Amy Writes

There's a certain time of day when the sun's rays enter our family room at just the right angle. When the floors and counter tops are clear, the light bounces around a little and gently warms the room and it feels like summer. I love summer. Today, that time of day was early, while Eden was still in school, and my heart felt a little sad - just a little - that she couldn't be home to walk through the family room and feel summery with me. The thought crossed my mind that, if we home schooled, every day could feel like summer. The girls could play outside in their own backyard in the middle of the day whenever they wanted - not just for 10 oppressively hot but miserably short weeks in the middle of the year. This morning was the volunteer appreciation breakfast at Eden's school. I didn't know what to expect other than "tons of food," and that only because I'd been given a heads-up by some teachers the day before. What I encountered was one of the sweetes...

Yeah, my team won the national championship. This team did something that mattered. HT to Brant

Curled up on the bed together, we were having our last Book Time before school. There were a lot of "lasts" that week. Last Pool Day Before School. Last Chuck E. Cheese Outing Before School. Last Lunch with Nana Before School. This was the last Last. Because Hurricane Fay delayed us for two days, we'd had to stay home from a friend's goodbye party to ensure a quiet night with a routine, on-time bedtime before the Big Show. I'd been teary for a couple of weeks...all these Lasts were starting to get to me. The stack of books that night was larger than usual, me trying to delay the inevitable: that I was going to have to put my preschooler to bed and in the morning, she would wake up a Kindergartener. My list of reservations was long. How long before she would come home a card-carrying member of Kids for Weapons in Schools (KWIS) or the Jesus Who? club? I pulled out a book about a snowman that, curiously, had an inscription in the front that said something like ...

God and I have this little game that we play. I think He calls it: Go Ahead, Make a Decision and Then See What Happens When I Change the Circumstances at The Last Minute. I am a notorious mind-changer. Mind-changing differs from wishy-washiness in that I say, affirmatively, what I am going to do. And then, usually at The Last Minute, I say that I am going to do the other thing. For example: I will stare at a restaurant menu and declare I am having the Grilled Chicken Salad. And then I will hear myself say to the server: "Bleu Cheese Burger and fries, please." It happened with my college choice. "I am definitely going out of state." And then..."Two bits, Four bits....all for the Gators..." It happened with getting married. "I am starting my career, somewhere exotic." Followed 4 months later by..."I do." It's happened with having kids and with nearly every vacation I've ever planned. I make a plan. God changes the circumstances. ...

Where I live, "People Like Us" don't send their children to public school. It was "never really an option for us." If I had a dollar for every time I'd actually thought or said "public school is not an option for us," we wouldn't think twice about writing the check for one of those private schools in which we'd planned to enroll our kids. In our "circles," the following unspoken rules are followed: 1. Private Christian school kids breed Private Christian school kids . It's the natural order of things. 2. Private Christian school kids who choose not to take out a second mortgage to pay for Private Christian school breed Homeschooled kids. It's the backup order of things. 3. Under no circumstances do Private school kids breed Public School kids . This phenomenon has no place in the order of things. I've never been clear about the reasons why Public School Is Not An Option, but I'm pretty sure the reasons include met...

I managed to sneak out for some girl time on Tuesday night. What a treat it was to have dinner with some girlfriends and take in a movie. A musical, nonetheless! A cheesy musical, in which actors who don't specialize in musical theater were cast in order to sell tickets. Arrrghh... Surely there are 427 more age- and voice-appropriate actors waiting tables on Broadway. Meryl and Pierce are brilliant, but not in this. Anyway, silly though the movie may have been, I am still looking forward to seeing the show live in the spring, and it still managed to elicit crocodile tears from me at one point. Check out these lyrics, and imagine the damage they do to the emotional well-being of a mom about to send her baby to kindergarten. Brutal. These 5 minutes quite unfairly blindsided me. "Slipping Through my Fingers" DONNA: Schoolbag in hand She leaves home in the early morning Waving goodbye With an absent-minded smile I watch her go With a surge of that well-known sadness And I ha...