Sunshine and freedom

It's at times like this I feel very very grateful to be home educating. We have just spent a happy three days in the sun; two of them doing outside jobs that needed doing and one day on the beach. Yes we spent Wednesday on the beach at Formby in the sunshine. An ordinary working Wednesday. We sadly watched the school children run down the road, uniformed and carrying 'stuff' while packing up the car with picnics, bats, balls, blankets and loads of 'stuff' of our own which seem, to be compulsory for a trip to the beach even though we rarely use any of it when we get there.

We did all the usual stuff, paddled in the sea (no it really isn't warm enough but I have to put my feet in the sea on principle whenever we go to the beach0, sat and chatted, played a new game we have called trac ball, drew pictures in the sand and collected shells. Most of all the kids vanished into the sand dunes, disappearing for a couple of hours at a time into some imaginary world that we adults were not part of. Not only is this very freeing on a work day (if a little sad without hard working DH) but there is something wonderful and freeing about a bunch of almost teenagers still willing to become lost in imaginary games. The music man turne 13 last week and I don't suppose many thirteen year olds even run round let alone with a stick, wooden cross bow and a head full of imagination. There is also something freeing about sitting on a beach with my friends talking about everything and nothing,while the rest of the world pities us for the hard time we have without breaks for our children. How do we cope?!

Freedom is one of the most importatn gifts we can give each other, after love it is possibly the most important, freedom to love, play, rest, work, pray, live, love and learn OR not to do any of those things. If nothing else our Home education journey gives us as a family, rather than me as an individual, freedom.