Johnny Appleseed.

We are home schooling this year. I'm not super nervous about the kids getting covid at school, but rather I didn't want to deal with the hassle of the back and forth of regular school vs. online school should the schools open and close throughout the year. Plus, June faced some challenges with the autism program here, and I've been interested to see if changing the method of her education would be helpful or not.

So we are doing our own thing--not virtual learning or anything to do with the school district. I admit this was a tough decision, one that Dan and I went back and forth on all summer. I say Dan, but really it was me. Every day my answer changed, and he would always reply with "Sounds great; let's just make a decision and STICK TO IT." 

So I would promise to stick to it and then would change my mind. I have researched about home school so much I could write a dissertation, but was nervous about my own ability to carry it out. I would picture myself meeting strangers and having them ask where my kids go to school, and my having to say, "We home school" and I would feel sick saying those words out loud. Because it seemed too weird. The idea of actually filling out paperwork to withdraw my kids from public school made me ill. Then I would do more research and get excited about the idea again. And then I had really-really-no-going-back-now-do-or-die decided to home school and had ordered books and started paperwork and then had a bad day with the kids where I lost my temper and backed out. And then while we were in Florida, I felt so much peace about home schooling that I flipped back AGAIN, and had to fill out all of the paperwork while we were on vacation. It was a little crazy, and Dan was more than supportive of my indecisive antics.

I've learned a lot about myself in the process. My inability to make decisions plagues me and hurts my progression. It's definitely given me a lot to think about and change.

So we started to home school a couple of weeks ago. And the first two days were terrible. I know June's principal fairly well, and I thought about calling him up and saying "Never mind--I'm bringing her in fifteen minutes!" but I didn't.

I had to remind myself that the first day of anything is usually terrible. And also sometimes the second.

And it's been pretty great ever since. Not perfect, not without hitches and not necessarily something I'm committing to for more than this year. But we can do a year.

We studied Johnny Appleseed this past week and went to an apple orchard as a field trip.

And afterward, we bought a fresh apple pie and a shoofly pie from the bakery and came home and enjoyed.

The truth is, only Dan enjoyed the apple pie. No one else likes it. We love lots of apple things, but not pie. So he was the winner of everyone's leftover apple pie. But the shoofly pie was a winner. If you don't know what that is, you need to visit Amish Country and get some Pennsylvania Dutch cooking in you! It's like a pecan pie without the pecans.

Today's Come Follow Me lesson was brought to us by Dan. Yes, this is a spiritual lesson even though it resembles the scary Scarecrow scene from Batman Begins.

You know the game--mask the person, spin the chair and then have them follow your directions to avoid upcoming obstacles.

The end goal was to successfully sit in a chair without falling on the floor.

The moral was--Follow the prophet! He knows the way! Or as my kids used to sing the song when they were too little to know better--Follow the prophet, and he'll go away! Sigh. Parenting is hard.

I don't know why June was wearing one of my snow gloves for the game, but I also don't know why any of my kids do any of the things they do. I'm going to put that in my parenting book I'm writing and I'm sure it will fly off the shelves for being the only honest parenting book ever published.

The End.