When you educate on the road
Today Book the 12th of the Series of Unfortunate events came out and my guess is my kids were one of the first to get their hot little hands on their copies here in the northeast. Katie had pre-ordered and Michael said, Mum will you please take us in the morning when the store opens? (this book store opened at 8 am, well we weren't there quite at 8) So...we went.

The three of us were sitting at a table reading and there were these two older gentlemen sitting not to far from us. One said to the other, "my grandchildren never have any time, they're involved in Scouts, debate and whathaveyou, then of course they have school on top of everything else." The other one said, "my grandchildren are the same way," (I listened but didn't look up doing my best to look like I was reading, I was thinking do you see these two across from me, enjoying a book?) the second gentleman continues, "they are so busy that they do not have any free time. No wonder they grow up and don't know how to relax, they are not learning how to play and enjoy free time now." I thought they also don't have time for their grandparents either.
As I was relating this story to Grace this evening, she said that perhaps the one who spoke first said it because he saw Katie and Michael enjoying a book while they were sitting there. That very well could have been. Part of me was thinking, some of my associates in the homeschooling world would think this idea is too fun, you ought to make them do their work first well, I guess that would be true if we did school at home but as most of you know (or perhaps some of you don't) we EDUCATE our children at home and we wouldn't want schooling to get in the way of this more worthy endeavor. Then my true heart rose to the surface, it put a smile on my face as I thought that I could hear Katie and Michael saying 5 or 10 years from now, "remember when we lived in Quechee VT and Mum took us to the Dartmouth bookstore to get The Penultimate Peril." "And she gave us the day off to read the book."
I thank God every day that my children love to read and that I was given the great privilege to teach them how. Along with the continued blessing of cultivating curious minds.