CHM 156: Finding Your Homeschool Community with Coach Nicole Kennedy Green

I'm a huge advocate for families demitri of starting something that you can't find. If you can't find it, step out and build it. Because remember, if y'all don't remember anything else I say today on this podcast, remember that you're never the only one looking for it. Somebody else is looking for another person to give them the courage, to give them the backup You maybe you know they just need somebody else. And so you find your people, libraries, wherever you find the social media, find your people and build what your family needs. Hi, I'm a Demetria. I'm your host. I'm a veteran homeschool mom of two wonderful daughters, one in high school and one in college. I'm a wife, a songwriter, and a child of the King. And I'm super happy to be your host and thank you so much for tuning in to episode one fifty six. So have you been thinking about ways to lessen your feeling of isolation in the world of homeschooling, or maybe you've been thinking about the transitions that your kids will undeniably go through as they move from elementary to middle school and then to high school. Well, on today's show, I have the privilege of interviewing homeschool coach and author Nicole Kennedy Green. She'll be sharing with us ways that we can find community in homeschooling and tips for transitioning our kids from stage to stage as they grow through their homeschooling years. So who is Nicole. Nicole Kennedy Green is an author, mentor, and coach. She's a well sought after keynote speaker, a workshop leader, consultant, and a voice of wisdom in the homeschool community. Nicole loves helping homeschool parents that she delights in coaching them along their homeschool journey. She's written two books which we will discuss in today's podcast, and you will have a chance to win a copy, So check the show notes for instructions how to join the raffle for your chance to win. We'll also find out more about how to join Nicole's homeschool Mom's Prey community, which meets monthly and attends to the sacred task of educating our children at home. So be sure to follow Nicole at homeschool Momspray dot org. The link will be found in the show notes and let's stop straight into the interview. Hi, everyone, Welcome, to the Christian Homeschool Moms podcast. I have a wonderful guest with me today. Her name is Nicole Kennedy Green, and she has over nineteen years of experience homeschooling her kids. So she has a lot to share with us and offer to our audience today. So you guys are in for a treat. She's a saw after voice in the homeschool community and she has a ton to share with us. We're going to be very encouraged. That's what I have to say. We're going to be so encouraged today. So Nicole, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. Yes, yes, I want to make sure that we all hear about your who you are, your introduction, your family, things that make you happy, hobbies, things like that. Yeah, so thanks so much. Let's jump right in. So I'm Nicole Kennedy Green, and I have a home school, like Dimitri said, for nineteen years. I have three children, twenty three year old just turned twenty three this week, my daughter, and then I have boys who are nineteen who was a sophomore in college, and my last one at home is a graduating senior this year. All three of my kids are creatives, and we're still trying to figure out where they came from because I neither of us are that kind of creative rette artists at all. And I've been married to my very best friend for twenty seven years. We have two fur babies, and we live in Maryland, and that's my life. If I was just tell you the two things that came to mind is I'm thinking about what are my favorite pastimes. I am a lover of corporate prayer. I love to pray. I spend a lot of time in prayer personally as much as I can. I have that walking and talking kind of prayer life. But I also love to get together with other people for prayer. And my favorite thing to do which weirds people out. But I think it's part of the stay at home mom thing maybe is I love all things around grocery shopping. I like menu planning, grocery shopping, and cooking. I don't love putting the food away, and I don't love dishes, but I do love the planning of it all and then getting the recipes done. So that's a little bit about me. Oh that's awesome, So wow, I need help with that. With the grocery shopping, planning and minu planning. So I mean to talk to you to think I used to think I wanted to start a business for grocery shopping and planning for other people, and along came emails and instacart, So so much for that. Oh well, yeah, Well, I love that you're sharing who you are with us. It helps us to connect with you and to see all that who you are and what you bring to the table because you are you have all this experience homeschooling, but you're so relatable, and so I think many moms listening today are going to be able to see just how you can help them in their homeschool journey. So now I'm gonna start asking you about advice because as new homeschool moms, there's a lot of new homeschool moms that have just got started, maybe during the pandemic or even maybe a little bit before that, but still consider themselves new at the homeschool journey. So you've been in this for a while. So what is your advice for the new homeschooling mom just beginning the journey, maybe they're raising the little kids. What is your maybe biggest pieces of advice for them, so I would think I want to think about this two ways. The first thing is wherever you're starting your journey right, So not everybody starts at the beginning. Not all of us have a runway. We're not all thinking about it where the children are born or you know, in their early preschool years. So wherever you begin the journey, I think the most important thing. So whether it's at the start or you pull them out of