Journey to Excellence

Father's Day is a tough day for me. It's the one day each year when I am confronted with all of my greatest failures, with my weaknesses. It is the day that I understand that my best is not good enough. I spend the day thinking about all of the mistakes I have made in relationships, and owning them. But I also lament in the fact that many of the relationships were fractured when I was doing what I truly believed was best for me and my children, when I was doing things for all the right reasons. Maybe I was right, maybe I was wrong. I am sure it's been a little bit of both. I am like anybody else. I just want to be loved and accepted for who I am, despite my mistakes, and maybe even in spite of them. Unfortunately, that has not been the case in my life. So what do I do with that? I try really, really hard to remember that God loves me unconditionally, and He always will. He will not leave me, He will not forsake me, He won't even be mad at me. When I am victorio...

Several years ago a lady and her son rented a house behind us. Her name was Pam. She was a reading resource teacher at the elementary school. Although she and I were not ever going to sit and have a glass of wine together, I really liked spending time with her. She was into natural healing and foods, life as education, was a Christian woman. Her son was a nice kid and my kids enjoyed playing with him. She got married to a local man, kind of known for being a zealot, and they moved away. A couple of weeks ago I learned that they moved back to town. She came into the library the other day and recognized me. She asked if we were still homeschooling, and I told her that Eli wants to homeschool through high school but that Brynne had decided to go to public school because she wanted to play sports and take advantage of the A+ scholarship opportunities for college. She told me she had pulled her son out of school, told me she no longer works for the public school system, and then almo...

See, I told you that would happen. I would blog for a few days and then get busy. And now it's been a month since I last posted. So what have we been doing around here? Brynne finished her 7th grade year in public school. She walked away with Straight A's all year except for one semester grade of an A- the first semester in Science. She had a successful year in sports playing volleyball and basketball and is now two-thirds of the way through her summer softball season. Eli finished his 8th grade year in our homeschool and had a very productive year. Although it was hard on both of us with him being home alone the majority of the time doing his work, it was also good for him as he learned what he is capable of doing on his own. One of the biggest things he learned was time management. And we can all benefit from a healthy dose of that. This year I have really concentrated on teaching the kids some life skills, not only because they need to know how to do these things bu...