Finish It Friday

Well today was a rather odd day to begin with. I ran over to a friend's work to pick him up and take him back to his place and then went into work myself. I was late to work, but it wasn't a big deal at all. My boss is pretty lax like that where I am concerned. I don't know that he's that lax with everyone, but I don't know. Worked a few hours, then it was time to go get the kids from my mother-in-law's house.

Picked them up, came home, put Boy C down for a nap, as he was falling asleep in the car on the way home. Of course, the fact that Girlie was asking me to sing song after song on the way home may have had something to do with it.

Hubby was already home from work, so he got the boy into bed and was playing on the computer, so I asked him if I could lay down and take a nap until the older boys got home from school. He said that was fine, then he let me sleep until 6pm! Talk about a nap! Four hours! I needed it though. I didn't sleep well last night, Boy C didn't sleep well last night, Girlie didn't sleep well last night...it was just a rough night in general.

So, Hubby woke me up at 6pm, and I rushed out the door to go pick the friend up again to take him to work for the night, stopped by Target on the way home to pick up a mousepad for Hubby and some Take-N-Toss straw cups for Boy C and Girlie. Boy C just learned how to drink from a straw last week. It was really exciting and we are so proud of him! It took him a LONG time to get the hang of it (like, 18 months or so) but now he is a straw master...minus the whole part of tipping the cup when the drink is almost gone instead of repositioning the straw. But hey, that will come with time, ya know?

So, on to the tackle for today...I posted on Katie's blog that I was planning on finishing the kitchen. I did a lot of work in the kitchen yesterday and it is close to being cleaned up. The drawers and cupboards all need a good solid, decluttering and reorganizing but that's not what I need to finish up. I just need to finish up cleaning the parts that you can see when you are just standing in the kitchen looking around. I may do the open shelving in the kitchen, but I'm not sure yet. I will take before and after pictures of the reorganizing project once I get started on it, because it is going to be a massive change and I am really excited about it. Not to mention that I plan on putting the picture of what the cupboard is supposed to look like on the inside of the cupboard once the job is finished - that way it will be easier for other people to put things away. At least, I hope it will be. Will have to see how that goes though. So tonight's project is to finish up the kitchen! (And to finally email Katie!)

Curve Ball!

Well, Hubby has surprised me this week. In a really big, major way. He said that after school is let out for the summer this year, he wants to homeschool. Just out of the blue. Well, it seems to be out of the blue. It's something that he has been stewing over and thinking about and evaluating without my knowledge of him doing so.

You see, we had originally planned to homeschool our kiddos. It was our plan all along. Even as we sent Boy A off to Preschool and Academy when he was three and four years old, our plan was to homeschool him and his younger sibling(s). I put the "s" in parenthesis because at the time he only had one sibling, but we were planning and hoping for more. We planned on homeschooling him right up until the week prior to the school year starting back in 2006. That week, we decided to enroll him.

Our home life was going through a lot of turmoil at that time, I had a new baby to take care of, Hubby and I were at the ending point of our marriage. There was a lot of grief in our lives at that time, and Hubby and I were separated. He felt that it was best to enroll Boy A in school so that he had some stability in his life, since our home life was so full of havoc at that time. So I did.

Schooling Boy A hasn't been the most beneficial thing for him, but we stuck it out. Mainly because I was following Hubby's lead in this decision, while still working with Boy A (then Boy B, and now Girlie and Boy C as well) at home. I have very strong opinions and reasons for wanting to homeschool, but that's not what this post is about, so I'll leave those out of this for now.

For the last three and a half years, we have broached the subject of homeschooling the kids probably twice a year or so. Usually, I am the one who approaches Hubby with this topic. This time, he approached me. There was no tentativeness in his conversation about the subject. It was pretty direct and straightforward. "I think when the school year is done, we should start homeschooling instead." Simple, quick, point blank. No question about it, just a statement.

One sentence that completely floored me. I've been wanting to do this, I've been praying about doing this, I cannot even express what this means to me, it is so important. He wants us to homeschool. And by us, I mean me. He wants me to homeschool our kids. At last!

Of course, at this point in our lives, there's a lot to think about and to put into perspective. For one, we really need both of our incomes. Second, our main childcare option is not someone who would be supportive of this decision. Third, well...I guess really there are only two major obstacles to overcome, but we have awhile to do it.

We also were discussing briefly what kind of homeschooling to do. Another flooring surprise from Hubby: "Boy A really likes to do his own research projects and to just learn on his own. I think allowing him to do that would really help matters." What he just described there was child-led unschooling. Letting the boy learn what he wants to know about when he wants to know about it. Hubby did say later on, though, that he thinks it would be good to have a curriculum for homeschooling, as a back-up plan to unschooling. He said that there is a lot he wants to explore before making this decision. I just could not believe my ears. He is really thinking about this.

I don't know if we will end up homeschooling the kiddos. Girlie will attend Academy next year regardless of what happens with the homeschooling aspect, and Boy C will still have his home-based public school teacher once a week, most likely along with other therapies at that point. But Boys A and B? They may very well be homeschooled next year. I'm being patient with this. I don't want to get overly excited or to plan on this happening 100%, because as I said, there are a few obstacles that we will need to work through first before this could become an actuality. But I just wanted to share this with you all, because it is something that I am incredibly excited about. Even if we don't do it, just knowing that Hubby has been reconsidering it and is willing to look into the options more thoroughly is just exciting and wonderful!