Welcome Back: Thinking About Your Why

SEASON 4 EPISODE 137 | Another season is here! We are starting off with a blast from the past with previous Homeschool Your Way hosts DeeDee and Ximena ie. Chips & Salsa Ladies. Listen in as Janna, DeeDee, and Ximena talk about the joys and challenges of homeschooling multiple children for many years. See how the highs and lows that come with homeschooling balance out in the end with consistency and remembering to find your WHY each year as you decide what is best for your family and children.

ABOUT OUR GUESTS | DeeDee and Ximena (known as the Chips & Salsa Ladies) are two moms who have walked together through their homeschool journey, learning to savor life through every messy moment and reminding one another to enjoy the ride. With over 20 years of combined experience, they love encouraging other homeschool parents through their YouTube channel, social media, and their Homeschool 101 online course. Recently, they celebrated a milestone as their firstborns graduated, embarking on a new chapter as moms of young adults. Find out more about them on YouTube:  @ChipsnSalsaHomeschooling  Instagram: @chipsandsalsaladies

Janna  00:01 Welcome to Homeschool Your Way. I'm your host Janna Koch and BookSharks Community Manager. In today's episode I am joined by DeeDee and Ximena of Chips ‘n Salsa Homeschooling. If you didn't know they were the first hosts of Homeschool Your Way. Super excited to kick off Season 4 by having them back giving an update on what they've been up to, and talking about revisiting your why you homeschool, creating a vision, and sometimes the most dreaded topic, consistency. Deedee, Ximena, thank you so much for being here. 

Ximena 00:32 Hey, I'm so happy to be here. 

DeeDee 00:35 Yes, thank you, Jana, for having us!

Janna  00:39  While you ladies, were the creators of Homeschool Your Way and have moved on to bigger and better things. Why don't you just quickly introduce yourself and then tell our audience what you've been up to?

Ximena 00:53 Yeah, go ahead, start DeeDee

DeeDee 00:56  Hi I’m DeeDee. And this has been one of the hardest decisions that I've had to make in a long time. But I just completed my last year of homeschooling. And it was really hard decision, my daughter finished ninth grade with me at home. And now she's going to be going to the private school. And my oldest son graduated from that school. And so he's looking at going into college and playing basketball. And he's super excited about all of that. So 13 years of homeschooling has been just a wonderful time in my life and grieving that it's come to an end, but I'm also excited for the future.

Janna  01:47 Now DeeDee. How many years did you homeschool just one child?

DeeDee 01:54 We homeschooled her for two years, with just me and her, eighth grade and ninth grade. And eighth grade was a little rocky as it is for most eighth graders. It's just that time of life. So we were really grateful to have that one more year together. Where you know, we got close again, and we ironed out some of those difficult puberty wrinkles. And so I guess I homeschooled her for 10 years.

Janna  02:25 It is interesting when you go from homeschooling multiple children and then only having one in the home the dynamics totally change. 

DeeDee 02:29 So different. So different. 

Janna  02:33  All right, Ximena it's your turn. What have you been up to?

Ximena 02:36 Oh, man. Well, I've been up to mainly graduating my daughter. She just graduated from high school. Yes, real big accomplishment. I still can't believe it. I always imagined that graduation day to be like, I don't know, this monumental milestone or something. And it is. But when it came and went, I'm still like kind of in shock. I don't know how else to explain it. Yeah, so that's it right. And right now I'm, I can't say what I'm up to because I have no idea. I know that my son is going into. So he'll be the only one homeschooling. So I'm going to be putting him in like kind of an umbrella private school where he'll be taking some external classes and be able to be with other kids, other homeschool kids. He's going into 10th grade. And so yeah, it's all new territory. For me, I'm, I'm back to not knowing what is going on.

Janna  03:39 Well welcome to the world where the rest of us live. I have no idea what's going on most of the time. And I recently said to my 17-year-old daughter, I have never been a mother to 17-year-olds. This is new to me I am doing what I know to do based on what I have done and so 17 style she said it's showing. Parenting 101:be prepared to be humbled at all times with your children. So how many or you are going to be in the same situation that Deedee and I have been in which is just homeschooling one child, which is just it's different style of homeschooling 

Ximena 04:23 One kid is going to be interesting.

