Friday, March 27

Standing in "Someday"

About 12 years ago we started hearing it: "It'll all be worth it someday."  The frequency we've gotten it has increased each year as people have watched us struggle with some odd problem or another.

Yesterday the house was recorded, and today became the "someday" I'm sure people meant.

For the first time, we're living in an area where I'm not disinclined to send my kids to public school. They're going to try it out for a month or two.  We might home school again next year -- Mia is being placed back two grades, and the twins one, (because policy is more important than children)-- but I'm taking a break for now.

Same situation as when we tried the charter at the beginning of the year; Anya is not happy about it, Mia and Bree think it will be fun. And for me, kind of devastating.  I've been crying off and on since I enrolled them day before yesterday.  I've had my babies with me all day every day... always.  There's a reason teachers sometimes refer to their students as "my kids."  Because they get them for more waking hours per day than their parents.  That's.... huge. But we've wanted to try for so long.  It's time to give it a real try.

I think it will be a lot better than our last try with the new charter.  We're more familiar with the structure of this school- it's like what Zach and I grew up with.  There's a lawn outside.  A cafeteria.  An established routine for everything.  And a definite end in two months.  Mia, though enrolled as a 4th grader, will be in the class that has both 4th and 5th graders.  I think that will help.  No uniforms.  There's not a sense of urgency and insecurity among the staff and parents. This is a lot easier situation for me to wrap my head around and jump into than Somerset was.

We somehow made it through to someday without any major catastrophes.  The purple van we got when the twins were born is still kicking, though we gave it permission to die long before we had the ability to replace it. Good Purple Vanny. Our house didn't cave in while we owned it. We all have all our limbs.

 If you can get your family to a place where you aren't worried at the end of every month, and do it without going through 12 years of government defined "poverty," then do it that way.  If you can see yourself as something other than a doctor, do it that way. Any other way. I laughed when one of the people in my LDS Doctor Wives club posted "Help! My husband is giving a presentation to a bunch of high school kids about getting a medical degree.  We want to make it really fun and interesting and we need some ideas." All she ended up getting were a bunch of jokes about how to weed out students and convince them not to go into medicine in the first place.

But we're through the toughest part, we can see our trail head.  Hopefully we will finally settle down, in Utah in just a couple more moves. A hard won blessing not everyone can have- raising their family in the state and area they choose.  We'll be all the more appreciative of it after wanting it and working toward it for so long. Meanwhile we're all the more appreciative of having been able to choose the area we live here.



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