graduation day!!

another big day!
zakk's day!
he's done with school today!!!!
true to form, he's scrambling to finish
a last project this morning just as we
head into a day of celebrating his graduation!

we will be celebrating zakk today!
and all that he has done thru out the years.

my gosh......
can we really have finished???

and with him, i'm done.
no more homeschooling.

when we started this whole thing, i thought
it would be for a couple of years. i had no
idea i would end up teaching all three kids
all the way thru.

each one has been so different.

one of my favorite stories with zakk is his
reading.

i had two big goals....one was to teach the boys
to love reading.

he was just my hold out.
he just wasn't into reading anything his brothers
had gotten into. nothing was capturing his interest.

until......
until.........

he was about 11 when he discovered college level text
books on mechanics or anything technical.

he'd get these books out of the library that i'd never
even look twice at. and he'd just sit and eat them up.

when he was around 12, i was worried about his reading
comprehension. he just didn't seem to follow the story
of some classic we were reading or something like that.

sitting on my couch one day, i was telling bob i wasn't
sure about his comprehension.

bob leaned over to the coffee table, picked up the big
fat text book for college students that was some technical
book i've long since forgotten.

ter, do you realize he understands these books?
do you realize he's reading these and putting them into
practice? do you realize how young he is and what he's
doing???

oh yeah.
i forgot.
he is.

and i'm laughing here thinking of that.........
oh yeah.
and then i stopped worrying. and i started seeing.

homeschooling taught me that over and over again.
stop worrying. start seeing.

i had to do that over and over again.

zakk and i have completely different brains.
and i gotta say, he's brilliant.

he truly is brilliant. they all are.
and i truly had nothing to do with that.

except for one thing....i tried not to kill their
love of learning. i tried to keep that alive.
that was the other thing i kept in mind all thru
out - don't make learning a chore, make it something
positive.

and THAT was the best thing i coulda ever done.

in return, they all taught me that if you want
to do anything, just figure out how and then do it.

i taught them to love to learn.
they taught me to apply that learning to life.

i am not kidding.
they gave that in return.

how's that for an education for all of us???

toasting zakk today, toasting homeschooling,
and toasting the best sons a mom could ever have!