Janna  04:26 Well, the struggle is definitely real. I think that when you have multiple children and you start seeing them be done and you kind of start losing them in the sense that you're not they're not with you all the time. So we're talking about the end of the road in some sense or or kind of transitioning to the end, but this is the fall and parents are coming into homeschooling, and they want to know what about the rest of us who are just starting our journey. And we'd kind of talked about this idea it's pervasive in the homeschool world know your why. Why are you choosing homeschool and some people have a very solid, why and other people's why changes throughout the year. So let's talk about revisiting our why because as a new homeschool parent, I could have decided in the spring that this was a good idea. I bought my curriculum. And the closer I get to my start date, I'm really starting to question why I'm doing this.

DeeDee 08:58 Yeah, I think it's really different to pull your kids out of fear, trying to keep them from something or avoid interaction with some type of kid or bullying perhaps. So that's a very defensive type of why. But to really circle back and say, Okay, I don't want it just to be out of fear. But to say what do I want to see for my kids? What are the positives that I want to bring into their life is a really, I think more encouraging way to start out the year. So yeah, I don't love what public schools are doing. But my Y is all about what we're going to get to do. So my Y is circling around the relationship that I have with my kids about the opportunities that the kids get to have and I remember one year Humana she gets me to go to the beach because I don't always want to do that. But I know it's fun. And the kids want to swim in one year, we started out the year with, we are going to school at the beach, at least once a week. And that was a great vision. And it actually got us to go outside and have school outside at the beach, way more than I would have if I hadn't cast a vision, right? And then, like Ximena said to talk it over with the kids because they have ideas about what they want for the year, as well. They have projects they want to work on, and things they want to improve on and get better at. And one year, you know, academically, it was like we're gonna focus on writing this year. So what does that look like? You know, and just thinking about ways that we can work on writing. And some years, it was all about, let's make, you know, include more field trips, and how can we get out more go out and do more things. So I agree that casting that vision, getting ideas out there, really, it rejuvenates your year gets you excited about what's coming, and you're a lot more likely to follow through. If you've already put out put those things out in motion.

Janna  11:27 I think it's very similar to taking a road trip so you can map out how you're going to get from your start to your finish. Right. And so that's like bare bones, okay, we're taking a road trip, or you can map out where you're going start to finish and then see along the way, all the fun things that you know it you don't even have to like, stop for a day, you know, because sometimes you're like, oh, I don't want to extend the trip the road trips long and not people get carsick, you get cranky. But if you say hope but we're just gonna make sure that we drive by this one thing and then that gets the family all excited, right? Or we're gonna make sure that we're intentional to look for we were just in the mountains this weekend. The moose, we really wanted to see a moose. So we were intentional to look for a moose. Now, we didn't see a moose, which is unfortunate. But we did my daughter did find an elk. And that was like so cool. And if you don't talk about it beforehand, it's something that I've been kind of mulling over thinking about what you're thinking about, right? Like, it's called metacognition. So if you're aware that, okay, I want my child to have a great year, and we're going to focus on the education, we want a quality education. That's like the basic roadmap. Okay, great, you'll probably get there. But why not have fun on the way there, just, that's why we homeschool, I have to remind myself constantly, when I kind of feel like we're just kind of in a rut, I'm like, wait a second, we homeschool we can do this however we want. Like, we can take the books outside of the house, we can go put the books down and go do some real-life learning or field trips. But we have to be intentional. And I think that we sometimes have this Pollyanna idea that it's just going to happen because we're homeschoolers. And I can testify to the fact that there are years where my homeschool was really dry, because I wasn't intentional to have a vision and say, Okay, it's not just about academics, it is about sibling relationship building, it is about quality time outside, I mean, all of these other things that maybe as a new homeschooler, you didn't even know you should be thinking about them.

