November 2009

Hi! I'm Liliana: disciple of Christ, wife, mother, reader, beader, dancer, homeschooler, traveler, photographer, and now a knitter. :)

Julian is 12 and in 7th grade now! We're still home-schooling and we're traveling to boot. We're still happy with our K12 curriculum and having used it to this point with such success, we plan to continue with it through high school.

People ask me, what kind of traveling we do and how we got to doing it.

Well, one day I told my husband I wanted to see Alaska. He hollered at me (he's kind of gruff sometimes), and said, "Whattya wanna go to Alaska for?" Because you see, by all outward signs, me asking to go to Alaska was about like asking to go to the moon. I replied to him, very calm like, "Because I read about it online and I've heard it's very beautiful and I want to see it with my own eyes before I die." I may have added something about the grand education it could provide to our son by actually visiting national parks and historical places instead of only reading about them in books. I had to do it fast before my husband took in another breath!

The upshot of it is, praise the Lord, we sold our home in Southern California during the real estate bubble of 2005, bought a 24' trailer, hooked it up to our truck, and went to Alaska for the summer. Our intention was to travel one year, check out places along the way where we might want to relocate, and buy a home.

Turned out we love traveling. We love the lifestyle which is called "full-timing." It allows me, us, to live out our philosophy that less is more. We don't just talk about it. We live it. We live small 365 days a year.

In 2005 we drove to Alaska, spent two months, and stopped at the Calgary Stampede in B.C. on the way back. In 2006 (we moved up to a 33' 5th wheel in this year), we drove the Trans-Canada Highway across Canada and spent a month in the boreal forest. We went through British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. In 2007 we went to Nova Scotia and saw the Bay of Fundy with its extraordinary high and low tide, and I got my photo of the famous Peggy's Cove lighthouse at sunset. In 2008 we only went to San Diego to visit family because fuel was too high. Anybody remember those prices? Yikes! This year, 2009, we went to Washington, D.C., Great Smoky Mountains, Gettysburg, and Devils Tower (which is one of my top favorite of destinations). Purely by accident, or rather, according to God's plan, we found the perfect place to winter each year - New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment.

We're already looking forward to 2010 traveling. We're thinking we might like to go to the Calgary Stampede again and this time buy our son a cool belt buckle. I think we're the only people I know who would drive across the country for a belt buckle. Haha! But it's the traveling that gives a buckle its story! What is a belt buckle with no story? Why it's just a belt buckle then. Truth is, we're not much for planning, so I don't really know where we'll go or what we'll do. I have signed Julian up for a robotics summer camp in California, and that is the only for sure thing we have going for 2010.

Hey, if you're reading this, many thanks! Not many people come to this page, so ifn's you made it this far, I spose I'll add that I keep a personal blog, A Little Grace, with wrrrds about my everyday days, quite a few photos, and a little bit of homeschooling interspersed throughout. You're welcome, and I invite you, to drop by anytime time you like.

To life!

~Lil. . . in the land of the watermelon skies