Still homeschooling

No, we have not been washed away by a tsunami. We're still here and still chugging along. I'm having a tough time believing that we're at week NINE of this adventure!


I know I haven't been on the ball with regard to our Week in Review - surprisingly, this homeschooling thing takes up a lot of my free time! I had to laugh - the other day, a friend of mine was lamenting on Facebook about the fact that, out of 84 waking hours in her week, she only had nine (9!) hours to herself. Once I stopped laughing, I had to restrain myself from making a snarky comment on her Facebook page. Her children are younger than mine and she's not been at this parent thing all that long. In addition, she works outside the home and so does her husband. I don't want to get into any kind of a pissing match as to who has it harder - stay-at-home-moms or working moms. I've been on both sides of that fence and whoever says the grass is greener on the otherside is fertilizing it with BS. Both are tough gigs.


But her post got me to thinking...how much "me" time to I have during a regular week? And I was surprised at what I came up with: counting bathroom breaks (assuming that The Boy or The Girl doesn't have a question that JUST.CAN'T.WAIT until I'm done in the bathroom...) it looks like I have a whopping two hours and 45 minutes. Here's what my week looks like, in case anyone is wondering where those 165 minutes come from:

Monday: school, teach sign language at church
Tuesday: school, art class (about 60 minutes on my own!), dinner, family time, etc.
Wednesday: school, BMX practice, Awana
Thursday: school, dinner, family time (soon: Bible study)
Friday: Co-Op, Ohana group at church
Saturday: BMX practice, Saturday Night Service at church
Sunday: church, BMX races, Ohana group


Somewhere in there are 15 minutes of bathroom breaks (my only other "me" time) each day which accounts for the remaining 105 minutes of "me" time each week. Huh. No wonder I find myself craving silence and blank walls on Sunday evenings. Interesting.


Thankfully, I have a husband who truly enjoys his children and is quite happy to hang with them if I need a break. And, over the past nine weeks, he's really stepped that up because he knows that the kids and I are together 24/7 otherwise. Which is fine - I love my children and they really are fun to be around. However, we all benefit with a little bit of time on our own.


If and when we get to our next duty station and he deploys again, I am going to really have to ensure that I have a little bit of "me" time carved out each week because I won't have his tangible support to rely upon for that year. Thankfully, the place it looks like we will be heading has wonderful homsechooling support so I don't think I'll have much trouble finding what I need. If anything, we might be overloaded with options!


I'll try to get a Week in Review post up this week. Last week was a little slow because the public school kids were off so we scaled back on our work. Which makes for a BORING post! So I skipped it.




Pau.




- hfs