Six Months Later

Wow, now that was quite a blogging hiatus! Six months later and our life looks quite different than it did on May 28, back in Dallas/Fort Worth making homemade laundry detergent.

The past two years have been turbulent for our family, to say the least. Without going into too much hairy detail, suffice it to say that we have been put through the pressure cooker, and have come out on the other side wiser, humbler, and thankful. Things happened to us that were utterly, completely bewildering to me. In the process I learned that God does not do things TO us, but he does things FOR us...even though at times that was very hard to swallow.

We learned about good friends. We learned about tough decisions. We learned about flexibility. We learned about letting go. Here are just a few of the changes in our life over the last six months:

1. We moved to suburban Austin.

Three hours and 200 miles south of our old homestead, we now live in bustling Cedar Park, north of Austin. It did not take long for us to like it here. It is a great place to have a family, with tons of activities, a great library, tons of grocery stores -- a Sprouts just a mile from the house! I was immediately struck with just how nice people are here. It's not unusual for someone to chat with you at the park, and as my commuting husband will attest, drivers actually let you in when you try to merge. It's all very refreshing.

2. We are home schooling our kids.

Considering that my husband just spent ten years in the public school system, you might think that our decision to home school our two children is some sort of statement on today's public schools or anyone who chooses to send their kids there. It is not.

Public schools are very important to our society. Zach continues to support the institution in his current position; in fact, he is able to help more districts now than the single district he used to work for. For many students, public school -- and the wonderful, dedicated teachers who work there -- is among the only positive things in their day-to-day life.

But Zach and I have the desire, the resources, and the ability to teach our children at home. We also have some very fantastic, very bright children. While I admit that my first response to Zach's suggestion that we home school the kids was, "WHAAAAT? You want me to do WHAAAAAT?", it has been among the best experiences of my life.

As our research proved during the decision-making process, I uncovered the fact that not all home schooling mothers wear embroidered denim jumpers and buns in their hair. And when I met the other moms in our home schooling co-op group (where we meet each Tuesday), I found out that these people are smart, talented, and dedicated to giving their kids an excellent education. A classically trained opera singer, a nuclear engineer, an illustrator of books about Mesopotamian hieroglyphics (that is a real thing, apparently!) are just a few of the moms in our group.

I am learning history, Latin, science, and math right alongside my kids, and in the process I learn more and more about the pure awesomeness (put that on a vocab quiz!) of my kids. Our family relationship has grown so much in the last four months. I could go on and on about it, but I'll just jot down a few of the things that I love about doing school at home:

- Learning is constant -- not just 8-3. When the kids were in school, I found it difficult to extract what it was they were learning about, so reinforcement was lacking. Now we learn, then reinforce all day long, and then talk to Dad about it at dinner. We are learning all the time.

- We can go as fast -- or slow -- as we want. Today Kate finished up 1st grade math curriculum, and so we will move on to 2nd grade math.

- Quality play time. We get so much work done in less time, which means more time for parks, Legos, reading, field trips, library visits, imagining, silly games, and more.

- Less stress. Quite simply, I have never seen my children so happy. "I used to dread Mondays," Drew told me a few weeks ago. "Now I look forward to them, because I want to see all the new stuff we're going to learn." That alone makes this decision worthwhile.

3. Zach gets to be home from work at 5:30pm.

This is a really big deal. He is home from work, and work does not follow him home. No one calls, rarely is something looming over his head. Rarely is he brooding about a decision to be made or a tough conversation that has to be had. Work life balance. It's where it's at!

Among the things that have not changed are:

- Our 5am workouts.
- My Texas Fit Chicks boot camp (although my new class starts at 5:30am instead of 5am, which makes a remarkably BIG difference).
- Our general health-nutness. (It's actually much easier to be a health nut in Austin...there are more of us down here.)

All in all, things are good. Finally. For many bitter, angry months we asked ourselves, "What did we do to deserve this?" and now we happily, thankfully ask ourselves, "What did we do to deserve this?"


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Workout of the Day
PiYo Buns