A sense of calm...

...funny thing about homeschooling is that if it weren't for my friends and the back to school ads in the newspaper, we would hardly notice that it was back to school time. It's been fun listening for the past couple weeks as my friends across the US have started sending their kids back to school or to preschool for the first time. There is a nervous excitement buzzing online and here in town. I am excited for my friends and their kids and my friends who are teachers. It is an exciting time of year. At the same time, I am so glad that it's not me. Except for Ian's speech therapy, I don't have to worry about school in the traditional sense. I don't have to worry about getting up too early or staying up too late (although most days the kids are in bed by 9 anyway). We can choose what to learn and how to learn it. We do school in the summer and barely do school in December. We do school on Sunday, but maybe not on Friday.


I'm happy that I am able to be with our kids. I'm happy that I found some local homeschooling groups to join and that we can enjoy doing new things together and that the kids can take a couple classes without me being their teacher. I had somebody ask me this weekend why as a former teacher I decided to homeschool. My answer was that now I get to have all the fun of teaching without all the politics. As a special ed teacher I always had individual lesson plans and goals for each student and we are doing the same now, just on a smaller scale. To me it's an ideal job. Don't get me wrong, we have tough days. Ian throws lots of temper tantrums and Alison does her fair share of eye rolling and complaining. Some days I'm tempted to give up. But I don't. I think of all the fun that we have and look forward to everything we can do as the kids get older and I'm thankful for this life we've chosen.

So tomorrow to celebrate the first day of school, we are going down to Holland to a place we've never been called Tunnel Park (there is a tunnel going through the sand dune!). We are going to meet people we've never seen before, that I've only talked to for the past couple weeks online. (Isn't that exactly what they say we shouldn't do? lol) and we are going to have a Not Back to School Beach Party. We hope to make some new friends and have a lot of fun. I'm hoping the most stressful part of tomorrow is going to be helping Alison find her swimsuit and deciding what to pack for our snack.

No matter how you do school, I wish you a great school year!!