I think you should frame Dazey's line above and stick it on your fridge ("what you are aiming for is learning how to learn, etc....")! (I think I'll stick it on my fridge, too!)
Another useful book you might want to look at is Rebecca Rupp's Complete Homeschooling Sourcebook--some of her suggestions are out of print now, but there is still an awful lot of useful stuff in there. One of my favourite parts is the series of excerpts from her diaries about what each of her kids was doing at any given time--a nice snapshot of how it worked in one family.
There's another very nice book (Learning at Home) by a woman named Marty Layne--she makes it all seem easy and warm and family-centered, so it might be a good read if you're feeling like you could use some reassurance.
Although we do use some curriculum, the most expensive things we do (music lessons & instruments, plus lots of novels) I would have done anyway, even had they been in school, so I don't have too much guilt about expense. (I suppose the biggest real expense is the fact that I'm not working, but I choose not to think about that right now!) There actually is quite a bit of decent-to-excellent free curriculum online (there was a long thread about it on the Well-Trained Mind K-8 board recently--I lurk there occasionally looking for book ideas).
Some other places to poke around are people's homeschooling blogs--I particularly like the Farm School blog, myself.
I will undoubtedly drop in again later to blab some more!
minnie
PS--Kimck, hope your little one is better soon! And hope that your migraine passes quickly, Kriston.
