We've been busy again, and haven't had chance to get some thoughts down.
We have had a wonderfully fabulous end to WWOOFing with 2 weeks at Lower Shaw Farm in Swindon. We all decided we wanted to return to our first host for the end of our trip, and I'm really glad we all agreed.
The girls loved the company, the playing but especially the animals, and we adults enjoyed, um, the same! We were only planning on being there 10 days, but Andrea said we could stay for her birthday celebrations, so we did.
While we were there, there was a Women's creativity weekend that I was a participant for, so DH and the girls had two days playing out, and generally keeping a low profile. I think that was a bit of a challenge at times, but I really appreciated the chance to try out new things.
I've been busy recommending LSF as a destination for families- we've had such a wonderful time and looking forward to planning a return visit next year.
We've returned to home base in Huddersfield, staying with my parents for a few months. We've started settling in, but that isn't going so well.
My parents have various holidays planned, so the idea was we'd be housesitting with a few weeks overlap. However, my parents are not supportive of home educating. In fact, they are anti-home educating and feel we are depriving Big One of a suitable education. She should be spending more time with children her own age (the slightly older home ed kids she chooses to play with are not suitable) and she should be made to sit down and read, write and do numbers.
That isn't what we want for her, and we don't want to have any conversation we're having about the girls turned into 'if she went to school/she should go to school' etc. Thankfully my parents feel it isn't going well- my mum especially is suffering seeing how 'deprived' Big One is. We are both quite firm on our opinions, but my mum isn't great at communicating around the issue and is feeling ill. My Dad quite agrees with her, but can talk to us about it.
This has helped us a bit, and DH and I realise that a lot of our issues with school education ( apart from starting too early) are about discipline, or the lack of it.
Anyway, to avoid a serious rift we've been asked to leave, and thinking about it DH and I are relieved. We thought it'd a be a struggle to share living space with these strong disagreements, and thought it'd be us saying we had to leave soon. This also means we haven't the choices we were trying to work through- I haven't the proof of income to rent anywhere, our tenants would need 8 weeks notice (and we don't want to live there) and that leaves buying a caravan as the way to go.
My parents go away for a few weeks in just over 1 weeks time, so fingers crossed we can manage this coming week.
Maybe it's Narnia
11 months ago
Hoping for best possible outcomes for you all (as well as the bits in between!) xx
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