Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Helloooooo, i'm baaaaack!

It's been a long time since I blogged. A number of reasons are to blame for this. I was quite busy for a long time between November and December.  A general feeling of inertia didn't help. What to write, what to say?

Frankly, today I don't have much more to say either. For starters, let me wish all of you a wonderful New Year. May the year 2012 bring you good health, creativity, and success.

2012 will be, for us, a year which will bring many changes. My father in-law will be coming to live with us. That is a big deal. And since we cannot afford a bigger home he will be making the family room into his bedroom. I've known for over two years this was coming and for over two years now I've been telling myself not to let my imagination run wild. Try that!

We are going to try and have our children enrolled in a nearby school.  Well, nearby is relative. The school is about 12 miles away and that distance peppered by a great many red lights, and roads well attended by hungry cops waiting for anyone going even three miles over speedlimit. And  to make matters all the more challenging....school starts there at 7:30 AM! Aaaack!!!
We also don't know if that school will accept our children. We are not in their district but that public school is the only one we are willing send our children to. The three 'ifs' here are:

1. Will they accept our kids.
2. Will they work with our kids abilities rather than age.
3. Will Missy's health be able to handle it.

Our reasons for attempting school again are several. We are a self employed family. The company needs to grow in order for us to survive the economy, and in order to do that I have to be there at least 3-4 hours a day to run product development and planning. We also feel that in order for Missy to access certain academic opportunities she needs to go to a school. There is a great local private school but the tuition runs about 10K per child and we cannot afford this any longer. Bear needs more interaction with children his age and so we have decided to try this.

Frankly, I am utterly torn up about this move. I don't really want to do it, and neither does my daughter. We love homeschooling and would love to continue doing this but in our small town we simply don't seem to have the co-ops here you might find in larger cities. We are academically very focused and it appears that the primary flavors of local homeschoolers are unschooling, Waldorf oriented, or Christian based. If we had some strong local homeschool options in terms of classes, lab time etc, we would probably be more likely to continue homeschooling especially with my father in-law at home. He would be able to oversee the children doing their independent lessons while I put in my hours at the office.

One thing is certain, unless I see with absolute certainty that the kids are thriving, this experiment will be short-lived.

Both of these changes fill me with much trepidation. But there is no way out of at least one of them, and so I need to charge forward.

This is a helluva time to reduce my wine intake....

2 comments:

A Homeschool Story said...

Um...up the chocolate intake? Your kids will do fine, they really will.
Father-in-laws are a whole other matter, don't think of it as losing a living room, think of it as gaining a live-in babysitter.
As for school: we just came from a meeting at the local high school last night and we were pleasantly surprised by the level of academics, choice of classes and activities, friendliness and knowledge of the staff. Am I ready for Aragorn to go off to school? NO! But I am confident that he may find interests and challenges there to meet his needs. And I will miss him.

Marlis said...

Thanks Angela, whenever I feel myself getting nervous about the whole thing with my fil I try to think of it the same way. As to school, this is one way I have to give my children their wings. But I know we will miss our time together in our nest so much.