More Nice People

We went to dinner at the house of the homeschooling family with eight children last night, and had a wonderful time.  We got lost on the way (naturally), despite having been given excellent directions, but the scenery was spectacularly beautiful, and our hosts forgave us for being a bit late.  They live in exactly the sort of location we had hoped to find – down a winding gravel road, with gorgeous views in all directions (of course, a house on sixteen acres wasn’t really in our budget. T. and K. had a great time running around the place, and Ed and I enjoyed the fruit trees (now I want some sort of dwarf fruit tree for our yard!) and the chickens.  It turned out that the husband, Ben, and I went to the same small, private university in Florida (he was two years ahead of me), so we had a nice chat about that.  The wife, Helen, is very gracious and calm, and had fixed a delicious spaghetti dinner (she had asked in advance what our kids eat).  We ate in two shifts, but everything went smoothly (I couldn’t help comparing it to when we had the neighbors over recently, with just a total of nine people, and we ate an hour and a half late!).  Her kids, who range from late teens to a baby, were polite and well behaved, and the little girls, who, I think, are seven and nine years old, played well with K.  We discussed homeschooling, of course, and she gave us the name of their piano teacher (one of her sons played for us, and I would be thrilled if either of our kids learned to play half as well) and reassured me that the state required testing at the end of the year isn’t really that difficult (I’m confident about our “three r’s,” but we probably aren’t covering some other areas the schools will hit this year).  She also invited me to join her book club and offered to pick me up and take me to the meeting next month (since we all know I might otherwise wind up in Nebraska).  I haven’t been in a book group in ages, but a women’s book group (Ed doesn’t read for pleasure) sounds like fun!  This month’s book is Frankenstein, which has never been on my “to read” list, but it won’t hurt me.  They also told us about a big fair coming up in Winston-Salem next week which we might try.  We had a hard time getting our kids to leave when it was time to go, but we hope to have them over to our house for a meal (probably pizza!) once we get things a little more settled.