Hi,

Just wanted to intro myself.  My family moved here 4ish months ago from Sioux Falls, SD. We lived in Rio Rancho for a while and are now settled in SE ABQ.  My husband and I have Jack 7, Lana 5, and Frank 1 1/2.  It has been a hectic time and we are jsut finally feeling like we are ready to get out and meet folks and do stuff.   Thankfully our three children get along great so they have been each other's company, but we are ready to eet some new kids.

My husband works from home for a company in SD and I take on most of the responsibility of HSing.  jack is in 1st and Lana has fun watching and cutting and glueing.  Our biggest struggle is getting stuff done with the baby either getting into everything or screaming his head off.  

I would say we are a mix of unschooling and curriculum based learning.  i love the freedom HSing gives us to live life and I also fond of measurable results, so we mix the two.  

We started hsing cuz we lived in a small town and i was not fond of the school district.  Also our oldest was extrememly frightened of public strange places.  He is less so now, but still extremely shy (in certain situations:)  )  

ANyway, that is all for now, looking forward to meeting you all.

Karen

I'm not sure where you are in the south valley - but we live in Los Lunas in addition to the Albuquerque homeschool groups there is also a Valencia Area Family Educators group that you might be interested in.  We are often in Albuquerque so we try to participate - at any rate, you can email me if you like josacli@comcast.net
Good luck,
Jo-Anne

Hey there, Karen! Welcome to Albuquerque. My husband also works from home, and I've  found that it gives us lots more flexibility with homeschooling, timing of family outings, etc. We also struggle a bit with entertaining my 3.5 yo daughter while doing schoolwork with the not quite 7yo son. I'm encouraged to hear it may get better as my daughter gets a older. She already loves scissors & tape, so that's a start!

What made you guys decide to live in Albuquerque? We love it here. So many fun things to do for such a small city -- zoo, aquarium, museums. Hopefully, we'll meet tomorrow at Italy day!

hi again,

Lana, my 5 yr old has been using scissors and tape since she was about 3 also.  Yikes, we have had some hair cutting episodes and the whole bit!  But she is very good with a scissors, has been able to cut stuff out really well for some time!

We moved to ABQ for the weather, the U (I have a thought about going back to get my Masters in Public Health -- i am a childbirth educator/doula)  We love it here too, fortunately my DH's job kept him on.  We have as yet not taken full advantage of the stuff to do.  It has been way too crazy.

Our house fell thru on the way down so we ended up in Rio Rancho in a temp house while we looked some more then when we moved into our house that we are in now we had much more fixing than we thought.  The kids and i "escaped" to go back to SD for a while while DH held down the fort and finished the kitchen and bathroom.  Now everything is done so we are looking forward to finally living!

See you tomorrow Elizabeth!
Karen