Homeschool Mother’s Journal – August

In my life last month…

We spent the 4th in Tyler, TX with my husband's family. It was a spontaneous trip that ended up blessing our family in so many ways. One of the best parts of the trip was going to visit my husband's 86 year-old grandma. It had been about a year and a half since I had seen her. She was small and frail, but as sweet as ever. She passed away July 24th in her sleep.

Sometimes when God gives me an idea, I ignore it. I'm so thankful that we didn't ignore the idea to visit early in July because it gave me a sweet opportunity to see Grandma Great one last time. I know the next time I see her, she will not be that frail old woman I saw last, but a glorified version of herself. Praise God!

July is my birth month, and this year my kids really went all out to spoil me with gifts. It wasn't that they got me anything excessively expensive, but just really thoughtful gifts. It's pretty fun to parent tweens and teens. If I ever thought that this would be harder than the toddler stages, I really missed the boat. They're pretty wonderful.

Another highlight of my month was the visit of my sister and her family from Boston. I cherish every minute I have with my family. I love how the kids entertain one another and pretty much forget that we exist. It leaves some really great time for chatting and catching up with my sister. This was another wonderful birthday gift for me!

In our homeschool this month…

Over the last five years, my son and I have enjoyed learning Latin together. As we started looking into colleges that he'd like to attend, he narrowed the focus of his college pursuits: linguistics. It fits perfectly with his giftings. When I give him a choice of what to study, he always defaults to Latin. This summer, he's cracked open First Form Greek to add to his understanding of languages.

What really appeals to him is the idea of translating the Bible into languages that still don't have their own Bible. Due to his passion for languages, we decided to partner on a project of creating a video resource library to complement the Henle Latin textbooks, but can be used by any Latin student.

It has been very exciting to launch the Latin with Andy membership site. We'd love for you to join us in your Latin studies.

What We're Reading…

We're road tripping right now, and it is the perfect time to really devour a good series of books with my family. Here's what's on our list to listen to:

So it amounts to about 30 hours of listening, but we're driving about 3,000 miles, so we better be equipped.

I also purchased a book to read in my free time on our trip: Education: Does God Have an Opinion? by Israel Wayne. I look forward to letting you know what I've learned!

A Few Highlights of Our Trip So Far....

We're right in the middle of making our way from Texas to California. Two unplanned stops that have been amazingly inspiring were:

Sandia Peak Tramway:

Family Vacation Day 3: We're heading west and enjoying the sights along the way. Our highlight of the day was riding the tram up the Sandia mountain. At the top it's 10,378'. Not too shabby. I was so proud of my little girl. The heights scared her a bit, but she didn't let her fear get in the way of her enjoyment of the beauty around us. We got to stay with an old college buddy of my dad's in Albuquerque. It was so fun to hear stories of their college days...sounds just like my dad.

A post shared by Betsy Strauss (@family_style_schooling) on

Petrified Forest National Park

On my blog in case you missed it...

Click below to get a peek behind the scenes of other homeschool moms:

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