Cincinnati

Recently I was able to take a quick trip to Cincinnati to visit my sister and brother-in-law and attend the Midwest Homeschool Convention. My dear sister gave me to a sneak peek of the butterfly show (Butterflies of India) that was to open that weekend at the Krohn Conservatory where she works.

My sister lives in Mt. Adams, a delightful old neighborhood of homes mostly built over a century ago. We ate dinner on the patio of a Thai restaurant and then walked from there to the "Playhouse in the Park," a theater constructed around a park shelter house built fifty years ago to see a show.

The next day was convention time. I'd considered bringing my bike once I realized the convention center was only two miles or so from my sister's house, but she dissuaded me, offering instead to drop me off and pick me up at the convention center. I was able to attend a number of helpful talks on such things as help for distractible moms, helping the distractible child, teaching writing, teaching logic, and educating yourself while you teach your children. The distractible sessions by two different speakers gave me some practical ideas to try out, but the writing session may have been the most useful. Hopefully I'll have a bit more on that in a later post.

All in all it was a fabulous twenty-four hours!My sister and brother-in-law are the best hosts imaginable, and it was so great to escape for a bit from the routine at home. Tim took the kids for a backpacking dinner the night I was gone, which they all thoroughly enjoyed. And even though I had planned the next day as a day off of school, the kids decided they'd rather have school. (They are eager to finish as early as possible, and not drag things on into June.) For some reason, my children have this idea that whenever I am gone for a day or so, they have to clean the house up as much as possible, so I will exclaim over how great it looks. And most of them were waiting up when I walked in the door at 10 PM, happy to have been away, and happy to be home again.