Teacher retirement...with a lot of old pictures!

NOTE: I'll put some (TOTALLY) random pictures in between so you don't get too overwhelmed by the sheer amount of text.

It's been a year since I've "officially" become a stay-at-home mom and our family has gone single-income. For a while I had braced myself for the possible cutting comments that I might receive because of choosing to stay at home with my children, a choice I made way back in my college days. In fact, I've only had two in the past year, two rather rude ones, the first being, "Are you sure you can *afford* to stay home?" (Yes, would you like me to provide a financial statement?) and "Well, that's too bad that you got that degree and you're not planning to use it." (Um, I used it for five years and plan to use it, well, forever) 

I think only two rude comments is pretty good and possibly shows a shift toward more acceptance of women choosing to take this role. I mean, wasn't that the whole point of the women's "liberation" movement? That women should have a greater choice of careers? Staying at home being one of them?

Uh, *yeah*...

As I was rocking Matthias for his nap this afternoon, I thought about how I am just as thrilled today, a year later, as I was last year about getting to stay home with him, see every milestone first-hand, call my mom every morning and report whatever cute thing he's been doing, go home to help with farming, and the list goes on. The newest question, "so when are you planning to go back?" is usually met by laughter by me and the statement, "I'm retired," which isn't totally true...

 because I also thought about my friend whose son is the same age--to the day--as Matthias. She homeschools her awesome, big family (which by any standard except that of the past 30 years isn't that terribly large), and I think, "I can't wait to homeschool. Just five more years!"

 But then it hit me--I am homeschooling. I'm a homeschooling mom right now. Enter the next barrage of comments (I'm sure I'll get more than two in the future). "Well, you might change your mind." "*I* could never do that." "Why in the world would you want to do that?" "Don't you worry about...??" Well, yes. But doesn't every parent change their mind? Doesn't every parent have something they couldn't/wouldn't do? Doesn't every parent worry about xyz when it comes to their children?

I'm blessed to be able to watch my friend and her children, as well as my sister and her children, homeschool and raise well-adjusted, highly socially-competent children.

I was fortunate to spend an afternoon with my two nieces in July, and was so proud to see how polite, sociable and genuinely happy these two children are, not just because they're homeschooled, as there are just as many sweet public-schooled children, but because they are loved. But I digress (and I just don't have any pictures that make sense to this post so bear with me!).

...and here we are in January and I realized it's been quite forever since I've written a post. My sister wrote a post that was way better than this one about homeschooling, so I'll just cut that topic off right now instead of going on and on. So here you go, a very belated, very poorly-written and random post that doesn't even come close to capturing the changes Matthias has gone through since I last published anything. I just don't want to "waste" the pictures I used precious internet to upload and the time I spent writing this.

Happy New Year!