Faith & Freedom Tour Family & Fun

Yes, friends, we are back home! We've already reported part of our trip (The Alliance & HSLDA conferences) and you can check out Jonathan's Blog for info and pictures, too, but now we report the second half of our east coast travels: The Vision Forum Faith & Freedom Tour.

What a week it was! It began with tragedy and ended in triumph. Well, okay, so maybe that's dramatizing it a little bit. The 'tragedy' was that Jonathan's camera was stolen at the hotel on the first night of the tour. Thankfully, Josh, Nathan, & Jeremy also had cameras with them so we were still able to capture some pictures.

The triumph? Well, it had to do with a treasure hunt in historic Philadelphia on the final day of the tour...


The guys and the various other teams gave it their best shot, but in the end a few of us who formed a team of "non-competing" ladies actually found the treasure first! We had such a blast and really had no intention of getting there first, but after sitting on a park bench for awhile - as the other teams traipsed around Philadelphia in search of clues - we figured out the answers to enough of the clues to locate the final clue and then, using our Caesar spy cipher to read that final clue, found the location of the treasure!

But the treasure hunt was really just a peripheral part of the tour. During the course of the week we learned an amazing amount of the history of the Philadelphia area and got to visit many places of interest. One of the great delights of the trip is the wonderful people that we have the opportunity to visit with during the course of the tour. This year it was especially fun to have Nathan & Jeanine, Jeremy & Sara and their daughters with us.
Listening to a lecture at Christ Church in Philadelphia
Serving lunches at the hotel
Relaxing on the lawn at the Brandywine Battlefield (in the foreground, Joey Valenti takes a picture)