Our Last High School Graduate!

So proud of this guy. Our baby. Our last graduate. Oh, so many emotions—most of them ones that I will have to take out, one by one, and explore later.

We. Are. Done. We've been doing this for 19 years. A whole career! 

So grateful to these three for their good cheer, their humor, and their incredible love. And for this man... he is my rock, my best friend, and the most incredible father any child could imagine. 

And now for a few shots of graduation day itself...

Duncan with some of his best friends. Wow-- it was hot on graduation day!

Duncan's senior table-- he's sharing a table with his girlfriend.

Duncan and Haylee decorated their caps. This was the first year the graduates were permitted to decorate their caps, and there were some super cute ones! I love how their personalities show through here!

Our support group's Class of 2019. 48 graduates-- by far the largest class ever!

Duncan and Haylee, waiting for the ceremony to start. That cord he's wearing was a surprise from his Dad. It's the Eagle Scout Honor Cord.

What an awesome moment. Duncan received the 2019 Outstanding Senior Scholarship from our support group. I'm so proud of him! He think he isn't a good writer, but his essays have earned him thousands of dollars in scholarship money!

My three. I've been so richly blessed by these years with them! Can't wait for the ones to come.

Sweet boy, I thank you for your beautiful smile, your kind heart, and your sense of adventure. I can't wait to see what trails you blaze next. I love you!

Last End-of-School Ice Cream Outing

So yesterday my three and I had one last end-of-school-year ice cream outing. It’s a tradition we’ve had for years and years and years. 

But this one was the one to end them all. I wanted to write them each a letter to tell them just how grateful I am to have been able to homeschool them, to watch them grow and fly and sometimes stumble and fall, but I just couldn’t risk spending the day sobbing. 

Not this month, with two kids graduating and a wedding in 10 days. 

Just ice cream and then back to moving into his new apartment (Jesse), work (Duncan), and wedding details (Laurel and me). 

Grateful for these years together and excited about what’s to come! Later, when the house is quiet, I'll spend time going through boxes of memories and thinking about what all this means, all these years we've spend together. But for now, it's back to wedding preparations!

(Graduation photos coming soon. Two graduates, lots of photos!)
 

The End of Homeschooling

And just like that, we're done.

Today marks Duncan’s last official day of high school, and, after 19 years, my last official day of homeschooling. 

To laugh or to cry?

It’s tempting to curl up in a little ball and weep. One of these days, I’ll have the courage to sift through memories, through the boxes that hold “All About Me” books and paintings and poetry projects, handwritten notes and stick figures. One of these days, I’ll look through photo albums and read old blog posts and allow myself to turn into a big pile of mush. 

But these next five weeks hold so much excitement: two graduations and a WEDDING! So much joy! So much to celebrate! So much to be thankful for! 

What a grand adventure. And now: further up and further in!

65 • 50 • 30 • 26 {SmallWorld's March math lessons}

65

Sixty-five days until our daughter gets married.

50

Fifty days until our youngest graduates from high school—and I graduate from homeschooling.

30

Thirty years on March 25, married to the love of my life. T H I R T Y. 

26

Twenty-six years of being parents. Jesse started it all on March 27, 1993. Randy, by the way, is 26 in this first photo.

That's what's happening in our own SmallWorld right now. A lot of celebrating, a lot of planning, a little melancholy, a lot of pondering, and mostly, incredible gratitude for this wonderful life.

Field Trip: Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary

Sounds weird, right?

This year, my friends Amy and Diane and I decided that we were going to do a Tennessee Explorations class with our boys, who are juniors and seniors. We gave the boys the task of finding places in Tennessee that they want to visit.

Their first choice: Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. They didn't have to think twice about that one.

A couple of years ago, the boys chanced by the closed-down penitentiary on a Boy Scout camping trip. They begged Randy, who is the Scoutmaster, to let them "explore" (AKA: trespass), but of course he refused (with some reluctance, if I know my husband). :)

Imagine how thrilled they were to learn that Brushy Mountain opened for tours a couple of months ago! As Duncan said on the ride over, "This is a dream come true."

Ah, teenage boys.

I have to admit: it was a fascinating and sobering field trip. It's just been open six weeks or so, and I suspect that in a couple of years, it will lose a lot of its rough, raw quality that makes it feel so authentic and, well, alarming. Creepy. Sad. We visited on a Monday afternoon, and there were only about 25 other people there; however, the tour guide said that it is absolutely packed on weekends.

Right now, you can just wander around almost everywhere on the compound, although a few places are off limits.

"The Hole"

The documentary in the museum is fantastic, but best of all, a former prison guard showed up and invited us to join him for a free tour. He was amazing. He took us through the compound and told all kinds of stories, pointed out where murders occurred and how prisoners escaped, and just gave life to the men who lived and worked here for decades. He related how the guards treated the prisoners with respect and dignity, regardless of what they did on the outside. It was really amazing. While we were fortunate to be there on a weekday and happened upon a free tour, I would definitely pay for one. Former inmates also give some tours.

