![\"Roy](\"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Roy-Maternity-2-684x1024.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI\u00a0am currently a full-time stay at home mom of four: two beautiful daughters and two sweet little boys.<\/p>\n
My past lives have included a being a world class ballerina who retired to start teaching dance before returning to school and becoming a childcare expert after which I took the time to travel and see the world.<\/p>\n
Of course that is all exaggerated, perhaps the life I would have had if I had had my way!\u00a0 The truth is much more bland, a mix of dance and childcare jobs with some babies thrown in the middle. \u00a0But still, it is my truth and I\u2019ve loved (nearly) every second of it.<\/p>\n
I grew up doing ballet in my hometown of Arvada, Colorado.\u00a0 I got bored in high school and decided to focus on dancing, going on to earn my B.A. in Dance Education from Jacksonville University in Jacksonville, Florida.\u00a0 I, unfortunately, never had a lot of natural balletic ability but found I really enjoyed teaching and was pretty good at it so pursued that side of the dance world.\u00a0 While in college I discovered I also really enjoyed choreographing and perhaps most importantly, I also discovered my husband.<\/p>\n
After completing our undergrad degrees we set off across the country to OOOOklahoma where hubby completed his Master\u2019s degree and we both took the best low paying jobs we could get in order to make ends meet.\u00a0 Even with a teaching certificate in Dance I was unable to find myself a full-time dance teaching job so I turned to the only job in education that didn\u2019t require certification: preschool.\u00a0 I began working at Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma City\u2019s Child Development Center (try fitting that on your resume!) where I worked for the two years we lived in Oklahoma.\u00a0 I loved the program more than any other I\u2019ve ever had experience with and with the love and guidance of great co-workers found I also had a knack for working with young children.<\/p>\n
I continued taking ballet classes 5 days a week and also taught ballet at a small local dance studio.\u00a0 After another year of failed attempts at getting a full-time dance teaching job I decided to begin my M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education through the University of Missouri, Columbia\u2019s online degree program in order to be able to further my career in the field.\u00a0 The journey to obtaining my degree was a busy one spanning a broken foot; engagement; relocation to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida; wedding; pregnancy; hospitalization for pneumonia; loss of my beloved Nana; and birth of my first daughter (in that order over a span\u00a0of a<\/span>\u00a0year and a half!) during which time I completely lost my footing in the dance world.<\/span><\/p>\n I returned to the dance studio when my daughter was 7 weeks old, teaching 6 days a week at 3 different local studios while still doing childcare part-time.\u00a0 It was an exhausting year and when my husband got offered the opportunity to relocate to Dublin, Ireland for a few years, I was ready for the change!\u00a0 The process of getting to Dublin was much longer than we had originally anticipated and we decided expanding our family couldn\u2019t wait for his\u00a0company.\u00a0 So at 14 weeks pregnant with my second daughter we boarded a transatlantic flight with an 18-month old and began our European adventure.<\/p>\n During our time in Dublin we traveled extensively, returning to the states at least twice a year (including for the birth of our 2nd<\/sup> daughter) and visiting a total of 25 different countries, all with our daughters in tow.\u00a0 Our 2 \u00bd years overseas were some of the best times we had but the day-to-day became exhausting\u00a0 and overwhelming with two children, no family, no car and a husband that was away from home at least 1-2 weeks a month.\u00a0 So, when the opportunity for a promotion and relocation back to Ft. Lauderdale came our way, we took it.<\/p>\n Back in Florida, we added two little boys to the crew while I attempted to balance ever more complicated motherhood with teaching dance (very) part-time. And after many stressful years in the traditional school system, we decided to undertake homeschooling\u00a0which was a major life changer for us and has allowed us to be able to return to traveling and focus on what was best for our family.<\/p>\n After 6 years in Florida, though, we were ready for a change. So, in the spring of 2018, hubby took a job transfer to\u00a0New York City, and our family made a huge move to northern New Jersey where we finally feel at home and our kids have really begun to flourish.<\/p>\n I’m by no means an expert on parenting or childcare, but I do have a lot of experience and stories to tell so I now balance my days juggling babies, homeschooling and trying to keep up with Beyond Mommying.<\/p>\n I’m Melissa Roy, a ballerina, homeschooling mommy to four. \u00a0I write regularly about my parenting adventures and live by the motto “Life is never boring when you’re never alone, but I know somewhere out there, there is life Beyond Mommying!” I\u00a0am currently a full-time stay at home mom of four: two beautiful daughters and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":2,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-25","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14503,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25\/revisions\/14503"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Melissa-Family-52-wm-1024x683.jpg\")
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