Sunday after meeting, all of us drove about an hour Northwest of Dallas through the little town of Bailey to the home of Jung (J.P.) and Lisa Paek. It is a beautiful 100+ acre ranch with cows, donkeys, goats, chickens, a bunch of watering holes, a natural spring, a fossil bed, and all kinds of other stuff. Their kids, Eliana (age 7) and Elliot (age 6) are just amazing; they are two of the sweetest and most inquisitive kids we have met in a long time. Lisa is homeschooling them in a very impressive way. The way she does her homeschooling is in some ways similar to the way we do it, but she takes it a step further than us by putting the whole program together herself rather than using a preorganized program like Sonlight. I think she is basing the program on The Well Trained Mind. Eliana is using the very same Story of the World book this year that Kelly and the Rizos boys, Nathan and Anthony are using. If they stick with the program, they will go through that same material a couple more times with more depth each time as they continue through elementary school, junior high school, and then on through high school. It is a great way to go, but requires an incredible amount of work and dedication. It really seems to be working well for them.
After a wonderful lunch of barbeque pork, rice, salad, and a marvelous dessert, the whole group of us went for a walk of the entire property. Our kids were in heaven. They got to hold newly hatched chicks, dig natural clay out of the earth, dig for fossils, pet all the animals, look at raccoon, coyote, rabbit, and other animal tracks, explore, and just play with some very bright, very well-behaved kids. Kelly and Christian talked about what a marvelous time they had the whole way home. I sincerely hope that we will be able to have them over to our place before too long.
An interesting side note was that the Paeks had a cassette tape version of Cheaper by the Dozen. Christian, Kelly, and I had been reading that book out loud over the last week or two and had gotten to the last two chapters on the ride out to the ranch. It is a wonderful book that we had enjoyed very much up to that point. Lisa told us that they had enjoyed the book very much, too, but the end of the book was a major disappointment. We finished the book on the way home and we all agreed that Lisa was right. What a lousy way to end that book. No matter what were the circumstances, surely there could have been a better way to describe the end of such a remarkable life.