Chris and I attended a Homeshcool Conference this weekend.

We had a great weekend. We were blessed to be able to attend the Christian Heritage Homeschool Conference this weekend, some friends of ours actually gave us tickets to go and then even helped us out with getting some new clothes since we didn’t have the proper attire for volunteering. It was neat to see how the Lord put all the pieces together for us to be able to go. I wasn’t feeling like I needed to go yet since Aidan is only three and it will be another 2-4 years before we get really serious about homeschooling him depending on where he is at by then. But after attending just one of the classes I realized how overwhelmed I have been at even the thought of homeschooling our children, I haven’t really wanted to give it too much thought because the task of preparing has seemed a daunting task. At the conference I was encouraged, and given some tools that I can implement today that will help prepare our family for when we homeschool full-time. I’m so excited to start figuring out a schedule for our family, another one of those tasks I’ve avoided like the plague! I think it is going to work though if we stick to it. I purchased two books while we were there both written by Steven and Teri Maxwell – “Managers of Their Homes: A Practical Guide to Daily Scheduling for Christian Homeschool Families” and “Managers of Their Chores: A Practical Guide to Children’s Chores”.

So my overall take on the conference was that if you have ever thought about homeschooling, or have homeschooled for years or even have grandchildren that are homeschooling this would be an awesome conference for you to attend!And if you have never thought of homeschooling, this conference is for you-you just might attend and like what you see! It’s not just a curriculum fair, their desire is to encourage and envision those homeschooling families and empower us to really raise godly children who will grow to be men and women of valor, and then to put tools in our hands to accomplish that goal. So that is my plug for next year’s conference, you can count on us being there every year! This was the Bradrick’s first conference they put on themselves though they have been part of hosting conferences for years!!! Way to go you guys, it is so great to have such wonderful people to glean from!

Here are a couple links:

Christian Heritage-Home Educators of Washington – the homeschool organization that put on the homeschool conference this April at the Overlake Christian Church.

This year’s Conference Schedule – They had some really impactful teaching. We came away really encouraged and challenged.

Vision Forum – Doug Phillips was the keynote speaker at the conference. We have been richly blessed by his ministry at Vision Forum for several years.

I think Chris and I really saw something at this conference that we really want for our family. Godly children serving with grateful hearts. They served together with their families and you could see in their faces that they were loving it! We saw Jr. high age children taking care of their younger siblings and having fun at the same time, and their parents were not around! These kids weren’t getting paid either, they were volunteers. It was refreshing to watch these kids interacting with one another, they are the testimony of their parent’s hard work.

When Chris and my lives are coming to an end we want to be able to look at the work of our hands and see that we have made the greatest investment in what really matters; our children. We believe that homeschooling our children is just one of the ways that we can make those investments into our children’s lives. And we look to God daily to teach us how to raise up our children to love and honor Him. We thank God for such great men and women who have been so successful, we can glean so much from them along the way!

I’ve posted just a few pictures from the conference, mostly of the banquet afterwards, we were pretty busy so we didn’t get very many. This one is of one of the Bradrick’s boys holding Guenna-it is nice being around pre-fathers who know how to hold an infant. :)