school and you're just getting started, one of the most important things is to get clear about why you are doing this right, So we all know the scripture, write the vision, make it plain right. You are the person. You are the person who is reading the tablet. You are the person who needs to run with the vision. So get clear about it and get buy in with everybody in your home. So if you're married, you want to get buy in from your spouse, and if your children are old enough, you want to talk to them about it. You know, you gotta be clear about why we're doing this. And the most important reason to be clear about it is because there will be times when you're asking yourself, why on earth are we doing this right? And you want to be able to go back to that original thought. This is what we decided to do, and this is why we want to do it, and it'll help you. It goes, It goes such a long way. And if you're starting with younger kids, I think the most important thing to remember is that they grow and change right and they'll be They'll grow and change from the time you thought about homeschooling them to the time you actually get started. They grow and change so much in those early years. So give yourself time to get to know who they are and who they are becoming. It's important, you know, we hear a lot about learning styles and all this stuff. It's important to know who they are and how they learn. But it's also important to know who you are and how you're gonna approach this. You know, if you have auditory learners but you're visual and quiet, that's that's the thing you have to be able to, you know, reconcile that. I talk to families a lot where mom says, I don't know how I'm gonna get them to socialize. I'm an introvert. You need to be able to reconcile those things. So think about who you are, think about who they are, and give yourselves time to get to know yourselves in this different kind of role. That's good. I love that you are helping us to see that it's not just about me homeschooling my child, but thinking about where do I stand in this, you know who, what is my personality? Like, what do I how can I reconcile my differences because I'm not just like my child, so their learning style is different than my teaching style and so forth. So the fact that you're just saying we need to think about all of these things is a holistic thing, and that we grow along with our children and that they're going to change from the time we get started in the journey until further down the road, they keep changing and evolving. So that's that's something to think about. So that said, as kids enter into middle school years, there's kind of a drop off in the homeschooling as far as how many kids are being homeschooled past fifth sixth grade, So sixth through eighth grade is when we see the decline in the amount of homeschoolers at that age group. And so, how can you help our moms listening today who are thinking about things they can do to support their older children as there's less kids for them to communicate with, probably in social groups who are also home schooling. Maybe you can give us some advice about curriculum choices or school choice co ops, that kind of thing. Yeah, So, you know, I think that part of the problem with the dropping off piece is because people don't know they can continue to do it right. And I think depending on where you live. And I know your listeners are all over the country, but depending on where you live, there may be more opportunities or fewer right for the older kids. So I think that back to our why, we also have to think about what it is that our family needs. If you have made a decision to continue homeschooling through middle school and you can't seem to find your people, you can't seem to find the social group that you need, this is a perfect time for you to start to build it. Think about your what your family needs. And because you know what I've discovered, I have discovered I am never the only one. There is somebody else out there who thought, wow, I would really love to homeschool, continue homeschooling, but I can't find the people who are also continuing. And I know that bravery, you know, could be courageous in groups. Right, and so if we if we find our tribe, if we create that opportunity that our family can have and continue, then other families can have and continue. Then you'll build that community around yourself. I think we also have to remember about middle schoolers, like just that age group, you know, and I try to give parents this perspective. If you think of adolescents, you know, puberty and everything that goes with that age range as a pre existing condition. Right, it's gonna be there. It is part of what this child's life is. It's part of who they are at this point. Then you can also begin to build and support scaffold yourself and them around it. They in middle school In school settings, middle schools tend to be the roughest time for kids. People think high school is bad, it's really rough around middle school. And it's because they have all of this going on internally, you know, it's all of this, They have all of this novel change. Yeah it is, you know. The first word that came to my mind was rage. But it's so much raging that they don't know how to manage it. And in groups, they need more. I think they need more guidance the older they get, especially in that age, so forming your community is a good a good way to go. I think also in the middle ages, the middle grades, we need to remember that they are becoming more of themselves and now they are beginning to and some kids do this earlier, but really in this age when they're starting to form their own values, their own preferences and that kind of thing, this is when you can really start to find out from them what their interests are, right, which is going to be important as we're planning high school. What exactly are you interested