Tori - no news... Jakeb - big news...

Well, we've heard nothing from the team personally. We did get word from 410 Bridge letting us know that they had arrived in Kenya and made it through customs fine. It's about 3PM there right now and I'm sure that if they are able to call or email today, it will be a good one as they were scheduled to go to church there and also to the orphanage. What a sweet time that should be for them!

Switching gears... we have finalized our decision to homeschool Jakeb this year. Some of you may not even know that we were thinking about this. It came up suddenly a couple of weeks ago, at Jakeb's request, and it sent us reeling with questions, concerns, anxiety and some excitement. Home schooling can be a big plus for one's education but it is not without fear, especially for a high schooler and the parents/teacher of a high schooler. If you think about it, public schools waste so much time and often in high school the teachers are less than helpful because of their personality perhaps but also because their time is split between 20 other kids in the class. This was actually one of Jakeb's main concerns. He wants to learn and felt he could learn better at home, and of course, he'll have a great teacher! HA! Really, his maths and sciences will have to be taught fairly independently with some help from Tommy and Tori because I am not a braniac that way. But there are also concerns about the social aspect. We told Jakeb that we were going to make him socialize cause it would just be weird for him to hang out with his parents and little sister all of the time. He definitely agreed! :)

We are now feverishly looking into our curriculum options - and there are many! We have found some really great stuff and some really lame stuff. We'd rather take the approach to teaching our kids from the standpoint of getting an education first. Many of the curriculums begin with the Bible as the main guide and "fit" the course study into it. We're just not so sure about that. I mean really, what does the Bible have to say about Algebra 2 and Geometry?

We've talked alot about it with each other and other home school parents, we've prayed even more and we're at peace about this decision, although there are still some unknowns as to "why" but we're all excited about it and sure that God will reveal the answers to the "why" as the year progresses. It's going to be a busy year for this "teacher mom"! But what a treasure it will be to get to spend this time with my kids!