Finding -- and Forming -- Our Group

Remember when you were in high school and you had a Group?  Jocks, Smart Kids, Popular Kids.  This may come as a shock to many of you, but my Group was the Band Geeks.

I absolutely loved being in a Group.  I loved walking into a roomful of people and knowing not just each person's name, but really knowing them.  More than that, I loved being known.  I loved having a shared history to laugh over - I graduated 15 years ago, but I can still laugh over the same stories with those same grownup Band Geeks even now ("Remember that time the student teacher we couldn't stand fell off the podium at the football game?").  

After high school, Groups don't form nearly as easily or as organically, but I think deep down, we all still want to belong to something.  I believe we were created to live in community, not isolation.  Including homeschoolers.  My greatest fear about homeschooling has nothing to do with whether I can educate my kids (but first grade math isn't as easy as it used to be, yo) but whether we can find our Group.

Funny thing about finding a Group in a post-high school reality - there's no signup sheet in the guidance counselor's office.  Instead, you have to drag yourself out of the house after the kids go to bed to go to Homeschool Moms' Nights Out with groups of strangers.  You try out co-ops during which your daughter stands up and announces to the class that she's "bored with this school" and homeschool classes that meet on ranches, in which everyone can garden but no one can read.  You have to go to "meet-ups" at playgrounds, trampoline parks, and dreaded bouncy house places (that make you want to give up parenting altogether) and make small talk with women who talk about natural remedies and homemade deodorant (and who wear it to the bouncy house place, because that's clearly a good idea...).

It's a painful process, this finding your People.  And it turns out, sometimes you just have to make your own Group.

Trouble is, no matter what I may have accomplished in my life, I guess I'm still sort of an insecure middle schooler somewhere inside.  What if I start a group and nobody wants to join???   But when the alternative is that my kids and I see no one but each other until public school gets out each day, suddenly stepping out of my comfort zone and risking a little bit of rejection seems like a small price to pay.

One of my favorite things about my God is that He makes sure that a little bit of obedience -- even imperfect, uncertain, dragging-your-feet obedience -- goes a long way.  A few conversations and  a few emails later, and I seem to have started the Group for moms and their young homeschooled kids that I wasn't able to find.  A group that's filled with awesome families who have the same need for homeschool community that mine does.  It's in its very early stages, but yesterday, I watched a dozen dirty, sweaty homeschool kids climbing a giant rope spiderweb at an Austin park and I could already tell that it's going to be awesome.

And as far as I could tell, everyone was wearing store-bought deodorant.  And all God's children said Amen. 

Our Space

I secretly want to be that cool, hippie homeschool mom who wears long, flowy skirts and has long flowy hair, and teaches her kids about (long, flowy) bugs while they sit in a glorious field of wildflowers.

And then my real self kicks in and reminds me that I'm actually a City Girl with some obvious nerd OCD tendencies and that sort of fly-by-the-hem-of-your-long-flowy-skirt attitude just isn't going to work out.  So instead, we now have a "Homeschool Room" upstairs.  The fact of the matter is, the kids and I just seem to work better with designated space and obsessive organization.

We worked on it all week, and it's just about done.  I had some awesome help from my sweet husband...

...and my sweet little boy...

...and well, I think those are Grace's legs in the background, she was probably dancing, not assembling, but as long as she wasn't spreading loose screws all over the house and calling them a "garden," that qualifies as "help" in our family.

So one coat of green paint and one trip to IKEA later, and we're just about done!  I wish I could show you some sort of panoramic view, but have you ever tried to take a picture of an entire room?  It's impossible, so they're sort of piecemeal.

The room is vaguely multi-purpose.  For example, if you stay overnight with us, we'll blow up a not-so-comfortable air mattress for you to sleep on in this room (never set up a permanent guest room in your home; it gives would-be visitors the impression that staying for extended periods is not an inconvenience...).  And if you come over and bring your kids, and your kids and my kids are annoying me us all, we'll send them up to this room to watch a movie.  So, I opted for a table that folds up easily and can be stuck in a closet.

Apparently, A Thing that Homeschoolers Do is put each subject for the day in drawers so their kids work their way down the drawers over the course of the day.  I liked the idea, because I think it'll help the kids (and me...) if we can see how much work is to be done before we, as Micah puts it, "do something exciting."  Thus, the IKEA systems with cute green tubs, one set for each kid:

In an unprecedented show of self-control and frugality, I resisted the urge to buy an expensive, attractive shelving system and am temporarily using this old, ugly, plastic shelf I stole out of our garage.  I like to complain about it, so Seth feels like I'm sacrificing for the Greater Good here, but it's actually sort of awesome because it's deep...and wide.  Just like The Fountain.

But really, the best part of the room is this -- a door...

...that goes out to the balcony (otherwise known as the "auxiliary homeschool space"):

Outside the room is this terribly awkward space by the stairwell that I've been trying to find a use for.  It's now officially The Reading Nook and one day will have a small love seat or other such attractive furniture.  For now, it has these tacky bean bags the kids picked out that would quite honestly fit in better in a House of Ill Repute.  Yes, they really are fuzzy and if you come to my house with a child who needs supervision while playing upstairs, I will make you sit in them:

And there you have it -- the room that we'll be learning in each day until we "do something exciting" and head out to the field of wildflowers!