It’s hard to believe that I’m down to my last few years of “formally” teaching my children – my youngest will be 11 tomorrow, and as I was working on school organization today, I had a mix of emotions rise up more than once. I know there are still several years left, but it feels weird to actually be winding down. It seems like yesterday when those middle-of-the-night panic attacks hit me, afraid that my children would never learn to read…

But we have had some wonderful years home schooling! I’ve saved so much of their work – papers written and corrected, artwork, poems, favorite books – and everything I look at brings back sweet memories. Most of them are simple, non dramatic, times no one else in the world, including my kids, would think at all significant. Any many of them probably weren’t. But they are in my heart as part of the fabric of my life — Davy sitting at her desk working on her Texas history newspaper; 4 year old Bo excitedly running into the room after he’d seen a blimp fly over the house, and not knowing what it was, drawing a picture for me; Erin drawing her sweet love pictures to me; Alyx memorizing The Swing; Cassie as a baby, sitting right beside us during all the activity.

Oh, it hasn’t always been easy…the piano being played always at the worst time -at least for someone; many tears over math; frustrations over siblings being too noisy; and never having enough time. Did we ever finish anything? Probably not. But we made so many valuable memories.

I’m so very grateful and blessed to have had these years, and I look forward to the few years left. What a privilege. I know I’ll feel a sadness, like I did today, when it actually does come to an end. But I also know that I have a wealth of remembrances to warm my heart, and every one is a treasure.