Thank you all so much for the WARM WELCOME.
We did home school in the early years, but my older 2 attended school for a little over 2 years. My dd started K last August, but we pulled all of the children out of school in Nov. We were expecting a baby and I really wanted to be home with my then 2 year old and the new baby. So, I quit working and we brought everyone home.
When we brought them home, I just continued with the A Beka and Bob Jones curriculum for the remainder of the school year.
I knew that I wanted something different for this school year so I began searching and narrowed it down to HOD, MFW, & SL.
Well we couldn't afford any of them at the time, so I was going to try to aquire a little at a time using resources, readers, etc.. from the catalogs. I did purchase their Lang.(R&S and Easy Grammar) and Math(Saxon) . Needless to say, with 5 kiddos, I didn't have time for the planning. Everyday seemed frustrating and overwhelming. I began to pray for God to show me how to make this work. We didn't have the money to buy all of the resources and consistently going to the libray was a challenge.
Well, to make a long story short, through a series of unexpexted events, we were blessed with a financial blessing that would enable us to purchase curriculum. Now I had to decide on which curriculum to order. I had actually weeded out Sonlight because we need the hands on activities. So it was now HOD or MFW. I was torn as these are both wonderful programs. I poured over reviews and catalogs over and over. Finally I decided on MFW---but I kept feeling like I needed to take another look at HOD. Two nights in a row my dh came home and asked if I had placed my order and I said no, "I'm just not sure if that's the one we need to go with." They next day I called HOD and Carrie spoke with me for a whole HOUR! She took the time to help me figure out what would work for my dc. Now I have to say that I spoke to several diff. home school suppliers and HOD's customer service is second to NONE
I hung up the phone with confidence. When dh came home I showed him the catalog and he was sold. I placed my order the very next day.
I told my husband that I'm not even going to second guess my decision because both choices were bible based and I can't ruin my children with God's word
Either way we are putting God first in our home school, it just seems like HOD will be a better fit for me and my dc. We needed to be able to group some of them together but not leave the younger one behind or the older one bored. with the HOD extensions we can easily group the boys together.
I do apologize for writing a novel--lol
God Bless,
Jennifer
. Carrie was so helpful in helping me to decide on the best programs for my children. 
