Homeschooling: Day 1

We took a new step (cross that, leap off the Empire State Building) and decided to homeschool the kids while we lived in Hawaii.  I look back on this decision and wonder if I was under some sort of influence.  The people I talked to made it seem so easy, like a wonderful experience that I was going to be privileged to be a part of.  I started thinking I could actually do it.   I filled out the necessary paperwork, ordered the curriculum, bought a planner, white boards and sharpened pencils.  Then we actually had to start......  And it became a reality that I was going to be with my children all day, everyday for YEARS.  And I had to teach them MATH.  

 Day one was all smiles, for an hour or two.  I didn't take pictures of me googling their math problems or them crying over how many spelling words our curriculum had.

Nothing has challenged me more than homeschooling.   I feel like a failure every single day.   I strongly believe that no one in the homeschooling community tells you the truth.  It's hard.   Like super, DUPER hard.  Like cry in your closet hard.  BUT, we have made it through 89 days of school and we are all still alive.  What doesn't kill you right??   

House hunting

From the moment we got orders to Hawaii we were set on living on base.  We loved living on New River and we knew we wanted to do it again.  We didn't even consider living out in town.   I wanted to be on the base for the connivence and housing looked awesome online.  Close to the beach, commissary, Jason's work.  We knew there would be a wait, so we might have to live somewhere temporarily, but we were going to wait.   So on our second morning here we went to our scheduled housing meeting on base to get the official word, how long would the wait be and check out the housing in person.   At our meeting they told us pretty much what we expected to hear, no housing for 2-4 months and when did offer us a house it would probably be on another base which would mean a long drive for Jason.  So we started our hunt for a temporary house.  As soon as we got back to our hotel, I started searching Craig's list.  I came across this house that looked just too good be true.  Nice size, water views, in the town we wanted.  Price was on the high side, but doable with our BAH.  We knew it wouldn't be cheap to live here, no matter what.  I saved it to show to Jason.   I knew he would say no.  But, he said lets go look at it.  So we did.  We LOVED it.  We wanted to say we would take it right away, but we knew we decided to be responsible and talk about it first.   Which was hard, because they say good houses go fast in Hawaii and if you find something you should jump on it right away.  We did the opposite and waited all weekend to talk it over.

Every single day we pinch ourselves that we get to live here.

Just hours before we were going to sign a lease for this house the base housing called us and told us they had a house to offer us.  Totally unexpected and threw us for a loop.  We headed to base to see what house they were going to offer us and on what base.  We knew it wouldn't be the base we wanted, so we figured it would make our decision easy.  But of course it didn't go that way.  They offered us a house on the base we wanted.   We went to check it out, it happened to be open so we were able to sneak in and look around.  It was a great house, but attached to another house and a very cramped feeling outside.  We would have places to ride bikes, but wouldn't have private places to sit outside.  We were close to the beach, but not as close to the water as we would be at the rental.  We kept all that in mind and went to see the rental again.  As soon as we walked in we knew this was home.  God had allowed us to see a base house and make an informed decision.  We didn't have to wonder about what base housing would have been like, we got to see one and weigh all the pros and cons.  You give up something no matter where you live.  We decided that living off base was right for us this time.  Complete opposite of what we were set on in the beginning.  Funny how that works out.  We are working on making this house a home and will post lots of pictures soon.

Day one of paradise

Waking up in paradise comes early.  Like 4 am early.  With no a/c at our "resort" ( I use that term very, very loosely) the windows were open and even if we hadn't woken up early because of jet lag we would have by 5 am due to the birds.  Who knew birds in Hawaii were so loud?  Maybe because there is so many of them?  Maybe because we are used to our windows closed in the summer with our a/c blasting and we don't notice?  Who knows.  I only know that I haven't slept much since we moved here because the birds are so loud and I swear the sun rises earlier and it is brighter.  Not to mention the chickens.  There are chickens everywhere in Hawaii.  And I mean everywhere.  In the Walmart parking lot, in our hotel parking lot, along the highways, in our backyard.  There is a very confused rooster who lives in our backyard who wakes you up at the crack of dawn and continues to crow for hours.  Sometimes he stops, for a bit, just enough for you to fall back to sleep, then he remembers his job and gets back to it, loudly.  Kyle says he has figured out how to shut him up.  He says you have to go look at him in the eye so he knows you are awake then he will shut up.  So a few mornings I have seen a sleepy eyed Kyle walk outside and stare into the backyard.  "Our" rooster also crows in the afternoon and the evening.  He apparently doesn't want us to miss out on only hearing that cock-a-doodle-doo in the wee hours of the morning.  How considerate of him.

 On our first day we also discovered the painful truth of how expensive Hawaii really is.  (And yes Jason was back from a trip to the grocery store by 6:20 am - those roosters don't fool around)  You are looking at $44 worth of groceries.  Ouch.

