My Peeps

Last weekend I had the joy and privilege of speaking to the Arizona homeschoolers in a mid-year refresher.  We all found sitters and gathered together in a hotel in Mesa and can I just say that it is so energizing to be with your peeps.  We are all in the trenches together.  We are parents lacking socialization with other adults all day long because we’ve chosen to school our kids at home.  We laughed, we cried, we laughed some more.  We shared our victories and our struggles.  No matter how hard our journey seems, there is always one other family who has it WAY worse than we do… and it secretly gives us hope.  If they can keep on schooling, so can we! 

We listened to Tim Hawkins’ new homeschool song: 

and we laughed until we cried.  Happy tears with my peeps.  It doesn’t get any better than that.

As the evening progressed, there were door prizes, laughter, a Southwest buffet and then I shared our homeschool story…. the challenges, the kid that couldn’t read, my failures as a homeschool mother, the triumphs and what we’ve learned along the way.  It’s cathartic to give your testimony.  It not only gives hope to others, but you realize how God pulled you through your circumstances and you’re still alive to tell the story.

It was a good weekend.  And I’m ready to finish the homeschool year now.  Not quittin’ anytime soon.  Thank you, my peeps, for showing up and keeping me on my journey with my kids.

My Son, the Creative Genius

My son Keeve is eternally leaving little signs of his creative genius around the house.  It brings a smile to my face each time I find some little ditty that he has spent his energy on…. for no real reason at all.  Just because.  He is 11…. I don’t remember my older son going through the 11-year-old-creative phase… maybe this is unique to this child.  Who knows? 

Our first example above is the Trix cereal box that has been carefully altered to read Trixie….. the name of our dog.  Notice the font size and type were recreated with precision.  Wow!  Such artistic talent!  The Trix box was not complete without the editing done by my dog-loving son.  And besides, Trix are for kids.   This is the boy who has asked for Sharpie permanent pens for Christmas more than once.  He LOVES his Sharpies.  They are so useful.  And they write on practically anything, whether it is supposed to be written on or not.

Exhibit #2 is the school work/microphone station at the back picnic table.  This is not a temporary set up in the happenstance that a song breaks forth from his soul today alone.  The golf putter is taped to the stool and the table for future song outbursts in this particular math-doing seat.  So ingenious!  So creative!  So useful…. especially when he’s supposed to be doing math… right after he finds a putter in the garage, a stool from his brother’s room, the packing tape from the pantry, etc. etc. etc.

Our final exhibit, the bejeweled Bible.  I remember picking out this Bible for him in the Christian bookstore, thinking that he had out-grown the little boy Bibles and needed a grown-up, leather-covered Bible.  Within the first month, he wrote out two particularly significant verses on the cover in ball point ink (why didn’t I think of that?)…. John 3:16, one known to many.  But he also included Job 3:2…. “he said.”  That’s it.  He said.  It is a complete sentence as it contains a noun and a verb.  Keeve is fond of this verse… I’m not sure why? 

And the jewels in the shape of a cross… what can a mother say?  He did do a very careful hot gluing job because there is no trace of hot glue gun strings running from jewel to jewel.  The heart in the middle of the cross did this mother’s heart good.  The cover wouldn’t be complete in this child’s life without Sharpie pen too, of course.  What could be of more importance than his name?  Naming your belongings is why Sharpie pens were invented, right?  Right!

I love my Keeve. <3