2011 Home school day at the capitol...

We had a truly wonderful time at the capitol yesterday, spending time with our legislators; some of us took the tour of the capitol; and we all visited with old friends and even made some new ones!

The following picture is of our friend of many years, Jackie (we used to get together for field trips and support group meetings when we lived over by Linton). She could not believe how tall and "Old" Jacob was and asked him to prove that he could drive by showing her his permit. :) She's a busy home school mother of 5 boys...

Here, Jacob was about to show the 30 second video he made for the ND Teen Traffic Safety contest he's entering. In order for his video to be entered in the contest, he had to give a public talk on some traffic safety facts, so he did that up in front of a bunch of home schoolers. :)

~You did a great job with your video (and speech), Jacob, and I hope you win one of the prizes!~

Oh yes.... I was so pleased to see my friend, Miranda, there, even though she couldn't stay for very long due to a previous engagement. :(

Here Jacob and David Bartlett were visiting about movie-making, Morgan horses, and other things, I'm sure..... :)

We were pleasantly surprised to see that our Beachy friends made the long, long journey to come to the home school event! These are the same friends that my parents stayed with a couple weeks ago when they made that long wedding-cake delivery journey up North...

We had a table to display some Parental Rights' Amendment information and to take signatures for the cause...

While my family and I were eating our noon meal, the electricity went off and everyone was walking around in the semi-darkness, wondering if the legislative session would be able to go on.... After a few minutes though, the power returned and Jacob even had enough time before the legislative session started to show his video to our Senator and one of our Representatives.

During the session, Andrew stayed in the Great Hall to run our booth, while Jacob went and sat with our Senator, Mr. Robert Erbele; Mother sat with Rep. William Kretschmar; and I got to sit with our other Representative, Mr. Mike Brandenburg.

I had a great time visiting with Rep. Brandenburg, as he's a laid back, great sense of humor, farmer kind of a guy who puts a smile on the face of nearly everyone he meets. I brought up our home schooling bill (#1211) to him and he assured me that he is very much in favor of home schooling. Our Senator is also in favor, and Mother spoke to Rep. Kretschmar and hopefully influenced him...

As the session progressed, Rep. Beadle introduced a bill that would give ND a state insect, that insect being: the ladybug! The bill passed in the House, so if it makes it through the Senate, then we'll have a state bug too. They couldn't have picked a much nicer one. :) According to one article I looked up today, "The ladybug isn’t the first proposed state insect for North Dakota. The honey bee didn’t make it as the state insect in 1989. Some lawmakers have joked the state insect could be a grasshopper."

In the afternoon, we showed "The Child" (a very informative movie in support of the proposed Parental Rights Amendment) to anybody who wanted to watch. Here, several young men were helping set up chairs for the viewing...

We left the capitol around 5:00 and headed to Sams to get some supplies. After going around the edge of an isle, we came face to face with a home school Mom who quickly introduced herself and we began talking. We realized that we saw/met some of their family at Prairie Days a couple years ago and have seen each other at conventions, but just have never gotten to know each other. Mrs. R. said that her daughter has read my blog, which really surprised me! Then some of her family came up the aisle also and I really enjoyed visiting with their 2 oldest girls, Haley and Gwendolyn. (If you young ladies are reading this now, I just want you to know that I'm looking forward to having more time to visit with you at the convention in March!)

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After all that excitement, it was time to head home. Andrew lost a pipe from under his pickup on the way back and we couldn't find it, so that was a bit sad.

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I think I told you all that my dad left for the NPSAS convention yesterday morning? Well, he did, and he spent the night in a hotel last night so he could take in more of the convention today. He just got home about 8:00 this evening---just in time for our weekly feast.

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The rest of us at home spent the day cleaning the house; bedding down the goat barn; moving not-so-little Laura (Andrew's milk cows' calf) out with the bigger calves; cooking and baking; and enjoying the loveliness of a day of sunshine and warmth. (It got up to about 35 degrees ABOVE zero today!)

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Oh, one more thing... I realized just today that I've now had Lady for over a year! How the time does fly.~