Of course, in those two years life moved on. Boy did it. We moved back to town. Two years in the country taught me that things are much more romantic on paper than they are in real life sometimes. There were good things about it that I am glad we experienced. Over all, we are back home.
My daughter has "retired" from gymnastics. This in itself was a HUGE change for us. It was time though and we are slowly learning to live without it. She misses it more than I do.
My son started formally schooling and has learned to read. My last child is reading. I will never teach another one of my children to read. That is bitter sweet.
My oldest will be in Jr.High this year. For real. Which brings me to why I felt inspired to pick up my virtual pencil and start writing my thoughts down again. I need to be able to get my thoughts out without annoying those around me.
I suppose the best place to start would be our plans for this year. I have several friends who have been attending Classical Conversations the past few years. In all honesty, I have never been that drawn to it until I read about the Challenge level. On paper it looks fantastic and what I hope my oldest will gain from it, is more of the supplemental aspects of being able to discuss in group settings than for it to be our core so I think it is worth a try. Since my oldest will already be there, the other two will also attend. It just makes sense. I reserve my judgment on the Fundamental levels until I see our campus in action. I am cautiously optimistic though.
There is also a second co-op (I KNOW. I am nuts.) that we will be participating in. This is one of those co-ops that offers everything and is stupid hard to get into. In fact, we were originally denied but were offered a space about two days before all of the fees were due. That was fun. We are going to use it mostly for fun classes. My oldest is taking a cooking class, the middle and youngest is taking some sort of science class with hands on stuff. We are only tied into it on a month to month basis, unlike CC, so if it doesn't work all we really lost was our deposit and that month's tuition.
Both of the girls are doing First Lego League. This has been a fantastic experience for them. I highly recommend looking into it if your child is interested in robotics. It has been not only a great experience from the robotics, but also from having to work together to problem solve in a group setting. As soon as Luke is old enough he will definitely be joining in.
Brianna was accepted into the Jr. Zookeeper program at our local zoo. It was quite an intense process as she had to interview, present a speech and prove she really wanted the position. She was so very well prepared when we went in though and I could not have been prouder.
Considering that Brianna will have a large work load with CC I want to be very careful about what we do outside of that so I plan on working more around their interests this year while still getting in the basics. Brianna will start Teaching Textbooks since she really needs to take her math a little bit slower. Keira will continue on with Christian Light Education. Her math needs are much more intense since she intends on going into an engineering field. Luke will do TT because at the moment he just needs the basics.
There you go. It wasn't that interesting, but it is a start. See you next time!
