Refresh. Regrow. Renew.

“Success is waking up in the morning, whoever you are, wherever you are, however old or young, and bounding out of bed because there’s something out there that you love to do, that you believe in, that you’re good at – something that’s bigger than you are, and you can hardly wait to get at it again today.”

Whit Hobbs

I love this quote because it describes perfectly how I feel most days. When I wake up, my first thoughts are on my kids and our day ahead. I love being a mom. Their smiling faces light up my day and bring tears to my eyes. Its amazing what an impact they have in my life. There are the days that they drive me crazy making me want to dive off a cliff into a boiling lake of lava while singing 'I'm a little teapot'. But those days are few thankfully, leaving me to enjoy their spunky and curious nature.

Its amazing to me that I am in this place at all. Prior to meeting my husband, I wanted nothing to do with marriage or kids. My life's goal was to either be an FBI serial killer profiler or to join the peace corp - which I realize reside on opposite ends of the job spectrum but either way there was no room for a family in my vision. Isn't funny how God changes you? Here I am today a happy wife with the usual 'close the toilet lid' complaints, a excited mother who occasionally drifts over to the cliffs of insanity and my children's teacher which I surprisingly love. I thank God frequently for giving my all that I have which is a hidden treasure of love, joy, happiness with touches of bewilderment and frustration. But I love it all and I look forward to every day.

Life's journey sometimes take us places we never thought we would go, at least without putting up a really good fight. That is how my homeschool journey has been. I never thought that there was anything outside of public school with their substandard cafeteria food and slightly maniacal teachers. My experience wasn't good either at school. I had trouble with grades, self-esteem and hung out with the loser druggie crowd so I was picked on often by the totally cool and awesome kids who were only cool and awesome because they had better fashion sense then I did wearing my grandmother's 1920 dresses and my sister's hippie rejects.

Eventually, I escaped the confines of public school and went on to college where I did well in the majority of my classes. I loved being at college. I don't why since I didn't really make friends there but I loved learning, listening to the lectures and getting a different perspective of things. My major was sociology but as I inched closer to graduation, I began to shift my interests to education. Where this came from I have no idea because I knew that I did not want to work with kids. But eventually I saw this as God moving in my life and I reluctantly accepted it. I didn't change my major but I did take some courses on teaching which I enjoyed immensely, even with the crazy media professor teaching us of archaic machines that can help us teach.

After college, when my parenthood began, I would plan out lessons in my head about things I wanted our kids to know. Things like astronomy, art and why the Beatles are historically important (I'll save that for a future blog) among many other random topics swirled about in my mind. I would also buy numerous workbooks ranging from Pre-K basic skills to fourth grade history anytime I saw them on sale. Why would I do this I could never figure out, after all what would I do with them but I bought them all none the less. Then I met a friend who had been homeschooled and planned on homeschooling her own kids. I always respected her choice but I knew that I would never do that because I value my freedom too much and because my kids need socialization. Isn't it funny how we make our plans without consulting the one who made us only to have Him come up and pull the rug out from under our feet and point us in a different direction. That is what happened to me. I kept saying that I would never homeschool for a variety of reasons and then one day I couldn't wait to start homeschooling. Hold on! What happened? Did nobody understand my plan? Incidentally, the same thing happened when I had my second child. There was nothing that could have made me want to endure pregnancy a third time yet here I am nine months pregnant wondering how I got here. Last year I knew that I would never homeschool or have a third pregnancy and now God is looking down smiling at me thinking, 'Never Say Never'. I'm sure that my stubborn nature will say never to God somewhere down the road.

After months of looking at various curriculums, I finally found the one I think will work best for my daughter and myself. When the package came I could not contain my excitement and immediately immersed myself into her school. I also found some things for my son to do to keep him busy figuring that he would rather play than do school work. How wrong I was! My son loves school and doing the worksheets, in fact I often run out of things for him to do but my daughter is another story. These were my expectations - my daughter would love the individual attention coupled with learning to read and my son would color one picture, get bored and run off to play. So she and I have been struggling with attitude, discipline and just getting her work done. Every week we get a little closer to finding a solution and every week I want to hit my head on the wall or just shake her a bit until she stops complaining. But I love hearing her telling daddy about what she has learned in extreme detail which tells me that its working just not the way I imagined it. Every day will get better and soon we will both be having fun.

Our newest ballet dancer (I don't think we should call him a ballerina) was excited before we left our house and even more excited after he was done. His over exuberance in telling me about his class and teachers brought tears to my eyes. He was so happy. Even the moms next to me said that based on his excitement they couldn't wait to see the performance.

My sweet little ballet boy.

Here are some of the dancers together.