Ximena 13:43 Now, absolutely. And I think that's one of the things you know, you said it, thinking about what you're thinking about, DeeDee and I are such big proponents of that of taking time, DeeDee would say we don't take enough time sometimes to just sit and think, you know, about let those because a lot of times we could be you know, in the middle of something, and we get this great idea. But we're too busy at that moment to like, you know, ponder upon it and jot it down. And that's what we need those times four. And then we actually tried to implement it once a week. Like, if you have your kids have an extracurricular activity or something that you drop them off. We would use our Mondays for that because they would have Learning Center, and we would just sit and kind of think and write you know, jot stuff down. And I think even if you have an idea book, you know, like available to you or like an app or something where you get I have a Google Keep, I put everything on there like just any on my phone, you know, anything that comes up a website that I run into that I like an article, whatever, I just pin it on there. And it's I just always have it and I think that like you said you were talking about like the pacing and the ideas and the roadmap that's such a great visual because that's kind of what we used to do. Like we would get together and over coffee again, make it fun for yourself, you know, like, we would get babysitters, and I mean, our husbands and we'd be like, we're going to do this, and we're gonna sit down. And what do we want to do? Like in December? I mean, we'd even be like, you know, and we're loose about it. Obviously, I'm flexible, but we're like, oh, you know, would it be fine? If we, like, learned how to make a cake? Or something on this, you know, on this month? Oh, you know, would be cool is that, like, we visit this ice cream shop, you know, in the summer, or, like, just things like that. And, of course, a lot of things got done, a lot of things didn't get done. But we have the bones and we would always revisit, and it was surprising, right? The the sometimes it'd be like, I mean, we wrote down that we were going to do this field trip, like, we totally forgot about it, you know, and then we'd like, okay, and that was kind of pushed us to, to do that. So yeah, I can't stress the importance of, of a dream and allow yourself to dream. Like you were saying, like, things don't have to be so dry. If you don't want them to, you know, you have to you have to enjoy yourself. You have to make it fun for you. And you have to make it enjoyable for you as well. Because you're leading this bus.

DeeDee 16:26  Well, yeah, and that's really the idea behind the name of the podcast, Homeschool Your Way to take your curriculum and take your ideas, your educational goals, but make it fun, make it something that you can be consistent with, that you and your family will be able to implement on a day to day basis. Because I mean, homeschooling is hard work, right? But if it's fun, you're a lot more likely to keep going keep doing it and enjoy it along the way.

Janna  17:01 And I think this idea of consistency is so important. I had recently seen an illustration where people think that consistency is linear, you just you're consistent. It's the same height you there's no deviation, when really consistency is real life deviation over a long period of time. So I always felt like in the fall, I had my plan, and I felt really good about it. And by week three, I was off the rails and reevaluating my life choices. And wondering how we're ever going to get to week 36 in our curriculum or how we're going to get through the year. But in already feeling behind, right, like oh my gosh, we miss this. I skipped this. This day didn't go like I thought it was gonna go. But the truth is over seven years, we have homeschooled and completed each year. Now, I don't mean that we completed 36 weeks each year, sometimes it was a little bit less. I mean, I'm going to be completely honest. This year was kind of a bust. I finally looked at my daughter, who finished up eighth grade. And I said, so you're just done with the eighth grade. And she was like, yep. 

Ximena 18:14 Oh, I know. I've threatened my son. I was like, you don't finish math. You're gonna be doing it in the summer. We're not doing it. I mean, he's not, you know, he started a little bit and then he didn't finish and I'm like, Okay, well, you did enough, I guess.

DeeDee 18:28 Oh, yeah, I had to finally make a deal with my daughter that if you can pass the assessment for the next level, all of this, let it go.

Janna  18:38 I think well, homeschooling your way is just letting a lot of things go.

