My first blog!

I need a way to document a project we're starting - so here's the easiest solution I could come up with! We've read the Flat Stanley book by Jeff Brown, in which a boy named Stanley is flattened by a board falling on him... He finds it quite useful to be completely flat - he can slip under doors, go through gratings, and be mailed across the country to his friend in California in a large envelope.

We are living a bit vicariously through him, and made a bunch of our own Flat Stanleys to send around the World! It works like this - we send a paper boy in an envelope with a short questionaire about the host family and their town. The family treats Stanley as their guest for a week, taking him interesting places and hopefully snapping some photos or grabbing him a postcard to remember his adventures. They send them back to us with photos, the questionaire filled out, and anything else they want to send.

Both Clay & Reed are doing this, along with one of their best friends, Owen. I put a request for host families on a message board of homeschoolers, as well as asking anyone on my email contacts who lives somewhere far away from Asheville. We'll post all the results here :)

So far, we have 35 families that want to help out! An overwhelming response, really ... And this is only about 8 hours after posting the request! These are ranging from right down in South Carolina, all across America from New England to California, to the Netherlands, Germany, Bahrain, India, Rome and Northern Canada. This is making it very hard for the boys to choose! So far they've made 15 Stanleys total - they may make more or just send them on multiples trips.

Reed working hard
Here's the whole clan of Stanleys - more may be added, but this is the work of 3 very motivated boys! True to the town they are from, they are full of the "asheville flavor" and we have Tattoo Stanley, Astroid-Boy Stanley, Ninja Stanley and even Crystal Stanley.