Well travel is certainly not exactly a "lazy" activity but it sure gave my kids a better education than anything they could have found in a book! We were extremely fortunate, in our earlier years of homeschooling, to have traveled extensively with my husband. I have talked a bit about our travels before but the sheer magnitude of the traveling in such a short period of time, in hindsight, is mind boggling!
Back in 1998 when we first began our homeschooling career, my husband was in computer installation and training which took him all over North America most of the time. One of the reasons we decided to homeschool, other than the abuse from the Catholic school which, btw, we paid for, was to spend more time with Dad. I missed him, the kids missed him and frankly the kids needed him. He had a trip to Newfoundland planned in April or May of 1998, while the kids were in school, and we couldn't go because the school would not tolerate travel during school days. Sigh. We missed out on that trip and then nearly came to blows when I wanted my kids to miss the last day of school, which is a total waste of time anway, to drive to New Jersey for my grandfather's 100th birthday party. How many kids have a great-grandfather who lives to be 100? (keeping all his marbles as well!) (ok MOST of his marbles, I think he lost a few by then.)
We decided to homeschool after we got back from that trip. What a load off my mind! The first trip we took as a family was in September to Newfoundland! What an adventure that was! We flew to Toronto then had a six hour layover before the flight to St. John's, Newfoundland. The adventure began at the airport when we were detained at immigration because my husband was going there for work. Canadians are funny about Americans working in their country. We learned to tell them that he was employed by an American company paid by American funds. After all of that fun waiting with two little kids, I thought, "why not go in to Toronto while we wait?" After a series of planes, trains, buses and automobiles, we were there in the heart of Toronto with all of our carry-on stuff included! I think my kids may have hated me by that time! We arrived in Newfoundland late at night and proceeded to have a great time! We saw so many neat things there! What would I have done without the internet? Please click on Newfoundland to see what the Avalon area on this nifty Island has to offer! (The photo is of "Bird Rock" and it is awesome! What you may not notice is that you are 400 feet up on a cliff with no fence!) We visited Niagra Falls on our return trip. I remember the falls being larger, but I was only about 9 or 10 when I was there before!
We went to Toronto several times and then on to Vancouver, British Columbia. We stayed there a few days and then lived in a condo on the beach on Vancouver Island just north of Nanaimo for two weeks. If you have seen the movie "Twilight" you can see a basket of Nanaimo Bars sitting on the edge of the counter in a scene at a store. Check out the recipe, they are SWEET! It was winter. It was cold. But we went to Mt. Washington (on Vancouver Island) and did some really fun snow tubing! I thought I was gonna die going down the mountain but it was really fun. Did I mention it was COLD? We are Floridians! We traveled to Victoria and went to the Royal British Columbia museum. We saw a salmon farming operation, we went to various Provincial parks, we walked along the beach in the snow and saw different kinds of eagles. It was a blast! We also went to Whistler (In photo above) and took the gondola up to a nice restaurant for lunch. It looked like the photos we've seen of the Alps! We flew in to Seattle and rented a car to drive up to Vancouver because it was so much cheaper so we had a day in Seattle as well. We went to the Woodland Park Zoo which is one of the nicest zoos I have ever seen.
These trips were all within a few months. There were many more trips that I will talk about later. The kids have no idea just how lucky they have been to see the things we have seen!
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