in? It's one thing to say our family is a stem family and so we value this, but what does your student really value? What do your children really like? This is where you might be able to see that they're artistic, or they have some athletic you know, prowess or whatever. This is where you get to see that. So this is the time to pay attention a little differently and maybe let them take more of the lead in what it is that they that they with, what kind of things they study, how they you know, get into it, and then you can be able to plan those middle years with them and their preferences and their interests. In mind. I love that. I feel like you're what you're saying is is kind of a middle passage of kind of a middle ground between connecting the younger years to the high school and beyond years. Absolutely you're able to use that time effectively to determine who is your child and help them figure out who they are as well and kind of dabble into different things so they can figure out who they are. They may be artistic, they may be stemmed, they may be, but it's about them not so much this is our family, this is what we do as a family, but also figuring out what their natural bents are, how God created them and wired them. So I love that. And then also with so going into high school, what are some tips you have for helping students of tenth through twelfth grade that area? What can they do to get prepared for life? Yeah, So, my number one piece of advice for families planning high school, and this is where I specialize these these days. My number one piece of advice is start with the end in mind. You always want to consider what the end goal is, like, what is it that we are hoping or what is it that the student is hoping to be? Able to accomplish. So now there are some families for whom the family right a has a value of college education. So you if college is the end, and you know college is the end, no matter what the major is, everybody's end goal after graduation is to go to college, then you want to start preparing your student to go to college. If if you don't necessarily have that cut and dry, you know it's not doesn't have to be college, then you think about you this as we've gone through the middle years, right or we've talked about what we like and we've kind of discovered ourselves and figured out who the student is. That kind of thing, you can start to project, help them project what would I like to do? You know, one of the most widely asked questions of young people but hardest to answer, is what do you want to be when you grow up? And kids, you know, they don't want to be environment Yeah, they want to be what they see, but they don't know, you know, they don't know there's so many other things to do. We didn't even know, you know, my generation doesn't even know there's so many other things to do. So, you know, remember the college fair we had, like those job fairs and your career fairs. Yeah, all that kind of stuff. So you can see something else. But when you when I say start with the end of mind, just kind of start to think of what is what would you like your child to be able to accomplish when they get out of school, and then as they are able to articulate that, what would they like to accomplish? And when I say that, I'm thinking, do you want your students to be able to go to college? Do you want them to be able to be entrepreneurial? Do you have a family business you're hoping they'll take over, you know, whatever that is. Maybe you're maybe you're a military minded family, or your child has always wanted to be in the service. You know, maybe you have that. You know if they're if they are great at athletics, and you know that they want to continue to compete, then you need to be able to prepare them for that. So we're thinking about the end in mind, and as we're preparing them for whatever that next step is, we can't forget about basic life skills. They need to be able to advocate for themselves. They need to be able to cook and clean and all those things they need to be able to fill out their own paperwork. This is the time when you let them see, but not necessarily maybe have yet the Social Security card that I do to understand the power of that number and why it's important. I was traveling with my son this week and I made sure he had his own boarding past and he pulled his own ID out. And they need to be able to live right. These are the times when they're still home that you allow them to do more for themselves. Fill out their paperwork at the doctor's office, answer questions, those kinds of things, so that they can then emerge as young adults with less dependence on you in the areas that really matter. Those little things matter so so sid it really does, And what I'm hearing the theme of our conversation is that every stage of homeschooling is really just parenting. It's parenting our kids, but we have more time with them at home, so we really have to be developing these skills and understanding where our children are in their different faces. So it's not all homeschooling. It's not all about choosing curriculum. There's so much more to homeschooling. It's it's raising our kids and being bearing hands on with them. Yeah, homeschooling is absolutely an extension of your parenting. It's absolutely an extension of it, and you'll find yourself in different roles. Obviously, you may not have ever thought about the fact that parenting would include you know, trigonometry, right, or higher level sciences, So there are different roles there. But when it comes to preparing your children for life, that is what you do as a parent. It's absolutely what you do as a homeschool mom or homeschool parent. And I love what you just said about being an extension of our family and preparing them for life because the truth of the matter is we are working ourselves out of a job, but we're working them into being able