Preparing for the Ride of My Life!

So here's our big news. As fun as it was to watch you all speculate, I guess I should finally share. I just filled out the official affidavit with the state for our new private home school, (Our last name) Academy! We have been talking seriously about home educating our children for about six months, although I have toyed with the idea off and on since I was in college. Over the summer I began to feel better and better about it, yet was scared to make such a big change and commitment. Our plan was to research this year and implement next year, but I think that was mostly because "next year" sounds very far away and less scary somehow. But during the past few weeks I have felt more and more led towards homeschooling our family; the Lord has put people in my path everywhere lately who home school or who were home schooled and I've had so many positive encouraging conversations about it. As we watched General Conference last week, many of the things that were said about families and parenthood supported our long list of reasons why home school would be advantageous for our family. This week I couldn't get it off my mind (remember, I do have a tendency to obsess) and finally spent much of the day Thursday studying about it and praying about it and I just knew that this is what God wants for us. Once I had that confirmation, I changed my prayers to, "Lord, take away my fear and help me have faith." He has done that for me.
We choose to do this for a number of reasons; naturally, the fact that we have a special needs child got the conversation going but the more that we have researched, the more we feel that this will bless our entire family. We truly believe that we will be led to do this successfully, although I am not naive enough to believe that it will be easy or that we will have a seamless transition.
We had a family council today and told the kids. They were enthusiastic. We explained that we would choose a date for Kimball's last day in public school. Henry will home school with us in the morning but will finish afternoon kindergarten before we remove him from public school. Kimball knew exactly how long he wanted to stay for--his class has a "Pumpkin Day" scheduled in two weeks that he wants to participate in. We chose a school name, a mascot, and a few units that we will study first (polar bears and sharks. Did I mention that I already know more than I care to about those two creatures because I live in this house? But we wanted them to have a role in choosing our curriculum, and I'm sure that we can find more to learn about.)
So, wish us luck! We are excited, nervous, and gearing up for negative feedback from the public school when we break the news to them. But we are armed with the confidence that comes from knowing we are doing what God means for us to do. I know that He will help us to do it well. Thank goodness for personal revelation. I am so grateful that He is mindful enough of our little family to lead us in our lives.