Many of them have their own application. FOr those that don't, I will be downloading the Common application and not submit it on the web because I don't want one same application to everyone. Yes, I know it costs but for us, it seems like a better choice.

Yes, you do have to understand that many people will not come over or let their children come over. My girls sometimes go to the youth group at our church. For Halloween, the party was held at a house with 2 pitbull mixes who the teen daughter said were great with people but were 'dog aggressive". My daughters did not go to the party since I refuse to let them go to any house with a dog aggressive dog. We have a miniature poodle. What if those dogs smelled our dog on our girls and decided they didn't like them either? Or maybe the smell of both our dog and our cat and my one girl's hamster would set them off. I will not have them deal with such dogs.

We have to have a census. It is in the Constitution. It does not need to ask what our race is, or do we own our house. Those are not mandated by the Constitution but rather by Congress or the Executive Branch.

I was thinking about that board recently. I hadn't gone there for quite a while since my youngest is 13 and started 7th grade this year. Well we have basically decided she will be doing 9th next year and so with another one who is an 11th grader, I just look at this board and not that one. I have been getting rid of scores of books. All those Sonlight readers from Core 3 and 4, and many other elementary school materials. I have been doing this for 15 years and the end is nearly in sight. 4 and a half more years. 3 more times after this that I will be buying curriculum. SO strange to think of all this. But I will be ready to retire. I will be 51 and will have been homeschooling for 20 years.

It isn't a matter if its true for the store but whether your state, like most states, say that anyone under 18 can't make a legally binding contract. That is a matter of state law. If your state has that, then she can return the item.

THe only point is for someone to discriminate against someone else. I will not be a part of that and refuse to answer race or ethnicity questions. I didn't approve of racial discrimination when I was little and they made the black kids go to a different school and I still disagree with it.

I am praying for them and for you.

In the last census, we filled in human race and no one contacted us. We intend to do the same this year. Oh and on another form for another government agency, we also put other in the category and it made us fill out ethnicity then so we again put not specified above since our ethnicities weren't.

My dh is 23 years in. He is in a field where he will have no problems finding a job after retirement though we don't have opportunities everywhere but rather in specific locations. In this area, it seems that he is unusual in that the economy doesn't affect him that much since he is in a field with a shortage of people with his skills and clearances. HOw is it in other areas?

I usually don't dwell on it but those commercials on tv do get me mad. It makes some people think we can all run and play tennis. (I have arthritis). I have had two very scares in the last two years and I just have to be careful. That means among other things, making decisions between how much risk I want to take. Not that much while I still have kids to raise. Maybe more when I am done with that. I have been sick the entire time we have been homeschooling and it is one of the big reasons we started. (Not your usual ones). It was much easier for me not to get kids out to school early in the morning when my joints weren't working correctly yet. Much better to wait till they were.

I agree completely with the above poster about it not being about size but about how you carry yourself. Not panhandlers but muggers is my next example. I lived in Sacremento, CA for four years. My dh traveled a lot and that particular year, he was gone before Christmas almost all the time. I ended up having to go shopping for presents at night in a mall that I knew had gang members hanging out waiting to see who to follow and mug. I wasn't going to be a victim. I did eye them directly as I went into the mall and then when I was coming out. I had bags, I had a purse, I was alone, and I was safe. I had given them the look, don't mess with me. They didn't. In terms of helping the people asking, I don't if they do ask me which as I said earlier is rarely with me. They are actually much more likely to ask my husband when he is with me or with the whole family. He doesn't give anything either. We know that the people use it for drugs and alcohol and do not want to be contributing to their problems and furthering the problems these people cause with that behavior in the surrounding communities. In Albuquerque, we lived up a hill. But on the bottom of the hill were grocery stores and bums who would ask for money. They would go in to the stores, buy alcohol, and later urinate on buildings, hang out at the playground making it useless for children, litter bottles everywhere, etc.

Sometimes yes. Mostly when I am teaching something I am interested in. BUt I have been doing this for 15 years. I have 5.5 years more if my youngest doesn't do 9th grade next year and it really seems like she will. So yes, I am tired of it too. BUt the end is in sight and I think I can perservere 4.5 years more. I am already thinking of what I will do when they both graduate and have decided that one thing I will do is judge. Judge debate and speech and maybe some other things too. The groups are always looking for judges and I would be happy to help homeschoolers once my kids are grown. I think I will also volunteer for CASA and probably become a museum or park guide of some kind. THen I will also have to go visit my kids.