Ximena 18:42 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, letting a lot of things go and exchanging others. Other things for other things. You know, a lot of times we it doesn't go according to exactly our plan. But you're like, oh, this works like this. What we're doing now is teaching this one principle or whatever. Yeah, you know, and I think that's why we stressed the vision so much, because we always talk about so like, give our theme is more time in nature, you know, for one year and be like, Hey, we really want to get out more than you can ask yourself, as your as life happens, you know, which is never linear, like you were saying, okay, is this going with my vision? You know, is this, even as this curriculum, aligning with the vision that I have, is this book aligning with the vision that I guess you can ask yourself those things and it's easier to let go of something if if it doesn't align, right. It's easier to incorporate other simple things as well. And so, I think that that anchor allows for that flexibility that you're talking about and that just kind of life happening and not being a linear consistency, but just you're plugging along and you're going, you're taking it day by day, and you're remaining flexible, because you have, you know, we always talk about how important flexibility is within homeschooling. But that's why an anchor is so important to your why and your vision because that will help you stay on track and motivated. And, again, be able to switch out activities or incorporate new ones, spontaneous ones, all that kind of stuff. 

DeeDee 20:31 Well and I like to say I'm consistently inconsistent, right? But, as long as you're, you remember that we're only moving forward. So yeah, some days are gonna look better than others. Some weeks are gonna look better than others, but you are making progress. And after 13 years of homeschooling, it's really cool to see, oh, my, I taught my kids how to read, you know, when they read something, and you're, like, taught them that, you know, like, they have grown, they have matured, they have learned. And so even the really bumpy years, were a success. In the end.

Ximena 21:18 There are so many great stories. Right now, when you said that DeeDee, I wanted to share I'm a big Office fan, as people may or may not know. And I was listening to the Office Ladies podcast, which is basically copying DeeDee and I. I mean, it's like, we were the chips and salsa ladies before they were the office ladies, just joking, but, and they're best friends. But they were talking about a deleted scene and one of the episodes. And this character, Robert, California, mentions, he quotes an entire poem that our kids know by heart, which is the red wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams. And I heard it and I got excited. And I ran to my son, and I was like, and he was like, wow, that's cool. I meant to share it with DeeDee and the kids yesterday when they were over. But you know, things like that, where you're just, there's all these little wins that you get to celebrate, because even though we didn't do poetry perfectly, or, you know, whatever it is, throughout the years, they learned so much poetry, and it's stuck with them, you know, and then now, when you hear references, and on TV and stuff, they're like, Oh, I, I know that you know, or I know that song, or I know, I know about this history piece or whatever. I just, I find those to be the pay. 

We know they say homeschool moms don't get paid that like those are paydays for me. Because I see the enjoyment that comes out of all those years that we poured out, and, and how we learn together. And it's something we get to experience together and get excited about together. You know, and I don't know, to me, that's, that's where you see the consistency that you're talking about, you know,

Janna  23:15 I was just, it just reminded me of my app on my phone. So there will be some days where we'll walk 1000 or 11,000 to 15,000 steps in a day because we are either hiking or we're doing something and we're very active. And then I look in the next day. And it's honestly like sometimes not even 1000 steps because I've been at a computer all day or whatever. But at the end of the week, it shows me my average. And I think that we have to remember those averages that life isn't just I'm gonna walk 10,000 steps every day. Sometimes it's more sometimes it's less, but on average, it will tell me, Oh, this week, this year, you've done more on average than you did last year. And honestly, it'll tell me the opposite last year, this week, you did more than this week. But it is the idea that consistency really is about just like Deedee had said, moving forward that progress than not being stagnant. Not doing nothing, but not beating yourself up because you didn't do it all every day.

Ximena 24:22 Right? Oh, yeah. I mean, that's one of the things we always tell people is paler your homeschool. You know, like, grab your use all the resources, you know, use a curriculum like BookShark is amazing, because everything's laid out for you. But even within that, that laid out, structured curriculum. There's so much flexibility, you know, you can cross things off you can add other things. You can swap books, you can you know, there's so many cool things that you can do.

DeeDee 24:48 Yeah, I'm gonna say the same thing. I mean, you're looking at it over time. And like BookShark uses Story of the World. Well, their resource guide is loaded if you did Everything in there, it'd be ridiculous. Like, it's not even meant to do at all. So a lot of times people will beat themselves up, like, I didn't finish, or I didn't get around to everything, or we hoped we totally, you know, missed the last five chapters of this curriculum or whatever. In the long run, that doesn't really matter.

