Visit with the Johnson Family

 Michelle and I have been friends for as long as I can remember.  We lived a mile away growing up (and way out in the country, this was a short distance) and have kept in touch all the years that time and life stages and distance have separated us.  We finished high school together (though separate graduating years) and my family moved up North but we have still maintained our friendship for over 40 years.  

We used to spend a couple of days with the Johnson family on their property in Southern Oregon to celebrate Glorielle and Rebecca's birthdays at the end of July.  3 years ago, we both moved.  They could no longer host and our property was in clean up mode and they needed to be able to camp to visit.  This year, we finally made that happen!




And our daughters, besties...



Lots of pool play fun!







Gideon, "Mom, do the goats eat chocolate chips?"  LOL!

One thing that I appreciate and enjoy so much about a "larger" homeschool family is that they generally don't segregate.  Now, of course, people have different interests and ages/genders tend to form friendships but what I mean by that, is that they are able to interact with each other as a group in a natural way and often times do  Childhood in a secular world are segregated.  Siblings, age groups, ability groups, interest or hobby groups, the family unit, are separated in our society, even at church.  

When the Johnsons were here, everyone grouped together.  They played airsoft all ages, girls and boys.  They took walks around the property with anyone who could keep up and wanted to go (ages 6 to 15).  If you could touch the bottom of the pool (or wear a life jacket), you swam together.  They watched a group movie.  They played tag whole group, even the 2 year old.  Olders helped the youngers and watched out for them.  This is exactly the vision that I had when I decided that I wanted to raise my kids without that "typical" segregation.  For me, it was such a blessing to be able to see this play out.  It has been hard, especially as the children get older, to maintain sibling togetherness and even family togetherness as people start to "go their own way" but this was such a good reminder to me to fight for our family unity, time together, and group socializing/friendships with families.  I don't regret one bit saying no to sports and other obligations that focused on individuals, insisting that we do things together as a family even when people didn't agree with us,  keeping our evenings for family time (up until Phil's new job anyway), homeschooling (even though it has been really hard and I have struggled with burn out and I often don't "want" to do it).




Family Movie Time



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