to handle all those things on their own. And because we have more time with them, we can be so on purpose. There's no reason for our kids to have to figure so many things out. They don't have to figure so many Some of us had to figure things out because you know, have you've seen on socials those complaints like why didn't they teach me that in school? Right, As a homeschool family, I figured it all out. Yeah, And as a homeschool family, I'm always thinking Oh, we talked about that, you know. But it's because we have extended our children's education from our home, from our family, and so it gives you that opportunity. Just because you get to curate their curriculum and pick their extracurriculars and all that kind of stuff, that doesn't mean they'll automatically get all the life skill things. You also have to be on purpose about that and remember that that's what homeschooling is good for. It is for doing all the things that you don't have time for of your kids to attend a traditional school. I'm glad you said that that being intentional and purposeful about how we parent is part of home education. And that said, I want to ask you about this big S word that everybody keeps talking about over the past many, many decades, this whole socialization thing. So how important Now? I know, we realize that there's importance to being with other kids and growing up being around other people and other families, but just how important is socialization for homeschoolers And if it is important, how do we get that if we're isolating? Yeah, yeah, so you know, I'm gonna we'll talk about the book a little later, but there's a part in my book where I talk about the difference between socializing and socialization. Right. Socialization is really where you train someone or someone learns the norms and how to go about living and all that kind of thing. We homeschoolers do that probably more than anybody. Our kids spend time in the grocery store, at the bank, in the doctor's offices, not only for their own appointments, but for grandma's appointment or you know whatever. They spend time, and all kinds of government office buildings and all of that they learn. You know that they're one question about how will they learn to stand in line? We do a lot of standing in line, We go to museums, we do all that. They will learn all of those things. So the socialization piece, not only is it naturally built into our day to day moving about, but it also can be again curated and planned, designed to meet our famili's needs, meet our families goals. So again you're in the beginning, you're thinking about why are we doing this? We want our children to you know, most Christian families will say grow to love the Lord and love each other or whatever. We want that, But we do that in a way where they are in maybe a setting where they're figuring out how to get along with other people. So we've joined co ops or out here Maryland, we have something called tutorials. You go to play groups or whatever whatever the gathering is in your area, because you know, every area kind of has their own personality with that whatever that is. And listen, I am I'm a huge advocate for families demitri of starting something that you can't find. If you can't find it, step out and build it. Because remember, if y'all don't remember anything else I say today on this podcast, remember that you're never the only one looking for it. Somebody else is looking for another person to give them the courage to give them the backup that you maybe you know they just need somebody else. And so you find your people, libraries, wherever you find the social media, find your people and build what your family needs. So that's the socialization, really quickly socializing, right again, what happened in your formation of your of your you know, your groups or whatever. But the other thing too is that we have to ream not all kids want to socialize. I'm an extrovert. I'm an extreme extrovert. I like go off the charts right, and I have I have three children who are on different levels of extra being extroverts, but we are. My husband is a people person, introvert, so he didn't want to do all the socializing we do, and there were often times when he had to say, hey, y'all should come home right and do some homeschooling. So then there's some work to be because we were out and about all the time, and there wasn't the math wasn't getting done, and you know, different things weren't getting done because we were socializing the extroverts. So remember, just keep in mind, and this is something people on the outside don't necessarily know, but I want to equip your listeners to understand those environments. Those opportunities really are built in to homeschooling. We can if you if you resolved not to sit at your kitchen table all day, your kids will both socialize and have socialization. Right, just find the people. There's no reason to do it alone. You don't have to, and if you're willing to build it or at least search it, you'll find it and other people will come to Okay, see that that's helping a lot of people right now. If you're willing to build it or find it. You can have what you need for your family. And I love that you're encouraging us to build the things that aren't there. And like you said, there's always something that someone's looking for. That's what we're also looking for that we can provide that if we just step up and do it. It just takes courage. It takes courage, and you'll find once you step out right that there are other people are like I wanted to do this, I didn't know how to get started. I don't know. You know, if somebody else wants it too, they just needed the backup. So if you'll be that courageous one, you know, there's a whole community waiting for somebody to step out and be that courageous one or that only one. Right, that's so true. And I know there's a lot of people that may maybe