All the Teens! : Travel Blog #13

Traveling. We love it and its endless pros so much, but what is one of the hardest parts? Probably missing our family and friends. It took several months of learning how, but now we have reached a point where we can balance seeing our friends in such a positive way! We see our friends usually around 3-4 times a year. This may seem shocking and so unimaginable to those who are used to seeing friends every single day. However, it allows our relationships to be so much richer. We value those in-person moments with our friends so much more and take nothing for granted. We have to work really hard to stay in contact with our friends which leads to a deeper appreciation for them. I talk to my friends just about every day and excitedly wait until I can see them in person. Then when we get to be together, we have the absolute best week of our lives. In a future post, I'm going to talk about how to maintain friendships and be high-schoolers on the road. Today I'm only going to scratch the surface!

These last two weeks were amazing. For the first week, one of my best friends, Lydia, traveled with me and my family after we celebrated her sweet sixteen! Then for the second week we went to an event called Teen Week. The community of families who live on the road and homeschool like we do is much bigger than you would expect. There is an organization called Fulltime Families that hosts big events at campgrounds where we can all meet up and have high school experiences! Teen Week was in Perry Georgia this year. All of my best friends were there, and we spent one week doing spirit week, class debates, teen nights, games, graduation, PROM, and so many other fun things! We went last year and it was amazing, so it was so great to get to go back! This week is one of the highlights of the whole year for many teens on the road. It is just jam-packed with every positive thing about high school and none of the negatives!

Week 1:

Lydia invited me to NYC for her birthday weekend where we went with her older sisters to the Stardust Diner, all over NYC, and then to see Aladdin on Broadway! It was so incredible!

After that she spent a week with us in West Virginia! We got our nails done to prep for prom, hiked, and went white water rafting! It was such a great experience! We all love Lydia so much and miss her. She is such a sweetheart and was an amazing addition to the family for the week!

Week 2:

We spent a whole week doing so many fun things! We painted a house for a woman in town, went roller skating, had a class debate, played hundreds of games, practiced swing dancing for prom, went on a blow up water slide, raced in Mariokart, sold henna tattoos and our books at the marketplace, made new friends, had campfires, jammed with all of our instruments, lead a Bible study, and just had the best time soaking up every possible moment with our friends. We basically fit a whole year's worth of relationships into one packed week!

On Friday we had prom! We got ready with our friends, had some pizza together before, and then went to the dance! It was so much fun! I went with Noah for the second year in a row which was really so great. With his hot pink suit and light up shoes, we sure stood out! I love dancing, and I had a such great time. Noah's family teaches all of the kids how to swing dance every year which is SUCH a blast! Prom is a high school staple, so it is such a blessing that we get to experience it and in such a cool way. It's not at many places that you can get ready with your best friends in a rig, then walk out to a pre-prom pizza party ten steps away, then walk ten more and be at prom itself. It was like a party all week, but prom was even more so!

Of course saying goodbye to your best friends is never easy, especially when you don't know how long it'll be until you see them again. It's only been a few days, but I already miss them very much. There were lots of hugs and tears. However, my mom always tells us not to cry because it's over but to smile because it happened. I know I'll smile when I look back and remember how great last week was! I treasure my relationships on the road and truly love seeing my friends it person. God does an absolutely incredible job of placing the right people in your life at the right time for soul-filling relationships. It can be hard to trust Him with your relationships sometimes, but from experience, he's always got something great in store!