I’ve been blogging since about 2005, when there were free little scrapbooky online journals. Those posts are long gone now. This site began on Blogger and I migrated to WordPress in 2012. I’m not a techie, but I manage everything myself. I don’t have an assistant. I’m a control freak like that.

I spent a couple years of almost no sleep, spending way too much money we didn’t have on a blog that makes next to nothing. We tried to build an essential oils business, but the FDA and the MLM company’s lawyers ended my attempts at that when they told me I couldn’t post anything with their brand online. So it kinda irks me when I see others doing that.

I’m more balanced now. I blog a few times a week about parenting, homeschooling, recipes, our travels, and sometimes military life.

I schedule social media posts that I find interesting and I hope you will too. I won’t post clickbait. You won’t find me on Periscope or Snapchat because I’m over 40 and I just don’t care about any of that. Some days, I just want to delete it all and be normal and other days I’m crying happy tears over a sweet comment that makes me feel like I make a difference.

Having an M.Ed. in secondary English education never prepared me to be a homeschool mom.

I was a school teacher for almost ten years. I taught English/language arts in grades 6 through college level in public and private school. I earned a gifted education endorsement and taught ESL, regular ed, and gifted ed students.

I still keep in touch with some of my students. I love them and I am so proud of their accomplishments. I am especially fond of the ones who became teachers because of how much negativity they’re up against in our American society.

I’m married to an Air Force medical laboratory officer and we’re excited to live all over the world and soak up history and culture while he serves our country.

My children come first – before the blog, before any work opportunities, before social events. They are my priority. They teach me lessons every day.

I’m an INTJ. And a 1/5 on Enneagram. So this makes me seem a little weird and even intimidating to most people.

I enjoy writing about homeschool curriculum and product reviews that suit our interests and worldview.

Why I Write:

It’s always been a natural thing for me to write.

I loved learning to write and practicing in the workbooks or worksheets at school. I remember begging to learn cursive. Then my first grade teacher wrote a BIG RED X beside my name at the top of a paper because I wasn’t supposed to know how to write in cursive yet. She was not a nice person in many ways.

From middle school on, I scribbled in margins while I was supposed to be taking notes in class. I kept poetry notebooks in high school and college and ceremoniously burned them, thinking I was some modern-day Jim Morrison or something.

I had lots of alone time growing up as an only child with older parents.

I was an observer. I was quiet. I was often forgotten and got to hear more than I should.

Someday, when all the people who will be offended are gone, I shall write about them.

I hated reading until I was about 12 or 13 years old. I had no mentors to guide me into good literature. I’m embarrassed by all the time I wasted reading Sweet Valley High and The Babysitters’ Club. I love exploring children’s and YA lit with my kids now. I had a really crappy and stressful K-12 education. I was plagued by anxiety, bullied, and often left behind socially and academically.

I’d sit in the back of the room in my English classes in high school and read novels and poetry that were not in the textbook. I still made straight A’s in English somehow. I had a poorly qualified substitute teacher for two years during my junior and senior years of high school because the real teacher had cancer.

So, I didn’t even know how to write a 5-paragraph essay when I got to college. Thank God for Dr. Voss, my Shakespeare teacher, for mentoring me and helping me along.

I took a variety of college classes that stretched my thinking: Southern lit, women’s studies, Black history and lit, Faulkner, neoclassical (I still shudder at that one!), sociology, and psychology.

I majored in English literature and minored in psychology, only a few credits shy of a double major. I wish I had finished that double major or gone on to earn a Ph.D. But I’ll never go back to school because I hate being a student in a classroom.

I want to understand.

I read so many books about parenting, metacognitive guides on writing, classic literature, historical fiction, and poetry. I love learning.

I still keep notebooks – prayers, poetry, thoughts, quotes.

I have several books in progress – mostly just chapter titles and outlines.

Being a perfectionist often paralyzes and the thought of pushing out a mediocre 21-page eBook of no content is appalling to me.

A Sacred Balance is about the circle of personal growth as I’ve matured into who God designed me to be.

10 Things About Me:

1. I’m an only child.
2. I lived in the same house for my first 16 years.
3. I am proud of my parents for staying together.
4. I’m an Army brat, but my dad was Army Reserve and GS (which is why we didn’t move around).
5. I’ve made some big mistakes. Read about them here and here. I believe I am forgiven. Message me if you want to chat about it.
6. I only have a Southern accent when I’m really tired.
7. My first car was a yellow ’74 VW Bug. His name was Charlie. I still miss it.
8. I began college classes during my senior year of high school and never took any summers off. I began my teaching job right away after my master’s graduation. So, I haven’t had a break since 1993.
9. I’ve had my children’s names picked out since I was a preschooler. I have only one son and another favorite boy’s name is Nicholas.
10. I did not grow up in church or with any religious education. I am trying desperately to make up for lost time.

Thank you for taking some time to read about our lives and experiences.

See our messy reality on Instagram. I share posts I find funny or convicting on Facebook. See my favorite blog posts from around the web on Pinterest.

Proust’s Questionnaire:

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
2. What is your greatest fear?
3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
5. Which living person do you most admire?
6. What is your greatest extravagance?
7. What is your current state of mind?
8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
9. On what occasion do you lie?
10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
11. Which living person do you most despise?
12. What is the quality you most like in a man?
13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?
14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
16. When and where were you happiest?
17. Which talent would you most like to have?
18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
21. Where would you most like to live?
22. What is your most treasured possession?
23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
24. What is your favorite occupation?
25. What is your most marked characteristic?
26. What do you most value in your friends?
27. Who are your favorite writers?
28. Who is your hero of fiction?
29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
30. Who are your heroes in real life?
31. What are your favorite names?
32. What is it that you most dislike?
33. What is your greatest regret?
34. How would you like to die?
35. What is your motto?