Meeting New Friends

We shared a lovely time yesterday with a homeschooling family from Melbourne. They were camping in the Blue Mountains over the Easter long weekend, so we arranged for them to visit our home for lunch. I had not met them in real life before, but the Mum and I know eachother because we are members of the most fabulous online homeschooling forum Rockpool Homeschool.
(sorry, still can't make the link stay in the post)

So enjoyable was our time together, that we shared lunch and dinner, before they headed off back to their campsite. I am sure we will get together again in future; we may even join K and her hubby S, and their 2 children camping one day!

We would probably never have met if it wasn’t for the Rockpool forum. I have made what I consider terrific friends via this online community, even though most of us have not met in real life yet. When we do get to meet up and introduce our children to eachother (as has happened already with 3 different families) fun times have been had by all. I think I know people in every state of Australia now! Besides this fantastic way of meeting new people and making some firm friends, our regular Ice Skating sessions with the various members of the greater Sydney area homeschooling groups - who meet up fortnightly, has also opened up opportunities for myself and my children to make great new friends. As well, Sarah and Daniel have learnt to become proficient Ice Skaters courtesy of the lessons which they participated in for the first half hour of every session. They can now swizzle, stroke, punt, glide (and glide on one foot) t-stop, and importantly - snow plough stop!

It was especially exciting for Daniel to meet their son J, because J has been taking the laminated paper dragon ‘Knuckles’ that Daniel made, around with him on their holidays. Have you heard of the FLAT STANLEY project? This is our version of that. Some Rockpool members children have made their version of a ‘flat Stanley’ and swapped them with the other members children. The idea is that they take the creature they are hosting around wherever they go, and journal a little about their experiences in a small notebook, or take a few photos, or collect a few little postcards or something. After a while flat Stanley (or in our case Knuckles the Dragon) is returned to their owner with some interesting snippets of life elsewhere.

Knuckles has already been photographed at The Grampians, and now the Blue Mountains, and was yesterday photographed playing Dragonology with both J and Daniel!

Life is wonderful!!