they don't have a local community. So for homeschool who just need that encouragement for themselves, right, maybe they can't find a community just for their own. Maybe there's a call op, but not getting that encouragement they need. Yes, what do you think about virtual groups? You know, if you can't find something, I don't think virtually. Yeah, I think virtual groups are excellent. I think we met in a virtual group, right, Yeah, I think virtual groups are I actually think and I host one, and well, I guess we'll talk about it soon. But I actually think that virtual groups in twenty twenty four are the way they are even the way to find your local people, right, Because I think that now a lot of us kind of go into the virtual space first because it's safer, it's easier. You don't have to get all dressed up, you don't have to put the kids in the car. Nobody needs a car seat or you know, a nobody needs a big code or any of that. You don't have to pack a diaper bag. Everybody can go, right you could. You can go without having to drag them along. The virtual space is easier, and it is definitely a place where you can find encouragement. You can see what everybody else is doing. People can show you what their curriculum is. You can just have these anonymous conversations. I mean, in some spaces you have to say your name, but here lately on Facebook, you can even join a group and post anonymously. Right, So it's a really a good place. And I think they're safer than we understand them to be. I have some lifelong friends and friends I've known these entire nineteen years that I have met in virtual spaces, some of which I have not met in real life yet, others that I'm just recently becoming, you know, more acquainted with and meeting in real life. And I think virtual spaces and are fantastic, especially for mom and dad or mom right, but then you know there you can once you find your people, then you get your kids together with people. Everybody can benefit, I think from a virtual space, and it brings us together from so many different parts of the country and the world that then it just expands who we are even more. Exactly fantastic would it be for your Georgia based student to have an Australia based friend or a UK based friend, or you you know, a friend who's from California or from the you know, the West coast, East coast, whatever. It's really really an excellent way to expand your homeschooling experience. So I think so it kind of ten xes that whole idea of pimp ounds, you know, in twenty twenty four and beyond, like we have we have virtual communities galore of homeschool communities, and so if we're looking for support networks, they are out there. And like you said, we don't have to worry about hopping in the car getting our kids ready, and it's it's right there and available for us. But you host a virtual community for homeschool moms of faith, and so we're talking about all of this, but I've been I've been trying to hang on to this because I want you to share about your community. And I think it's called Homeschool Moms Pray, right, yes, okay, just share with us what this is and how you help homeschool moms of faith. Okay, So homeschool Moms Pray, and you know, and sometimes people ask me, so, is it homeschool moms Pray as a directive? And no, it's homeschool pray like an identity. Of course, I'm a homes of course, I pray. I'm a homeschool mom, right, it is that kind of thing, homeschool Mom's pray. It's what we do. And we meet monthly on the first Monday of every month, and we meet late in the evening, well late East Coast time. It's nine o'clock pm. East Coast time and we meet by zoom and we just have a really good time of corporate worship and prayer. We share prayer requests if people are open to sharing their prayer requests, and some of them do it in the chat. Some of them do it, you know, they send it by email and we have time of worship. We share some announcements were share in the word a little bit. Sometimes we have a guest and then we pray and we cover each other in prayer. February's meeting, for example, we talked about how and why Hannah's prayer was so effective for her son. Hannah was distraught. She wanted a son. She was being teased by her husband's other wife, and she was discouraged, and she prayed. She prayed, and the Lord showed he opened up her wound and gave her a son. She went directly to the one who could answer her prayer. That's what Mayhanda's prayer so effective. She went right to the one who could answer it. You know, she didn't him in hall and try to figure it out herself. She didn't try to get back up in nine herself. She went to God. That's the kind of stuff we talk about how the Lord, how what we can do to help us along this journey. And it started demetrio with me. During the pandemic. I was like, Hey, this is getting to be encroaching, Like I'm starting to feel overwhelmed. I got on Facebook one day and I said, Hey, any other homeschool mom's out there need some prayer support. And we started getting together on Facebook Live at first, but decided we wanted a more intimate space and that's when we moved it into Zoom and it's been a wonderful community. It's free. I host get together Live every year and so last year was our first Homeschool Mom's Prayer Live. This year's going to be a weekend retreat. I'm looking so forward to that and I want to invite all your listeners to join us. Just come on in on the first Monday night. You just need to go to our link tree to register and we'll put that in the show notes for people say they can do that. Go on our link tree and register, get your Zoom link and meet us on the first Monday night. You're gonna You're gonna really be glad you did. Nicole. I love that. I love that you said you. You were saying, this is this is getting to be too much. Let me start something so other moms can join me and we can help each other. And I know I'm not the only