Today my son Joshua and I travel to the Wisconsin state home school conference to present some workshops and keynotes. With rare exception, I always travel with at least one member of my family. The children rotate, taking turns at travel. The family rule is that, as soon as they are out of diapers, they get to go with Daddy. Of course, this creates a helpful incentive to reduce our diaper bill. Some people find it odd that I would travel with children age three to ten, but it has always been a joy for me, and I welcome the opportunity to begin the training process early. Sometimes it is a balancing act to present a message before an audience and watch my children at the same time, but perceptive viewers will notice that I have my own secret code that I often communicate to my children through winks, nods, and motions — even when giving a speech. Sometimes I feel a bit of a failure and highly inadequate at the task, but I never regret having them with me. Ever. My prayer is that, when they look back on their childhood, they will never remember a time when they were not intimately involved in Mommy and Daddy’s life work, or when they were not spending special personal time with Daddy. We have little traditions we observe. For example, I always let them pick out a special book from one of the other home school vendors, and I usually bring one fun DVD which we watch together in the evening on my laptop. Another tradition is that we have a never-ending adventure story that I tell them in the evening time. Of course, they are the star of the story. They usually present me with drawings of Daddy talking in front of the group. I keep every one in a box. This may create a storage problem, but throwing them away is like cutting off my ties to their childhood, and I cannot seem to do it.

From Doug’s Bookshelf: This week Josh and I are reading about Freddy the Pig in Freddy and the Perilous Adventure by Walter Brooks. It is not a distinctively Christian book, but I read it for multi-generational purposes — my grandfather read it to my mother, my mother read it to me, and it allows me to tell stories of my childhood and my dear mother. I would describe Freddy as Mr. Toad meets P.G. Wodehouse. The multi-volumed Freddy series was recently republished, true to the original dust jackets and format, by Overlook Press in 2001. Hilarious.