School's out

Peyton and Reagan finished their first (and possibly their last) complete year at Seth Whitman Elementary School in Belvidere. They both did very well and enjoyed the experience. I loved their teachers and appreciated the hard work and dedication that these teachers displayed throughout the year.

Still, it may very well be their last year because we have made the decision to home school the children next year. There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary one is that we believe that the education of our children (teaching them) is our responsibility. Certainly a parent can use the public, or a private, school system to accomplish this purpose. For us, the mandate to teach our children extends beyond what they learn in the classroom, and in order to ensure that the values that we are trying to teach at home are not contradicted during the hours that they are in school, we decided to combine the two...hence, home-school. Pray for us, as this is a big step and we need God's grace to be successful in this endeavor (as we do for every endeavor we undertake.)