The weather is great and I’m sitting here watching Kaelyn’s 4-H practice. She is really excited about being in the fair this year with Shinanigan. Today she is working with Blade the mustang.

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Threw together Haystacks for lunch and everyone fended for themselves for the rest of the day, including breakfast.  Kitchen is a disaster, table is a disaster, sprouts are rotton and need to be thrown out.  Food from grocery shopping still not put away and cluttering up the living room.  Tomorrow will be a new day.

My days have been heavy emotionally.  My life is overwhelmed with duties that I cannot keep up with.  The home schooling is suffering, and it has spurred me to make a decision.  I already put the oldest in school this past January.  It has been a good experience.  Some of his grades were barely passing, so my fingers are crossed that he can maintain well enough to stay there at the boarding school and not have to come home to special education in the public school.

And now I’m going to put the other two in the local Christian School that is affiliated with our church.  In some way, I’m feeling like a failure to make this decision.  I’m feeling lost, as my identity has been a home school mom for 10 years.  But our life cannot keep spiraling out of control like it is and we need the discipline of an imposed schedule.  I should be able to have my own schedule.  I should be able to keep them on task.  I should…

But I can’t keep beating myself over the head about what “should” be, and I have to face reality.  I run a full time dog kennel and breeding business.  I am in charge of all the marketing, photos, shots, worming schedules, email communication, FB page updates, website updates, etc…and we still need this income to live.  I can’t let up on this responsibility, not to mention the daily tasks of being a wife and mother, plus living FAR in the country with wood heat, huge garden, etc.  I just can’t keep feeling like I’m failing my kids in the homeschooling realm, so I have decided to enroll them in school.

I am a credentialed teacher.  I get excited about the opportunities they’ll have in the tiny, one room school.  I want to help in there.  I think I can make the school a better place.  I think I can invest in the school and be an asset, even if I’m just a volunteer mom that listens to kids read, or helps kids with their multiplication tables.  I am a great teacher, but not so much when my time is divided with so many responsibilities.

I feel settled in my decision, but I can’t help feel like I don’t belong in some of the home school groups that I frequent online anymore.  That makes me sad.  I hope the online friends I’ve made will still like me even if I don’t home school, and fit into that mold.  It will be a different life, there will be pros and cons.  But I can’t keep doing what I’m doing.  I’m not doing anything well, and just barely keeping my head above water in all areas.  This is not the model I want for my children.  This is not the chaos I want them living in.