Where are we now?

Tricky one.
It's hard to say why, in one simple sentence, but there is every possibility we will be trying to get the girls into a tiny christian school, despite some reservations, and the very real chance that there will not be places available.
To be honest, I wonder myself how it has come to this, but I think it breaks down like this:

• Friends, associates, normal life - we just don't have them. The girls are normal, outgoing, friendly children, they WANT to be around other people. We on the other hand have tended to be a bit isolationist. I now regret that, and feel socially challenged at every turn. I don't want that for them (mind you, bear in mind that I went to school.) Homeschoolers repeatedly tell me that family comes first (but they have ten children, I have two) that as long as they have one good friend (they don't) and other children at church (zero) they'll be fine. That they don't need lots of friends. (No. But one would be nice.) Maybe in America, where christians and homeschoolers abound. But in this country? Where christians are in short supply and two home educators who think alike are even rarer? (see below)
  
• The passage of time ... we had this house on an agreed low rent while we 'did it up' for two years. To our horror, the rent review has just come around and the rent has gone up massively. Two years have gone. But that's OK, since we now have a fabulously made over house to live in, right? Wrong. We have decorated one room, and the kitchen is currently being redone. But what else happened? Like most home educators, we had to put education first and put life on hold. I don't regret that, but I'll turn fifty this year. I don't have forever.
• Kind of related - God's call on our life is clear(ish) to us - it has to do with living on the land, farming in a small way, bringing people out into creation and teaching and sharing skills,what most of you would call homesteading. We always believed that homeschooling was inextricably linked with that. Now it seems like it may be curtailing it?
• The hormone wars. The journeys into and out of the childbearing years of womanhood are tumultuous ones - at the moment, we have one of each going on, and one in the wings. It can be scary.
• Burn out. I feel all home edded out. I wonder if it's the year I've spent doing Ambleside? I never felt like this before. This is the one side road we have not yet fully explored - the one where we don't go to school, but we also don't do homeschool the way we have been doing.
• Disappointment. I have to say, and this is harsh, but true - home educators, both christian and not, have disappointed me beyond belief. The cliqueishness, the rudeness, the lack of consideration - I have stood there red faced while a particular mother talks over my daughter's head to invite another child to her precious drama group, saying 'oh do come, we would so like you to come' - leaving my poor daughter wondering what she has done wrong to be so totally, totally excluded. I have watched embarrassed as other mothers are invited to things, and I have eventually had to say 'er .. what's this about then?' only to be told grudgingly what's going on. We went yesterday to an event where one group of home edded children were positively herded by their parents to keep them away from our 'unknown' children. I am sick to my stomach with home educators. The worst offenders are 'christians'
• Disappointment #2. The Badman Report has brought out the worst in us. The bickering and mudslinging are offensive to me, and a poor example to my children.

Looking at it here, in black and white, it seems fairly done and dusted, actually. I've had enough.

However, whether there actually is a way out, is another matter.