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I absolutely love our annual homeschool convention. It is always over a Friday and Saturday each year in July and it is sponsered by AFHE (Arizona Families for Home Education) Jay and I have gone every year since Anastasia has turned two! I can't believe we have been attending for 10 years now. It is such a time of renewal and refreshness (is that a word?) I didn't hear a final count this year of attendees but it has grown so much and there were thousands of people in the main speaking room each morning. We love to go for a multitude of reasons....listening to great speakers, workshops, the curriculum hall, catching up with friends, time with just the two of us to recommit to what God has called us to, did I mention the curriculum hall  .
This year's speaker was Voddie Baucham. He was incredible. I encourage you to check him out he has various sites and you can just google his name. Jay and I so share his vision and others that we have heard at previous conventions of creating a multigenerational family based on a Bibical world view not a secular humanism view. I am about to get on my soap box here so watch out. LOL I am getting copies of his talks on cds from the convention and we can't wait to listen to them again. He shared some fabulous and yet scary quotes from some of the founding fathers of government education. Too many people believe that education can be neutral and that is just not so. The Bible says give to Caesar what is Caesar's. Well my children are gifts from God not Caesar so I am not going to send them to "Caesar's Indoctrination Camps" Whoa! Those are probably fighting words. I have always heard them refered to as public schools, gov't schools and Caesar's schools but when Voddie called them Caesar's Indoctrination Camps I thought he was right on but don't think that I could get away with calling them that!
So moving on; Voddie shared about his family and his commitment to family disciple ship and the call for parents to take back their biblical responsibilities as the primary spiritual mentors and shepherds of their children. It is not the church nor youth pastors responsibility. We bought his book Family Driven Faith subtitled Doing What it Takes To Raise Sons and Daughters Who Will Walk With God. It is an excellent book. We listened to all 5 of his talks and didn't really go to anyone else this year.
I was really good in the curriculum hall. I brought my list and stuck to it. I would really like one year to have an extra $200.00 to spend on books and "stuff"! Wouldn't we all!!! I bought Anastasia and Joshua's math books, a spelling book for Joshua and a vocabulary book for Anastasia. I have the year planned out for our unit studies and I will share that in another post.
I will end with this. If you are homeschooling or considering homeschooling and have never been to a convention I strongly encourage you to go. You will not be disappointed. It has been such a blessing to Jay and I each year and next year we will take Anastasia with us. They have a teen track for those 12 and older so she will finally get to participate in that. | 
