We'd been traveling back and forth to Virginia Beach for several months and on one of the quick trips home, I felt led to grab a book off the bookshelf.  Deciding that I didn't really have room for it, I returned it to the shelf, locked up, left the house and got in the car.  The insistence to grab that book persisted, so I hastily ran back inside and tucked it in my book bag.  The book was an old Landmark book that I'd found at a thrift store called The Barbary Pirates.  I knew my boys would be interested in it, since it was about pirates, of course.   

Once we were settled back into our hotel room, I remembered the book and began to read it to the kids.  Right away I was fascinated and amazed that the Barbary Pirates book was actually a story about the beginnings of the United States Navy.  That may not seem to amazing to you, but you don’t yet know that we were in Norfolk, Virginia, adjacent to the oldest shipyard in the world and largest naval base on the East Coast.  If the pirates weren’t enough to interest the boys, this new found knowledge certainly did not escape them.  As I was reading, the boys were also playing a strategy game with tiny ships called “Pirates”.  They were excited to find that some of the ships in the book were also the ships they were playing with in their game.

That was such a pleasand and eye-opening experience that I learned to that prompting and the results were incredible. There were several other ‘ah ha’ moments on that trip that allowed me to easily see how the Lord could orchestrate our days.  One day, it was suggested that we visit the MacArthur Memorial. When we arrived, there was a school field trip going on.  We asked the coordinator if we were able to sit in on the movie that was being shown.  Immediately, he recognized that we were not from Norfolk.  We told him we were from Ohio and he announced that he was from our hometown!  He was so excited to see someone from his old home that he scheduled a private tour of the complex just for us if we were willing to return in a couple days, how could we resist? 

It was exciting to me that many of the outings we were going on seemed to be an extension of what we’d learned earlier in the year.  Not to mention, before going to Virginia Beach, we’d just wrapped up an ocean study with our science co-op. We'd also read about a breeches bouy and how ships go through the lock system.  We spent time with an Army Corps of Engineers employee as she showed us how the locks work. We now had the opportunity in Virginia,  to go and experience firsthand what we’d spent the first part of our school year learning about and it was really exciting. 

Since that trip, I've no longer worried about my shortcomings and how I homeschool the kids because I now understand fully that God has us covered.