To Homeschool or Not to Homeschool

That is my question. It's really not one that I'll be able to answer right now, either, which is driving me crazy. I hate not making decisions about as much as Kent hates making them. There are just so many variables and I have yet to get a real feeling for what we should do one way or another. Honestly, I'm wanting more of Kent's input, but he (rightly) wants to put the decision off until Abigail is older. I know this is really the best option because so much can change in the next two and a half years before she can start kindergarten, but it's so hard to wait! In the mean time I can at least busy myself with doing our homeschooling stuff now (I bought some fun 3-5 year old stuff!) and just try to enjoy without worrying about the future. Would be nice if it were that easy, wouldn't it?

Until that time, I'll just continue to document the uncertainty here. If you get tired of my vacillating, just skip that particular post...I'll try to stick more to information than whining about the future, but no promises, lol!

On that note, I'm going to go work on my plan for the new week so I know what activities we'll be doing, which books we'll be reading, and how I'm going to attempt to keep Nathan busy while we do this :). I might try to lay out the different options/websites I'm looking at later, but sometimes the overwhelming amount of info makes me even more frazzled about what to do. On the other hand, it might help me to get things laid out so I can examine and evaluate more clearly. Oh well, thoughts for another time...

I always have the best of intentions...

...yet some how they just don't always work out. Sigh, I'm so bad to start something and then stop only to begin again MONTHS later. God has been showing me lately that I really need to work on my follow through on things that I begin. In a lot of ways it's tied in to my patience struggles. I get impatient with the lack of results, with how long something takes, or any number of other things and I quit or give up or move on, pick the phrase you like but it equates to the same thing. Also, I get busy and side-tracked and then leave projects to sit and sit and sit. Anyway, I'm trying to learn to have more discipline in my daily life, which leads me to my one and only true goal for the year: practice more self-discipline! I have many different areas that I want to be more self-disciplined in, so it's definitely a broad and far-reaching goal. I'm trying to just work on it in babysteps by building good habits over time, to hopefully keep the stress of feeling like I have to do it all (and do it NOW) to a minimum. I love to play at being organized though it doesn't usually last very long, so we'll see how it goes.

If you're interested, here's my plan:

First, I put the areas of my life into general categories. For me this is spiritual, physical(exercise), meal planning, homemaking, homeschooling, kids (as in what we need to work on for them, like schedules) and personal (hobbies, "me time").

Then I sat down and made (or found online) lists of what I wanted to accomplish in these areas. Anything was fair game and I'm adding to the lists as I come up with more. For the most part I'm trying to stick to things that lend themselves to building good habits. I have a separate list for "to do"s that are one time things.

Each Sunday I sit down and pick out a few habits to work on for the week. lol, I say each, but really it's just been last Sunday and today, but this is my plan for the future as well. Today I looked over my list from last week and some I did well on while some I completely missed. I pretty much kept all the same habits from last week, though, because I didn't feel like I was one hundred percent nailing any of them. But you know what, that's OKAY! I didn't make this my list of what I wanted done in a certain timeframe, I just move on as I finish each one. I saw improvements in a lot of my little habits this week and to me that's what matters.

To borrow a phrase from the FlyLady, Marla Cilley, "Progress, not Perfection!".

Websites

I want to link the websites that I frequently use and that I find helpful, so that hopefully they will be shared and helpful to others. One of the things that I'm learning is to take things more slowly in my life. It might be the beginning of patience in me!! So, to take my time with this and to do it (hopefully) right, I'm going to do my recommended sites one at a time and then also add new posts as I find more.

The first that I want to bring up is FlyLady.net. My friend Kaylyn introduced me to this website through her blog. It's a housecleaning site that has really helping my in developing my schedules and daily routines. She not only helps you with figuring out what to clean when, but more than that to make it a routine so that it flows smoothly instead of being something to worry about. I've been adapting it to fit my life since I began it, and I will continue to rearrange the basics she gives, but it honestly has been a huge blessing to me as a homemaker. One of my main goals in life is to be a successful housewife and this website has been very instrumental in helping me get as far as have. Hope it's helpful to you, too!

A Fresh Start

Welcome back (or welcome for the first time)! I've been wanting to restart my blogging for awhile, but between taking care of Abigail and Nathan and getting moved into our new home, I haven't been able to find the time. So, slowly, I'll be getting back into it and updating all the things here. I hope this blog will be uplifting and helpful to those who read it, but more than anything, I wanted a place to write my thoughts and get them in so sort of coherent order. So...welcome! Welcome to my online home and a glimpse into my life, family and thoughts!