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Our Story

1989 - I had gotten interested in homeschooling when I was in college.  I was mostly looking for the guy God would send me to be my husband (BTW, I didn't find him there.  We met at church), but I was taking an education class and the teacher said something derogatory about "those homeschoolers."  I leaned over to a classmate and asked, dumbfounded, "What's THAT?"  She said she guessed kids who do school at home and don't get to go to school.  "REALLY???"  I was incredulous...but intrigued.  I didn't quite know what I thought about it, but was interested in find out more.  So, I worked diligently to find some (it was the late 80's, so there weren't that many to be found).  I was less scrupulous then, and didn't actually lie, but deceptively introduced myself as a college student who was taking an education  course and doing research on homeschooling.  (None of those things were lies, but put together it sounded like I was writing a paper for an assignment - which I wasn't.  I certainly do THANK those families that allowed me into their home to do my "research.")

1994 - Dave and I begged God, and He said we could get married -- so we did!

1996 - Our oldest daughter was born.

1997 - Our 2nd daughter was born.

1998 - When our oldest was 2 years old, after almost a decade of mulling it over, I announced to Dave that I thought we should homeschool our kids.  His answer rang out with shock, "You want to do WHAT to our kids?"  It turns out that this was our first discussion on the issue and he hadn't been mulling it over the last decade.  "Our church has a school, so we'll send the kids there!"  Now, I want you to know, I'm no wallflower.  Very few people tell me what to do (or if they do, they only do it once).  I continued to read up on the topic of homeschooling ALOT (at the time, Dave thought obsessively).  But no matter how many discussusions, arguments, or logical conclusions I put before him, my husband wouldn't budge.

2000 - Our oldest son was born.

2000 - We put our sweet little girl in preschool.  I cried.

2001 - We put our sweet little girl in kindergarten.  I had a difficult pregnancy that year and thanked God our 5 year old had a wonderful teacher!

2002 - Our 2nd son was born.  That was an incredibly trying summer.  We had medical issues, behavior issues with some of the kids and I knew sending our lovely 6 year old to full-time school was immanent.  So...I blocked it out all summer and just didn't think about it.  I finally had laid-off reading all the homeschool books.   Everything in me was screaming that homeschooling was what was best for our children.  Yet, we were about to send away our innocent, adorable little girl.  I begged God to change my heart if He wasn't going to let me homeschool.   I felt so horribly torn and helpless.

In the fall, I packed her lunch and sent her away.  I cried all day.  She had no idea how I felt.  I didn't want to make the adjustment to school any harder for her than it had to be.  I cried the next day and the next.  God was NOT changing my heart.  I poured out my pain to Him. 

God intervened.  By the end of the 2nd week of school, we noticed low self-esteem issues cropping up in our daughter.  How could this happen so soon?  Dave told me to give him information about homeschooling - my heart skipped a beat.  I took a deep breath to DIVE into a 6-hour discussion about homeschooling.  He stopped me at my first word.  He didn't want to be told, he wanted to be shown.  (I'd exhausted his capacity to listen to me say anything about homeschooling during the previous 3 years.) 

So, I did what any wife would do ... I stayed up 3 nights in a row, working day and night, researching and typing.  Then I printed off a 24 page report I bound in a plastic report cover and submitted it to my husband right after church on Sunday. 

My Report 

 So, he did what any husband would do.  He took it to the bathroom and read it.  While I prayed and didn't breathe, he read it for an hour.  He emerged, said nothing to me, and asked our daughter to join him in his room for a discussion (all our biggest discussions happen in our bedroom -- I don't know why???)  HE WASN'T EVEN GOING TO TALK TO ME?????  After about 20 minutes, he asked me to join them.  They had decided we should homeschool (at that point my daughter had only a vague idea of what that was.)

So 3 weeks into 1st grade, over 2 years after I first sent my daughter away, I got to bring her home to school.

Dave wrote us a School Song.  I had the kids learn Sign Language to it.  We orderd some books and were off and running.

2002-2003 - That first year of homeschooling was hard.  The baby was a joy, he was HUGE to lug around at 4 months, but a joy.  The 2-year old was DEFINATELY acting 2 (which is my least favorite age in my parenting so far), but except for being tired with the baby (which I was pretty used to by my 4th kid), it was ok.  (There was the time he took wipe-off marker to my living room walls - it didn't "wipe-off"!)

It was hard because my daughter & I were lonely.  We tried a few homeschool groups in the area, but nothing clicked.  We were both lonely.  It was hard for me, and harder for her.  She loved schooling at home.  She loved being with her siblings.  She learned to read.  We were just lonely.  Finally, at the end of the year, I decided I was going to have to force us to find friends.  So I volunteered to help run a  homeschool group - and that did the trick.  Then another homeschool group I was a member of asked me to step up and help run that.  I was dismayed, but the idea that by my efforts another family wouldn't have to feel so isolated when they started homeschooling was too much incentive to pass up.  I said "I'll HELP."  hehehehehehe  I "helped" a little more than I originally thought.  But it was all good and we've made some WONDERFUL friends.