It's a Small World, Especially in Iowa

On St. Patrick's Day- almost a week ago, I know- we, that is, Jordon and I, and three of Jordon's siblings, took off for Des Moines for the "Homeschool Day at the Capitol" which is put on by NICHE. We missed out on most of the activities, other than a speech by one of the HSLDA people...I think he was with HSLDA, anyway, warning us about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, we did get to spend a lot of time going up and down stairs, trying to track out Senator and Representative, and running into all these homeschoolers we knew, or that knew us, and almost getting a tour to the top of the capitol dome. Which would have meant more, and steeper, steps. (As a side note, the stairs at the capitol are kind of annoying, unless you take them two at a time). We caught up with the first of our lawmaker's near the replica of the battleship "Iowa", and incidentally, also near the table that had free punch and a huge box of cloverleaf cookies. Every time a group of little people went by the box's contents were largely reduced, and I was puzzling over how long that one box would last...until I noticed five empty boxes off to the side, and then I stopped worrying about it. So the four younger Caves, including myself, drank punch and conversed among ourselves while Jordon talked to the Hon. Chuck Soderburg about matters of state. The Hon. Randy Feenstra was a bit harder to track down. Long story short is that Jordon and I got to cross the Senate floor by ourselves (with permission from the Sergeant at Arms) to try to catch him coming out of an Education meeting. After much standing around, meeting people from WIT who Jordon used to know, and who were also there to lobby Sen. Feenstra, we found he had escaped us once again (not that he was purposefully avoiding us, but if he had been, he would have been doing a good job). We finally found him when we were almost ready to go, and had a nice little chat, in which the younger Caves actually participated, however little. I still don't think anyone in power was completely buying Jordon's theory about relieving property tax burdens on people who didn't have children in public schools, though. They were more for giving refunds after they took the money. Homeschoolers are just weird after all- they want themselves and their money left alone. It was actually Sen. Feenstra who offered to take us out onto the dome...which would have been fun, heights or no. But his key didn't work. Eventually we bid farewell to the place, (not to all the people we knew there- that would have taken too long to hunt them all up) and wended our way homeward. And that was that day...did I mention 4-6 hours in the car?