Getting Started is Always the Hardest Part

Doing something new and different, like starting this blog, reminded me of how difficult it can be to begin new projects. I sat around thinking of starting a blog, but when it came down to it, how does one begin? What does one write about? This brought to my mind one of the most challenging endeavors I ever had to begin. Home schooling.
In the beginning, homeschooling seemed like something so foreign. Something other people do. Growing up I never personally knew a single home schooling family. What little I knew was limited to snippets I'd seen on television. Those cultural educational specials that show "all the different kinds of schools". To be frank it seemed kinda weird. I assumed people who either home schooled or were home schooled themselves must be not quite like regular people.
Then, I met my first home schooled friend. She and I attended the same church and had babies that were the same age. I was totally shocked to find out that she'd spent grades K-12 entirely as a home schooled student. She looked like a regular person! She was not overly awkward or introverted at all! Quite the contrary. She seemed well adjusted, delightful, and even, shock of all shocks, intelligent! I was the introvert, I was awkward. Yet I was a poster child of a mostly successful public school education in all its glory and splendor. After I learned that she was dead set on home schooling her child and future children (I mean we had both just given birth to our first child a few mere months earlier), I became intrigued and thus the seed of an idea was planted.
A two years and another child later, school was not something on my mind yet. After all my child had only just turned three. I assumed somewhere in the fuzzy future, I'd enroll him into K-5 at my local public school. However, after some discussion my husband and I made the decision to enroll our precious first born son into K-3 at a local church preschool. The effects were not what we'd imagined. In my mind I had envisioned my perfect wonderful child coming home with smiley faces stamped all over him. His teacher gushing to me her love of teaching my obviously gifted child.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, however you wish to view it) reality did not get the memo from my fantasies. Lane came home with a "sad face" on his paper nearly everyday. The few times he received a "happy face" the teacher was quick to crush my joy by telling me that it was only due to the fact that he was "lethargic" and unresponsive all day. He'd done nothing. Neither great nor terrible.
After a meeting with Lane's teacher during which she insensitively (I thought anyway) told me that it was her personal belief that there was "something wrong" with my child, I decided to observe him one day. Indeed, while children chittered happily all about, he sat at the table with his head hidden and his legs drawn up underneath the table. Once a trip to the pediatrician gave me the assurance that nothing was amiss, I had Lane removed from his class. The idea of home schooling begin to take on a more definitive form in my thoughts.
Then the biggie. My husband and my life were changed forever when the Lord changed our hearts. In an instant were were saved when before we were not. (While this is important, it is another entire story in and of itself, one I will share one day!) Shortly after that I felt a strong spiritual conviction to home school Lane and our future children. While I was pumped about becoming teacher in addition to being mom, I was a bit lost on how to get started.
This blog is intended to chronicle how we started our home schooling journey and to share with others out there how we get by each day. Our struggles, victories, joy, growth, and learning as a family. Now our family has grown to be six members strong. I am teaching a second grader, a K-5 , a 3-K, and even my 9 month old baby (because all mommies and daddies are their child's first teachers.) It is a challenging thing to do and demands much sacrifice. I do believe that we home schooling families need each other for support, ideas, and accountability. That is what I hope to accomplish. So there you have it, I began!