There's No Place Like Home

Day Fourteen of Count Your Blessings

When I was a little girl I told everyone who asked or would listen that I wanted to grow up to live on a farm and have twelve children.  I would play house alternating with teacher, my two loves.  As I matured I couldn't figure out how I could do both, be a homemaker and a school teacher.  But I shouldn't have worried because being a teacher is another name for mother, and God had a plan for me.

I don't live on a farm, in fact, my hardworking husband has NO desire to do anything remotely connected to farming (and I LOVE cows!).  We don't have twelve children either, but that is because we were 31 and 30 when we married and when I had Danny at age 40 I knew I was done.  Having babies is a young people's sport! I really admire my Nana who had fifteen children beginning when she was 23 and ending when she was 46, no twins there either!

During our engagement TopDad and I talked about our future family and home life.  I was adamant that I was going to be a stay-at-home mom; he worried because he felt it took two incomes to make it.  I told him that I knew how to live on one income, having learned from my parents.  He eventually agreed that when we became parents I would be able to stay home.

When I had Noble I couldn't imagine leaving her with someone else and trudging off to work everyday.  Horrors!  When she was three we did put her in a Montessori preschool where she did really well, EXCEPT! Except she began to change into a little monster, picking up bad language and behaviors from the other students.  We lasted one semester and didn't return her to the school after Christmas break.  About that time we asked questions of a family at church who we knew homeschooled their children.  They answered our questions, gave us books to read and invited us to meetings.  It didn't take long for us to be convinced that this was the way to go for us.  What really converted us was attending an end of year exhibition of the whole group in our county.  We were so impressed with the teens!  They were well groomed, articulate, friendly, well-mannered and just wonderful "poster children" for the whole thing.  We said to each other "That's what we want our children to be like."

And that's what they've turned out like.  I'm so thankful TopDad trusted me enough to let me stay home and be a wife, mother, homemaker, and school teacher. It has been my dream career.