Thanks, I had forgotten that this year we can't subscribe as a group.

My two dd are using Life of Fred. The younger 11 yo is using Fractions and really enjoys it. She telles me she understands it better with LOF. She finished Horizons 5 before this. Her sister is doing Geometry. she is having a much easier time doing proofs with it and is also understanding and remembering better than her earlier tries. I find the work quite rigorous and don't see what else she would need to do. For the younger one, I will be adding a review workbook where she can keep reviewing other types of problems throughout the year.

Gone Baby Gone in the fall time. I don't usually see movies alone though I do watch tv alone a lot. My husband didn't want to ee it since he thought it would be depressing. It was but also very thoughprovoking. Sometimes someone watches Dr. G with me or Medical Mysteries but often they don't. I also watch some political shows they don't Fox NewsWatch, Beltway Boys, etc. They watch plenty that I don't. Dopey vulgar comedies, woodworking shows, history programs, science other than weather or criminal science shows, etc, etc.

I say rent the house. The short commute for you husband is worth it plus the fact that you are in a good place for your kids. A one hour trip to your parents seem wonderful to most of us. Most of us have a lot longer than that and the lesser commute for your husband I think will more than make up for it.

Absolutely not. If I get awoken for any reason, I usually have a very hard time falling asleep. I will be up for hours. My dh gets to sleep right away but he will only awaken for things like phone calls or doorbells or our dog barking. (Our mini poodle is very good and will not bark unless someone is at the door or I assume, trying to break in). We don't go to bed at the same time always and we might have a very short conversation when the others does go to bed but is usually on things like did you out the sighwasher on?

Praying for you. I know how hard it is to have sick children who are suffering through procedures. I would suggest something little but special for him as a way to help. When I was little and had to travel long distances and with long waits for apppointments and procedures, my mother would always have some good Swiss darkk chocolate for me to make it better. It did. For my children, it was little Matchbox cars. Make your own better memories to supercede the not so good ones.

Our almost 16 yo Siamese male - Yorick our 7 yo domestic medium hair male- Zorro our 4 1/2 yo miniature poodle male- Fluffy our fish- no names except for Killer for our Bala Shark (not a shark at all)

My daughter 14 has taken two classes with Florida Virtual and tried three others. For her, all the classes take a lot longer than the courses estimate. I think this is because it takes time to learn how to use their system, how to use programs on your own computer you child may have not been familiar with (Excel, Powerpoint, etc,), takes a lot of time to make virtual posters and things like that. Sometimes the courses ask for strange information that is hard to find. Did she learn a lot in her two classes (Keyboarding and Personal Fitness)? Yes. But she took much more time than they estimated. I think with her some of the issue is that she sets her own really high standards and therefore needs time to work on that. She won't just throw together a bunch of junk and call it a report or project. She was rewared with A s in both classes and but they took too long. I am also considering trying it with my next daughter. She would be doing 6th grade work.

I am not good with patience at all. I like things planned out. I don't know if my dh will get promoted and we'll move or he will retire and we ll move. I don't know when in the next year that is happening. I don't know where we will be going. Ok, ok that is all normal for a military wife so why am I out of sorts? I don't have my curriculum planned for next year and I have to wait for others to do their plans to finish. It was something I thought I could have wrapped up by now. Nope. I am waiting for homeschool classes to be set. I am waiting to find out if I will be teaching and if so, what. I am waiting to see if we get an articulation agreeement with the community college so my tenth grader can take a class there. I am also waiting to see if I will be actually doing jury duty on Friday and if I get called to a trial. Too much waiting.

We have informed our children about both mental illness and substance abuse in our families. My husband's two brothers definitely have abuse problems and in one case, mental illness preceeded that for years. My sister was bipolar and generally had problems with control. I think her bipolar disease was the issue since for the short time she was under control, she had no other issues. Since neither my husband nor I have any such issues, we don't follow any special prohibitions other than legal ones. I used to drink socially and not very frequently but since I am back in the States, i never do since alcohol and tylenol do not mix. (In the US, certain drugs must be combined with tylenol in a silly attempt to prevent abuse. In people who have no issues with addiction, it is not the thing that is stopping us from being drug addicts. With the drug addicts, they couldn't care less about whether they are ruining their livers. In fact, if they think about it at all, they probably figure they are generally ruining their bodies).

Generally I think if McCain is elected, it is one and if Obama is elected, it is 2.

Actually it is a shell game and you don't help the US government by not depositing the check. You can tell him that it came from a military family (like us) investing in savings bonds. It really is a big accounting pot where all the taxes and all the money from the savings bonds, t-bills and everything like that goes. Who buys savings bonds and t-bills? Ordinary Americans, corporations, foreign investors, other countries. Who pays taxes? The same group of people. You can't distinguish the money you receive back.

A renter's agreement and a piece of mail is usually all that is needed. We went to Montgomery AL for 7 weeks about 13 years ago and that is what we did. I would look online for the library system in your new area and check what their requirements are for a card.

I have learned so much from these boards. Not only that,you all make me feel like I am in a community when I am not really feeling like I am living in one right now.

We had an incident this last weekend. Someone ran into the sanctuary where we were all waiting for the play to start asking for help with the Heimlick manouver because someone was choking. Immediately, maybe twenty people ran out to help. No one in my family did since we saw all those others running and thought no more people were needed. We also figured one of those twenty is probably a medical person or a paramedic type or something like that and we are not anything like that. The responses to tragedies depend so much on the community or group involved.

