What are you smoking???

I know the thought of home schooling sounds crazy. Believe me, I agree with most of you that it is a crazy idea. Just a few months ago I said out loud and with much enthusiasm "I would NEVER and could NEVER home school!" I believe I also may have told a friend that was considering it that she was crazy. At this point it is not my first choice for my three little darlings. I love the school they go to now. I could go on and on about all the things I love about it and all the people that I love there. My kids are happy too. Unfortunately, it's not free and sadly we don't have a little money tree growing in our back yard. When we chose their school we had not been blessed with our sweet little Charlie yet and we did not anticipate three children. Of course, we wouldn't change a thing and we love our little Prince Charles to pieces. If we do choose to home school it will be short term with the hopes that they can ultimately graduate from the school they go to now. That is why we would prefer to keep them at home for a while rather than change back and forth from one school to another.
I know school choice can be controversial and I really do respect each parent's decision about where and how they educate their children. Of all of our parenting decisions we have spent more time than anything worrying about, praying about, talking about, crying about and stressing out about our choice of school. It is not something that we take lightly. I know it's not a decision to be made by a blog poll either...that just makes it more fun. And right now, the whole thing is not much fun. It's making me crazy.
Yesterday we spent about an hour at a home school bookstore. The nicest woman spent a long time talking to us about all of our options and the misconceptions of home schooling. I left there feeling VERY overwhelmed. It's a lot of information!!! Amazingly though, I actually felt a little more optimistic about the idea. There are parts of it that actually sound very appealing and many things about it that I know my kids would love. I think the only thing my kids would actually miss would be seeing their friends everyday. I worry about my sanity. It would be a HUGE change for us. For better???? For worse??? That's the part I haven't figured out yet.