These last two weeks have been pretty exciting at our house.  We started our homeschool year, Reagan officially started half day at the middle school, Cade and Levi started their one day a week hybrid, charter school where they get to take four elective classes and Liberty started preschool.  Every Wednesday afternoon at exactly 12:30 I will have NO CHILDREN for 2.5 hours!  My ideal has always been to have some school learning and some home learning.  It is only this year that we’ve finally been able to do both!  To celebrate, I went out to lunch with friends! 

As exciting as no kids for a few hours is, it was with some trepidation that I signed Reagan up for middle school.  It’s fantastic that Idaho allows dual enrollment, but it’s still hard to turn your kid over to the public school when you’ve chosen to homeschool because you don’t like the public school.  However, right now, for our family, this is the right thing.  I am hoping it will raise the peace and sanity levels at our house.  Reagan was diagnosed with ADHD recently, something we’ve always suspected but couldn’t get confirmed until now. He is both the audience and the performer in our house, both the distracted and the distractor.  It makes homeschooling very difficult at times.  The house was wonderfully quiet every afternoon this week, but the kids couldn’t wait for him to get home each day.  He had a great first week, though, and I think it will be a good experience for everyone.  He’s taking a home ec/keyboarding/art class , a math class, and PE/Orchestra.  He loves all his classes so far and had his first cross country meet on Thursday.  He came in 36th out of seventy-six 6th, 7th and 8th graders.  His 1.5 mile time was 11:18.  Pretty darn good for a beginner.

It’s been a tough balancing act to juggle all the new activities and places we need to be at different times on top of homeschooling.  I feel like I’m going to drop a ball any minute.  I’ll probably forget to pick someone up or drop someone off.  It’s never the same from day to day.  I realize that is normal for most moms, but not for me. 

I can’t complain, though.  Life is busy and full and my kids still have their mom.  Life can smack you pretty hard in the face sometimes as it did a few days ago when a friend of mine from Duvall suddenly passed away.  She was young, full of life and love. I weep for her three children who are without a mother as they start their new school year.  A light has gone from the earth this week, but heaven is all the brighter for her presence.  God bless you, Kimberly, and thank you for your example.