It's been too long.

When I first started this blog I decided that I would do my best to write about the positive things in my life. I didn't figure anyone one wanted to hear me bitch and I thought it might force me to see things in a brighter light. I did pretty well for awhile and actually went thought my day looking for things to blog about. Then we went to New Hampshire, the girls and I were busy so I didn't write much. When we got home we ran into some major drama with the person who was taking care of our house, then came the annual visit from the in-law and then on to the holidays. I lost all ability to see anything positive. Winter is hard on me. I miss green grass and blooming flowers. I miss being able to go outside and not having to get bundled up only to still freeze my butt off. I miss the sunshine. This winter was especially snowy and of course our plow didn't survive the amount of work it had thrust upon it. We had someone who was going to change the plow from one truck to another for us. He was going to do it for the price he could scrape the old truck for. Well he scrapped the truck and never did the work. Easy 300 bucks for him and we were out both the money and the completed work.

I really hoped the once spring got here I would be able to crawl out of the dark hole I felt like I was in. I think I am about half way there.This spring has been rainy and not very warm but the flowers are blooming and I have the garden planted. So there is hope.

I am finding that raising a 2 and 3 year old is H.A.R.D. Taking care of two babies was easy peasey compared to dealing with a toddler and a preschooler. I love them with every once of my being but it is hard work to raise kids. Every where you turn is someone who thinks you should do this or that. If you discipline one way you are a pushover, if you do it the other way it's too harsh. If you let your kids eat McDonald's, you are a terrible mother but when you try to feed them healthy food you get lost in all the confusion of artificial colors and additives and, and, and ,and. Everything causes something. It certainly makes you feel like you can't win. It's very easy to feel incredibly insecure when raising children. I'm not even going to go into the stress I feel over vaccinations.

Pie is getting close to school age which lead to another extremely stressful situation for me. Chris and I have talked seriously about teaching our girls at home. I would love to be able to do this and have spend hours and hours researching and reading about other home school families. Unfortunately we have zero support in our decision.  That doesn't mean we aren't still pursuing the idea but I have to admit that it very depressing to not be encouraged. Certainly adds to the insecurities I already have.

Part of the reason that we'd like to teach our kid at home is the situation with our local school. The school in our town is going to close at some point in the near future, probably before our girls would be old enough to be enrolled. They would then be bussed more that 15 miles away to another town to attend their school. I am not comfortable with the idea of my girls on a school bus at all let alone for such a long time everyday. Both the school in town and the proposed school don't show very high test scores. Public schools in Maine have shown that high school graduates are not prepared for entry level college classes. I just don't feel like we should settle for mediocre when we could at least try for something better. Education is changing from the standard classrooms that Chris and I sat in as children. Higher education is online more and more. I don't see why it would be such a horrible idea to take a different approach with early education too.