I shared the board with my husband last night. He read my post and the replies. We both really appreciate all of your words. We also both appreciated the point made that said something to the affect of, when using the boards, to take what we need and leave the rest. That is what we did.
My husband and I, along with our one child that is baptised, all feel strongly that we will most likely disassociate ourselves in the near future. None of us feel like doing any pretending. We've done that for far too long and anything that is even remotely similar to a lie is not the way we want to live our lives. We want to live in truth and love, with our heads held high. We also don't want to leave with anger being our main emotion. I think we just want to feel pity for those that are still entrapped and hope they soon will come to their senses.
Why disassociate rather than disfellowship? Because we feel WE will be making our stand loud and clear. That is important to us. We do NOT want to give anyone else the power to make the decision that we need to be separated from the Organization for us, like through the elders deciding we need to be disfellowshipped. We know if we present all the info that has helped us to make our decision, it won't get read, so we aren't going to include it. Just a very short letter to the point ("After an in-depth study of the Watchtower Societys history and its development..."). We want to be able to get on with our lives and do whatever we end up doing without feeling it needs to be done in secrecy or the wondering if we will get "caught". I hope this makes sense! If someone in our family or circle of friends insists on reasons why, we will be happy to meet with them and present the facts. Otherwise, we are going to request "live and let live."
I will let you know what is going on with all of this when I can. Right now we are waiting until after the holidays and after we give ourselves a bit of time to digest everything. We aren't going to observe Christmas this year, but we are going to have a late birthday party for our littlest one this weekend. We set a budget last night and will be going to buy all the presents and decorations this evening. When I asked the little one about if they'd like a birthday party, they replied they wanted a Scooby Doo cake with candles on it and we sing "Happy Birthday"! So that's what they'll get. Scooby Doo all the way! This all feels so good and so right. We'll just be glad when the rest of the family/friends know and we can have that one last weight off our shoulders!