This tour is not for everyone. It was, after all, a maximum security prison. We commented that we could feel a heaviness around us, sense a sadness and even the cold chill of evil. I think young kids would have nightmares—or at least I would have. This made me think of the "Scared Straight" movie from the late 1970s. While the boys enjoyed a sense of exploration and adventure, they also felt the danger and hopelessness that is pervasive even now at the prison.

It was not our most cheerful fall field trip ever, but it really was an enlightening experience!

Linked up with the Homeschool Blog Link-up and  Weekly Wrap-Up

Weekly Wrap-Up: Beginning of Our Very Last Year

We're a month into our last year of homeschooling. Or more like: I'm a month into it, but Duncan is closer to two months in. 

Duncan on top of Mt. LeConte as part of his Great Smokies Experience class

Duncan started his senior year in mid-July with a dual enrollment class at our local liberal arts college, Maryville College.  The Great Smokies Experience is a phenomenal 12-day program open to high school juniors and seniors nationwide. They spent the majority of the class living at Tremont Institute in the park, with the first few days on campus at Maryville College and at a few other local spots. Activities included hikes,  a canoe trip,  scientific species surveys, exploring the park at night, an interpreted climb up Mt. LeConte, as well as daily readings and time in a classroom discussing environmental issues. Duncan absolutely loved every bit of it. He said that although he's grown up in the Smokies, he had an entirely new perspective on his big backyard as a result of this class. It was truly an amazing experience! He earned a science credit for high school as well as credit for a three-hour Introduction to Environmental Issues and Sustainability Studies.

Duncan plunged right into intensive studying for the ACT as soon as he returned from his Smokies program. As soon as that was over, he began an online Brave Writer class: Expository Essay—Exploratory and Persuasive. For the first time in 16 years, I am not teaching at our co-op, so it was time for him to take a writing class from a different source. Of course, as a Brave Writer instructor myself, I feel 100% confident that he is getting the absolute best instruction available.

Besides his writing class, he is finishing up odds and ends on several different Boy Scout merit badges. He already has his Eagle Scout award, but he had a bunch of badges that he started last year that he didn't quite finish. 

Here Duncan is finishing his Art merit badge—finally! He's been working on this one for a year.

 He'll be wrapping up health this semester, and we have plans in the works for a Tennessee field trip class with a few of his friends. First stop: Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. Because boys. 

And, of course, we'll be doing a couple of final college visits, and then he'll begin the application process.

I took beginning-of-the-year pictures while Laurel was still here, so I could get senior year pics of both of them. I also begged them to do one last "All About Me" page, and they sweetly obliged. They are adorable.

We've been doing these at the start of each school year in various forms, and I so treasure these memories. I keep them in our Big Box of Books.

How can it be that I have a senior in high school, a senior in college, and one that has been out of college for three years already? And so I begin the end of all these years—a whole career of teaching my children, of waking up in the morning so thankful for these three and for this life together.

I have taken great joy and satisfaction in lesson plans, looking forward to that moment when, at 10:00, school begins. I have also locked myself in my bedroom just to get a few minutes peace. Those days seem so long ago now, those days of squabbling and tattling and sweet bodies piled up next to me on the couch, those days of precious drawings and playing Beanie Babies and Barbies and building Lego towns. Those days of forming letters, sounding out words, and telling time, of memorizing multiplication tables and remembering all that punctuation. 

One last year: I'm savoring every moment, every chance to sit with Duncan at the dining room table, every movie we watch together, every field trip we carve out for ourselves. I may even get up the courage to look through our Big Box of Books one of these days.

Linked up with the Homeschool Link-up and  Weekly Wrap-Up

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Senior Year {All Around}

Monday will begin senior year for my younger two: senior year of high school for Duncan and senior year of college for Laurel.

Tomorrow, we'll take Laurel back to Nashville for college. Before she leaves, I'm going to measure them both one last time, and they are each going to make one last "All About Me" book. If Jesse lived at home, I would make him do it, too.

Next week, I'll take out our Big Box of Books and look through all their "All About Me" books.  I'll laugh. I'll take a few pictures and send to Laurel, no doubt.

I'll get really, really choked up, like I will do on and off again all year.
 

Because it's not just their senior year, it's MY senior year, too. 

I'm heading into my 19th and final year of homeschooling, and I'll be wrapping up and reflecting all year on my blog. I'll be preparing for the next stage in my life, as I've been working toward for the past couple of years.

It's scary and sad and exciting all at once. 

I'm taking extra time and pleasure this year in preparing Duncan's year. I'll post more about that next week as we begin, but we're heading into senior year with plenty of space for both fine-tuning academics and pursuing passions.

Come back often for one last year of homeschooling in our own Small World. What a year it's going to be!

Linked up with the Weekly Wrap-Up