An Answer to Prayer...

God always answers prayer, but sometimes it is not the answer you want. Raymond and I have prayed about whether we should send Jonah to Christian school next year or homeschool him. It all boiled down to whether or not we could able to afford it. Raymond found out what his annual raise would be this past Monday... It is not enough for Christian school, so it means we are officially going to be homeschooling next year. I was disappointed at first but I know that this is what God's will is, at least for now. I love the school that we wanted to send him to. It's small and truly is a great ministry. I'm sad for the things I will have to give up, like my Community Bible Study group, and selfishly, the free time I was looking forward to having once both kids were in school. I won't be able to work for the courts much at all, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes I like working and sometimes I do not.

But there are a lot of pros and things I am excited about. We'd be on our own schedule and be able to take vacations whenever we want without any flack from teachers. Hopefully we'll be able to save up since we won't be paying monthly tuition and be able to visit my family in Chicago next year! Maybe we could afford to go to Disneyland every couple of years or so. Jonah will be able to learn on his own pace. And for what it's worth, almost all of my local friends will be homeschooling too so I will have a lot of support and resources!

I know I will need to have regular time away from my children and you can bet I will make sure I get it, haha! If my friends are homeschooling, we'll do some nights out together and leave the kids at home.

Now I need to figure out exactly what curriculum I want to use. There are hundreds of choices out there and it will be quite the task to figure out what I think we would like! Thank goodness we are starting with kindergarten so it will be relaxed and there will not be a lot of pressure.

But along with this decision we've made, we also made another. We're cutting Jonah's preschool day down to half days starting next month. We're just struggling so much to pay for it and since Jonah doesn't even like school as much as he did because of nap time, it seems silly to send him for the full day when the reasons we originally started that schedule are no longer a concern. I wanted him going the full day because kindergarten at that school is all day so I wanted him to be used to that schedule, as well as get to know the kids who might be his classmates. Now I don't need to worry about it, so cutting back will save us about half of the tuition. I feel absolutely stupid over this whole thing. Raymond and I have even talked about pulling him out completely but for now we want him there. I know Jonah likes it and I've seen positive changes in him since he started preschool. But he's already counting down the school days until he doesn't have to stay for nap time. :S

Thankfully Raymond and I were both homeschooled ourselves so our parents are happy about it. We won't have any issues with family disagreeing with our decision to homeschool. I know a bit about what to expect and I also know from my own experience things I want to do as a homeschooling family and the things I want to avoid.

Prayers would be much appreciated as we take on this adventure!

And please do not let me become a stereotypical frumpy homeschooling mom, LOL! (No offense to any frumpy moms who might be reading ;))