Park Day

After Wednesday I just kind of gave up on trying to get back to school this week. What was the point - too many other fun things were getting done. By Thursday afternoon we had just about hit our saturation point with a lack of 'schedule' and mom-guidance. The girls had been wanting to go to the park since Wednesday, but one thing led to another until it was Friday morning and my only goal (besides the three loads of laundry) was to get them to the park before it started raining.

Which park to go to was the big discussion of the morning. We are lucky that we have a lot to choose from - each with their own pros and cons. It also means that everyone has a different 'favorite' that they want to go to. I finally had to step in and make the decision that we would go to the park that was on the schedule for our hs group's park day today. Mary, really didn't want to go - she wanted us to go have our own park day. I was thinking that it is the beginning of the school year and a good time to see if she could click with anyone new.

I should have listened to Mary. The playground was packed. Mary, who generally will make friends with anyone at the park was kind of snubbed by the other girls who are always at park day. I was my general anti-social, inept self when it came to the whole small talk area. The one time I went up to talk to an acquaintance - Robbie picked that time to have a big spit-up moment.

The best part of the day was when the girls took their scooters and we all went for a walk around the small pond - as a family group, alone.

I just need to stick with the small group of homeschooling mothers I have come to know from other small group events. Neither Mary nor I do well thrown into a large, chaotic social affair. And, we always have more fun doing what we want to do when we want to do it.

As someone who does try to find the positive/interesting part of everything, I just have to say that being at that particular park today one could believe that homeschooling was a mainstream occurrence. Not only was the local group I belong to taking over the upper, large playground area, older kids were walking along the ponds and trails or playing in the sand volleyball pit. There was also another homeschool group at the other playground/shelter areas actually conducting co-op activities. There had to be at least 60 children of various ages at that park - and I only saw two families that had obviously just brought their toddlers to play and were wondering what the heck was going on.

I'm not surprised, necessarily, because this area is so accepting of homeschooling as just another school option. I never run into anti-homeschooling sentiments from other ps parents. In, fact I am always hearing about what a wonderful option homeschooling is, how great that I can do it, etc. This evening I ended up having a long conversation with Mary's soccer coach - who, among other things, was telling me all about the benefits of homeschooling and how he wished he could do it for his daughters. Homeschooling is huge here - the schools are so overcrowded that many now are on a year-round schedule so that they can fit more kids into the spaces. The public school system should be paying us to not add our offspring to the already overloaded system.

It did end up being a good day. The schools had one of their half-days today, so friends were waiting to play as soon as we came home from the park. And, I did get the laundry done!

Peace,
Amy