 Our "resort" was small, but clean and a place to call home as we navigated our new state.  It had gorgeous mountain views and was just steps away from the water.  We got on each others nerves a lot being so packed into a small space and were all grumpy because of lack of sleep, but every problem was a first world problem and we tried to remind ourselves of that daily.

 Kyle was not happy about the idea of taking a picture and it is written all over his face.  We really are such horrible parents, taking our kids down to the beach and making them pose for a picture.  Somehow he made it through this trial and lived to see another day.

Let's start at the very beginning...

I wrote this quickly to get it all down and just to start somewhere.  So excuse my mistakes and lack of interesting topics and dialogue.  :)

On Sunday, June 15th, 2014 my parents drove us to Baltimore MD to get a hotel for us to catch our early morning flight to Hawaii.  Our new home for the next 3 years.  We had been "moving" for almost a month already.  Our moving journey really started May 15th.  Early that morning Jason and I dropped kids off at helpful neighbors houses and we drove 7 hours to Baltimore to drop off my car in hopes that by shipping it a month early, it would be waiting for us in Hawaii and we wouldn't have to rent a car.   We had 2 different babysitters lined up for that weekend, and just the logistics of that alone took me a week to figure out.  We shipped our car and my mom, Josh and Lindsey picked us up in Quantico, VA and drove us back to NC.  My mom took all 3 kids and Leonidas (our dog) back up to PA and I started prepping the house to move.  Due to the holiday weekend our movers started packing on Friday, May 23rd, took a break for the weekend and  finished up on the 27th.  We lived among boxes until they picked it all up on May 29th.  We had our final inspection for base housing on May 30th and said goodbye to the town we have called home for 4 1/2 years.  It wasn't easy and I cried, a lot.

 I loved our house on base.  It was a great place to live and will always hold a special place in my heart.

Everything we owned fit into 11 crates that would be shipped to Hawaii.  Each piece of furniture had to be taken apart in order to fit in crates.  

Trying to figure out what to pack to live with until our shipment of household goods arrived (we didn't know how long it would take and if we would have a house to receive it when it did arrive) so packing was a challenge.  This is what I ended up with.  12 pieces.  Amazing how much stuff we need, yet how much we can live without. 

 Saying goodbye to our family dog, Leonidas, was just as hard as I thought it would be.  He was family and I couldn't explain why we had to leave him.  The suitcases made him anxious and I know he expected us to take him in the car like we always do when he  sees the suitcases piled up.He is doing well and loves his PA family, but we really miss him.

Especially Ryleigh, Leonidas was her sleeping buddy and bedtime here has been hard without him.

Our first flight on June 15th was from BWI to Denver.  Our flight was at 7:30 am.  We were up and moving by 4 am and caught the shuttle to BWI just before 5 am.  When we finally checked our luggage, it was a huge sigh of relief.  ALL of our stuff was on it's way to Hawaii now.  No more figuring out what to take and if it would fit.  We were on the finally on the last leg of this long moving process.

The kids did great on the flights.  Our almost 4 hour flight from Baltimore to Denver didn't seem too long.  The kids read and slept.  We had a layover in Denver, but only enough time to eat and take bathroom breaks.

After a LONG 7 hour flight from Denver to Honolulu, we arrived home.  Or what was now home, which has been lots of places for this family.  It didn't seem like home and we were cranky, hungry and tired.  It was 2:30 in the afternoon local time, but for us it was 8:30 and we were starting to drag.  Marine Corps friends that were already stationed in HI met us at the airport and that was a lifesaver.  They directed us to our rental car (our car did not make it despite our shipping it a month in advance), helped us find our way to food and to our hotel.   By the time we made it to bed we had been up for 22 hours.   It was a long Monday.

Back to blogging... I hope

We made a big move this year with lots of changes for our family.  Our life is now almost completely different then it was just 3 months ago.  We moved 4,859 miles away from the good ole' south to a tropical island.  Jason is now with a squadron (air side) in the Marine Corps after almost 18 years working on the ground side.  He is learning a whole new job.  We are in a different time zone, which means we don't get to talk to family much and we like talking to family.  Helps us feel not so far away.  So not only are we REALLY far away, we feel far away.  We have a dog, but we couldn't bring him.  It wasn't easy leaving a family member behind, even though he is in good hands and happy with family.  Our kids have always gone to public school and we have liked and thrived in this environment.  We are about to embark on homeschooling all three kids (this scares me almost to the point of feeling crazy).   We are used to a yard, sidewalks and space.  Here we use the beach for a yard and we can hear our neighbors conversations we are so close.  We are embracing the change, but change is hard.  The kids miss their friends, I miss my friends.   Yes, we live in a tropical paradise and I get to look at the ocean every single day.  I am blessed by this.  But guess what?  My kids still fight in paradise!  So I might be looking at the water as they fight, but I still happens.  We still have bills to pay (and boy are they higher in paradise) and meals to cook and laundry to do.   Life is life, not matter where you live.

