Thank you to those who responded to my last post.  It was kind of you to respond to someone who, in my opinion, sounded a little depressing.  Seriously.  After looking over what I wrote I chuckled to myself that since none of you really know me then you probably got a different impression of me and of our home than what is is really like.  I was down that day.  We all have those days.  And I am lonely for homeschool friends.  That was all true.  We are getting ready to move (again) and that is looming over my head.  The last two years have been rough...a difficult pregnancy and c-section in '06 and my husband gone with the Army to Afghanistan this last year.  But over all, we are doing well.  I look at five healthy kids and a husband who returned to me from a dangerous region and I know God has taken care of us.

Homeschool is such an intregal part of our lives and I just love reading all your blogs about curriculum, daily schedules, struggles, triumphs and just plain chatter.  I'm trying to get things together for this next year and yet I know it will be disrupted again by a move.  Sometimes I long for normal - predictable - steady - stable.  But those concepts loom out there in front of me ... always out of reach.  Like my husband said to me yesterday, what is normal?  Well, for us normal is moving every couple of years.  It is having a baby every couple of years.  Normal is being defeated in the diet and exercise battle and hating the scale every morning.  Normal is looking in the eyes of five happy and onery children and loving motherhood.  Normal is a husband who has given us a lot of unpredictability in our home and surroundings, but so much stability inside whatever four walls we occupy.

Ok - so I look very forward to meeting and talking with more of you.  I am truly thankful for the place I can go and be totally honest about what is going on in our home and in my heart.

"Integrity is telling myself the truth.  Honesty is telling the truth to other people." (Spencer Johnson)

Posted by Panshrmu

it is so easy to think we aren't normal.....and I never was in the "world" sense. But your post was great....normal for every family is different. You have been through alot it seems, but your outlook is what makes you!
Deana

Posted by raisingknights

I just started blogging also. Normal is certainly relative. Sometimes, it's easy to feel not-so-normal when our lives are different from what we perceive to be the status quo. We do share a few similarities. I have four boys, homeschooled since the beginning, and my husband is on orders with the Army Reserves for the second time in 3 1/2 years. Fortunately, he has not left the states (but is 8 hours away) and will be finished with his year in a few weeks. I can't even imagine how much more difficult it would be to know he was in a dangerous situation or to have to move so frequently. We are also looking at a move when he returns along with a new job. Oh, and I was born in '72.
Hope to read more from you.
Christy

Edited by raisingknights on Aug. 12, 2007 at 12:04 AM