Ximena 25:22 And I think that's why to another practical tip is to, like, make sure you document stuff, you know, take pictures, or, you know, things for you to look back, I have to do that a lot of times, because the, the years are so busy, that you look back and you're like, Oh, well, that was this school year that we did that, you know, like that, that'll happen to me a lot. And looking back on pictures and be like, Well, we did all we really did a lot of what we wanted to do.

DeeDee 25:48 But that's such a good point, Ximena.

Ximena 25:52 A lot of times, we feel like, oh, shoot that, you know, it didn't really work out like I wanted it to or, or I just feel kind of incomplete or feel like a failure because I didn't, you know, reach certain goals. But you look back throughout the year, and you're like, Oh, we did, we did a lot kind of like what we did with chemistry Diddy taught the kids chemistry. And I was like, did we do enough lab for them? And then we went back and saw everything. And she's like, oh, yeah, I mean, we got a lot of lab done, probably more than they would have gotten at school.

DeeDee 26:24 Yeah, but you don't remember it all. It's like, Oh, I forgot we did that. Oh, we did that too.  

Janna  26:30 Yeah. I think human nature, we just naturally think about what we don't do well, and we don't remember what we do, do well.

Ximena 26:39 Absolutely. And that's, that's for the kids too. I often have to have slides, like sit down, and let's watch slideshows of all the pictures. Because sometimes, you know, as they get older, especially my daughter, I think she's such a dreamer, you know, and she's like, you just feel like we didn't do this, or we didn't do that. Or you know, and I'm like, oh, let's sit down and watch all our memory. You can see the childhood that you've had. And it's great, because we really do go down memory lane. And it really filled our hearts. We're like, oh, man, we've really had a rich journey. You know, we've, we've been intentional, and it, and I can say I don't regret anything in the sense of like, I put my heart and soul into it. You know, of course, there's a lot of mistakes I made and things you know, you could have should have done whatever. There's a ton of that always, but when you look back, there's a sense of satisfaction because you're like, okay, it was beautiful.

Janna  27:44 Well, documentation is important. Because I had the opposite. The other day, I chided my eldest for not remembering that I took her to an amusement park. And then I realized it wasn't her. To be fair, I have twins, but they're not identical. And that is no excuse. But I then realized, Oh, that wasn't you. I do apologize. And if you'd like to go to that amusement park, I'd be happy to take you.

DeeDee 28:12 That's hilarious. I have four kids, four years. I mean, one year apart each. And I do that. Oh, that wasn't you. Okay, well, you know, we can do it another time.

Janna  28:24 Yeah, the truth of motherhood and homeschooling here. And so we've talked about revisiting your why, you know, if you don't have a why create a why to remember. What prompted you to make this decision as a family? It's okay to revisit that why sometimes on your worst day, I think it's important to go back and say, This is the reason we chose to do this, even though it's hard. And it's great to look at it on a good day and go, yes, this was the reason that we chose to make this decision leading into having a vision, you know, it's like, it seems so simple. But I think again, human nature, we take things for granted. So we go, Okay, I'm gonna run a marathon. Great. Well, how are you going to run that marathon? You can't go from not running to running a marathon, you have to have a plan. And personal experience. I've ran one marathon, I will never do it again. I think running is dumb. But I did have I had to consistently train in some days, I hit my goal of getting the miles and then I needed to some weeks I didn't, but I finished the race, right? 

And so thinking of it as you need a plan, you can be consistently inconsistent, but you've got to keep doing it. And that vision is helpful otherwise you aren't you may not remember what the plan was. You think about building a building or even like a she shed, right? And it's like, okay, you want to build this thing. You didn't have plans, and you start putting it up and the structure starts to look wonky. And why isn't this working? It's like, well, you didn't have a blueprint, you didn't have a plan. So, again, think about what you're thinking about coming into homeschool, it's a new year, you're new or it's your eighth year like myself, being intentional about setting aside time to vision and plan. And then this idea of, you know, dd, I love how you said consistently inconsistent, at least I'm least there's something there. 

