Life Decisions

Thoughts about homeschooling. A response to a post in one of the LDS homeschool group.

I homeschool because of a prompting. I was in the temple minding my own business and was told I needed to homeschool my kids. Umm, what?!? I had heard of homeschooling but didn't know anything about it. I have four kids. Three of them were attending a charter school that seemed like a good fit for our family at the time. My youngest was going to be starting kindergarten there - having done 2 years of preschool elsewhere. 
I started that fall with kids in K, 2nd, 6th, and 7th grades. The only thing that kept me going was that I knew it was inspired. I've asked since and all I get is - 'You know my answer.'. My kids are now 13, 15, 18, and 20. They are great kids and doing well in their endeavors. I've had quite a few people tell me how great they are - so much for not being socialized...or whatever. 
It's true. It's a sacrifice. I realized about a month ago that I have no idea what it's like to have all of my kids out of the house on a school day. Well, I do. But, it's only because we're on an outing or with other homeschool families...together. Our schedule is a little more flexible now that there are only two of them. (They'll be 8th grade and a sophomore this year.) 
It's been tricky at times. But, I know our family is closer because of it. It worked out perfect for when we were dealing with my husband's cancer. The kids had a chance to spend more time with him before he died. I'm grateful they all remember their dad. 
At the time I received the revelation I wasn't looking for...I had no idea what a blessing it would be for our family. Looking back - it's obvious 'someone' knew more than I did. And yes, I would do it all again.

Viewing Icebergs

I had a thought regarding icebergs the other day. It was about how we only see the tip of the iceberg and the majority of it is below the water. It is the same with people. We see only a small portion of what they choose to show us. We don't know about what lies deeper until the person lets us get close enough to show us what is underneath the 'public' view.

Face to Face

I went to live stream the Face to Face that is happening this morning. They have it available in 12 different languages. How cool is that? I love being part of a worldwide church.
I also love experiences like this. I just had to participate while the kids had their own experience with the youth of our stake.
I just finished listening and watching. I chose the ASL version to watch. Fantastic. I loved the questions, the messages, the music, and what I felt. I know it was worth the more than hour and a half of time it took out of my day. I have several things on my 'to do' list today. This was worth it. I've even thought of some things to work on - for myself and with my kids.

Something To Say

The last while I've felt a need to share some things...to have a voice. There are topics that I want and need to say something about. I'm not sure where the thoughts are coming from - but, they just keep coming. Most of the thoughts and ideas are about topics that I might have a unique perspective on or that I feel more needs to be said. I feel like part of it is that I'm being inspired to share my voice. Maybe I have things to say that need to be said in a certain way in order for others to understand. There are things that I want to tell people about - things I feel that just need to be said. I'm hoping that some of that can come about here on this blog. This is meant more for thoughts and ideas than some of my other blogs are right now.
I have a few things started. I just need to finish up and edit a few posts. It seems that some thoughts have come quickly and others have taken awhile to take shape. In all of that - I have several posts worth of keywords and phrases just so I could get things down while I figured out what and how I really wanted to say things.

New Blog

I decided to start a new blog for sharing what I've been doing to focus on Christ each day. You can find it here. It's called Christ Daily. I realized I wanted to have this blog focus on other things.

12 Steps to Change

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has a program they share online to help people get through times when they struggle. This is one of several stories that has a powerful message. I know Christ can help us change. I know He wants to help us change. We just need to ask and then work on taking the necessary steps to make the change happen in our lives. The biggest thing is letting Him help us through each part of the path.

Primary Sharing Time 2016

I skimmed through this section today. I wanted to get an idea of what the annual curriculum will be in church this year. This is for the children (ages 3-11). There is an annual theme (2016: I Know the Scriptures are True) and then monthly sub themes that are broken up into weeks of study/teaching. This is the one for this month. I skimmed because I wanted to look for things that specifically mentioned Christ. I paid special attention to the week about the scriptures being His word. I also noticed the idea they had for keeping track of your own progress in personal scripture study. It would be fun to figure out something for the kids and I. So, here's the link for January's Sharing Time.