So much has happened in a year, as you can imagine, but I'm not going to take time to cover it all, except a couple of extra special highlights. The first being that I have a new niece, Rosemary Lorainne Kittel. She's beautiful and I haven't seen her since she was first born back on November 9th, and I really would love to see her again VERY soon. The next is we had to put our longtime family dog, Ruby, to sleep because she was so old and sick and we could no longer take care of her. This was the kids' first significant loss in their life, and they took it pretty hard.
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| My sister's new family! |
The kids are coming to a close in this current school year. Owen is finishing up 3rd grade, Raymond is finishing up 1st grade and Judd is gearing up toward Kindergarten and finishing up Preschool! Our most exciting news is what will happen in the next school year! As a family, and after lots of research and many discussions, we have decided to pull the kids out of public school and explore a new life in home schooling! We are very excited about this new venture. Our children have had EXCEPTIONAL teachers and we've loved our schools so far, but just felt compelled to try this new venture. We love the philosophy behind home schooling, teaching our own kids, giving them the moral foundations that our family feels are important, the flexibility of the schedules, the ability to offer them a Christ centered education without the cost, the time to teach them life skills, and teach to each of their individual needs while letting them explore their interests. It's such a blessing to us that we get this opportunity! We have a large circle of people we know that also home school, so we already will have a great support group to start off with.
I have spent many hours researching different home school philosophies, and love many of them and hope to mix the styles to meet our needs. I will still be running my home daycare, but know this will be good for the daycare kids as well. For the last few years we have spent so much of our day loading and unloading to take kids to and from school, that we haven't had the time to really do many fun learning activities, and with home schooling they will get to participate with my kids. The most important point to make about this entire decision, is that the kids are SUPER excited. They pushed for us to say yes, with all understanding of what home schooling involves. They will miss seeing their friends each day, but understand that they can see them outside of school whenever they are able.
We have prayed about this decision extensively and felt that God was showing us this path, so we are excited for this new adventure in our lives and have no real idea where it will lead us, but have faith in God that he has a plan for us, and we trust in Him!
I hope to post more now that I have gotten back online. I look forward to sharing our stories with all of our friends and family!
Happy Easter
