Hey, I'm new at this.  In fact, I really didn't know what a blog was until I looked it up on Google.com and found out that I should be writing something about what's happening.  So, I guess I will. 

You will find more pictures on my Weblog than word entries simply because through the use of photography is how I express myself and remember my past.  As a teen, when time seemed limitless, a journal was my best friend.  However, as time now seems scarce, photography is my journal.  Thus, in my life, pictures do speak a thousand words.  I hope you enjoy them.

Today in homeschooling, as usual right now, it seems like there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done.  With two little ones not yet in school, it is difficult to keep them happy and go on having quality time with the older ones who still need my help and who are not yet independent.  Homeschooling young ones are fun, but challenging.  I have felt that God will help me with the challenge.  Nothing of true value in a life comes easily, but only that which is difficult to achieve and takes hard work.  The outcome of what is fought for in ones life through a challenge will become like pure gold and silver in one's life.  Homeschooling is like that.  Sometime I feel like I want to give up.  Sometimes I feel like a failure and that there is nothing left in me to give.  But when I ask for God's help, his guidance, his mercy, grace, wisdom and strength, then renewal comes from above and I can soar again.  I'm fighting for the homeschooling experience in my family - not with my family but with my own shortcomings.  The fight is within me and the battle is doing what is right over what I would like to be doing.  That is the front lines which I am in daily.  Is this worth fighting for?  Yes indeed, and once on this path for me and my family there is no turning back.  Fighting for a close-knit family system of homeschooling is worth it in this day of age.  And I know the pay-off won't be until later in life when my little ones grow up and begin lives of their own outside the nest that has been built around their growing experience here.  My entire house permeates "children live and are growing here."  There are casualties of the war I'm fighting between doing what is right for homeschooling, and doing what I wish to do all around me.  What I wish is to keep and spot-free home, but the casualties of homeschooling are toys and papers scattered in every room.  What I wish is to have time for me to be creative just for fun, but the casualties are putting that aside to pull out crayons, glue and construction paper to make paper crafts.  What I wish is to have time just to relax and read for myself, but the reality of the war that rages inside of me is that also needs to be put aside and the reading of Green Eggs and Ham and Usbornes World History is better fit to be read at this time of life to my fellow little soldiers.  The war rages on in my home, my life, but again, only that which I truly fight for is ever really worth the fight.  Happy homeschooling!