What You Do For Someone Who Is Passionate About Homeschooling
Why you take them to a homeschool conference, of course!
Banff Springs Hotel, Chateau Lake Louise, beautiful hotels but I don’t think I’ve ever stayed in one so nice as the Opryland Hotel. It was absolutely amazing. The setting was fun, beautiful, unique and romantic… but be forewarned, it is very expensive.
We stayed two nights at the Opryland Inn which is located across the street from the hotel but for one night we got to stay at the hotel. We did spend 3 of our days at the hotel because the homeschool conference was located there. Every time we would leave the conference to go for lunch, we could count on getting lost. We saw plenty of others that were lost, too. There are big wall maps like you would see at the mall, saying “You are here,” with a big star to indicate your location. When you check in to the hotel, you are issued a map and it’s not a bad idea to carry it around because you never know where you’ll end up.
Where, oh where am I?
One day we ended up on the second floor in the wing of some guest rooms looking for a specific elevator. Clearly, we were in the wrong area. As you can see from this sign, there are all kinds of choices… and it’s like this most everywhere.
Thankfully, there was some staff on hand that led us all the way to where we wanted to go as well as another guest who was feeling slightly bewildered, too.
The homeschool conference itself was about half the size of what we have here in Arizona. They told us they had about 1,800 people registered. It’s a Christian conference with the speakers feeling very free to mention God, which they did many times as well as quoting Scripture.
Some of the speakers were Mark Hamby from Lamplighter Publishing…
Israel Wayne (his mother started Homeschool Digest, the longest running homeschool magazine we have in the homeschooling circles), Nancy Campbell, founder of Far Above Rubies (she is the sweetest lady!), Sonya Shafer (from Simply Charlotte Mason), Geoffrey Botkin and so many more. The Benham brothers were even there.
Unfortunately, Dr. Dobson was unable to make it – one of the main reasons we went to the Nashville conference instead of others listed. So, the Benham brothers had to fill in for Dr. Dobson and they did an excellent job keeping us laughing while telling some interesting stories about their baseball career in the minor leagues.
In case you are not familiar with the Benham Brothers, they had a HG TV show but were canned back in 2014 for their beliefs that homosexuality is a sin.
See this short 5 minute intereview to hear their story. It’s pretty amazing that this is happening right here in America where we are supposed to be a religious country.
http://benhambrothers.com/fox-friends-show/
And now, after whetting your appetite to see the Opryland Hotel, I’ll show you some an abundance of pictures.
The Opryland Hotel is the largest non-gambling hotel in the United States with 9 acres of their hotel under roof. They have 16 restaurants, 2,800+ rooms and 3,500 employees.
And because I’m a big foodie I just have to show some of the delicious food we ate while there. We dined at this Mexican Restaurant twice, it was just so good.Mexican food with a gourmet twist.
I had to take a picture of the menu for Serenity since they offered items with goat cheese. She seems to think that goat cheese is an inferior product but instead I can prove that it’s a specialty! 🙂
My hubby who planned this trip for me.
A couple of restaurants located in one of the conservatory’s.
They say that in the original conservatory they had 10,000 plants. Of course, it is all climate controlled being kept at about 71-72°F. The humidity is not noticeable either.
Thank you to my thoughtful, giving and loving husband for this time of homeschooling inspiration and refreshing in the most fantastic of settings.
2 Comments
Anna
Looks awesome! That last picture is really sweet:)
Pingback: