Adventures in How the "Other" Side Lives

We have been living the civilian life for about 1 full year now and there are a few  fun things I have learned about how the other side lives....

1) A business trip is just a business trip!  Lots of times military spouses refer to deployment work ups or week long training exercises as "business trips."  In the civilian world they really are called business trips.  To top it off, guess what....phones and usually internet connection are included!!!!

2) People in this alternate world don't usually talk about their life in 2-3 year chunks.  That is completely foreign speak!  Most of the time, they talk about graduating from high school, going to college or trade school or finding that first "real" job.  When I talk about our life it usually revolves around duty stations.  For us it begins at Quantico, then we lived at Lejeune, then Lejeune again, then Benning, then Rochester, then Lejeune again.  Our entire life in 6 nice to manage time periods.  Pretty handy actually!

3) When you start speaking with letters and numbers you get funny looks.  Most of the world does not use acrynoms in every day speak.  "Oh, you are dropping your child off at the CDC while you are packing to do a DITY when you PCS."  Yeah, that is not a normal sentence.  Neither is, "Call me when your husband gets back from CAX, mine is currently TDY at TBS."  Or, "Where is 1/2?  Oh they are on K street down past building 2."  HUH?  (MY DISCLAIMER: I totally just made up those sentences to see how many acronyms I could pack into them for effect.  You usually don't hear them all at the same time.  But in a conversation, you might hear a bunch :)

4) People have lived in the same place FOREVER.  I mean their Mama lives down the road and their grandma lives two doors beyond that.  They rarely, if ever, have had to pay for a baby sitter because family is abundant.  The first home they bought, IS their forever home.  Or, if they have moved it is to chase a better job, or a job closer to family.  When talking about our life more the once I have seen tears in their eyes.  Just the tought of living how you live and doing what you do, even just the logistics of it all is mind blowing.   They have mad respect and secretly, are so thankful it wasn't them.  And, honestly, when you are on the other side and you think back on your military spouse years you will wonder how you did it too!

5)  Your military friends think you are crazy for leaving and the civilians don't quite understand you......yet.  It's not an easy transition.  Breaking into friendship circles is hard.  In the military spouse world friendships happen super fast.  They must.  There is a deployment or a field exercise right around the corner and you are going to find yourself needing to be in two or three places at the same time! You move so often and you need each other quickly.  Family isn't around and your military spouses fill in the gaps.  They become your family.  In the civilian world that world is established.  Trust isn't easily given and you might have to "prove" yourself just a little bit.  But those friendships built slowly and steadily will become just as precious as your military spouse friendships, and taking the time to sit back and enjoy the ride is what I have come to appreciate.  I mean, isn't is all one chaotic adventure anyway?

Our Adventures in Homeschooling

I am going to say up front that I am hesitant to "go here," with a homeschooling blog.  However, I want to share our very real reflections about how our first year has gone, knowing that my audience of friends and family includes several homeschooling Mamas and Papas as well as those in education, both teachers and administrators.  My only disclaimer is that what I write is strictly based on our experiences.......not my best friend's brother's wife's cousin or my cousin's best friend's next door neighbor's sister's niece.  I know there are good and there are bad experiences with both homeschooling AND public school AND christian school.  I've been both a public school teacher and a  homeschool teacher.  Now that is out of the way let's move on ;)

Today we are reflecting.  I keep seeing pictures on Facebook from Kindergarten and Pre-K graduations and I am realizing that we MADE it!  We are in the homestretch.  Our middle child is finished with Pre-K and our oldest has about 3 weeks left of Kindergarten.  And since we are being honest, we all know what that last three weeks of school looks like in ANY setting.......parties, games, relaxed atmosphere, using the fun materials, etc.  We just finished our reading curriculum and are almost done with math.  We are finishing these last three weeks working on handwriting, reading books out loud and reviewing our math concepts.  I also have a couple of assessments that I will give  to see where they are at as far appropriate grade level goes.  I see these as a valuable learning tool for myself to know what we will need to work on in the coming year.

As I look back over the year, I definitely feel we made the right choice in homeschooling this year.  We were able to travel during the school year while we were waiting for our house and the oldest was not in and out of three different school systems with different focuses and different teachers and different kids.  While other parts of their lives were chaos, school was a constant.  We have made the commitment to homeschool again next year.  We will have a first grader and a kindergartner.  We also will be joining a co-op where both kids will take classes in literature, spanish, science, PE and art.  I think they will both enjoy getting out once a week for school and I know that I will enjoy the company of other parents who are in the same boat.  While we have made the choice to homeschool next year, if there comes a time when it isn't working anymore or if one child decides they really want to go to public school we will evaluate and make a decision at that time.  We want to do what is right for each kid and that may be that at one point in time we have a kid in pre-school, a kid in public school and a kid doing school at home.  In fact we selected our new neighborhood based on the fact that the schools are fantastic.  They consistently are rated at the top every year.

As I reflect, I am reminded of all that we accomplished this year.  It far outweighs and overshadows what didn't work.  The oldest has learned to read, and he did it basically in the last 6 weeks.  He is a fantastic memorizer and by 4 years old he had memorized the entire set of BOB books.  Tricky little kid, right?!?!  We started this year working on phonics and, yeah, that didn't go over so well.  He and I would, no kidding, fight our way though the lessons.  It was mentally exhausting.  I just wanted to quit.  We took a break until January and it wasn't much better, but I changed approaches and at least the fighting and tears (on both sides), stopped.  A few weeks ago, we noticed him reading signs in the car and the last few nights he has been reading to his younger brother and sister.  My goal for him this year was to be able to read by the end of Kindergarten and he did :).  It has been really neat to see him grow and mature as a reader.  I want to note, as a bit of encouragement to others, that I would say he was 6.5 before he was ready to read maturity wise.  And just like potty training, when he was ready he was ready.  No amount of pushing got him there.  Just making the resources available and allowing him to go at his own pace is what worked!

We started some geography lessons in the Fall, but it was just too much.  That was when I realized that focusing on Math and Reading, with some science experiments and history museums thrown in the mix, was going to be our best bet for success for the year.  We did a lot of play, both structured and unstructured.  Lots of children's museums and park visits helped to round out our education, along with church and daily Bible lessons.  We made an ABC picture Bible book with all the verses we learned this year which was a really fun project that both kids are proud of!  I think when the kids look back at their first year of homeschool they will remember it as a good one.

So, yes, we made it!!!!  It kind of feels like when a one year old is approaching birthday, and his parents can look back and say, "YAY!!  We survived the first year!!"  I'm proud of us.  I'm proud of the kids for putting up with me learning how to help them learn.  I'm thankful for a husband who has taken the  baby so that we can learn uninterrupted, so many mornings.  I'm thankful for the opportunity to be home and able to homeschool.  It's been an interesting, fun, scary, adventurous, crazy, amazing, terrifying ride full of beautiful chaos.