Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Homeschooling, for reals

As my kids would say. John and I decided several weeks ago that we wanted to pull the last two kids out of school and start home schooling all of them after our move. I thought it would be a huge decision, like it was with the older boys, but it actually was fairly easy for us.
Tonight ended up being the big decision, which is to pull the boys out now. As in, tomorrow. We've come to dislike our dual schedules (one public school schedule and one home school schedule) more and more as the days have gone by and finally decided that enough was enough.
All the kids have been home all week due to sickness, and I have loved it. I have been in the best mood today. The house is clean, my kids are happy and the sick ones are better to the point they were set to go back to school tomorrow, Jasmine took herself to the bathroom to poop in the toilet... I thought life couldn't be any better until I sat down with John tonight and started discussing the boys going back to school tomorrow and realized that I really don't want them to.
I have thought about it before, of course I have, but haven't wanted to pull them out during the school year. I was worried about them missing out on stuff and having no idea where their teachers left off, different things along those lines. Ok, I wasn't worried about that with James. I mean come on, it's kindergarten. I did worry about that with Joseph, however John (as usual) managed to reassure me and calm my fears.
So, tomorrow is it. My sons will not be going back to public school tomorrow; instead I will print off the forms tonight to pull them out of school and I will not be looking back. Though I WILL be handing the phone to my husband to talk to his mother every time she calls for the next few weeks, since I know how much she disapproves. She's old school, literally, and has only been retired from teaching for 2 yrs or so. John believes that he would have been a much happier kid if he had been home schooled and she refutes it every time and tells him he would have been miserable. She's his mom, we both love her to death, but sometimes she doesn't know her son very well and it's not unusual for her to disagree with the choices we make in parenting. But, she IS the kind to (overall) mind her own business even if she does disagree. See why we love her so much?

Monday, February 1, 2010

Why Idaho, you ask?

Several reasons, actually. It's warmer than here but still allows us to have snow occasionally, it has three temples and we can live within 30 minutes of one, it has a nice sized LDS population without overwhelming us with members (I'd like to have an occasional missionary opportunity!), it has mountains and rivers which is a must for John, the home school laws are great, the midwifery laws are great, it has a medical school.... The reason are endless. The house we found is another fixer-upper; built in 2005, but the extras were never completely finished because it is a high-end home in an expensive neighborhood and the bottom fell out of the market and the builder couldn't sell it. So we figured, why not? We can finish the house, landscape the yard, and if we don't want to stay sell it for a substantial return with very little comparable output beyond man hours. No matter what, we will move to Idaho within the next few months because of the above reasons. The only question is when and if we will be buying. If this falls through we'll just rent while we save up to buy land and build.