It has occurred to me that this whole relationship we’ve got going on here is extremely one sided.  I mean, there’s me, the blogger and then there’s you, the fan base.  (uh thank you.  uh thank you very much) And this is extremely unfortunate for you.  Because if we were speaking in person, you’d have so much more opportunity to ask ME questions to get to know ME better!  I mean, really.  You’re missing out here.  For instance…. Usually pretty early on in any conversation I have with a new acquaintance, two interesting things about my life unfold.  First, I’m an only child.  Yes, whoa is me!  No siblings to grow up with, to share life’s early experiences with, to grow into adulthood with.  And sadly, and most importantly, no one to tag on Facebook on sibling day!  And secondly, I was home schooled for K-8th grade.  Now, one of those things alone is bad enough and people expect me to be a little peculiar.    But compound them together and people pretty much expect me to act a lot like this guy:

And now, those of you familiar with the movie “Office Space” are suddenly concerned that I may have arsonist tendencies.  But I assure you, I came out of those two harrowing  life-style experiences no worse for the wear!  In fact, most people are shocked to hear that I was both an only child and home schooled.  They always are quite amazed at how social and outgoing and… normal I am.  And you have to believe me, because I’m telling you that in MY blog and you, remember, are the fan base.

But, truth be told, I always wished that I had siblings and I spent my entire 9 years of home school education longing to go to school.  I would sit on the bottom of the steps pretending to ride the bus.   I could just imagine how fun it would be to have a classroom with friends and go to lunch every day and recess… Ok, maybe I am a bit weird.  But when I FINALLY got to go to school in the ninth grade, I LOVED it.  Seriously cherished every waking moment of high school.  (Thanks, Open Door Christian School!)  I fell in love with drama and musicals and fell in love with Zac whom I met in high school.

So, needless to say, I was never ever going to have just one kid (check!) and I was never ever going to home school my multiple children (oops!). Yes, oops, because that’s exactly what I’m doing now.  Granted, it’s only been three days.  But here I am, in an RV no less, home schooling my kids.

When we (and by “we” I mean “I”) got this crazy idea to travel the country for a whole year, the only thing that made me hesitate was the thought of home schooling.  I know they always say that you’re not supposed to live vicariously through your kids but, major mommy confession, I TOTALLY did for the last three years they’ve been in school.  Going back to school shopping, class rosters, open houses, meeting the teacher, first days, first bus rides, back to school pictures…  I reveled in all of it.  And that was only the beginning of the year!  All throughout the year there were fun class parties that they got to attend, new friends they were making, and fun class productions.  They were loving it and I was loving it.

So, this past week has been hard.  All of my friends kids were getting ready to go back.  They were doing all of those fun things mentioned above and my heart hurt a little bit.  Here there kids were getting ready to start off another great school year and my kids were going to be stuck doing school in a bus.  With their mother.  Should I start saving up for their future therapy sessions now?  (“Hi, I’m Caydence”, Hi, Caydence. “I’m here because my mother yelled at me on a bus for a year straight about holding my pencil correctly.”) I am good at many things, but patience, organization, and attention to detail are at the bottom of the list of things Melanie is awesome at.  What was I thinking?

For anyone who is wondering, we are using Alpha and Omega LifePacs for our curriculum.  It fits all of our needs quite nicely for the RV lifestyle AND it just happens to be the same curriculum I had growing up!  So there is a certain level of comfort and familiarity that comes with it from my angle.  And so far (yes, I know we’re only three days in) the kids seem to enjoy it.  I mean, they hate math, but doesn’t everyone?  Amazingly, it hasn’t been as disastrous as I thought it it would be.  Three days and no one even got hurt.  Well, Phoenix fell and smacked his nose on our fire ring, but that wasn’t school related.

So, maybe there is hope!  Hope that I won’t lose my mind!  Hope that the kids actually learn something this year!  Hope that the kids will wake up excited to do school everyday all year long!  Ha, hahahaha.  Right.