Being involved in your Community

As a homeschooling mother of 5 kids, you can imagine that life is busy, trying to get all the kids educated and the house cleaned and the laundry done and dinner cooked every day. Not to mention driving the kids to and from piano lessons, choir, play practice, basketball practice, and outside classes. And of course there are church responsibilities....I am the Superintendent of the K-8 Sunday school, plus teach the middle school class, and sing in the choir and participate in the book club. So it is hard to fit anymore into my schedule. But my husband and I have decided that it is also important to be involved in our small community. He is a local attorney and as such needs to be involved to get his name out there and let people know that he cares about our town. He is on the Board of the local Chamber of Commerce. He just finished a 3-year term on the Board of the local food bank. I and the kids have participated in 4 productions with our community theatre troupe. Because of my involvement with the theatre group, and because people know my husband, I was asked to be on the Board of the Arts Commission, to which I answered yes! As homeschoolers, it is so easy to insulate ourselves from the world around us and just hang out with other homeschoolers. But I think it is important for non-homeschoolers to be able to see that we do not just care about the education of our kids but also care about our community. Our communities need to see what homeschooling looks like from real people like us, not from stereotypes they hear b/c they've never met a homeschooler.

So tonight my husband and I are going to the annual Chamber of Commerce dinner, which brings up that perpetual question, "What do I wear?" As you can imagine, going to "fancy" dinners means I need to wear more than the typical jeans-and-sweater I wear in winter and shorts-and-tshirt I wear in summer. This is the third community event I've gone to in as many weeks, so I am running out of choices! I will see a lot of the same people I have seen at the other two events, so I can't re-use an outfit. Maybe I will need to go shopping to enhance my wardrobe, if I plan on being involved in my community! Just one of the many perks. :)