What to do?

I never thought I was the crazy lady at the end of the street, but I am slowly realising that that is exactly what I am. First we lived in a tiny cottage in the middle of the veld (really) for 8 years whilst we built our house. Now, we will be the people living at the end of the street with a huge catamaran in their front yard, building a boat! No we do not live on a plot, we live on a normal stand in an ordinary suburban area. I guess that really does categorise us as “The Crazy People”. I wonder if our neighbours tell their kids to stay away from our house haha.

Speaking of living in the veld for so long, space on the catamaran doesn’t seem to be presenting much of a problem, considering we lived in 16 square meters for 8 years with 6 people. We are moving to 67 square meters for 4 people hopefully for more than 8 years. I think we can handle that with ease!

We have managed to decide which DVD’s we are keeping and which we will be getting rid of. We have also downloaded half our CD’s onto Itunes, we will make a back up onto our external hard drive for safety sake. Shortly we will be off to Cash Converters to sell these items and then to the bank to deposit our money. This process will be continuing, slowly selling any household items we do not use until when we leave we have none and rather have cash in the bank to help fund our trip.

Over the weekend Barry and I discussed our current lives and decided we should attempt to become more social. We can build our network and get more people interested in what we are doing, we can re-establish contact with our families and friends that haven’t seen in ages. We are pretty much recluses and have been for the last few years so this will be interesting to watch as it unfolds.

We are considering taking a few days off and going to stay on the boat for a few days next weekend – watching the weather and waiting to find out what the kids plans are for the weekend. Hoping it will work out.

I have been investigating where to send Rauen to High School as this is coming on far to fast. I have at the moment narrowed it down to 3 options.

Option 1(un): Send him to Ashton International College.

Pro: Our other kids are there so we know what to expect. They also teach the Cambridge System which is a plus for me.
Con: Far to travel daily, it will increase our fuel by at least 50% Not to mention travel time.


Option 2(deux): Send him to Helderwyk Private School.

Pro: Close to home, in a complex on the way to work.
Con: New school with no History of performance Standards, big concern for me.

Option 3 (trois): Send him to a Home Schooling Centre

Pro: Get him into the home schooling swing for on the boat
Con: I am unsure of what and how they teach.

We will be visiting the schools. The Home school centre will be first on our list. It has many pro’s besides starting home schooling. The kids don’t attend school on a Friday, which gives us an extra pair of hands to build the boat every Friday, not to mention all Rauen will learn by helping to build it. We could easily continue with the same curriculum on the boat when we leave. The school is directly opposite the school Kyle is currently attending so no extra driving. But all these pro’s do not detract from the 1 major Con: Is their standard of education up to scratch, I do not want to detriment my children in any way! Education is after all the only real thing you can give them.

Helderwyk will be opening in January so we will pay them a visit then and Ashton has their open day in March. We must sign Rauen into High School by April next year so tick tock, tick tock.

Otherwise things are progressing as they should be, we are still hoping to leave sooner rather than later but time will tell how we progress in our endeavour. Our major topic of conversation at the moment seems to be how we can become more focused on our goal. How we can ensure we always choose the option in line with our goal and not get distracted and spend money on other things.

We keep trying to strike the right balance – we don’t want to live only in the future and have nothing for today!