I've been inspired!

My sister-in-law, Laura, is an inspirational person and after seeing her blog, I decided it was time for me to put together a family blog, myself. I have often thought I should be recording the fun and whacky daily events from our home, but never felt I had the time. If Laura can do it with all she has on her plate, I can do it too. So thanks Laura for motivating me to do this!

I guess I should begin by explaining what I mean by Bringing It Home, the title of this blog. I love to do everything as close to natural as possible. I would not call myself a greenie, although my husband Allen does refer to me as such, but I do like to focus on the basics. Given the time, I would prefer to never purchase store-bought bread and as soon as I find the perfect whole wheat bread recipe I will stop purchasing bread completely! I buy wheat in bulk, grind it at home and use my bread machine with the assistance of my children to churn out a loaf as often as I can. I would rather use basic household items to make anything I could purchase at the store. Such as using baking soda and vinegar as staple cleaners rather than purchasing chemicals in a bottle. I worked hard on putting in a garden this year, but was thwarted by morning sickness just as the plot in the backyard was finally clear (I spent a month clearing honeysuckle and English Ivy). I did, however, get two raspberry bushes, a champagne currant bush, a cherry bush, a blueberry bush and numerous tomato plants in the ground before becoming incapacitated. I do have to thank my dear husband and father-in-law for their planting assistance! Therefore gardening will hopefully be a fun part of this blog as time goes on. So Bringing It Home refers to my desire to have a no-frills, going-back-to-basics lifestyle for my family and I.

To go along with Bringing It Home we have chosen to homeschool our children. Let me introduce you to our children. Connor is our oldest at 5 years old, Lillee is 3 years old, Isabel is 2 years old and baby Chase is due December 30, 2008. When faced with the option of placing our 5 year old into the public school system I began to wonder if it was such a good idea. He had struggled a bit in preschool this past year, we had to pull him out early because of some behavior issues. He was only in preschool 2 hours a day, 4 days a week. I could not imagine how hard it was going to be for him being in class 7 hours a day 5 days a week. He was quite bored in preschool, which lead to his behavior issues. Now my husband and I had uniquely different experiences in the public school setting, but both of us still struggled "doing the program."

Rather than putting Connor through years of public school anguish, we opted to homeschool (there were MANY other reasons, but this was one of the first markers). I know public school works for many families, it was just not the best option for our family. After much prayer we knew this was the way to go for our family and I have to say, it's been one of the best decisions we've ever made! We are all learning, not just Connor. We're stronger as a family and become closer each day!

I hope this gives you an idea of my focus for Bringing It Home. I look forward to sharing our daily antics, our homeschooling succeses and frustrations, recipes and anything related to my passion for food, as well as family news.