Finishing One Thing and Beginning Another

It's done!

We transferred the book file to the printer this morning.

I feel like I've given birth. All weekend long we were heads-down in editing... all day Friday (with exception noted below), all day Saturday, all day Sunday. At 11:10 last night, we finally pronounced it Good Enough. And this morning dh hit "Send." Now, whatever mistakes we've made, whatever errors we missed, will be reproduced in 2000 copies for the world to read. Que sera, sera.

The only fun thing we did all weekend was take a break Friday night to go to a picnic with ds's classes. One thing I guess I've never blogged about is the fact that both ds's go to a one-day-a-week classical program called - get this - The Classical School. (Original, yes. Also guaranteed to cause confusion when you try to explain to other homeschool moms that yes, you do follow the classical model of education at home, and yes, your kids participate in a program of the same name.) At this program they take notes, have discussions, learn a little Latin, and get some reading and writing assignments to take home and complete. It's pretty rigorous, but we've seen a big jump in both boys' abilities since they started there.

Anyway, Friday night was Family Night for CS . This is where every family who has a kid in the program (grades 5-8) meets at a Christian retreat center about 40 minutes north of town and has a picnic and schmooze. Parents and kids alike do the picnic and schmooze thing, then the parents go home and the kids and a few brave chaperones stay up all night for games of Risk and chess and such.

Two important things happened for us at Family Night. One, dh met and hit it off with another CS dad. They talked work, they talked theology, they talked church. And then when we wives joined them, we had an awesome conversation in which we discovered something pretty rare: commonality. Two suburban-livin', SUV-drivin', kid-raisin' families who feel like total misfits at all the churches that are anywhere reasonably close to our homes. Two professional, homeschooling, meat-eating, milk-drinking, non-grain-milling, nothing-alternative-about-their-lifestyles-except-homeschooling-and-being-entrepreneurs families who have visited church after church in their county and cannot find even ONE where the teaching is intelligent and true and full of the grace of the gospel. Youth groups abound... which is a problem with our current church situation. Community and small groups abound... another problem we seek resolution for. But how can we stomach the dead, dry, Pharisaic religion that goes with them?

Anyway - we and this other family - we want grace. We want depth. We want authenticity. And we want fellowship and activities for our kids, too, that's close to home so we can participate. It was so... validating. It's so nice not to feel crazy. I just wanted to hug them.

And the second important thing that happened Friday night was that oldest ds cut his foot open while playing Capture the Flag barefoot in the dark. By the next morning it was determined that he needed stitches. But guess what? Cool new friend dad turned out to be... a doctor. Who met us at his office on the way home from the all-nighter (where he had chaperoned) and stitched up ds' foot neat as a whistle and wouldn't take a penny for his trouble.

Now we have new friends. And a friend-debt that will be very enjoyable to repay. How many home-cooked dinners do you think will it take to even up the score? Yeah, I agree - a lot.