I LOVE HAVING MY KIDS HOME!

Benjamin's Kindergarten graduation, 2000

We use to get the paper, but found it was pretty a much a waist of money. It's been several years since we have actually received a community newspaper, but today as I went to the mailbox to mail Scott's Louisiana Tech University tuition, I found the local paper laying in the driveway.  I picked it up brought it in, and opened it up. Looks like it's just a little newspaper pretty much full of correspondent type articles. 

The first article I read was from a mother who wrote about school starting. She starts out talking about how now that school is in, we all need to be careful of children waiting for the buses, and for buses stopping, etc. I TOTALLY agree! She goes on to talk about how happy she is to have her kids back in school, and how she is sure the dog is too. Why? Well, because of all the noise. She said that she was "more than happy to see them go back to school."

This made me sad. I love having my kids home; especially when they were young. We use to do all kinds of fun things. I'd take them to the pool everyday, until we got our own pool; then I was out back with them in the pool. We always took a vacation to see grandparents and other family members. There, we would go to the beach, visit, and just plane ole goof around. Now that our youngest is a senior in high school, well, it's different because everyone is pretty much gone :( I miss those young years. 

Homeschooling for ten years, I got a lot of comments like, "Wow, I could never home school, my kids would drive me NUTS!" Homeschooling, we not only had school time, but we did a lot of fun field trips. I can remember living in Coastal North Carolina, we learned about pirates, then we went to the Maritime Museum and saw the Blackbeard exhibit. Another time we learned about the sea and the creatures that live there and went to the local aquarium. One time we learned about knights and castles. Our field trip for that was the beach, and we built sandcastles. We have visited cotton fields, road on a cotton picker and learned about how cotton grew, was harvested and what things they make with it. On several occasions, we went to Colorado to visit with extended family. We took our books and studied Colorado history. We visited a lot of historical sights around the state. Another year, we went to Mesa Verde and the Four Corner's area. Before we went we studied about the ancient inhabitants of that area. Our ultimate field trip as a cruise. Before we went, we studied about Mayan ruins, salt farming, and other places we were to visit. It was nice to see that my kids had a clue as to what they were seeing as the guide would talk about these places, and ask us questions. Our kids already knew a lot of the answers. Boy, I could go on and on about all the fun things we did. I loved having my kids home! I miss those days.