not all days in our home are bad…like the one i posted about here. in fact those days are very rare. but when they happen, the force of them can be…stifling. all parents know. all teachers know.

i once heard that it takes 7 “good things” (or compliments) to cancel a “bad thing” (or insult) in our minds. bad days are like insults…sometimes we need a really good string of days to make us forget the sting of the one stinky bad day.

i’d love to pull a post together listing and explaining all the reasons we homeschool. if not for any other reason but to serve as a reminder for me. those reasons are the “big picture” that i lose sight of. there are so many GREAT reasons we homeschool, and i need to keep them in mind, or staple them to my forehead when one bad day plans to ruin me.

instead of boring you with our reasons (we have several, and no, none of them include brain-washing our kids), i’ll just say that i feel like the luckiest woman/mom/wife in the world. and i have an incredibly level-headed, even-keeled, encouraging husband.

okay…one quick “simple” thing i love about homeschooling: we get to plan our days exactly the way we want to. i don’t have to drag sleepy, cranky boys out of bed 5 days in a row. we decide if school is canceled. we decide if there is an impromptu field trip (like last week’s last minute decision to go to the Carnegie Natural History Museum) or an “out for lunch” afternoon. we decide on a big, slow breakfast with books read aloud by the fire before getting dressed. what if we decide to make cookies for measuring and counting practice instead of filling in a worksheet? SURE! although i have a schedule of lessons that need to be completed each month and we’re very good at sticking to the schedule, we can still be relaxed about it because of the time it takes us to complete lessons each day (less than 2 hours most days).

i love the relaxed nature of our scheduled chaos.