You'll notice on the sidebar, that there is a link to another Raising Arrows Blog.    For those of you new to this blog, I thought I would clarify the difference between the two blogs and what you can find here as opposed to what you will find on the other one.

Oringinally, this was the only blog I had.  I started this blog as a place to write and nothing more.  I never intended it to be widely read.  I love to write.  I love the way words sound and feel in my mouth.  I like knowing the etymology of words.  I like how they look on the page.  I like the pictures they create in the mind.  This was a place for me to think through things and then write them out.

As more and more people began reading the blog, I felt I needed things to look nicer here...better presentation would maybe be the correct term.  However, all I know of HTML, I taught myself, and honestly, I know very little.  I decided to leave Homeschoolblogger and move to eBlogger where the templates were a little easier to work with and my limited knowledge of HTML was enough to create a blog that felt more like me.  And then, Emily died.

I knew the blogging community here would have no way of knowing if I didn't post.  After all the love and support through her hospital stays, I could not just ignore my homeschoolblogger readers.  However, eventually I was no longer able to keep up with both blogs and I decided to let this blog go.

God had other plans.

About a month after announcing I was leaving this blog behind, I began to realize that God was placing a distinct desire within me to step outside my grief and begin thinking and talking about other things.  That was a hard thought for me to grasp and accept.  Wouldn't I be dishonoring my daughter by not grieving for her every second of the day?  However, what I realized was that I was actually honoring her memory by stepping back into life, caring for her siblings, and doing many of the things God had called me to...even if they were on a much smaller scale.  So, I stepped back into this blog with this post: http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Raisingarrows/508195/

From there, this blog became a strictly homeschooling blog.  I had already established a "life" at eBlogger.  My deepest, darkest moments as a grieving mother were happening there.  So, I separated the two as best I could; although, you really cannot completely separate the grief side of me from the homeschooling mom side of me...they are one in the same and both shine through in nearly every conversation I have.  But, I wanted this blog to be a place where I talked more homeschooling than anything.  And with that, my other blog naturally became a place where I talked more about every other aspect of my life (because believe it or not, I do like to write about things other than homeschooling on occasion  )

So, here, you will hopefully find encouragement and a place to flesh out new homeschooling ideas while gaining a few giggles and the knowledge that someone else is in the trenches with you. 

The Raising Arrows site on eBlogger is more about the rest of who I am.  There, you will find more of my family, more of my grief, more of my other passions, with only a smattering of homeschooling mixed in (because once again, you just can't separate the two worlds).

So, please, nose around here all you want and come visit the other site as well.  And...

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my rock and my Redeemer.

Psalm 19:14