Thank God. We will continue praying for a complete recovery.

I did that (stop every two hours and walk around) and still do that since even without having recently had a baby, I am more prone to blood clots.

I had to do this. My oldest was 6 lbs. 8 ounces. We had to use towels or blankets to prop him up. We had to go since we had orders to move to Ohio from California. Now we didn't travel 10 hours a day. Much less. FOr the first part, in the military, you only need to travel 350 miles a day and that doesn't take 10 hours. But we took frequent breaks and just took him with us. He saw the Grand Canyon at slightly over a week old.

I did Sunday School for many years. We used hand sanitizers for the kids and I washed my hands. We didn't have fruit so no issues with washing the food. When we did Vacation Bible School, we sometimes did have fruit and rinsed that.

I cook some things they like and I don't. The main thing both dh and I hate (as do all the children) is mayonaisse so I never have to cook with that. But I do make lima beans or butter beans though I don't like them. I make the kids mac n cheese or cheese and noodles and I won't eat that either. I also will make some desserts I don't eat like pudding and a pastry that I can't remember the name for right now.

I do live in an area where this happens and often live in such areas. But I am not a target, usually. I think it is the same reason I am not a target for anti-homeschooling comments from strangers either. I guess I have a don't mess with me look that probably comes from being prior law enforcement.

If the child wasn't taking aspirin or other NSAIDS or something like prednisone and it was unusually more bruises than normal or in really strange places or patterns. My kids get lots of bruises as do dh and I. We are all very light skinned. My lightest skinned child gets the most. THis has been a pattern with them from their birth with shots giving them bruises. WHen I was on Medrol ( a medicine like prednisone), I had so many bruises.

Thanks so much for this thread. I have so much on my plate including both weekends before Easter being debate tournaments and my dh will be out of town (and out of the country). This week we have National Building Museum fieldtrip with building a geodesic dome, Porgy and Bess Opera performance, regular co-op, sign- up for soccer, hair appointment, End of the year party for Odyssey of the Mind, and Military ball. But this will be a fun thing for me to do sometime in between. It may very well be the last time I have all three kids together for Easter and the second to the last time for the middle. I am going to try to make it very fun. Now what should I do? I think chocolate eggs, chocolate bunny, jelly beans, CD (which they won't expect at all), and maybe jewelry or a figurine for the girls and I am not yet sure what for the boy.

My daugher who is 13 takes VIt 2 at 2000 iu per day as per her bone specialist. She takes 2 sour gummy multi-vitamins that give her 200, I believe without looking at the bottle. THen she takes a small pill that is 1000 IU then 2 pills that are 400 IU each. She didn't like the chewies. Having the sour gummies vitamin helps encourage her to eat all the other pills she needs.

Is she taking actual Sudafed, the one you have to request and sign for? If not, I would have her take that one. Also guafenesin and drink a lot of liquids.

We won't live in HOAs. OUr first house had a problem because of neighbors. Our next three houses we lived in in the US without being on a base have been great. We look for well-educated neighbors, many married couples (not necessarily with kids, could be older couples past child-bearing age), and strong community spirit. These aspects limit the negative aspects of badly kept properties while keeping us free from ridiculous rules. Our neighborhoods included a country club area with a page of covenants but no HOA and the covenants were ones we could live with (no livestock, 2 yardsales a year, that sort of thing), a small city in Florida with a great community spirit and very low crime and great city services, and now a neighborhood with a stong community association that is helpful, not bossy and the oldest continuously existing crime watcher group in the country. I can have any color curtains I want. THe landscaping in these neighborhoods is much nicer than HOAs since lots of home gardeners are more creative than cookie-cutter landscapers. Does everything look the same? No, but that is what I like. Variety and nice neighbors.

Going there I shipped most in unaccompanying baggage. Bad mistake because A, it didn't get there very soon, and B, we couldn't accept delivery until we had a house since our hotel rooms were tiny, tiny, tiny and we lived there for almost a month. Going back, I shipped priority mail for the things we would be using in the next month to six weeks and I got it very fast. NOw depending on where you are moving, you may get much better movers on the other end. We moved to Belgium and were fortunate enough to get Gosselin. THey were the best movers we have ever had in 23 years of moving. We requested them for the move back and we had zero claims there. They are a very large international company and if you can use them, do.

I taught government this year and we did go over that we are a republic, not a democracy and they learned that some very small towns in the NE are, in fact, democracies. We went over all of the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights and all the amendments.