Fresh Direction

The kids and I got together with some friends today. At the end of last year we decided that we really needed to get our girls together. Her daughter is 7 months younger than my girls and she has a son that is just a little younger than mine. She also has an older son and a younger son. What we realized in the process of getting our children together is that we also really have a lot in common and it's one of those relationships that I feel really good investing time in. Anyway, the kids and I went to their house today. We went to the pool for a while then went back to their house and had lunch and more play time. The kids all really entertain themselves when they are all together and that gives my friend and I some time to talk. Today we were talking about the homeschool year and I was telling her how stressed I get every year at this time and how I look back on all my failures and worry so much about not repeating them and how to do better, etc. She was such an encouragement to me. I have kind of been married to the workbook for a while. When we first started homeschooling it took my quite a while to find curriculum that suited our needs. I bought some things that didn't work, but every time I would buy something new I would feel like we needed to start over, so we ended up getting really behind, couple that with dealing with a child with a learning disability, a Mom (me) that wasn't as motivated as she should have been in the early years, and had 3 surgeries (preceded by medical problems) in 5 years, a house fire and the death of 3 grandparents and we were REALLY behind at times. We've worked really hard to catch up, but at times I've felt really overwhelmed by it. A very wise friend talked me into skipping some math and moving forward a couple of years ago and today's conversation furthered that. My girls are very smart, they have strengths and weaknesses like anyone else, but I felt like if we didn't finish every single workbook, then they might be missing something. After our conversation today (and some things I'd been noticing and thinking on). I feel fairly confident just putting them both in the appropriate day and dealing with weaknesses as I notice them. I will not continue to define us as behind. We will begin a new "day" so to speak and I'm confident that my children will be no worse for the wear. I'll let you know when all of our final decisions are made and what our schedule ends up looking like.