It’s the third and final day of the Midwest GHC and we’ve decided to take it easy today. We had morning sessions we had originally planned on going to, but with how Creative Kid was yesterday we decided t0 get in one last swim this morning before we have to pack up and check out of the hotel. The pool was empty, so that was nice and we got packed up fairly quickly, but it took a while to get a bell hop to come get our bags. I am not used to having to wait on a bell hop instead of just going and getting a cart ourselves and so that part was a bit frustrating.
So we packed the car and moved it to a public parking garage next to the convention center before taking Creative Kid to the kids program. We did that so we could do some shopping in the vendor hall without interruptions and distractions. We both had things we wanted/needed to purchase for the next school year and just wanted to look around and see if there was anything else we missed.
A couple purchases later we picked CK back up for lunch and we let him pick something out at the vendor hall. His choice was ukelele and we gave him some rules about how it will be handled at home because he’s had one before and he ended up tearing it up by not taking proper care of it. We also let him get a explorers flashlight with a compass in the end and a pair of binoculars. With our house build and the land we want to encourage the exploration of nature so I had no problem springing for a couple extra purchases.
Next we all headed to a session entitled Nerf Guns and Shaving Cream. The description made it seem like it was going to give you some creative teaching ideas for kids who can’t sit still. The description…well my husband called it false advertising! We skipped out of the session after about 25 minutes because it was obviously more of a product plug for a curriculum than it was strategies for helping kinesthetic learners. After hanging out for a bit longer, we took Creative Kid back to the kids program one last time. He was sweet and said he wanted to tell everyone goodbye and we wanted to make sure he got that opportunity.
We headed to our last session we were going to which was another great lecture from Kathy Koch on change and how to teach our children to change and not just tell them. It was a bit of an ouchy/step on toes moment for parents as well because she explained how she identified troubling behaviors in herself and faced what she had to internally believe to be okay with those bad behaviors and then how to face those falsehoods and make changes. She even gave a worksheet with a clear plan to help you through the change process and advised us not to write on that part and instead take it home and copy it so you could use it over and over again. It was a great session and I know I left with some new tools in my toolbox for being a better parent to my child and just being a better human being.
We picked CK back up and grabbed a quick dinner and made one final purchase before finding a table to sit down at and wait for the closing session that evening. The closing session was two very powerful speakers, Gianna Jessen and Nick Vujicic. Gianna survived a saline abortion when she was 7 1/2 months in utero and Nick was born without arms or legs. Both were inspiring, emotional, Godly testimonies that really touched hearts and minds. There was laughter and tears and the room was filled with approximately 2,000 people just hanging on every word. If you ever have a chance to hear either of them speak, I highly recommend it…you won’t regret it.
Thanks for reading!
