We did not do "school" this week. We were on vacation. We could not afford to really go anywhere, no $$ for hotels and such so we slept at home and ate mostly at home and did a couple day trips. We call this a
Staycation!!! It was a great week, but it went waaaaaaay to fast!
Our Staycation week started Last Friday night when dh came home and said,
"Let's go out to eat at 5 Guys Burgers and Fries."
There was no arguing about that... everyone got ready quickly and we got going!! Court and I had been to the one near our home for the first time on our anniversary weekend and we promised the kids we would take them while we were on vacation this week. Everyone was excited and everyone loved it. Most of us could not finish our food even though we got each got the little burgers and shared large fries between two people.
Last Saturday we drove around for quite a while: we laughed, had a good time together, and we went to an Amish store. We bought a few treats, the girls got some material, and we had a great time looking at all the housewares, material, books, games, sewing notions, and the boys especially enjoyed the selection of penknives. Christopher was not feeling well and Nathan was still recuperating from his cold and sore throat, but we did not do anything strenuous so they survived. We stopped at a little pizza shop we like for dinner and then went to a nearby dollar store and bought a bunch of junk food for our staycation. See Rachel's post on the material they got by clicking this link:
Miscellaneous...
Sunday Rachel, and Court and I went to church and Jessica stayed home with the boys since they were still sick. After church we went to the Library and got a bunch of movies so we could just chill and relax Sunday and maybe even Monday depending on the sick kids and what they felt up to doing. So the rest of the day was lazy, watching movies and eating!
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we did not do much of anything. We spent the days working on blog stuff (I had reviews to do), watching movies, hanging out, and eating.
Thursday morning Rachel had a knitting class. I had wanted to have one of our day trips be a trip to
Sight and Sound Theatres. I had been notified through our homeschool support group that they were offering discount tickets for educators and their students. The tickets were offered for the present time through the middle of Oct. so I had thought it would be a great thing to do for our staycation. I had tried to get tickets for all 6 of us online and it would not allow me to get 4 adult and 2 student tickets with the discount. I did not want to be disappointed and so I had not tried to call them over the phone and find out if there was anything they could do for us. Each of us had decided that we wanted to go to
Sight and Sound badly enough that we were willing to pay for our own tickets. We couldn't afford to do it any other way, even with the discount.
Well, Thursday was the last day we could go, so I decided to call and leave the results up to the Lord. My dh said that we could make the 4:15 pm show fine if they had seats available and we could
all get the discount ticket price and did not have to pay full price for any of us. The boys qualified fine for the discount, of course, and my dh and I were fine as homeschool parents and educators. The problem was our grown daughters. So I called. First I asked if they had any seats left for the show that afternoon. They did. Then I told the man on the phone about the discount and the problem with the online order. Next I told him about Rachel teaching knitting and sewing classes, and the fact that Jessica has helped in our homeschool, helping the boys with their writing and with art. It was all the truth. I was so excited when he said there would be no problem getting us all discount tickets!!! I gave the phone over to dh so he could give him the credit card numbers and I went running down to tell all the kids.
I was jumping up and down and running to all the levels of the house. No one was as excited as I was, but I did not let that dampen my enthusiasm!! I was definitely doing a happy dance!!!
My dh took Christopher and went and got some supplies for lunch meat wraps and we made them after Rachel's class finished and we all got ready to go. By the time we got there the kids were starting to get more excited. Jessica and dh took a couple of pictures and then the batteries for the camera quit.
Typical!!! You can't take pictures in the theatre during the production anyway but they wanted to get a few more shots of the family and the lobby! Oh well!
A photo of the outside of Sight and Sound Theatre
That is Rachel (in the pink top), Nathan (in the green shirt) and I (in the white top) in the lower left hand corner.
The musical we got to see was "In The Beginning," the story of creation. It was beautifully done. From the beginning of the production where they brought up from below the stage a huge blue earth and projected moving pictures on it to simulate the creation of the earth and the waters etc. to the finish where Christ our groom spread out the Marriage Supper of the Lamb the show was stupendous, amazing, moving, spiritually uplifting, full of wonder, encouraging, challenging, and many other things. I cried several times, including when Cain killed Abel (and then as Adam and Eve found their dead son); and when the earth was made new and then the marriage supper of the Lamb took place.
You can see Rachel's blog post with the pictures by going here:
Sight and Sound Trip!
I am unable to describe it well enough! Words do not suffice!! You have to see one to understand. By clicking around on their site...
Sight and Sound Theatres... you can get a little idea. It is the ultimate theatre experience for Christians and a great outreach if you took non-christian friends or family. Much better than any Broadway play because of the content... but the production, the music and the quality of the acting is as good as any play anywhere!! and just so you know I have seen a few in my years, including ballet's in Philadelphia and New York City and even an Opera in my college days!! Nothing compares to a Sight and Sound musical!!
After the program they said that if anyone needed or wanted to pray with one of the staff or members of the cast that they would be up in front of the theatre and out in the lobby. I felt a need to have prayer (and so did Court, but I did not know that until later) but I did not go up. When we went outside we sat in the car and ate our dinner (the lunch meat wraps) and one of the guys who was a parking lot attendant came over to our car. His introduced himself as "Moose" he had been a missionary in Alaska for years, probably where he got his nickname, and was now working at Sight and Sound. He wanted to know how we liked the show and he and dh talked a couple minutes.
He then asked if we had any questions and we wanted to know what they did if anyone got sick. He said that had 3 ladies that played Eve and 3 or 4 that played Adam and 3, or maybe it was 4, that played Satan. He said that though they have multiple shows a day that the guys that play Satan only do one show a day. They bathe them in prayer before each show so they will not be spiritually weakened by playing such an evil character and the actors find is so draining that they each only do one show a day. They want the Lord to be glorified and not Satan so they bathe the actors and the musical in prayer each day. After he answered our questions he asked if he could have a word of prayer with us. It was a God-thing!! Both Court and I felt the need for prayer, did not go and ask for it, but God sent someone to pray for us anyway.
That was definitely the highlight of our week!!
Friday we went to
Shady Maple Smorgasbord with a family from our church that had never been. They have two children, a little boy (Matt) and a little girl (Katy). On the way to Shady Maple Matt road in our car with boys, Rachel, Court and I. Jessica went with the rest of their family in their car. The boys were a riot!!! We put on some Patch the Pirate music and Matt took his water bottle lid and put it over his eye like a patch. The boys were also making all kinds of boy noises... you know: light sabers and making up characters. We got to Shady Maple and we had a great time. We ate...... a lot.... as usual. We shopped in the
gift shop on the level below the smorgasbord, then we went to
Goods store and Jessica got two new sweaters.
Today we hung out at home for most of the day then Jessica, Court and I took a walk at Winterthur. I have been working on school stuff for next week and working on TOS Crew stuff also, and of course I wrote this really long weekly wrap-up post!!!
I hope you had a great week whatever you were doing.
Join the Weekly Wrap-up... read other's and post you own.
I will be doing the weekly wrap-up each week from now on, though most will not be this long or this varried... usually it will just be homeschool stuff.
In Christ,
Debbie
for History 
[the first link goes to the book on Amazon, the second link goes to the complete series on Kindle which at the time of this posting was on sale for $0.99] Christopher is reading this for a class I require all my high school children to do. We call it EF for Educational Foundations. I am ashamed to say he is reading these and I have had plans to read them for years and keep putting it off. Maybe his reading them will get me moving to read them also.
with my hubby. The book suggested reading Proverbs through each month... 31 chapters, a chaper a day + a couple on shorter months. I have been learning a lot and trying to practice what I learn. 
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