A Christmas Secret?

Well, did the surprise stay a secret?  It didn't.  A strange thing happened that I didn't anticipate. You have to understand about Virtual School to understand what happened next.   Last year, in order to gain more flexibility for our family, our children participated in a pilot program for the State of Indiana Department of Education.  "Never let school get in the way of an education." -Samuel Clements.  We tried a virtual school.  The plan was just to do it for one year.  As a public school teacher for the last 20 years, I found this program to be a good challenge for our academic geniuses. Best of all,  we were able to enhance our students' education by traveling around to many sights and museums in Indiana and surrounding states last year. Public schools are very strict about attendance these days, not even allowing kids to be sick. By working a little harder at our lessons, we can gain extra time in our school schedule to do educational things.....like travel! We decided to do it again this year.  Not only are the kids getting a personalized and challenging curriculum, but also have time to see so many neat places and things.  Who wouldn't like to see the world with their children? 

So the kids have teachers that we see occasionally, attend Live Lessons online, and talk to on the phone regularly.  My husband rarely sees or talks to the teachers, since he is always at work.  However, at Christmas time our entire family attended A Christmas Carol in Indianapolis sponsored by Harrison's English class, for a day of fun in the city. Of course, I had made arrangements with the children's teachers that we would be gone for the first week of January.  (You have to love a school that you can work a little harder and get a week off to travel to the Grand Canyon!)  As we were leaving the theater, Harrison's teacher caught us and wished the kids a Merry Christmas and told them to have fun at the Grand Canyon!  There fell silence upon our family.  The kids immediately knew what had happened, and Mike started laughing as soon as he caught why the teacher would say we were going to the Grand Canyon.  We were disappointed the trip was no longer a surprise, but still very, very excited for the adventure!

Will we make it to the train station in time to catch the train?
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