One Journey Ends, Another Begins

This is a post that should probably have been written last year, when the homeschool journey was ending. But life. Both girls graduated from our homeschool and are thriving in college. Whitney is now a senior at UMF, she's been captain of the snowboard team since her sophomore year, involved in Intervarsity Christian Fellowship and on the leadership team, found a great church, and is doing well academically. Sarah is a sophomore at Roanoke College, participates in Young Life and is a leader at the middle school, also has a great church, and is ditto on the academics. Both girls made the transition from homeschool to college pretty easily. I think the independent learning I encouraged here as they got into high school really has helped them in college. Because they were used to managing their time they have done well planning their time to fill it with clubs, athletics, social events and still have plenty of time to go to class and study. We are thrilled with the young women they have become.

The transition to the empty nest at home was both easy and not so easy. If you look online you see all sorts of articles and facebook posts about the angst and sadness about sending the kids off to college, especially the youngest or only. Sending ours off was easy, although a little harder with Sarah but definitely not the drama you read about. They're off doing what they should be doing and we're super proud of them. We're also enjoying the empty nest, getting out and doing adult stuff by ourselves, vacationing just the two of us.

But the empty nest isn't all fun. I think the transition was harder on me than the girls. It really started when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to be when they grew up and suddenly last summer that time was here. I was hoping to have the summer to go through the house and do a good cleaning, some painting and organizing. That didn't happen partly because Bob asked me to work part time for him when his intern asked for time off then quit. I'm still trying to figure out what's next; one possibility is starting a bookkeeping business. I really like the idea of working for myself so that I can work around family needs, we'll see if I can work it out.