And when we decided to move our family over to New Zealand, we knew we would experience both. Now that time has past and we are settled into our lovely home, I've had time to reflect on the first 4 months of our time in this new country.
It didn't go exactly how we had planned it to go...but that's what made this chapter in our book of life pretty epic!
If you missed my "blahs", be sure and read it here...
The Blahs
Now for the FUN part of the experience... the memorable moments...
The "Hoorays!"
1) We truly embraced the unschooling lifestyle. I never really understood the unschooling approach to homeschooling until I was forced to do it!
And I liked it!!! And so did the kids!
When ALL of your homeschooling supplies are locked up for over 100+ days, you just teach with what you've got! You let your children learn through experience and play. We read brochures and magazines instead of having a "reading curriculum". We gather nature specimens from our hikes and then looked them up on the internet to understand them better. We cooked and baked ALOT more than normal. We embraced living in others homes and used their board games for a #gameschooling- type learning.
We were given the chance to explore this new country! And so we did just that.
2) R-E-S-P-E-C-T (sing it!). This was another "hooray" that we took away from this LONG, homeless vaca. We used this opportunity to teach our children to respect other's property during our many stays at many, different homes.
When you book-a-bach/Airbnb, you are a guest in that person's home. We made sure that our children understood that. These weren't our things and our home, but we need to treat them as if they were...with lots of respect!
And to maintain that respectful attitude, we STILL had daily chores. UGH! We made our beds (most mornings), we picked up our toys before vacuum time, and we even cleaned the toilets on Tuesdays! I wanted the boys to understand that guests that show respect are always invited back.
3) No matter what house we were "living" in...we always "made it home". Yep...the saying "Home is where your heart is"...it is so true! Home, at this moment in our lives, was all about where WE were together. We made LOTS memories. We watch our favorite movies and had dance parties. We baked our favorite cookies and even celebrated 2 birthdays during this time. We still had epic hide-and-go-seek games with NEW places to hide! We became a family that depended on each other and the love that we share!
We made each house, our home!
And on February 20th...we finally "made it home".
 |
| My first cup of coffee on our front deck |
