Convention

First of all, have y'all seen the Homeschooling Ryan Gosling meme thing going around?  HILARIOUS! For real y'all, I have a teensy crush on Ryan Gosling.  Well, more like his character in The Notebook (Noah Webster).  I LOVE The Notebook.  My "story" with The Hubs is quite similar to the movie, but that's a story for another time.  I don't "get" why Gosling attached to this homeschool thing, but it makes it 10x better.  :)

Anyhoo.  So we went to the Homeschool Convention in Cincinnati this past weekend. 

The Hubs was adamant that we were leaving at noon. I insisted that the house be CLEAN because I was not returning to a mess.  After all was said and done, we wound up leaving around 5pm. Then we hit the inevitable traffic.  It was brutal.  This guy driving next to us started honking and waving.  When he got our attention he pointed at our bumper stickers and gave us a big smile and a thumbs up.  I have a few Jesus/homeschool/etc stickers on my van window, and I usually get negative attention for them.  It was so nice to get a positive reaction.

We finally got to the convention center and found parking, and headed in. Last year I learned a lot about how to prepare for the convention. This year I got many compliments on my VERY organized, detailed, highlighted, and tabbed binder. It was great...until I set foot on the convention floor.  OH my!

Hello.  My name is Anna and I am a curriculum junkie.

I had to see EVERYTHING.  I was like a little kid.  We decided to start at one end and work our way over.  We got to maybe the 2nd row of booths before it was time to head to a workshop we had promised to Bones.  Bones loves superheroes (like any almost-8 year old boy does) and any oddities people may have.  He's seen the show Stan Lee's Superhuman, and one of his favorites on there was the Human Calculator.  When he heard that Scott Flansburg was going to be speaking, he was SO excited.  The Hubs volunteered to run the calculator (to try and race Scott), and the kids loved it.  he was so entertaining!!!  I learned a lot of neat tricks, and Bones has been using some new tricks to get through math faster.

After that it was time to get to our hotel.  We were all bushed.  When we were waiting to leave the parking garage The Hubs and I had a major miscommunication over the parking ticket and I lost it.  Oh it was ugly, y'all.  I wound up yelling and in tears, and then with egg all over my face.  Not my best moment at ALL.  We ate and got to our hotel and passed out.

We woke up LATE the next morning and I had missed 2 of the workshops I wanted to do.  I was bummed.  (Lesson learned: Save $$$ to stay in the hotel connected to the Convention Center next year.)  Got to have IHOP for breakfast.  It's a once-a-year-treat...  We enjoyed it.  Took almost an hour to find a new place to park.  Wandered the Convention hall for awhile longer.  Went and listened to the Mally family speak about "Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends".  Even I learned quite a bit from that workshop!  We figured out our game plan for next year's curriculum, purchased the math curriculum for both kids, and KK got her violin she's been begging for nonstop since she was about 2 1/2.

All in all, the convention was great.  I didn't make it all the way through the booths until late Saturday afternoon, and when we made it to the end I got a prize! :)  The Hubs bought me another bumper sticker and a t-shirt.  The bumper sticker has a picture of a school bus and says "Home School Bus", and the t-shirt is pink with a picture of a ninja on it and says "Homeschool mom by day. Ninja by night".  So cute!  :D

If there is a convention near where you live, you definitely ought to go.  It is SO worth it.  :)

Blessings!!!