MEET THE WELCH FAMILY

(you can double click any picture and it will be bigger! cool!)

Hello Friends

One of the perks of living in a military town is the folks you encounter over the years. I would like you to meet the Welch Family. Many of you will remember Mercedes from our home school group. They were in transit from being in Hawaii when they came to the only landlocked base in America- Millington. When they left here they did go back to Hawaii. When I first met Mercedes, she called me from Hawaii. You know Hawaii is an American State. With an American zip code and a regular phone code. Have you ever called Hawaii? I have several times now. Her kids are Sarah 14 , Ben 13, Tristan 11, Geoffrey 8. When you haven't seen them in a while, they look so grown up. Can you imagine for the children when they grow up and and someone says where have you lived at? Hawaii mostly~~ The memories they will have living on base on the island.

I did email her and asked her about the situation with the Hurricane that just passed by... here is a few things she said about it.. enjoy... LIZ

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Hawaii is the most eastern island in the state's chain. We actually live on Oahu, in the middle of the chain and a little farther north. The normal weather pattern for hurricanes out here is that they pass by south of us. We may see some wind and light rain but that's all. We could really use the rain...there is a big brush fire on the other side of Oahu that is threatening homes. I'd probably stay home in case of big emergency. We live high on a hill in a home built in 1940. While there are many tall trees on our street there are also many really neat families with lots of kids and it would be a party, let's make the best of this atmosphere. Oahu doesn't have enough shelter space for everyone and they are all located downhill from our neighborhood. I'd stay home anyway just to be on the Naval Base.We are into week three of our tenth year of homeschooling....YIKES where does the time go? The public schools and majority of the private schools are on an almost year round schedule here so we mirror their schedule to a degree. With 34 kids on our little dead end street it's fun to not be schooling when your friends are playing. When you live in paradise and the weather is always summer (but not like YOUR summer...what's up with 105 degrees anyway?!?!?) there is no incentive to pull out a separate time of year to dig into the books. I've attached a picture taken in April of our family.

Much Aloha,

Mercedes