I remember hearing this phrase so often when we started homeschooling: "All you need to successfully homeschool is a math book and a library card".

There is so much truth to that! 12 years later, I know that good books are foundational to a real education. Which explains why we now have 7 bookshelves groaning under the weight of all our favorite books. This is a typical scene at breakfast:

As I've been unpacking books the past weeks, I have once again come across some of my old favorites and have displayed them in a place of prominence. They are books I read when I first became a mother, and contemplated what I should do once my first baby was born. Continue working? Work parttime? Stay home completely? Many of these books helped shape my thinking and gave me encouragement which was sorely lacking from most of my contemporaries at the time. They are very special to me. Books like Mary Pride's The Way Home, Brenda Hunter's Home by Choice, Susan Schaeffer MacCauley's For the Children's Sake, and Home Grown Kids by the Moores. These books were pivotal in my shift from career mom to stay-at-home homeschooling mom. I don't want my children to ever think we just happened to fall into this lifestyle by accident, it was most definitely a conscious choice fraught with fears and doubts. Perhaps I'll add some of these books to their required reading list for high school.