About Our Family

I'm Meg.  (Hi!)  I'm a stay-home Mom to five kids, all with special needs.  Their dad, Neal, and I have been married for almost 25 years.  We met in college, via the school's intranet system.  I was a theater major with an English lit minor, while he was a business major.  We married six weeks after he graduated from college, and it's been a wild ride ever since.  I'm originally from Philadelphia (grew up in the city proper) and now live in the farm country of southern NJ.  Our family business is supplying packing boxes and crates to farmers, and since you can't move the farm fields to the city, the city girl moved to the farm.

Welcome to our blog!  You'll find bits about our life, homeschooling and otherwise.  When I started blogging, Jude was our only homeschooler, and he was in preschool.  He's now in high school, and we've added several more homeschoolers.  We are slowly changing our focus from lots of little-kid-friendly how-tos to more conversational updates of what we've done recently and things I've learned along the way. I have taking a bit of a sabbatical as - like everyone else - we've spent the last few years just hanging on, but hopefully blogging again will be in our future. I used to be part of the  Homeschool Review Crew, as well as a few other review teams, so you'll find lots of product reviews in addition to what we're doing on our "regular" days.  We love trying out new things.

We also love road tripping.  Over the last few summers, we've traveled to 46 of the 50 states -- National Parks sites are our favorite destinations. Our most recent bio pictures were taken at Herring Cove and Nauset Light beaches, part of Cape Cod National Seashore.

Roll call!!

Luke is our oldest and first homeschool graduate.  He attended Catholic schools through 9th grade but joined our homeschool when his high school closed in June 2013.  After taking a gap year to work in our family business, he headed off to college. He is currently a student at Rowan College of South Jersey, studying with Business Administration, and is slowly taking over his grandmother's position as the accounting department of our (very small!) family business.  He was my right-hand man at Lilla Rose - Strawberry Princess until he passed the torch to Matthew, and is the author of the series Luke's American Adventures and Real Men Make Quiche.

Matthew is our second homeschool graduate, finishing high school in June 2019. He had straight 100 course-end averages for Geometry, Algebra II, and Trig, and it took until the second week of Calculus to say "That needed a little bit of thinking!" He is planning on working in our family business for a while before making any further school plans.

Celia is our Tomboy Princess. She has a condition called Eosinophilic Gastrointestinal Disorder (EGID).  However, it doesn't slow her down at all - look for lots of creative recipes that only use a few ingredients.  Celia is also an avid music and arts lover.  Currently in 12th grade, she is a section chair in the Rowan Youth Orchestra (Violin II), a violist in the Rowan Youth String Orchestra, and a Percussionist in the Rowan Youth Wind Ensemble.  Celia aspires to a career as a music therapist.

Jude is now in the 9th grade.  His adventures as a homeschooler were the early focus of this blog, but sibs now make frequent guest appearances.  You can read about how we got started homeschooling here.  The original idea was to homeschool him a year or two before starting back in private school, but it didn't quite work that way. Ten years later, we are still homeschooling!  His favorite subjects are American History (especially the Founding Fathers), zoology, and anything in a National Parks Junior Ranger program.

Damien is the typical "wait for me" littlest brother.  He's in 6th grade by age, but a voracious learner working above his grade level. He has EGID, just like his sister, so he's her official recipe taste-tester.  He has never been in a bricks-and-mortar school, so it's been interesting teaching a child completely "from scratch."  His favorite activities are Legos, training for 5Ks, and if every day could be Halloween so he could dress up, that would be perfect.








You may also see some kitties skulking in the background of photos.  Toby and Henrietta are a set of boy/girl littermates, and Annie is a rescue kitty.  The girls are typical cats --they are affectionate when they deign to acknowledge you.  Toby, our kitty who thought he was part puppy, will only be in older pictures, as he passed away in early 2014.


Thanks for coming on our Adventure with us!  We love hearing from our friends, so please comment on our posts, or stop by our Facebook Page and say hello!