Saturday, I went to the MHEA conference. Daniel Pink, author of Free Agent Nation was the speaker, and he was fantastic. Much of what he talked about was directly from the book, but he was very entertaining. I was particularly glad to hear him clarify that the kind of free agent education he's talking about is unschooling and not homeschooling in general. He argues that with the changing economy, unschoolers are going to be much better positioned in the future job markets than their public and conventional schooled counterparts who are receiving outdated training in an educational guise. The workshops were nothing to write home about, but I really enjoyed the keynote speech and talking with so many other homeschoolers.

The kids stayed home with dh and helped him with the climber. They went to the hardware store and bought some bolts and things, and they helped attach the railings. They also did some cleaning up inside, which was great!

When I got home, we all had dinner, and then climbed in bed and watched Disney's Lilo and Stitch marathon. Great to relax and reconnect!

Sunday, the kids played outside a bit on the climber and helped dh. We also made fairies, played with numbers, and the kids played with our neighbor most of the afternoon. Pretty low key.

The coolest part of the day was when we discovered that our tiger swallowtail chrysalis had hatched and we had a butterfly! The kids loved holding it and allowing it to walk on their clothes and hands. We tried to hand feed it some sugar water, but it wasn't very interested. Unfortantely, one of its wings is ripped, so it can't fly. :(

Sunday night, the girls climbed in bed with me and wrote some in their journals--which is what I was doing. Julia's practicing writing the names of all her favorite characters, and Emily's writing a story about Harry Potter. She's convinced that she'll be able to publish it and become famous, thoughts that caused her to giggle with glee.