Homeschooling has been amazing for our family. This year just reinforced how thankful I am that we have chosen this route. I really don’t know what we would’ve done this year if we had been forced to adhere to a public school setting. Life has just been one curve ball after another for us in 2023, and I’m hoping we find balance again in 2024 because we seriously need a break!
My favorite part about homeschooling is hands-down the flexibility. Taking a play date, a sick day, a mental health day, or even just playing hooky is easy. Scheduling our lives around what we want to do and not what holidays are given to us is amazing. Last year, we decided to move to a year-round schooling schedule, because we knew it would work better for us. We have been doing a Schooling/Unschooling system that came in handy with everything life threw at us.
February
In February, I decided that I wanted to return to blogging. I used to blog regularly and loved it, but when I had kids, between all the hormones, the PPD, separating from the military and back into civilian life, fertility issues, and finally having a second child, I closed shop and walked away from my beloved blogs. Now that my kids are older and life (and my mental health) is stable enough, I wanted to return to that world.
So I started setting up my blogs and making a plan, as this time I was going to do it “right” and monetize them. The plan was always to make just enough money to fund themselves, while also bringing in a little extra. I figured that if my blogs could give me a $300-a-month paycheck that could go toward paying down debt faster, that would be more than enough.
In the latter half of February, we lost our beloved housecat, Aeris. She would’ve been 12 years old this year. She was acting odd for two days and then in three hours, she went from odd to critical and we got the kids out of bed and made the midnight trip to the emergency vet.
She was struggling to breathe without the oxygen kennel and was rather fatigued. X-rays showed poor results. We tried to get her through the night, hoping it was just a severe respiratory infection, and she was showing signs of improvement until around 0500 when all the improvements disappeared and she was right back where she began. When the vet clinic opened up in the morning, we transferred her over there.
The Veterinarian at that clinic was much more experienced and upon looking at our x-rays, told us what we already suspected. Yes, she had a severe respiratory infection, and he could treat it, but the larger concern was the multiple tumors scattered across her lungs. We made the heartbreaking decision to put her down.
March
Throughout our grieving process in March, it quickly became apparent that we couldn’t survive without felines in our home. I knew that cats made great emotional support animals, but I didn’t realize how much I had come to depend on those purrs. I had nine panic attacks throughout March, despite only having two total in the four years prior. Add to that the attitude and tantrums the kids were experiencing while working through their grief and the fact that our dog was showing obvious signs of depression, I started searching for kittens
April & May
April looked like it was going to be normal for us. I found the cutest pair of kittens that we had to wait for them to work through their foster to be old enough to bring home, our moods were stabilizing, and we were finally getting back on the homeschool train after 7 weeks off.
Our new babies, Ruby and Nova came home on May 12th and we were finally cured of our felinelessness. A pair of kittens is so much nicer than just one, but it’s also a lot more exhausting. We were back in the homeschooling cycle but were admittedly keeping it light. We are fortunate that Texas doesn’t have vast requirements, so we were able to stick to just the base required subjects and take it easy, knowing we’d have the rest of the year to catch up. And Fate just laughed and laughed…
June & July
At the end of June, my mother-in-law was rushed to the hospital. She’d been fighting cancer for nearly a year, and while there had been some improvements, she took a sudden turn for the worse. We rushed to drive the six hours to Corpus Christi to be with her, not knowing what would happen and in the process, rushed our packing. We never expected to be there longer than 48 hours, but when dicey conditions kept us there longer, I woke up around day six wishing I had brought along our curriculum to work on our schooling.
Unfortunately, she passed away on June 30th. The grief of a beloved pet is hard. The grief of a family member is even worse. They say that the worst feeling is burying your child, but I think having to bury a parent is up there too. As you can imagine, July was a wash of anything productive as we kept ourselves together.
August, September, & October
The “back to school” season found us dealing with various stressors. For the most part, surrounding my husband’s job. Bad management, safety concerns, and insane schedule changes (seriously, he’s had like five different schedules this year alone!), left us seeing how badly he needed to move on. He’s spent this time job hunting, trying to find something more stable.
I also, finally, received my official ADHD diagnosis. I’ve known I had ADHD since I was eight years old, however, mental illnesses “don’t exist” in my family, so of course I was never tested for it. Even now, I’m sure I could show my mother the diagnosis on my medical records and she’d deny it. Trying to adjust to new medications while also keeping the status quo and getting back into working on setting my blogs up has been fun.
November
We were finally able to get back on track with life. I finally was able to get back to my blogging and spent most of the month getting them ready to launch. We also were able to jump back into our homeschool. We spent most of the month doing reviews and very little new material, but at least get got back into our routine.
The flexibility has been the only thing keeping us going.
Seeing all of that, I’m sure you can understand the struggle. Yes, some of the worst of what we needed to go through happened during public school’s summer vacation period, but all the stress and grief would’ve probably led to my eldest being held back or stuck in summer school to try to make up for it. I don’t know how they handle things at the elementary level when you are far behind.
Now, I won’t deny, that we are behind this year. Last year wasn’t as cruel as this year, but it wasn’t kind either. Add to that the fact that my eldest is a struggling reader, and we were already about half a grade behind, to begin with. After this nightmare of a year, we are at least a full grade behind. It’s not a huge deal for my youngest, since she is still in preschool levels, but my eldest should be doing better.
Despite that, I’m not worried. That is the brilliance of homeschooling! You get to work at your child’s pace. I know that the struggles will click soon and we will be back on track in no time. In the meantime, we’re transitioning off our four-day school week onto a six-day week, with the sixth day being much shorter and for reading only. There is always time to catch up.
The flexibility has been what saved us. We were able to move and switch things up as needed to accommodate our lives, and while we are technically “behind” in many areas, we are also ahead in others. Being able to focus on my kids this year and really look at what they needed instead of what a school district thought they needed has been invaluable to me. When you think about it, you only get 18 years, at best, with your children. I had decided to be a homemaker so that I could have as much of that time as I possibly could and homeschooling just lets me have even more time. Being able to take a break to focus on their health, both physical and mental, as well as helping with their emotional growth is well worth any of the hardship that might come from doing things yourself. Homeschooling is truly a blessing.
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