The whole gang on the bridge over the pool.
Minnie Dania


Luke trying to hide to suck his thumb.

Putt-putt heaven

Austin was trying to be all cool sitting on the rock and Nate came up to bring him back to reality.



We spent a lot of time on the putt-putt courses. There are 4 there and you pay one price for the entire week, up to 8 people. It is about the only bargain at the resort.

The first year of school is over

These are all the awards that the two younger boys won at the awards ceremony at school. Luke completely caught up and exceeded all his goals. He and Evan were both on the honor roll all year. Evan was considered and granted permission to go into the gifted program next year. I am very proud of him, but I am not sure I want him in the program. There is tons of projects and more work. Coming from a homeschool perspective, I do not think that all the extras are worth it. They do enough work at school and I am not interested in us spending our evenings doing loads of homework or science projects, so we shall see how it goes. Austin was on the honor roll as well and received an award for having the highest GPA in math.

All 3 of the younger children will be in school again next year, while it looks like I will be homeschooling Austin even though he is begging me to let him go to the middle school, but that is not happening. I will look into another christian school that is closer than the one he went to last year and see if that is a possibility.

I thought that since the kids all completed a year of school away from home I would give my most honest assessment of their time away. I loved it and I make no apologies for that statement. Evan thrived, and all I saw was good things for him and our relationship. Going to school changed his and my dynamic. I became the support and encourager rather than the enforcer. It was a much needed change for us. Austin did very well with the change and it was incredibly good for him to be accountable to someone other than Mommy. He had to grow up and take responsibility for himself and his work. I saw no negative effects on him. Luke pushed himself really hard and became even more driven than he was. He took his work seriously and overcame some of his academic hang ups. I have noticed that the social environment had an impact of him. Of all the kids he is the only one that seems to have picked up some unpleasantness from his peers. He made some "enemies" on the bus, and his mouth was sassier, if that is possible. It was nothing incredibly alarming, but enough that I had to wonder if it was his age or his peer influence. Dania was not is school long enough to see any changes, good or bad. I will say that since she spent most of her life around people, she seems to really thrive in that environment. She will not be happy home with me all day, and I don't think at this point that is best for her. Overall, I am so grateful to God for this past year, so many good things happened and God's grace was with our family.