If my kiddos went to school, tomorrow I would be sending my son off before eight, to catch the yellow school bus. He would come home about four and hopefully we would chat about his day over milk and cookies or something just as yummy. The girls, they are still too little, Raine won't be old enough for kindergarten until next fall. But they would miss him while he was gone. But we homeschool (or we are some type of not go to schoolers-eclectic? unschoolers? for now, year by year, one never knows what the future holds) so tomorrow we will wake up when rested, eat some oatmeal and have our day all together.
Plans for the week include dealing with the 80 pounds of peaches we picked at an organic orchard and the rest of our garden bounty we need to harvest. There will be more jars of pickles and grated zucchini for the freezer. Since the sun disappears before ten again, we will finish up the astronomy book we started in the spring. Liam wants to make his own geocache, a Lego one and a trackable of him posing as 'Flat Liam' with a memory stick attached that people can take and upload pictures of his 'Flat Liam' image where ever they place him next (inspired by Flat Stanley.) We will play with friends we haven't seen near enough of over the summer and write stories about our summer adventures. Books will be read.
Although there are many reasons we choose to homeschool, at the top of the list, for now, I am grateful we get to really do this life together. I see each extra year of really knowing Liam (and eventually the girls) well, having him be around people who love and cherish him the most in the world for most of his day, as gifts. I love how he knows his sisters so well and how despite their age differences are such good friends. When asked if he would like to go to public school by a truly curious relative, he answered all on his own 'No because he would miss his family too much.' We've never really talked about public school and what it would mean much (we know lots of homeschoolers) but this was really from his heart. (Mine too.) I know this always won't be the way it is, but for now I am happy.