Would you like to meet the family?
This is Andrew, alias dad. He is 46. He is our great and courageous driver. I tried to find a picture of him that was not behind the wheel of Maggie or the smoke of the BBQ but couldnt. Dad can frequently be heard saying the following things over and over again. “I am so glad we didnt get that bus”, “my mind is hungry I need to feed it”, “just 5 minutes on the computer”, or spouting off his own version of one of his dad’s jokes saved for just the right occasion. He loves to BBQ, Drive Maggie, Read, Blog.
This is me, Debbie, mum. I am 48 and proud of it. It is hard to find a photo of me with my mouth shut. I still havent plucked up the courage to drive Maggie. I love to do all things creative and I love roadschooling. I keep on accidentally, on purpose forgetting that we have a tutor with us and accidentally, well, sort of, teaching a lesson or two of maths before the teenage tutor wakes up. hmmmm, sorry Donald. Debbie and Andrew met in Belgium just before going on a ship that brought educational books into the Americas. We got married over 20 years ago and have been developed stranger and stranger lifestyles as time goes on.
This is Sam. He is 18. Oh yes, our grown up son. He is with us until the Spring when he wants to go to college. At present he wants to go to Scotland and become a playwright and director but plans may change as it is a big, exciting world with so much to see and do. Well, he is presently learning harmonica and guitar and functions (with Donald) as our own live mp3 player as we have no working sound system when we are driving and wild camping (most of the time) and he loves music. Especially that classic stuff. He is our useless knowledge dictionary for music facts. He is presently reading a huge complete works of Shakespeare book. He is a creative traveller that takes on the world with fearless expectation and fun.
This is Liz. She is 16. She loves her saxophone and pretty mini cupcakes. They are just SOOOO cute. Right now she is roadschooling Saxophone (of course), Creative Writing, Design, French and Cooking. She has loved seeing beauty in unusual places since she was little. Her greatest fear in travelling is going into the men’s toilet by mistake. Her toilet fears have just been expanded recently to being in a self-clean toilet during the self-clean. Liz loves to read. She raced through all the twilight books. She just finished reading Inkspell and is desperately looking for a copy of the 3rd book of the series so she can get absorbed into another good book. Lately, she has been quite upset at how “Heroes” is developing and might do her own personal rewrite.
This is Abi. She is 14. She loves bubbles and her love has increased since spending time with a certain polish “Bubbologist” on her last birthday. She is currently roadschooling normal stuff and looking for topics that take her fancy. She is our webmaster as she is good with techy things and the word impossible doesnt mean “stop” to her it just means “get more creative”. She doesnt want to think much about what she wants to do in the future as she says she got too much of that in regular school. She does want to go on a ship when she turns 18. She is presently reading “The Teenage Liberation Handbook”, not sure what she thinks of it. She has always loved looking after people. She has had diabetes since she was 7 and refuses to let it slow her down. She is looking forward to doing some extreme sports that involve things like jumping out of planes. She wants to live on a ship for a couple of years when she turns 18 then settle down in Orkney.
This is Hannah. She is 12. She is a self-confirmed information geek. She is a fountain of facts and useless knowledge. She normally wins the useless knowledge competitions with Abi, Sam and Dad. She also loves strange haircuts. She finally got her dream haircut over the summer. A mohawk. It has been green, purple, orange and natural. She loves to roadschool absolutely everything. Give her a book and she will have read, absorbed, integrated it and will be spouting out information from it in no time. Her favourite person to give cuddles to is TJ. I dont think she has any fears with travelling. She loves to find quiet escape places all her own so we need to do a special “Where’s Hannah” check when we leave anywhere.
This is TJ. She is 7. In this picture she is pleading for us to adopt yet another pet. We have thot that it is more practical to travel with no pets. She disagrees. She has presented us with multiple options for pets including a cat, a dog, a lizard, a grasshopper, a frog, a toad, a praying mantis. I am sure this list is much longer in her mind. She has been sporting her own adventure backpack lately that contains her favourite animal book, a first aid kit, a water bottle, rope, a notebook and pencil a handkerchief and her zebra phone. All you need for an adventure. She loves to play her piano for people and to read out loud. She loves to learn new languages because it helps her with her number one travel goal of making new friends. She wants to travel the world on a donkey with a large group of dogs travelling with.
This is Donald. He is 18. He is not a Jones, He is a Cowan. We met him in Orkney. He is traveling with us for his “gap year”. He will start University next year and is with us until the Spring. He wants to be a primary school teacher so he is with us tutoring Hannah and TJ. He is their favourite teacher EVER. We think donald is great he brings a bit of craziness and music wherever he goes.
This is Alana. She is also not a Jones. She is a Hurst. She is 19. She wanted to travel and is now travelling with us. She is very colourful and very clever. She is American but has spent most of her life in Europe. In addition to English she is fluent in Portuguese and Italian. She loves learning languages, cartooning and customizing her clothes. We met her with her family at Freakstock about 4 years ago.
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