My name is Tracy. My husband and I knew we were going to home school our children almost the day we brought our first son home from the hospital. My husband did not fit into the normal public school and hated almost every day of it. I was the perfect public school kid. I was social, played sports, enjoyed clubs and events and was just about an average student academically. I went to college and it was just an extension of my high school years with more freedom.

My boys are 6 and 9. They are truly polar opposites in every way including looks. They learn differently, react to things differently and face different problems. They have a few things in common; they both enjoy online games, playing with friends, cub scouts, soccer and Karate. The youngest one gets upset when the oldest one is allowed to do things he can’t and does not understand why he can’t “hang” with his brother at times. We have our challenges but for the most part they are good boys who enjoy life and who generally care about others.

Ultimately we have been home schooling for 9 years but we “officially” started when my eldest was 4. We were told that we needed to stop teaching him when he was in pre-school because he would not fit into kindergarten and was too advanced. My husband and I did not listen and informed everyone that he would be home schooled.

My family supported our decision to home school totally. We are from the North and the school systems down here were so much different than where we were from. My husband’s parents took a little longer to come around to the idea and my father-in-law has finally stopped mentioning that we are doing wrong by our kids. Our decision to home school came about because of things I heard and read and because of the love we have for our kids to keep them moving forward and to enjoy them, teach them, travel with them, and not be bound by public school narrow minds and schedules that conflict with our life.

We have had our challenges finding groups that we fit into and we are not a “normal” home school family. We allow our kids a bit more than most around us in movies, technology, and video games. We attend a huge Science fiction, fantasy, horror, gaming convention every year that would probably be frowned on by most in our area if they knew.

We met Kati’s family in the spring. Actually my boys met them in January of this past year but because I work during tax season I did not actually meet them until spring. We spent a month in CT over the summer and when we got back we had her family over for swimming a bit and found our families to be eerily similar and the 8 of us have become inseparable. We found in them the comfort we have been looking for in another family, not only for our kids but for my husband and I also.

If you want to pursue my personal blog you will get a feel for who we are, what we do and you will realize very quickly that our lives revolve around our kids and we are never to far away from them. You will also see Kati’s family scattered quite a bit throughout my blog and notice that they are not to far from us normally.

Visit Tracy at http://ourlifeexploration.blogspot.com/