one. I know, I know that I am never the only one. And this is one of the things that proved that to me. Right, there were so many others who were like, you know what, I need this prayer, I need, I need somebody I can pray with you. And you know what, if I can just add this to Dimitri, what I've learned is that even even homeschooling moms of faith, we may have vibrant church communities, maybe there's a sisterhood some other kind of way, but they're not always homeschoolers, right. You know, we have to we we build our community around our need and so you may find, you know, we went we all had mops and other little things when our kids were smaller, Mocha moms and those little things when our kids were smaller. But the older they get, then the kids started going to school. So then those moms are now a different kind of person. They do something else. But homeschool moms still need that kind of support, and homeschool mom's praise seeks to offer that kind of support and we we love each other. We really have a good time. Just for an hour. It sounds like a good time. First Monday Nights. It's a great time. First Monday nights every month and free. Yes, offering your time, your energy, your prayer and support. There's no excuse for any of us. We need support. We're gonna put the link in our show notes so we can sign up and register. So you offer support for homeschool moms in terms of helping us with our homeschooling. So, homeschool coach, can you tell us more about that? Yes. So I wrote a book called Homeschool one oh one Chart the Course, Enjoy the Journey. And in my book, and here it is in my book, what I do is I start people. I start you from the very beginning of your journey and we go all the way through. The book goes all the way through the end of the journey, so wherever your journey begins to wherever it ends. And I use the principles from my book as a as a starting off point or you know, use it as the material for how I engage families in coaching. So I offer packages where you can, you know, book me to like put on a retainer for several months and we can get you started to go all the way through. Sometimes families need help with transition. So we're going from elementary to middle. We're gonna try this middle thing, So we need you to come on and engage with us to get through middle and sometimes just through high school. Right. So the coaching I provide helps them along the way wherever they are in their journey, to be able to chart the kind of course that will help them enjoy that journey. So I offer that kind of coaching. And then also there are sometimes we do consultations where maybe we're just trying to figure out how to set up high school for this particular purpose, and that can just be a couple of different calls. It doesn't have to be a whole coaching package, right, So that is part of the homeschool coaching and my latest venture which i've now this is my third year in a row, and I found how much I love this is actually college prep coaching for home school. Yes, I do it for homeschoolers and students who attend like smaller private schools or even traditional schools where they don't have a college counselor, and it's really all about making the school list, finding out what schools will be a best fit for your student, working through getting their coursework set up all the way. You know, we do it all the way through. It's the best time to start it is sophomore junior year and so because by senior year it's time to really get rocking and roll and not really planning that for college. But I but if you're student as a senior, don't you know, don't dismay we can still catch up, right, But it is. It is definitely. The coaching space is one of my most favorite places with homeschoolers because I love getting in the trenches with others. I've been doing this for nineteen years. It's almost it's like coming out of my poores, right, So I love to share it with others. And I'm finding that families are having good success after we work together to chart their course so that they can enjoy the journey. I love that. And Nicole, I can see the passion in your eyes and your vibrant when you light up when you talk about helping homeschool parents. So this is key that you've been called to this and parents who need this kind of support should come to someone who has that kind of passion to offer that support, because not everybody can offer it in a way that really is meaningful and helpful to their families. And from what I see, it's like you're telling me that each individual family receives different kinds of support from you, whether they're they're looking for college prep or they're looking to just begin homeschooling, that you're there through every step of the journey for them, and you have a book that supports that as well. So that book, can you hold it up on more times homeschool one on one homeschool one on one chart the course Enjoy the Journey Enjoy the Journey by Nicole Kennedy Green. So we're going to have a link to that, and also you have a preperature all is that right? Yes? So the Prayer Journal is a product from Homeschool Moms Pray and our our at the retreat we had the one day with Live event we had in October. We our topic was or our theme was relate, relax, relate, release right, and we prayed through relaxing, and we prayed through relating, and we prayed through releasing and we we had just some some really good time in the Word and with the Lord as we uh shared around those topics, and out of that came a twenty one day prayer journal. It was a response to our time together in October. But I know that that moms who who spend the time with it, it helps us to think about you know, we have some time in the Word, there's scripture and and the prayer journal itself is virtual or digital. Yes, the prayer journal self is digital. I have an event price, like when I go to conferences and also when people like