Confirmations

So guess what? I broke the news to two of my neighbors over coffee yesterday, neighbors whose kids attend the same public elementary school that mine do, and they didn't even bat an eye at what I thought would be a controversial bombshell. "Oh I've thought about it, too," said one of them - obviously torn between her frustrations with teachers, assignments, peers and her insecurities about educating them herself. Then just today I had nine-year-old Elijah with me at the library for five-year-old Benji's weekly pre-school class (he was up alot of the night with a stomach ache and then miraculously felt better in the afternoon) and the children's librarian asked if he was homeschooled. "Next year," I told her and she nodded her head knowingly.
"I have a few friends who've been teaching for years in this district," she told me "and they are frustrated by how constrained they've become by state testing. I think more and more parents are considering the homeschool alternative."

Tomorrow I will go with my friend Kris and her four darling children to check out the local homeschool co-op. I am going to try my best to just observe it all casually for now. My life runs so much smoother when I take a step and pray, take a step and pray, instead of charging like a bull into experiences I'm not fully prepared for. All in all, I am encouraged by the small confirmations sprouting up quite unexpectedly in my interactions with fellow community members and in other strange circumstances, such as the grade school talent show I attended last Friday which involved a whole bunch of gyrating and, on a purely entertaining note, a five year-old boy who was a huge Phil Colins fan (or so it said in the program) and sang "I Can't Dance" in its entirety.

Stay tuned for my reaction to Wednesday morning's co-op meeting!

Love to you all!