And failure is just part of life, whether you got to do a, you know, a field trip that was educationally sound, every week, or every month, you know, if you didn't, or you thought something was going to work out. Sometimes you have these ideas where I'm going to take my kid to a living farm or a living museum are one of those things, and they're gonna really capture what it was like, and then they're just playing in the dirt. And all they remember was chasing the duck. And it's like, well?

Ximena 31:05 Or they were whining the whole time. Or they're about that stuff all the time DeeDee? And we would 

DeeDee 31:14 And they're wandering off.

Janna  31:17 Not even listening. Yeah, they're not listening to the presentation. There's no educational value whatsoever. Thinking why did I pay for this? I could have been home getting things done.

Ximena 31:28 Right. And I think that's just part of the journey. Right. One of the things, one of our mottos, you know, Chips ‘n Salsa is to, you know, just enjoy every messy moment, because it is going to be super messy. And it's going to be different every day. And as you know, we like we said, you know, kids are ever-changing. Nobody ever talks about the hormonal changes that they go through, and that we're going through at the same time, and there's just there's so much to life. But you could either be super rigid, and think you're a failure and everything, or you can embrace, embrace the mess and make something out of it and just stay flexible and kind of have fun. In every messy moment, I would just want to tell everybody who was maybe starting and it seems like a lot of days are hard. In the end, you're not going to remember those hard days as much, you're going to remember all the amazing memories that you've made. And all those special moments that you were intentional about. And that's what I have to take. I know it sounds super sad. But you know, even with my son only has three more years. And I just always going to treasure are the moments that we lived through homeschool.

DeeDee 32:46 It's we're really sentimental Janna, right now. But, hopefully it comes off as encouraging. If you're starting your homeschool journey, and you're wondering, is it really worth it? As you know, there's money involved and there's time involved and their sacrifice involved. And we just want to let you know it is worth it. It is so special to homeschool your kids, to form those relationships, to grow and learn together. That has been also I mean, one of the best parts you know, we say like some of the lessons. I remember this one time Ximena and I created this game show that was going to be this big review for all the whole year and we're gonna do this game show. And the kids just, I mean, they did not appreciate it. And it was a big bust.  

Ximena  33:47 They were like they were crying and fighting.

DeeDee 33:50 I couldn’t believe it!

Ximena 33:53 I spent hours and hours preparing that game.

DeeDee 33:56 We were pretty disappointed in that moment. But now look at us. We laugh about it now.

Janna  34:06 I don't know I think maybe Ximena still has a little tear. 

DeeDee 34:11 She's still a little bit upset. 

Ximena 34:12 But no, no. We just have a lot of those been moments where at the at the time may have seen like the failure but it's just hilarious.

Janna  34:22 Ladies, I want to thank you so much for coming on and giving us an update about what you're doing and where you're at and encouraging not only those of us like myself who are continuing and you know it feels like is this ever going to end and at the same time encouraging those families that are coming in as newbies and are excited and can hear that there is a payday at the end of all of this. All these decisions that we're making in our day-to-day with our homeschool, so thank you so much. How can our audience continue to follow you and hear more about what you guys offer? 

DeeDee 34:59 Our Instagram handle is chips and salsa ladies where you can find some posts and links to our YouTube channel chips and salsa homeschooling. We also have a homeschool 101 course that we offer that you can find links to on Instagram. 

Ximena 35:15 And we offer consultation one on one if you're interested, you can check out our website. But if you go to chips and salsa, ladies, you can find all that info there on social media. 

Janna  35:29 All right, well, we will have all of their links in the notes. Thank you guys so much for being on today. Appreciate all that you've contributed to the homeschool world. Deedee and her minute chips and salsa homeschooling.

Ximena 35:43 Our pleasure. We're so happy to be here and go moms and dads.

DeeDee 35:48 Yeah. Thanks, Janna, for having us. It's been a pleasure. 

Janna  35:53 Thank you guys. Until next time, goodbye.