It is here - the first real milestone of home educating at KAAH - Ms. Brit's 8th Grade graduation!  I have mixed feelings about the momentous occasion.  On the one hand, I can hardly believe that it has been 8 years since we began this journey.  I still remember sitting on my couch when our first books arrived via UPS.

Well, it's hard to forget because I had only arrived home hours before from giving birth to our 4th child.  I was so excited to get those boxes, that I immediately opened them and began pouring through everything!  It was like being a kid in a candy store, except someone had discovered how to send the candy home to the kid!  I should have been in the bed, resting.  I couldn't - I was an "official" homeschooler!!  We didn't have much room in our tiny apartment, but we sectioned off a teeny bit of space in our small living room where I put a small plastic table and two chairs.  Our desk was beside it and I plopped a little dry erase board on top of the desk, got a couple of bookends to hold up the textbooks on my desk and after a quick run to the nearest Teacher's Supply Store, I put a school boarder up on the wall and I was ready.

Our first day of school, I walked into the living room and my two students (and their 2 yo brother) sat at the little desk with beaming faces and big "kool-aid" grins on their faces and said with a very loud, preschool voice - "Good morning Teacher"!  I was so proud and excited.  I looked at my desk and wouldn't you know they had even convinced their dad to buy me an apple!!

So much has changed since then and even more has remained the same.  Although their adulthood is staring me in the face, in my heart all of my children are still the wrinkly faced little babies that I first looked at in the hospital.  Even when I see Ms. Brit in her cap and gown, I still see my little Nupe Nu Nu (pronounced Nupee New New).  She will die a million deaths if all of her friends read this - LOL!  Seriously though, this time really did come around a lot faster than I expected, even though the older mothers said that it would.  So let me sound really original here, new mothers: hold on to your babies and cherish every moment you have with them.  Because week after next, you will be blogging that your child's 8th grade graduation arrived years before you thought it would - or so it will seem :)!