just another morning here

That word, flux, always makes me think of the flux capacitor in Back to the Future (and then, more recently, in the lyrics of ‘Year 3000′ by Busted, but the less said about the fact that I know that, the better ).

Anyway. Lots of things seem to have been up in the air recently and some of them still are, which is leading to a general sense of … erm … unsettledness? I thought I had everything sorted for September but things haven’t quite worked out as planned!

One of the potential changes is that we are seriously considering home educating Josiah again. Since the summer, and over the holidays, he’s been talking about being home educated again, which really wasn’t in my plan at all. My idea was to throw myself into work a couple of days, have Robyn a couple of days, and get involved at school, which I have been doing to a certain extent – I’ve been there just hearing readers etc. for at least one afternoon a week over the past month, but anyway. We don’t think there is any particular problem at school, simply that he knows home education is an option for him. Since school started again in September he’s been more insistent, so we’ve been thinking hard ourselves, and in discussion with the school as well.

Both Anna and Abbie are really happy and enjoying school, they wouldn’t dream of leaving. Josiah seems okay as well, and probably could stay at school and be absolutely fine there if that’s what we wanted him to do, but at the same time we see so many benefits of home education for him. When we first sent the children to school we were hesitant about Joe, so it’s not really a surprise to find ourselves here. We thought we’d need all our time to be invested in the businesses but as it’s turned out, it should be perfectly possible to have time to home ed as well as everything else.

We had hoped that the school might consider a flexi-time arrangement, which we first started investigating back in the summer term, but unfortunately it seems that won’t be an option, so we’re left to choose between the two full time options – a decision which we’ll be making by half term.

Emma and Robyn are still staying with us, which has been absolutely fine generally, in fact great, most of the time! Emma’s had lots of interviews but until she gets a job I don’t know exactly when I’ll be having Robyn so that’s another thing up in the air for now.

And work is the other thing generally causing stress, as per usual I suppose. Nothing new there!

Meanwhile life goes on, and today was the first day I’ve worn boots this side of the summer; guess that means Autumn is well and truly here

Just putting this link here completely for my benefit, although there may be people out there who might be interested … found on one of the blogs that I read in my (ahem) spare time … an article explaining how the emergent church is similar to a home school group.

I can really identify with this article, actually – for us the journey into home education was synonymous with much of our church-exploration-thinking, so it was nice to hear someone put it into words.

Not sure quite where it leaves us now, but that’s another story!

As I write, I am at the office catching up on some admin, and Steve’s at work too. The children, meanwhile, are having a taster day at our local primary school. Sorry to shock anyone who maybe hasn’t seen the odd comment that I’ve left on other people’s blogs, or hasn’t heard about it any other way, but I thought I ought to come clean sooner or later.

There are a number of reasons why we are considering the option of school to this extent at this point in time, and anyone who’s been a regular reader here will know that it has occasionally been on the cards over the past year, so it shouldn’t be a complete surprise. We have approached it fairly openly, knowing that there are advantages and disadvantages to both options for all of us.

Josiah is just staying for the morning, so I only have an hour or so left. And Abbie’s year is almost full so we weren’t sure if she would actually be able to have a place in any case, apparently they are holding it for us until first thing tomorrow morning. So tonight will be decision time.

Can someone say anything that will make us more proud of our children?
Can anyone tell us that they can do something better than we know already?
And does someone else’s praise mean more to them than ours?

Eating my words? Maybe. To read the music examiner’s comments just made me wonder why I would set any store by it as I knew Anna could play well at that level, I know how hard she’s practised, and I would have been proud of her efforts even if the comments had been naff. She was proud of herself for having done it but I think in some ways disappointed not to have been able to pass something – does that sound stupid? It was supposed to be positive not to be able to fail, but after all the work, to not really have a benchmark, just a few encouraging comments, was a bit of a let down. Somehow a mark out of 150 would have been better!

Same with Joe’s parents’ evening, really – nothing they said was news to us, so it was a bit of a waste of time. Nice that they’re willing to give time to discussing how the children are doing, but really, does anyone *really* need to be told how their own pre-schooler is developing? Although Josiah’s reaction to the news that he can borrow books from Start Right was amazing, he let out a ‘wow’ gasp of excitement which was a lovely reaction to witness.

Perhaps I’ve just grown out of proud mummy moments? Although sometimes praise/constructive criticism coming from others means a lot to me. Disillusioned with the world’s view of success? Maybe – I don’t know. Ah well, dinner was nice

And on to tomorrow, in which we should finally reclaim a working dishwasher, now there’s something to get excited about.