Whew....we are home!

We left a little earlier than we anticipated, because I didn't want to wait 2 hours for a class when I had everything else accomplished. It was good though! We got curriculum bought. I really only need to order a few little odds and ends and we'll be complete for Fall 2011. I want to check the library first to see what I can access there for free. I kind of wish the conference was a little later in the year so that I didn't have to store all this stuff AND my current stuff though . I mean, we still have 43 days of school left, so it is kind of hard to think of next year already. 43 days will zip by in a hurry though. I want to take a field trip or 2 during our "spring break" while Jamie is off, so we can count those days too. Oh, the beauty of homeschool and being finished by the end of April or first week of May:-)

We took 4 seminars. 2 of them geared towards writing, reading, spelling, etc (I'm a math person, not a writer) and 2 of them 'lighter' to sit back and enjoy. One of the 'light' ones ended up being a dud and I was really wishing we had sat by the door, so we could escape. It was just not that informative and I think it was suppose to be funny, but it wasn't. I looked around several times and almost everybody had a glazed look in their faces hoping that the hour would hurry up.

We saw Tim Hawkins last night. About half the material we have on DVD's, but about half was new and fresh for us. I laughed until I literally cried and my stomach got a good ab workout. He is a very talented man and has his eye on the big picture of Christ. We also got to listen to his wife speak this morning and she is a lovely lady

I don't know that we'll go every year, but it is so nice to kind of get fresh ideas, see books in person, and get a "recharge" and excitement going to finish out that spring slump. I learned quite a bit too. I think I'm still in that uptight, I must do everything perfectly or screw my kids up forever, worrying about the future, am I doing enough, am I doing too much, what works, what doesn't mode. I wonder how many years it takes to get out of that mode. I suppose there will always be a bit of doubt, because God has called us to this and it takes time, patience, commitment, energies, etc every single day. Satan wants to put doubt in my head and I often have moments where I really stress out about this big responsibility. Being a parent is always a huge God sized responsibility anyways.

I'm taking a little bit of a different approach to teaching next year. I needed the curriculum to hold my hand a bit this year, but next year, I'm going more with unit type studies and more 'laid back'. I'm glad I did what I did last year, but I'm also glad that I have a new vision. My kids are too fun to be around to not have fun with them:-) They are fun people!

It was nice to just have Jamie to myself for a couple of days too. Even if I believe he probably 'suffered' through some of it for my behalf:-) I love him!