakfast line apparently. |
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| Getting ready for lunch. |
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| Just cause we're ladies doesn't mean we just want to salad all the time, geeze! This is why I pack snacks, I'd rather not eat like a bird. |
After lunch, there were two more sessions, I think, I'm a little fuzzy on how the sessions were scheduled and I'm feeling too lazy to go look it up in my booklet from the Summit. How much do you think I could pay a "fact checker"? I wonder if Doug would do it for free....
So yeah, I think after lunch, was the second break out session, I chose to attend one called "Holding Time", you'd think, after my first session, that'd I'd read a little more carefully before I went to the next one, you'd be wrong. I thought "Holding Time" meant activities that would hold your child's attention and it DID say it was for younger children. At least this time, the material did apply, even if it was different than I expected. "Holding Time" is basically holding your kid in your lap and having then look at you, they don't have to be still or quiet, but you hold on to them and don't let them go. In can be used in place of time out and it's supposed to re-enforce that you love your child and they are safe. I've done a modified version with my kids since we got back and I'm pleased with the results. Though I think I naturally did some of the stuff anyway, great big pat on my back. ;)
And my last break out session was about learning styles. I love learning styles, unfortuntately, there wasn't any new information in this class. I'm sure it was new for most of the people in the class, and it would have seemed new to me, had I not reviewed all of that stuff in missionary training. However, it NEVER hurts to review this information, especially since I can apply it to my own children. The teacher was EXCELLENT. If I had to do it again, I would have chosen to go to her other session and done something different since I already knew a lot of the stuff.
Another great thing about the Winter Summit is connecting with other moms, and encouraging one another. It was a little sad for me that I won't actually be living here, so if I made any friends they'd be long distance, but I hope the few new friends we DID make will keep in touch and possibly hook up with Kristee, the ones that are in her area anyway.
We had a break for dinner. Kristee and I went to Ted's Cafe Escondido (a Mexican place), it's famous in Oklahoma. At this point, I was glad we'd had a sparse lunch, that way I could gorge myself with little guilt involved. Yay!
All during the conference they drew tons of names to give out door prizes, and whoever had the best reaction, got a second prize! So I had a whole routine planned out, and guess what, Kristee's name got called, and she did nothing, except turn red, rush back, grab the nearest option, and come right back. Life isn't fair.
Perhaps, I was overly sad about not being able to act like a weirdo whilst winning a door prize. And perhaps that contributed to the debacle to follow.
After dinner, they had all these "games". The first one was a pajama-off. I think I was the clear winner because I have pepto bismol Hello Kitty pajamas. How they ran the competition was to have each table send their best dressed person up on stage and then it got crazy. First we had to answer Miss America type questions, then they sent us back to our table to get "messed up", to show what we'd look like in the morning.
I let my table paint my face with cupcake frosting and they tried to tease my hair. At the last minute, I grabbed a wine looking glass and decided I should pretend to be drunk for a laugh. No one stopped me, looking back, I'm not sure why...
If I could do it again, I'd blend in. But at least if I was going to make a fool of myself, I did it in front of mostly complete strangers who won't be seeing me at next year's Summit since I'll be out of the state. So there's that.
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| Yep. |
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| Sigh, why am I an idiot?!? |
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