PHILADELPHIA, BOSTON, AND NEW YORK CITY--HERE WE COME! Seeing, handling, touching, acting out, experiencing, reading outloud---these are the live experiences that make history feel real. Since my children were very little, I have purposed to plan ways that they could really experience what we studied.
Missions was not just be a story that someone else lived, that we read about. I wanted my children to experience being in a foreign country and eating foreign food and hearing a foreign language, while seeing the great needs of others.
Serving in a soup kitchen or babysitting at a single mom center for battered women makes needs more real, because children get to put a name to a face that they can pray for over months.Seeing how blessed we are as Americans is a nice thought, but when a child sees homeless children or feels what it is like to be hungry, they have a whole new understanding of poverty, or material wealth or whatever!
For this reason, since my oldest children were very small, I have intentionally planned and purposed to give them real life experiences so that they could really get a more realistic understanding of those we studied. It is why we have been such travelers. Reading about historical figures is inspiring, but seeing places they lived or built or battles where they were fought gives them a more realistic understanding of the issues of stress, physical limitations, issues in the lives of the people they have studied.
So travel has always been a central part of our lives. I could not do this in certain seasons of life, but I learned very early, that my little ones could be very happy in a car if I gave them things to play with, draw, munch on, or listen to and so we have traveled our whole lives. It started when my older kids were young. Clay worked for 3 weeks on our book catalogue every year and my friend's husband had 3 very busy weeks with his animal husbandry business, so we planned a trip together every spring. Finding museums, battlefields, cafes, art galleries, and more were our goal. Always we would have 2 or 3 books on tape to listen to about the places or people we were going to visit.
This year, our little history group below, are planning a history trip to Philadelphia, Boston and New York City. We have been studying American history--early years for the last 9 months, saving our money and planning our trip. We will be in these three cities during mid-October. I would be happy to speak one evening in each city. If you have a support group or mom's group that you would like for me to address, please send any requests to Sally@wholeheart.org and I will give them to my sweet two other mom friends and they will help me figure it all out.
As it has happened over the years, we have often stayed in homes of people, shared meals together and we have made many of our close friends just from meeting with people we found on my blog. It always makes Clay feel better to know we are not in a city without friends close by.
And just maybe we travel not so much out of philosophical reasons, but more because I love to travel and get away and am too adhd to sit still all the time. So I look forward to hearing from you.
Below is the trip we took last year. What great memories we have stored over the years. Our history group has shrunk over the years as our children have graduated and left home. We are down to 2 girls and two boys and 3 moms!
PS We are going to be on the train and will not have a way to go outside of the public transportation in each city---so I will speak to groups in the cities!
Deb Weakly, mom; Jack, 13; and Christie, 16; Shelley Rose, mom; Jackson, 13 and Joy, 15 and me.
“Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; love more, and all good things will be yours.”
Swedish proverb
Not many people have driven to Sweden, but our history group has extraordinary powers! Well, really, we just drove to mini Sweden, AKA Linsborg, Kansas. Miss Sally, Deb and Shelley and their children hopped in a red mini van and began their seven hour adventure driving to Kansas. After much groaning, exciting wheat watching and about 50,000 cows and windmills to observe, we finally arrived at out destination. What followed was two days of good old fashioned Swedish fun. Bicycles built for five, Dala horses built for none, (but piled with four) and pickled herring. Yum! Swedish pancakes and hot chocolate, Swedish dancing, vikings on sticks (meant for eating) and one cold bleacher. If you have nothing to do two years from now for the Hylliningsfest, we strongly suggest you check it out. -Joy, 14; and Jackson, 12. (our next door neighbors for several years and friends for 10 years--the kids are like brother and sister or cousins.)
If you would like to view more pictures, I will post a website for you to visit.
Getting atop a Dala horse is harder than you think. Dala Horses were all over town.
(There is a legend that says that it was a young boy on top of a Dala Horse that saved the people from the bad trolls and elves. So Dala horses are always Scandanavian--primarily Swedish.)