Richards New Adventure

      We are starting out on a new and scary journey.  It has been long coming (3 years of two boys begging and 1 mamma fearing the change), but I have finally given into the fear of failure and have started the crazy and exciting life of being a home schooling family.  Before Christmas, we started looking into Dylan starting home schooling and began gathering information to make it happen.  Dylan is a very smart kid with a personality that is a mix of emotions, laughter, craziness, and love.  He has a big heart and wears his emotions on his sleeve.  In the past few years of his schooling experience, he is our one that swallowed a chain necklace (we were already on speed dial from the nurse for various other strange accidents), ate a worm on the playground, pretended to "poop" out a pencil resulting in being pulled from class and getting a talking to where he came home thinking he was going to go to jail for sexual harassment, claiming he could "blow' up the bus (imagine cartoon character here with evil little laugh) with a smoke toy a girl brought onto the bus, and his list of misunderstandings due to his creative side could go on and on!  Dylan has always kept us on our toes, and he honestly views the world through a different lens than I do.  He makes me see life differently, and I am always in awe over his way.  In the past few years though, we have seen his creative side being squashed and his sense of self worth getting worse.  School setting has been hard for him in the sense of just trying to be like other kids.  Common Core has really made things harder for him too and therefore we just felt like it was finally time to see what this boy could do with a curriculum that was tailored more to him.  At the same time, this year for Ethan has been a year of tears and anger.  He has had a hard time with his current teacher and for some reason the two of them just don't get along resulting in Ethan feeling like he is always bad and in trouble.  We really wanted him to finish up the year and "graduate" with the kids he has been with since kindergarten but as the time came closer and closer to school starting again we saw how much anxiety he had over school and therefore pulled him for home schooling too.  

      I honestly don't know how long this journey will go....it may just be this year or it may continue for them until high school but either way, I will be trying to keep track of this journey on here.   I understand many of you may see us as crazy and making a huge mistake but sometimes the best things come from the mistakes in life we make and we will never know if it is a mistake or a blessing until we give it a try.  So here goes nothing as we venture into the unknown world of home schooling!  Oh and please if you have encouraging words I would love to hear them, doubts and negativity though you are welcome to keep to yourself!  I have enough doubts and fear of my own that I am going to screw up my kids that I really don't need to know you think I will too!  Any negative thoughts you have had, I have already thought them and I am sure I have mulled over all the what if's more than I should have!  I am ready to put the fear in God's hands and just take this leap of faith.  Thanks again for joining us and seeing what amazing kids we have!