Homeschool.

Something I never thought I would do. Or want to do. Or even consider doing.

Who does that?

We do.

I think we’ve finally settled into a routine. The first couple of week, however, were pretty rough. Not going to lie. We struggled with expectations (Rachel) and sitting still (Andrew) and the ultimate distraction (Cara). I started to question my sanity on this whole venture, but then I remembered when Rachel would come home from 1st grade every day for at least a month and cry her little eyes out. “It’s SO hard.” “My teacher is mean.” “I’m SO tired.”  Yeah…. I think we are doing slightly better than that.

I also waged a war with my perfectionist side. I wanted everything to be perfectly organized, ready to go, every subject needed to be planned in advanced. I needed to have a 2 week schedule mapped out and know exactly which worksheets they needed to do, which crafts, and when we were going on field trips. The entire week before we “started” school, my kids BEGGED for us to begin. “PLEEEEEASE can we start school mom? PLEEEEEASE???” I thought they were nuts. It didn’t help that all their friends in Utah started the week before and all these cute photos of kids standing on their front porches kept popping up on my Facebook feed. I wasn’t ready, so I kept putting them off. I was still waiting for xxx to come in the mail, or I hadn’t thought about zzzz subject and didn’t have a “plan” yet. I finally ran out of excuses and we started on August 26th. After the Utah crowd, but before the crowd out here in Virginia. And you know what? The universe didn’t explode. See how happy they look??

We have our ups and downs, but for the most part I think we might actually survive this.