Last Saturday marked a particularly bittersweet milestone for us in our home education journey: we graduated our first from high school.  How did she get to be 18 all of a sudden? When did she lose those baby-chubby legs? When did she get so beautiful?

What happens next?

We've schooled E1 at home her entire life, starting when we lived in the UK. She's been the test subject in more ways than this: the oldest, the pioneer, The Example For The Others. But she has morphed into a lovely, God-loving, new-adult woman. Which was really our goal in the first place.

Steve (http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SteveWalden/132415/) has a great post on "Why do you homeschool?" and I'll repeat a bit of my comment here:

The public school System is designed to be The Great Leveler. But, all that aside, educational quality or breadth is almost irrelevant... We homeschool for one reason: that our kids will know God.

E1 has done that on her own.  She has good influences outside of our family.  She is associated, of her own volition, in a group of like-minded young adults that want to obey, love, worship and serve The Living One. She knows God with her own faith, not ours. And she will do great things for Him with her life.

She is also the fifth generation, daughter-as-first-child-when-her-mom-was-21. If she holds to pattern, we'll be grandparents in three years. 

I'm rambling but I don't care. I can't even describe the feelings I have, I just know they're real. [Godwin has a great post on that: http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/;