Parenting is full of hard decisions. We are constantly faced with opportunities for our children, for our family and for ourselves. It can be so hard to know what is the best decision, the one with the fewest regrets or the one with the biggest payoff for our family.

Currently on my mind is education for our girls. Sammi is going into 2nd grade and Elli is a Kindergartener. We loved their public school experience last year. But the schedule was long and wearing on us all. Poor Elli got sick so much during the fall and then finally had tubes put in her ears and her adenoids removed. The thought of her school day becoming 2 hours longer is worrisome.

Then there’s Sammi. Once she got the swing of test taking and worksheets, her learning exploded. She reads at a fourth grade level now and told me her favorite subjects are math and science. She’s very good at both of them. She’s literal and full of problem solving. She is our child of the third option. She always has an alternative solution to every choice we offer her. It’s infuriating sometimes, but helpful other times. She can see solutions that I am often blind to.

Since we’re talking about education, I have to bring Brent into this discussion, too. This year is his final year of medical school! Fourth year is full of opportunities to make long term connections, finalize your choice of specialty and seize all your opportunities to make a successful residency match. That means he will be traveling this fall, interviewing and doing rotations with the Air Force. If there’s anything we’ve learned about our family through medical school it’s that we do better when we are together.

One month he has the opportunity to choose where he goes. We talked about going to Utah for the month as a family so we could reconnect and introduce Ben to our family there. But, to be able to go, we need to homeschool. We enjoyed homeschooling Sammi during her kindergarten year. And she’s actually been asking to homeschool again this year. But with Brent being gone for the two months preceding the month in Utah, I’m worried about how well we will do.

I’m stuck. I’ve been on the fence all summer. We’ve done some homeschooling days and things are going relatively well, but I have Brent to help with dinner and to get the kids in bed. We missed the back to school night tonight. School starts Monday. And I keep wondering what we should do.

Why, oh, why is this so hard? any thoughts?