for example, for your podcast, people who buy the Prayer Journal as an event offering, right then they also get this vil biold notebook and purple pen to go with it. So this could be where you actually write your prayer. Otherwise it's just digital and you would need your own notebook. So both of those are what I've created for families so far. The prayer journal and the book. That is beautiful and we need that. And I think that's a great thing to bring the prayer Journal to the homeschool mom's pray Monday night meetings so we can pray through our issues and then journal and our journals yes, yes, that's wonderful. Okay, you know I want to say, can I just say, just for a second, the prayer journal is only twenty one days, okay, okay, and the book is relatively thin. I had this conversation with a mom at at a conference I was at recently, and what we talked about was because we don't have a lot of time to be lingering over stuff, right, so that prayer journal will take you ten minutes, maybe fifteen minutes in the morning. That might be all the time you have. Maybe that's your bathroom time, you know, but you know, get you together for twenty one days. And of course, you know, expansion is in the world. So I'm constantly writing and thinking about homeschool moms. But I wanted to make sure that parents understand that because sometimes we think, oh, book is just so overwhelming. I don't have time to read a book. You do, you do? I wrote it with you in mind because I know we don't have time, right. I love that twenty one days and you said a few minutes, So there's some excuse. We have the time and we need to spend that time in prayers. So okay, how can we get a hold of these items, How can we get these products? How can we reach you? And also if there's a giveaway or some kind of special that you want to offer us, yeah, absolutely, So you can reach me at the best way for people to find me is on the Homeschool Mom's Pray website, So it's homeschool Momspray dot org and there's a contact page there and there's a store set up there. You can also reach out to me at homeschool Momspray at gmail dot com. I'm on all the socials. Homeschool Mom's Prayer is at Facebook and on Instagram, and then also you know by email, they can reach me that way. I want to give away a copy of Homeschool one O one Chart, the course Enjoy the Journey. Can give Can we give away two things? Yes? Okayykay. I want to give away Homeschool one O one Chart the course Enjoy the Journey. So this is the book that starts you at the beginning and takes you through the end of your journey. And then I also want to give away one of the journals, so it will be the digital copy and the notebook, so we could let's do both of those. That's exciting. Okay, so we've all heard it. We have two giveaways here today and I'm just so I'm blessed listening to you. I hear your passion, your excitement, your love for the homeschool community. And that's why I wanted you on the show, because I know you have something that maybe many many moms need. And the Word of God tells that we're to encourage each other and the Lord, and there's so much out there that's not encouraging and we need that kind of support, especially this calling and this decision to homeschool. We don't have a lot of people who have been on the road for as long as you have a who are willing to come back and help. So thank you for what you do. And I just I know we didn't plan this, but I would love for you to say a prayer over our moms today before we say goodbye on the show. Absolutely, let's pray, Ladies, Father and Heaven, we thank you for this day. This is the day that you have made. Lord. We're grateful, we're rejoicing, and we are glad in it. I thank you Father for every mom who's listening to this podcast. Thank you first for the podcast thank you for this awesome space, this awesome time of encouragement. As Demetri, every every episode, Lord encourages our hearts and brings our minds back to you, and we thank you for that. And I just thank you, Lord, God, even for our episode that we have, just the conversation we've just had, and I just pray that some mom was encouraged. Lord. And as you are making our hearts good soil for whatever ground you are planting seed. And I've prayed, Father, in the name of Jesus, that those seeds will come forth, that they will grow up. God, they will be become fruit that remains. Thank you for every sweet mom who's here and for her children. Lord, Will you empower her along this journey. Will you strengthen her along this journey. Will you give her wisdom and encouragement along this journey. Make it so Lord that she knows that you are there for her. Father. Make her a homeschool mom who prays because you have the answer that we need every single day. And I thank you for her sweet children and for her community, Lord, and for even the community she may build up around herself. I just thank you for this time of encouragement today. And I pray that you will keep us encouraged Lord, as we walk with you every day. We thank you, Lord God, because you said that you will keep us in perfect peace if our minds are stayed on you. And as homeschoolers, Lord, we need the peace that comes from keeping our minds stayed on you. So I thank you now, and I praise you for Dimitri. I pray that you bless her in every effort, Lord God, that she puts forth for homeschooling families and Lord with her own children, her own home. I pray for her, and I pray that you continue to bless her and make her a blessing. All these things we ask, Lord and your son Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Wow, thank you so so much. It's been a blessing having you on the show. We are going to put all the links in the show notes so we can get a hold of this wonderful the products that you offer, but also the coaching and the homeschool Moms Praise support rooms. So thank you so much. Absolutely, thank you