I took my two daughters to a new doctor. He seems very good and thorough. ALthough I have mentioned my my concerns about my youngest to two other doctors, they never considered anything strange. He is concerned enough to order blood tests and refer us to a geneticist in Orlando. Her symptoms are easy fractures in the last few years, a slowing of her growing, and a deficiency of enamel on some of her adult teeth that have been coming out. She is 11 1/2. Anyway, among test for calcium deficienty, vitamin d deficienty, and thyroid, he is also testing for celiac disease. I have also been wondering earlier if I have that problem since I have some symptoms that my be attributed to it and it is linked to a disease I already have. This has just gotten me thinking about how unhappy I would be to have to have a gluten free diet. I get such happiness from baking. It is one of the real pleasures of my life, and something I love to do when I am stressed. I also love to eat baked products. I hate corn bread, but I love wheat and rye breads. I love pasta. If it ends up being that we have these problems, I guess I will have to adjust but it would be very hard for me. What would you all have problems giving up forever?

I kept my name and he kept his. He had no problem with mine keeping mine since I was the last in my family with that last name. He was one of four brothers. As it turns out, none of his brothers had any children so no one has his last name. He doesn't care. He knew that I cared that my father's brother's family had to change their name due to his (my father's) immigration to the US and his writings about freedom. I sign our mail as X-Y family. We both have long names so that wasn't it. The children have names like Susan Ann X Y where Ann and X are middle names and Y is my name. It made things a lot less confusing for us when we were stationed in Belgium because there you have to sign documents in your given name at birth, not any married name. Near the beginning of my homeschooling journey, I made a friend who used to tell me how much she admired my husband for letting me keep my name and how she had wanted to keep hers. Fast forward a few years, he husband hid assets from her, filed for divorce, and then stopped working so he wouldn't have to pay child support. I won't have a problem with my children if they decide to change their last names. I just never want my girls to marry men who insist on it.

I will be voting and campaigning for McCain. Why? Because he is a strong supporter of national defense and the battle against terrorism and rogue nations like North Korea. Furthermore he has voted for and will be much more likely to nominate Supreme Court candidates I agree with. He is not as conservative as I am, however he is not a raving liberal like Obama. Obama wants to cut and run from Iraq. That will embolden our enemies. Lastly, McCain has experience and Obama has virtually none. I disliked Hillary Clinton as a candidate but she did not disturb me as much as Obama.

I am putting both of you in my prayer journal. I am so sorry.

Yes, I do and try to be very understanding. My only daughter who has hormonal issues so far has bad PMS. I am trying to teach her how to deal with it. Since she has another medical problem that invariably gets a lot worse then too, I do give her a break. I have had to be less regimental with her than with her older brother. I know that she is doing very well in school considering all her medical issues this year and the very stressful issues in our family (her brother has been hospitalized twice this spring and has come home to live and is currently occupying her room while she is in our guest room/office).

Starting my 13th year, at most 7 more to go.

I just never understand why people ask such stupid and/or rude things. We are a military family so we move around a lot. I never ask people about the children in the family trying to ascertain parents, adoptions, twinness, or anything like that. If the people in question and I become at least acqaintances, after a while they generally slip in that so and so is adopted, from a former marriage, is an identical or fraternal twin, or whatever. I feel that this is personal information and why should I inquire just to feed curiosity? I have a friend I met in one base who when I first met her, I thought she had maybe one adopted (because the child looked very different from her husband and her) but that four others were their biological children. It turned out that all five were adopted although the youngest four shared a mother and some shared a father between them. The parents had two older children who were out of the house who were their biological children. What difference did it make? Well, until I was a friend, I had no business knowing. Once a friend, it helped clear up some things and I was able to help give her support. They had adopted the sibling group only two years prior to my knowing them so they were still adjusting when I met them.

Well we won't be putting down 20%. Why since we are eligible for VA loans? I would rather keep the money for emergencies. Also, I think he often assumes that you will live in one place for the life of the loan. I can't ever make that assumption even when my dh does retire from the military. Until he stops working, I have to assume we may move. We have bought two houses in our last twenty one years. The first house we bought, we kept for almost four years and it increased in value enough that we only had to pay around 500 at closing. However, we got a wonderful tax break for four years and lived in a bigger house than we could rent. Then the second time, we also put no money down, lived inthe house for four years, then rented it for almost three. With us having to repay depreciation, we made almost 31,000. Pretty good on nothing down.

I used to think 12 as that was the recommendation on the car/truck. Then I read about studies that show there is a higher than expected death rate in 12 and 13 year olds in front car seats. The people doing the studies concluded that it was because until you are about fourteen, you bone structure isn't strong enough to withstand the power of the airbag. They used to think it had to do with size but they found out it didn't. It had to do when bones thickened up to a certain point which is basically age 14. So my youngest still has 3 1/2 years to wait.

There was no way I could answer this directly. I said no but the reality is not in the real bedrooms. However, my middle child has been temporarily (2 months so far) been displaced to our office/guest room and that has a computer in it. Even when she was in her own bedroom, she could go into the office anyway. My oldest who is 19 and home due to depression recovery does have his own computer and own cell phone he either has paid for or is paying for on his own. We don't have tvs in bedrooms except the master bedroom which is mainly used for exercising (we have a treadmill in our room) or for early morning news. We don't own any game systems at this time (we are seriously considering the Wii). Neither of my underage children are the least bit interested in telephones. What electronics they do own is stereo or boom box system.