by Joan Hall

Created on: September 09, 2008

I suppose we would all agree that it is very hard to rank our accomplishments. Some have earned great awards; some have run huge companies or volunteered in third world countries. Each of these people has every right to be proud of what they have accomplished. I think we have to look within ourselves to realize what really an accomplishment is.

I remember back in high school, sitting around the lunchroom table with my friends discussing the biggest question ever asked of us at that time, "what do you want to do when you graduate high school?" I remember hearing most of my friends saying they wanted to go on to college to become a teacher, a nurse or an accountant. Some of my friends were happy to be finished with school and were looking forward to just joining the workforce. When all eyes were on my for my reply, I had to tell them what was in my heart. I told them, "I just want to be a mom".

My husband and I both came from large families without a lot of money. There was no pressure put on us to go to college, our parents let us decide what we wanted to do with our lives. After a year of technical school I got married. We decided to start our family right away, knowing if we waited to have money before starting a family, we many never start one. Our son was born the next year and our daughter followed four years later. After our son was born, I hated the thought of leaving him to go to work. I started watching some nieces and nephews to help with our family budget. I told myself when the kids were both in school I would return to the working world. But then I heard some other kids telling my kids one day how lucky they were that their mom was home to get them off to school in mornings and was there when they got home since they had to go to daycare before and after school.

By this time I had become an official daycare provider to stay at home with my kids. Realizing that just because kids are legally old enough to stay home alone doesn't mean they doesn't still need their mom. Of course as they became junior-high age, I began to worry bout peer pressure and what they would be doing after school if I was off at my job, so I decided to stay with my current profession and stay at home a bit longer. Well, you guessed it; I stayed a daycare provider through their high school graduations.

My son chose to go to college two hours away. He graduated 4 1/2 years later, found a great job and bought a house. He was always very ambitious; had his first paper route at

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