Weekend Wrap-up

I’m still spinning a bit from this last weekend’s homeschool convention in Duluth, MN.  I was able to hitch a ride with 3 other mothers from the homeschool group we attend.  We shared a hotel room and I had a blast.  The women I rode with were so intelligent.  Maybe I’ve just gotten used to talking with people who are under the age of 7.  The whole way up we talked about theology, family, school, politics, etc.  It was just so…adult.  The woman I was with knew so much on so many topics that by the time we got there, my brain already felt the work out.

It was cold and windy, and snowed a bit while we were there.  The hotel room was about 3 times the size I had imagined it would be with a full kitchen and everything.  It overlooked a harbor with an enormous boat sitting right there.  It was right next to the convention, so we got to walk everywhere the whole weekend.

My first session was addressing the highly distract-able mother.  Solveig and I were sitting there, and I saw everyone around me had printed notes from the speaker that they used to follow along.  I whispered to the hostess in the room for a copy of the notes.  She said that this year they were not available at the conference, I was supposed to have printed them off at home and brought them. 

So I figured I could take notes myself.  I looked in my diaper bag.  I had packed the kitchen sink, but I guess that did not include any sort of paper, or any writing utensil, unless you count a tube of lipstick, which in this situation would not have worked.  I was searching my bag with one hand, and rocking Solveig and trying to keep her pacifier in the other hand, and looking up at the speaker, kicking myself that I had come here to learn to be more organized and I didn’t even bring anything to write down notes!  I was bent down over my bag, and my brain was scattered, and I looked up at the speaker who talked about we as mothers always have dozens of thoughts in our heads waiting for a chance to finish and I thought “you have no idea.”

After that session I headed over to the exhibitor’s hall and found the art supply booth.  I picked up a legal pad there and a pen at the Sonlight booth.  I was set from there.

I found the most beautiful books in the used curriculum hall.  A gold leafed hardback of Anne of Green Gables, a beautifully illustrated book of James Harriot’s Treasury of Inspirational Stories for Children, and a bunch more.  It was very difficult to make it through a whole session because Solveig needed to leave.  I actually was able to nurse during the sessions.  Well, at least I did.  When I walked in the first session, I saw a group of 3 women nursing their babes and covered very modestly.  I joined them, and inquired about the statement about the nursing room.  They had all called to complain about the rule, and encouraged me to do the same when I got home.  I guess where it sat was that legally, the convention could not prohibit mothers from nursing in the sessions.  In our state, mothers may nurse in public, covered or uncovered, without any restrictions.  However, the convention was requesting that the mothers use the nursing room, or at the very least, be modest in breastfeeding.  Legally, though, no one was allowed to remove us from a session because of nursing.

Well of course I was going to be modest, so I had no problem whipping out my little cape and feeding her during a session.  It was the squeals and cries that made me leave so often.  I would often go to the nursing room that they set up because it was like stepping into heaven for a few minutes out of the chaos of the crowds.  Inside the nursing room there were comfortable chairs with arms.  Harp music played softly in the corner c.d. player, plucking hymns like a lullaby.  Baskets of chocolates, along with flowers lining the table, and the view outside was vast.  When I described the nursing room to the other moms I came with, they asked if they could borrow my baby just so they could go in there for some peace!

When I had to leave a session and had no hope of returning, I would carry Solveig in the ERGO carrier over to the exhibitor hall and talk with the vendors.  (She was in that thing all weekend!  I can’t imagine how I would have made it without a carrier that saved my back!)  Seriously, the knowledge of the vendors was like gold.  I swung by the Sonlight booth, since that’s what we use.  I was able to look through all the books that will be coming up for us.  The lady there asked about my family and I rattled her head off talking about Silje and David, and their strengths and weaknesses and looking into the future of how was I going to teach them both simultaneously when they were both doing school full time.  She gave me advice for what seemed like 30 minutes, and her advice was golden.  She knew so much, and made suggestions for tweaking the core this way for this child, and that way for that child.  It was so great.

A favorite speaker was Todd Wilson who has this amazing ministry to fathers, especially fathers whose families homeschool.  He was so challenging, and so funny.  I wish Knut would have been there to hear him, as I know he would have loved it.  I brought home c.d.s of his sessions of course, because I didn’t hear all of his sessions there and he had so much to say about raising sons, especially, and helping mothers be released from the guilt that seems to follow us.

I’m sure there is so much more information from the weekend that will appear over time in my posts.  It was so worthwhile to go, and I’m so glad I was given the opportunity.  I don’t think that this will be a yearly event for me, but I hope to go again.  I think I learned more from the people I was with and the vendors I spoke to than the sessions, but the sessions were so good too!!  Well, now at least that I can listen to them without interruption with the use of a pause button.