Changes

I know I've been quiet recently. I don't quite recognize my life right now, so it's hard to write about it. My daughter has been gone to college for three weeks now; my second son is attending community college; my oldest son is graduated from college and is working at home. Lots of changes right there. And now, I've done something rather untypical for me.... enrolled two out of the three kids still homeschooling in the California Virtual Academy which is part of the K12 program.

I did the enrollment last week and we are still waiting for our materials to arrive. The effect this delay has had is that we are enjoying an unseasonal, tucked-away hiatus right in September. Usually we start our academics in mid to late August and by this time are just getting up to full steam. This fall, with everyone around us in the midst of school (public school starts early around here) we are in an interlude.

In the morning I am reading Lord of the Rings to Kieron and Paddy. This is wonderful. We are all enjoying it so much. Later, Kieron often makes cookies. This afternoon we went to the lake, spectacularly silent and peaceful, almost all the vacationers gone.

My feelings and thoughts are jumbled about the charter school thing. I don't think I could really articulate what went into the decision process. Bad sign, no? In some ways I think I just wanted the challenge and thought my kids could use that too. The past couple of years have been sort of doldrum years. My kids are growing into an age group where they don't need me for physical survival, and odd to say, homeschooling three wasn't really using up enough energy, not the way we do it. I was filling up the missing spaces by researching about education and so on, but it felt subtly wrong, like my kids and I were in different spaces and getting more different.

Kieron was increasingly drifting, though in a thoroughly amiable and decent way -- he is bright AND very phlegmatic, and my style was not energizing him. He needs something to interact with, and there is not all that much up here for him right at the moment. His situation is very different from that of his older siblings -- he is in a ghetto of two little brothers who are half his cognitive age and maturity level. While the oldest ones had each other, and the babies to amuse them, and their lives were quite full up here in the mountains, he is both lonely AND a sociable type learner. And his mom is tired and a bit bored and couldn't manage to pull out many energizing ideas or opportunities for him. So I was looking for something, SOMETHING to kickstart with, something that didn't cost very much money. The charter was the thing that kept coming up, and I mentioned it to Kevin, and he agreed, and Kieron also liked the idea of the science supplies and the computer ;-). I was also thinking that if we move or if our life changes in some other way this year, I'll need some way to have some continuity. So we're trying it for this year. We'll see.

I'm actually pretty hopeful and happy about the way it looks so far, but I'm sure we'll run into our challenges. Meanwhile, the Fellowship, and the peanut butter cookies, and the quiet lakeside and neighborhood, are giving us some unexpectedly nice September days.