Mothers Day and....

It has been a while since I posted but we have been really busy. School is officially over and I have been searching for all new curriculum for next year. I think I have pretty much narrowed it down to a couple of things. Getting excited about the new school year starting. On the other hand Mothers Day is Sunday and it will be a year since my dad passed away. What a mothers day to have right? I well all of my family has had a hard week knowing this is coming up. Wow the time has passed so fast, but sometimes I still think he will be home for the weekend from work. Sometimes it still does not even seem real. I miss him so badly, but at the same time I remember the early morning phone call I got from my mom the last night my dad was home and he was yelling cause he was in so much pain, and it feels so good to know he is not in pain anymore. I wouldn't take him back in that shape that is for sure. I think one of the best parts is knowing that I will see him again in heaven. And through all that dad went through one thing that sticks in my head that he said to us was GOD IS GOOD! And how true is that. Bryan asked me what I wanted for Mothers Day and all I could say was I dont know. I am having a hard time with this so I ask that each of you to please pray for me and my family especially my mom as this is weighing hard on her as well. Let me just say something about my mom. I am sure we all think we have the best mom in the world. But my mom is just awesome. I love her dearly and couldnt have asked for a better mom to have. She is such a strong, caring, compassionate and loving lady. So to my mom and each of you ladies I wish you all a Happy Mothers Day!

Whats going on at the Kennedy house?

So what has been going on at our house. Lets see where to begin. Well we had an unexpected death within our family. The kids and I have all been sick with some awful stuff. BW pulled a muscle in his neck. We have been busy helping my mom the past couple of months doing some work on her house. And most importantly we have been trying to do as much school work as possible.

School has been going really good. BW is showing more interest in wanting to do school work too. This is making life as a teacher much easier. We have testing coming up in 13 days, yes 13 days. I am a little nervous being our first year, I just hope we have covered everything that we need to at this point. I am also starting to check out curriculum for next year. Thinking of checking out some new curriculum for next year. Also trying to figure out where I want to start with BW. He will be 5 in November, not in Kindergarten according to the public schools. But I am thinking of starting him in to some more in depth preschool and start working on reading with him. Reading he is showing a lot of interest in. As for Bryanna I think she needs a different Math one that is more hands on maybe if I can find this. The Language Arts that I used this year was good but I didnt feel as if there was enough grammar work for her. As for history, science, and bible I am thinking of trying something new. I like to try new things. Maybe when I make my decision that will be another post.

I have some difficult upcoming days ahead for me. First, on the day she will be tested will be one year since we found out about dad having cancer. A month and 3 days later will be 1 year since he passed away. God has blessed us so much in the past year even with my dads passing. It has been so hard and sometimes it seems as if he is still working out of town and he will be home on Friday and then he is not there. But one thing is for sure I know exactly where he is and that is heaven with his Lord and Savior. One thing my dad said that I remember always is he said "God is good" and how right is he!!

This is a lot of different subjects, hopefully you didnt get lost in the whole post.

Blog Title/Homeschool Name

So I thought I would post how I came up with my blog title/school name. We had been thinking about homeschooling for over a year and we didnt talk about it with family until we decided for sure what we were going to do. When we decided this was what God was leading us to do my dad had become really sick. At the time I felt he was just too sick to talk about this with him. And months later the Lord took my dad home. So now, it was time to decide on a school name. I told Bryan since I never got to talk about homeschooling with my dad I wanted him to be included in our decision somewhere, so we decided when we named our school we would somehow include him in that. We went through many names, Faith, Grace, etc. One day we were sitting around just saying names and Bryan said Echoes of Love Academy. I immediately said that was it. My dad had so much love for God and his family that everyone seen it. My dad loved us unconditionally, no matter what we did or what happened he loved us.
One thing I remember about daddy is no matter what the situation or how bad things were he would always say "you know what we need to do, we need to pray" and he would get on his knees with us and pray. He had a tradition on Christmas Eve when we would go to his house before anything else he always read us the Christmas story out of the Bible.
He loved God and even during his sickness he always said "it was ok, God is going to take care of me" and "God is good". Daddy never questioned God why this was happening to him, but I did. He would often times say "I am more worried about yall than I am myself because I will be fine". My dad had an impact on my life that I will never forget. I love him and I miss him but I know he is better now, no more sickness.