It begins

I am writing this as a kind of journal, or log of our family's life. I know this will be mostly my point of view, but I feel like I need to save my point of view right now so that one day I may read this and see that I truly have grown.

Our kids started out in a Private Christian Academy. As our family grew our income kept up, for a time. Once we learned we were expecting twins it quickly became clear we could no longer afford to send our eldest 2 girls to private school and have twins in day care. Well, we could do that or we could eat and have fuel for the cars to get to work! Dominic (DH) & I worked out our budget and it was decided that I would continue to work after the boys arrived. I did return to work for 2 months after Luke & Ezra's birth. I believe we were all miserable. Dom was on deployment, I was breastfeeding and pumping @ work. My boss was not understanding of this @ all. Apparently it took too much time away from my important job of running her errands and making her fresh coffee. Mady (DD) was having a hard time doing the 2 hours of daily homework on her own. I couldn't help-come on?! Two hours? She was a 3rd grader for Christ sake! And Niki (DD) was feeling so left out. Between regular daily tasks, the kids, work and the occasional nap, I had no time left to spend with any of the kids and it was blatantly evident we desperately needed time just to be ourselves together. The more I worked (ok it wasn't that long, just 2 months) the more I saw us growing apart. I saw our attitudes change, our priorities shift, and our family falling apart.

On top of all this, I felt very pressured @ work to just conform to the rest of the crowd. I was taking too much time to take care of my kids by breastfeeding. No one said that. What they did say was I needed to inform them when I was going to go do "that" and when I returned. I was then told that I wasn't provided enough break time in my 8 hour day to continue the schedule I was on.

I could go on about the pressure to conform. Like the experience Mady had in 3rd grade with the state testing, but she and I can remember that and I don't want to re-live that either.

We finally had enough. I quit my job to stay home with the kids. I also began to think that I was going to homeschool the kids. I started researching and I haven't stopped. We decided on the unschooling method. So this blog is about our lives. How we choose to live and learn as we go instead of taking time away from living to go to a special building, with government paid babysitters that do not have time to teach my children, let alone see what special unique people they are.

I am looking forward to sharing our uniqueness, our shininess on this blog.

First post

I am starting a blog to record our family journey. I also think, for me, it is an outlet, a place to record my own growth as a person, as a wife and mom and all the titles I have right now.



Mady has also started a blog. She is having difficulty writing when it comes right down to it, but she is intrigued by the idea. Once I have time I will post some of the recent pix and small descriptions along with a link to Mady's blog.