my unusual life

I have such an unusual life.

This weekend my kids went to my stepdaughter's mother's place in the country (my husband's ex's) and we missed them today so we went for a country drive to visit them. They were a bit shocked, they were very worried we had come to pick them up early! Nope, we just missed them and wanted to give them a hug and say hello. They were relieved. We had a cup of tea and drove home.

My husband is a spiritual teacher, thats pretty unusual and not always a very comfortable thing to tell people, so I thought I would get it out here. He is very passionate about it, and he works from home. We live on the riverside in a city, and its beautiful. We rent, we dont own much at all. Our kids are very lucky. But, it is unusual and we are a bit odd for our neighbours.

Homeschooling has meant I dont have to worry about what the local mothers at the public school think when I forget to wear any shoes to pick up the kids up from school. Its a snobby, rich suburb, and i am pretty down to earth. I do feel, even though the homeschooling community can be quite conservative, and I am not, that I can be myself and not get wierd vibes. I feel more accepted than I did by the local school mums. I am so glad to be out of that environment, and that my kids are out of that environment.

We have been homeschooling for 18 months. I found the Well Trained Mind about a year ago and thats my rock, my spine, the thing I lean on to stop me completely drowning in the sea of information and beliefs about homeschooling that exists out there. In the first months I didnt know there was anything but natural learners out there because they are very loud on the net.

Its funny though, because I dont look like a classical homeschooler. I didnt realise that till the other day when I met a fellow homeschooler in a bookshop and they said they thought I was a natural learner, when I asked them about Latin. I fit that image more, I think. I am a bit of a hippy, a nature spirit, health nut, I wear colourful clothes- probably more your natural learner image, just to stereotype them all! However, thats not my inclination at all. I am not sure why, its just not! I think I myself had a fairly classical education (I did Latin for 2 years, went to a private Christian girl's school) and I come from an academic family, perhaps thats why.

Back to my unusual life. My husband runs spiritual groups from upstairs most evenings and some mornings. He teaches people how to be happy. The teaching is similar to Eckart Tolle's The Power of Now. Its good stuff, but hard to explain to people! Just over a year ago I quit my part time job, and stopped doing naturoapthy, to be with the kids full time, homeschooling. I just love it, and my husband loves having them home too, we feel so blessed.

We dont have a lot of the stresses other people have in their lives. We both love doing what we do, we have enough money, we walk along the river every day, we have dolphins out the front of our house, and we have plenty of free time to just hang out together. Unusual in this day and age.

Well, I am going to try and do this every day or so, and get into this blogging. I havnt worked out how to download pictures yet. I downloaded the program Hello but havnt worked the rest out yet.