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To Carrie's, Julie's, and all HOD families - Happy New Year and God bless you on your 2015 HOD journey!

I am so excited about this year. First of all, this COULD be the year that Jesus comes! That would be the best thing.
If He does not return in 2015, because of Him, we can look forward to the blessings He has in store for us here on earth. As you can tell from other posts I have written, I am so happy to be back here, and looking forward to teaching my daughter, with patience and without frustration. The Lord has taught me so many things through these last two years and I know He will continue teach me as we go along. Angie wanted to stay up until midnight last night. When she was in bed, I prayed a little prayer thanking the Lord for the new year and prayed that in every day we would please Him. After I prayed, I told Angie that this was going to be a good year (she was smiling), and we would have fun in school. Response: Oh! School! I have something to live up to now. Really, I am excited. Even though we are 3 weeks into Bigger, the new year has always been like a fresh start for me. I just have a peace and confidence that our renewed HOD journey is going to be sweet.

(As added blessings this year, I feel much better physically, as I am being treated for Lyme, which has, unknowingly, been plaguing me for a couple of years. And, I have two more grandchildren on the way!!) The Lord is good!

Happy New Year to you and everyone here! For us, my kids have been sick these past few days - both stomach bugs and respiratory sickness. And to boot - my husband completely blew out his ankle on Monday. But the great thing is that we are off of school still and my husband had already planned to take the week off. So we have had a very relaxing week. For me, I always bring the New Year in with a massive amount of work LOL. I am an accountant for a local non profit and every January I have to complete W-2s, W-3s, 1099s, year end gift letters and sales tax filings. I probably won't be on the boards as much this month. I ALWAYS pray every year during the month of January that I won't get sick because I also help a few other people with some accounting needs too. I was excited to go to bed early last night as we usually are out with other people. But because of sickness, we were homebound. Last night was so relaxing - truly delightful - we had a family game night and that is always a ton of fun.

I pray many blessing on each family here and I look forward to our next year together I love this board and consider so many of you my good friends. I don't know about all of you but sometimes being a homeschool mom can be lonely. My family isn't necessarily against homeschooling but they aren't exactly what I would call "supportive" either. I do belong to a co-op but many people have many philosophies on educating their children. And while I firmly believe that everyone should homeschool their kids in the direction they choose, it is a huge blessing to have a place I can go and connect with people who have similar goals and similar ideals to achieve those goals. Thanks so much to all of you who are on here. You all really brighten my day so often and you don't even know it.

Thank you again Carrie, Mike and Julie for your dedication to publishing your curriculum. I was talking to my husband recently about the fact that I am planning to order next years stuff in late January/ early February (I order early in hopes that I can pony up some time over the next few months and read some of the books in advance - not only do my kids love the books but so does this mama! ) We started reminiscing about how every year I would change my mind with the products that I was planning to use for school.....that is until I found your company. He usually doesn't take too much stock in researching curriculum or even voicing an opinion on what me and the kids do but he did say he was so happy that I picked HOD so glad I finally found a good fit for our family. From him, that says a lot I am so glad I no longer have spend any time researching curriculum at all and that I can just enjoy our schooling experience from here on out. Thank you so much for all the research you do Carrie!!!!! That is a huge blessing to me and so many others. I am curriculum junkie (or at least I used to be) and I have researched most mainstream products that are available. I am so glad I no longer have to piecemeal anything together! And I am so glad my kids love what they learn. Thank you again. I hope this New Year brings everything you are looking for and so much more.