Thank you all - what wonderful responses! Very helpful.
Part of the reason that we are thinking about this now... we've outgrown our house and are debating if we should do an addition or just upgrade to a larger house (possibly moving nearer to the gifted school as well). We are leaning very heavily to staying here, because we like this area and it is near my parents - who are very involved with our kids. The gifted school is in a very densely populated, and we are more "wide open spaces" types. So if we decide the gifted school is the best idea, I might bite the bullet and drive them. It could be a good hour with traffic, but that is life in suburbia.
It's really good to hear some of you had children with similar "achievements" as young toddlers that leveled out a bit as they got older. I hope no one takes this the wrong way, but I do hope that is what happens with DD. Gifted is wonderful and I could deal with it. DH and I were both in gifted programs, so I kind of "get" those challenges. But PG is an entirely different bag of bones and, honestly, a pretty scary proposition in my mind. So I do hope that DD is maybe just having an intellectual growth spurt and this won't necessarily be her trajectory.
Our strong preference would be to send them to the local public school. I like the idea of "partial home schooling" and as a stay-at-home mom I would certainly be up to the task.
We are going to go and check out the school, have a tour and whatnot.
Since my son will be starting kindergarten in a couple of years, I agree that the wise thing to do would to be to focus on HIS education needs first. I do feel that DS would do OK with the local public schools, but given his personality I do worry that the high student/teacher ratios would not be ideal.