I'm going to try and pick up blogging again.  Since I don't get to talk to family much and my family is a large one at that, this might be the easiest way to keep them up to date on what is going on without clogging up everyones Facebook news feed.  If they want to read they can, if they don't they don't have to.  Plus, I want to remember these next 3 years here and document our adventures.  We've been given a chance of a lifetime to live here and embrace the culture, so here's hoping I can stick with this blog and record the next 3 years.

Back to Blogging.....maybe

The kids at Christmas....

I have missed not having this place to write down what is going on in our life. A place to remember the funny things the kids said or did and just a general place to document our life. I am going to try again. Might not work, but hey I can always try. :)

The kids have gotten so big, their conversations even more interesting to listen to, their problems sometimes harder to solve. I see glimpses of a teenager in Aiden, almost 10, and it scares me. All three are in school now and some days it breaks my heart to take them to school and drop them off. I want to spend all my time with them, yet if I am honest, I wonder if I would feel that way if I did spend ALL my time with them! :) Since my last post we made it through a horrible deployment of Jason being in Afghanistan. Thank God that is over. Many lives were lost in our battalion and once again we were reminded how freedom is not free. That deployment changed us, changed every one that went through it.

So we will see if this lasts.... :) Or if it is another 2 years before I decided to write again......

Maybe I should stop kidding myself

I think about updating the blog. I talk about updating the blog, I just never actually update the blog. With everyone on facebook these days, it seems like a waste of time since everyone sees our pictures on there. But I miss a place to write down what is going on in our life. A place to record the funny things that happen in this household and a journal of sorts of our lives. With Jason once again away, maybe the thinking and talking about updating will be replaced with an actual update. We shall see. :) Nobody hold your breath, or perhaps no one even bothers to check anymore??

The Christmas Cards that never came to be.....

I had good intentions of getting Christmas cards out this year. Even took the photos weeks in advance. I actually "made" the cards on Shutterfly, but couldn't make up my mind on which ones I wanted and couldn't decide on the photos. We didn't really get a good family one, but got some great ones of the kids. Jason didn't want to send one of just the kids, I didn't want to do what we did last year and have separate pictures......so we didn't make a decision. Then on December 12th I got sick. And stayed very sick until just a few days before Christmas. When you are laying on the sofa, sick as a dog, with 3 kids running around doing whatever they please, your husband is gone for 10 days and you can't see the floor from the mess, Christmas cards kind of get knocked off the list. :) Here are some of the ones of the kids we were considering. I think this first one shows their personalities so well. Kyle - happy go lucky, Ryleigh - goof ball, always hamming it up, Aiden - serious first born. :) I love this one too!

And this one!

Aiden is looking a little goofy here....

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!! Thanks to everyone who did send us a card, sorry we didn't respond with one! Maybe my New Years Resolution will be to update my blog regularly. :)

Some pictures!!! Wahoo!!

I have been uploading these pictures longer than I care to admit. :) So I am not even going to try and upload more....I am just going to publish these....

Aiden at one of his football games this fall. This was his first year playing football and it was flag. He was very disappointed that it wasn't tackle, but that does not start until next year. He seemed to have fun, especially when they would win, which was only about half of the time..... I enjoyed watching him play. I was not too fond of the 3 practices a week and early morning Saturday games. But the future does not look much better, so I just better suck it up.

Jason and I at the ball. Red eyes and all. You think I am actually going to take the time and edit it??? Our ball was over 2 hours away this year so we had to stay the night. With no family around I didn't think we were going to be able to go. Not too easy to find someone willing to watch 3 kids for 24 hours. But, we have been blessed with AWESOME neighbors/friends and between a few families they took them for us and we got to have a 24 hour date.

Halloween. Again with our awesome neighbors. Here we are craving pumpkins in the street. Fun times. :)

Jason did one of a deer with antlers. Kyle thought he should wear them.
Ryleigh hanging out on her bike. She has since graduated to a big girl bike and as I type this I realize I have no pictures of her riding it.....I am so falling behind.
Pizza night with friends. There are lots of boys in our neighborhood for our boys to play with!
Ryleigh and Kyle playing around at one of Aiden's football games.

Unfortunately this did not really keep them contained....

See? They escaped and now are trying to throw chains over the fence to escape even further. And it looks like Kyle is lassoing a chain. Nice. Luckily it didn't hit posing Ryleigh.

More red neck training.
The kids at a football game.

This was short and sweet. But now on to help Aiden do a research paper. Yes, I said a research paper in 2nd grade. We get to do it on poster board so that makes it more elementary.