Fifteen years ago, as a young mom of 22, I was scared. I remember spending countless hours just staring at Baby Girl's sleeping face and wondering: How am I going to ever do this?; How am I going to raise you to become an intelligent, kind, and confident woman when I have just barely reached womanhood myself?. Luckily, I have never been one to allow my fears or my ineptness to immobilise me. I face things head on, take the necessary leap, and hope for the best, and after spending this past week travelling down memory lane, I am humbled by being able to say that my leap into parenthood turned out for the best. We have lived a charmed life for the past fifteen years. All the decisions, the work, the mistakes, the laughs, the tears, and the lessons learnt have brought our family to this point in life, exactly where we are supposed to be, and the view is spectacular. I can look behind me and see how everything lined up exactly how it needed to be so that we could get to this point, and I can look ahead of me, hopeful, that everything will line up again to take us to exactly where we need to go.
When Zoe was a baby, I thought about homeschooling her; however, after the revelation that I needed to finish my own education in order to ensure that Zoe would do the same, this no longer became an option for us. But, in a twist of fate and some divine intervention, we found an even better option for Zoe, Touchstone Community School. She was four years old and I was looking through the newspaper one evening when I came across a very tiny ad for the school. Unbeknownst to me, that became a life-altering phone call for my family. Not only did Zoe get the educational experiences she needed to shape and ignite that great big brain of hers at Touchstone, but I also found and fostered the teacher within me there. We spent seven remarkable years at that school, and we all benefited it from the countless experiences and opportunities it offered us. My highlight though, was teaching Zoe for two years in grades four and five. I will never forget how she would call me "mama" in class. It always made me giggle, and it became even funnier when the other students would accidentally do the same. We had so much fun!
Zoe's first day of school
A typical day in class
Graduation day from Pre-K
Elliot thought he should join Zoe:
Another first day of school:
Lots of friendships were made:
Mama decides to get her Bachelor of Education after receiving her BA
Zoe's second International Night
(an annual event, where the students presented projects about a country of their choice and performed songs and dances from different countries)
At TCS, Zoe developed a love for science:
She also kicked some butt at a few Spelling Bees:
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| The sign reads: We are cheering for Zoe |
For two years, Papa Skov came to TCS to teach karate to Zoe's class. How cool is that?
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| Kurty's Angels |
And who wouldn't love Touchstone if it meant spending your days with these two lovely ladies:
(I know we were Zoe's highlight . . . tee hee!)
Touchstone was a perfect fit for our family, for a time, and there are many days I miss it and wish my boys could have experienced it for longer, but I am confident that we are where we need to be right now. I govern my life today the same way I did fifteen years ago: by my heart, and looking at all of these photos this week and seeing just how far Baby Girl and our family has come, I am going to keep on living my life that way because it has definitely never steered me wrong.
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| Zoe receiving all of her academic awards from MCS |
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| The MCS girls celebrating their volleyball victory |
Here's to our next fifteen years, Baby Girl!
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