Yes, those are backpacks! For the first time ever, four of our precious children are enrolled in a local Christian school. We have been home-schooling since Lydia (15 1/2) was 3 years old, and are so thankful for our Savior’s strengthening and provision for that task, and the fruit that He has granted from it. Approximately 9 months ago after a lot of prayer and discussion, we decided we would put the boys into a private Christian school as of the 09/10 school year so that I could be much more helpful to Rich with the business, working from our home office.
About 6 weeks ago, we decided to also put Jubilee & Valerie into the same Christian school as well for a year. On August 26th, Jubilee, Valerie, Jesse, and Benjamin started their year at the Christian school. Everyone is really enjoying the new school and we are delighted with new teachers and routines!
Lydia continues to be home-schooled via The Potters School (based online) in her Junior year. She is also hoping to go to Honduras this year for a missions trip w/TPS. Here she is enjoying sleeping-in because her TPS classes don’t start until September 14th. It takes a very secure teen to let her Mom put pictures like this on the family blog! ;-P Lydia’s summer has been full of working at Mount Ascutney Hospital as a therapy aide, volunteering for 3 weeks at Camp Good News, and taking her next math class with a TPS teacher! She also managed to get Norovirus at camp and was pretty sick for a while! Very busy girl. We are so thankful that, by God’s grace, she is such a motivated and diligent person.
Not spending 75% of my time home-schooling and not having all our children in house all day is a *huge* change for me, as you can imagine! I need a little while to let it “gel” in my brain. I know the Lord has led us here, clearly directing us, and He will teach us each new things. I am mostly excited about being able to bless and help my hard-working husband in this much-needed new way! I am also psyched about watching the Lord teach me how to most effectively nurture and train my children without having them in my sight every moment. It’s all good. I have no idea what next school year holds, but I know we’ll all learn new things this year and grow in new ways. I hope we will be diligent to make the most of each moment!