Welcome to our lives...

We are the Hale family. We are a basic family (mom, dad, big brother, little sister). We live in a beautiful, rural part of Kentucky which is, fortunately only about 30 minutes from Louisville, 15 minutes from Shelbyville and an hour and a half from Lexington. We get to enjoy the country while benefiting from the convenience of the city. What could be better?

Craig and I have been blessed by Our Savior, Jesus Christ, to be married for 23 years (at the end of April) and to have 2 children (Stuart-14, and Alyssa-4, she'll be 5 in early May). Life can be very hectic and there so much to keep up with, I wanted to start this blog as a 'journal' to look back on and share. We welcome you and your comments, as long as they are respectful and language is temperate.

We've seen and heard so much from so many people (IRL and On-Line) about how much their families have grown apart, we've decided to face it front on and do all we can to avoid that. So, what does that mean? I (Lisa) don't work outside the home anymore. I enjoyed a wonderful job as a Benefits Analyst for several years, working both from home and in the office. Over the course of our marriage, I worked for the first 8 years, stayed home with our son and home-schooled him for kindergarten. He started first grade at a Christian school about 35 miles from our then home and I started working part-time.

After that first year, the reality of driving that far out of the way for school was getting ridiculous, so we searched for a school closer to home. We found one, another Christian school. This one, we didn't see eye-to-eye with on many, many issues and decided after about 2 months that we needed to leave (more on this at a later date). We re-visited the idea of the public schools nearby and decided to try it. Well, it worked (well...more on that later, too) for a while. Our son was quite advanced and was getting left behind, due to time constraints, teacher-pupil ratio, the simple fact that they didn't need to work with him, so they left him to his own devices most of the time. Not exactly what we had in mind academically. While he was involved in I-LEAP classes, he wasn't being challenged anywhere else, so while we continued to try to work with the school for the remainder of 2nd grade and all of 3rd grade, by 4th grade we were done fighting a losing battle. We home-schooled him for the majority of 4th grade and again enrolled our son in yet another Christian school for 5th grade. His 5th grade teacher was great! She challenged our son, extending various opportunities to him throughout the year and was wonderful all around. Sixth grade, not so great. Another teacher, and back to the same old, too many students, not enough time and no patience for having to provide anything extra to a child who finished in such short time without being challenged.

So, 2 months into the school year, we withdrew him and decided the best course of action was to work it out ourselves. So, we began homeschooling permanently. After scoring at 97% nationally on the Stanford tests, we began moving at 'his' pace. Well, his pace finished sixth grade early and started 7th grade that year. We follow the public school schedule (for the most part) and so enjoyed summer vacation. He picked up 7th grade and then finished that and 8th grade by the end of May. So, he was 13 and ready for 9th grade. While I wouldn't have been please by that prospect in a public school - peer pressure, etc.- I had no problem moving him up at home. Now, he's 14 and almost done with 9th, getting ready to move up to 10th grade shortly before we end our school year. We will probably use the extra time to review, focus more on elective courses and prep for testing again. I really don't want to accelerate him much more and have a 16 year old college freshman.

So, while we were enjoying the journey, trying to keep up with our son, we were amazed and blessed with an addition to our family of a perfect little princess - after 18 years of marriage! We had always hoped for more children and had lost many to miscarriage and had settled our minds to being grateful for our son. Well, all things in God's time, not ours! We may have decided we were done, but thankfully God hadn't. Our lives have all been enriched and blessed by our daughter.

She is now 4, going on 5. She had such fits when she was 3 and realized that while brother had school, she didn't. So, when she turned 4, we thought we'd give it a try and see how it went. Well, she's finished most of the curriculum and all of the workbooks already for kindergarten, so I guess it went well. We've been having to supplement with extra work for her since the end of February and we'll just continue to see how it goes. She's writing, reading and working simple math. She loves science and history and anything artsy or crafty. The year is moving along beautifully.

As for extra activities, field trips, etc. Last year, we had activity and game days every 2 weeks. Well, you can imagine how hectic that was. Then in May of last year, my husband had a severe diabetic reaction that triggered a seizure and a heart attack - at only 45! Since we were at the end of the school year already, we simply ended for the year. We are blessed to have a couple of huge support groups locally (750 families in all take part to some extent). There is never a shortage of field trips and activities - we usually have to limit the number of things we do so that they don't interfere with school itself. Our son is involved in computer game programming, video game design, guitar, chess, video gaming on-line, and loves go-carts, laser tag and is beginning airsoft. He enjoys weight-lifting and wants to look into boxing some, as well. Our daughter loves anything crafty, wants to knit (but I just don't think she's ready yet), loves High School Musical and anything with Disney Princess or Barbie.

Now, as for Dad and his contribution to building family unity. First, his health is better than ever (runs 2 miles a day since last year) and his diabetes is under very good control. However, he really started looking at the quality of life after last year. So, towards the end of the year, he started looking for a new job where he wasn't working 70 hours/week. As an actuary working in the pension benefit area, there are many areas he can work in. We were so blessed when he found a virtual job. He works from home full-time. It's been amazing! He travels 8-10 days of the month, usually meeting with clients, and the rest of the time he's here. We have breakfast together, he works and the kids start school. Then we break for lunch - with him - and do everything imaginable from playing in the snow this past winter, to picnicking outside a couple of times already this spring. If nothing else, the kids can show him what they are working on (he's the math whiz/teacher here and holds lessons in the evenings and weekends), watches our daughter ride her bike, finger paints, plays a game with our son, or we simply stop for coffee and tea in the sun room while the kids do their thing for a bit. Then it's back to work - lots of conference calls in the afternoon - while we finish school or leave for afternoon activities. We are usually done by around 3:00 and then the kids are free to goof off for a while. Dad works until around 6:30 or so and he's home! ;o)

One of our family rules is that we eat dinner together, around the table or the island or wherever works out best. I spend part of the evening grading school work from that day (if I hadn't had time to do so already). Then we watch TV together - you can still find good, funny shows, you just have to work at it and the DVR helps tremendously - we can watch what we want, when we want. While we spend time together, we sometimes read - we all love mysteries and often end up talking about the plots and such more than we read - I knit or sew (still multi-tasking, LOL). Then the kids have some free time before we all get ready for bed at our various times.

Weekends are family time, with movies (home or at a theater), the zoo, game days, dinner out for the family, dinner out for mom & dad to have date night and church. We just finished getting our annual Disney vacation scheduled and everything reserved, so we're really psyched about that, even though we still have a few months to go. I'll update about our vacation plans later, it's going to be great again!

So, that's where we are. First blog and it left so much out, but we'll fix that in the coming days.