Saturday 8 March 2008

March madness

I'm not talking about the college basketball championship series. I'm talking about "Ah! It's March! Are getting anywhere with school!?!" The answer is, yes, we are- but a moment of panic still comes. I won't bore you with the details of our homeschool, though.

Instead, I'll tell you about our latest family trip.

Last weekend we hooked up the camper and drove to Austin. We stayed at McKinney Falls state park. We didn't see much of the park, so I think we'll try and stay there again sometime. The reason for the visit, besides seeing my brother and his wonderful family, was Explore UT. Our alma mater has a campus-wide open house every year and we decided to check it out. It was a lot of fun: we got to see our old school and we and the kids enjoyed everything from scenes from Shakespeare acted out to a lecture on medieval weapons. The girls and I watched Shakespeare- the boys went to the lecture. We saw demonstrations at the engineering schools, made shields and crowns in the South Mall, ate lunch at our old dorm, Jester Center (the cafeterias look a LOT nicer now), and learned to march like the Showband of the Southwest in the "Bubble"- an enclosed playing field.

We enjoyed having dinner with my brother, my sister-in-law, and my nephew, who is a couple of months younger than Bug. Abigail showered him with affection and he loved it. He was more reserved with myself and Tartan, but he seemed quite happy with all the cousins.

Sunday morning before we headed back home, we visited the church where the pastor who married us is now the senior associate pastor. We don't know if he knew to be looking for us, or maybe it's just that a family with five kids just naturally sticks out, but he did see us and came over to give us a warm welcome. We haven't had the opportunity to see him since Aidan was traveling in a car seat, though we've kept in touch by e-mail - mostly at Christmas. He looked a little older (I'm sure we did, too!), but he had the same energy, good humor, and obvious love for his job and his Boss. :) We also met both sets of parents of friends of ours who were ex-pats in Norway while we were in Scotland. They treated us like they'd known us for years rather than meeting us for the first time.


Since Alex will be 14(!) as of March 18th, we might soon find ourselves making more family trips centered around possible college choices. Wow, what a thought. I won't say what he's getting for his birthday {bag of coal} since he might read this beforehand. Just kidding, son.

Trusting in the Lord,
Naomi for the Colliers

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