The Start of a New Journey

Hello friends and family and new visitors to my blog! It has been a little while since my last post and a LOT has happened this past year. So hold on tight with me on this new journey we have started: homeschooling!

To catch those of you up who don't know what this last year has consisted of for our family, let me clue you in. At the beginning of this year, my husband and I decided to really get serious about selling our home (as if we weren't serious already.) We decided to drop the price about $8,000 from where we originally wanted to sell at. With this drop in price, we had to really take a leap of faith and let God control what happened next. I am so glad we decided to take that risk, because around the first week of April, we got and accepted our first offer!

It was around this same time frame that I began praying about school options for our oldest daughter. She had been in public school kindergarten and while she loved it, I hated it. Let me just say one thing, it wasn't one teacher or one incident that I hated because really, the school itself was fine. The hardest part for me was sending her away all day to people I have never even met before. I just could not get around this fact! I felt like the weird mom who didn't trust anyone. While apart of that is true, (there is a lot of people in this world not to trust,) I really just wanted to be the one who taught her things and got to see her learn and grow everyday. I did not want to hear these things about my child from someone else. So what options did I have? Homeschool? I thought, "Wow, now you really are nuts." But I prayed anyway.

Well, after quite a while of praying, the Lord answered my prayers! He set a resounding "YES!" In my heart for homeschooling. After that decision, everything started to fall into place. We sold the house, and things got really hard after that. There was quite a gap between selling our home (and leaving it) to finding and actually moving in to our new home. This also included staying with my in laws for two months with my family of five living on their back porch in the heat of the summer. I will admit, there was a ton of doubt in there! I thought maybe I should just get a job and go back to work, and I thought we would never get into this dream home of ours. My husband and I had to keep the faith that He was providing even in these crazy hard times. We did finally move into our dream home, though. It has been a little over a month now and things are starting to settle down.

This week, the curriculum FINALLY came and we were very excited!! We even transformed the "dining room" into a wonderful, colorful homeschool room! So, yesterday was the kids' first day of school! We have a first grader and we are starting preschool with my middle child. I was so nervous to see how it would go (especially with a toddler running around.) Let me tell you, it was AWESOME!!

We had chose Sonlight curriculum and couldn't be more excited! I love all the books that came and it was really easy to get started. I was so relived not to have to send her off to be with someone else and I got to see things click for her as we moved through the day! My preschooler even got to practice writing her letters and did some that I didn't know she could do!

The day got a little tense when my youngest wanted all of Mommy's attention but luckily my husband was home yesterday to swoop in and take him off my hands for a bit. I know this is going to be an adjustment for all of us for a little while until we get used to it. So for now, I will try and enjoy every minute of it!

My goal is to keep up on this blog for friends and family who are curious about homeschooling (obviously I am not shy about us doing it and love to share.) I never thought I would ever have kids, let alone stay home and homeschool! Haha, life is so funny sometimes but I have a great big God! I am willing to follow His lead on this journey and hope you will follow along too! Thanks for all of your love and support, I really couldn't do it without you all! : )