We just had day one of Kindergarten, and my 2yo was great with puzzles and coloring, but my 9mo was all. over. the. place. Trying to cruise around Savannah's school table while she's working, making lots of noise during the read-aloud, insisting I hold her when I'm trying to squat down to watch Savannah do handwriting. Not sure if I need to change how school works or how I deal with the baby, but either way, I need some ideas! In case it's my school plan that's the problem, here it is for your critique. :-D We're doing a gentle (I think?) Kindergarten with the following goals: -Morning time (4 hymns and 1 Bible story) 5x/week -Handwriting (3 pages from Getty-Dubay) 3x/week -Math (1 game or lesson and 15 minutes of worksheets) 3x/week -Reading lesson (15 minutes from OPGTR) 3x/week -Read aloud (15 minutes from whatever we are reading) 5x/week I'm trying to get school done before lunch so we can go outside in the afternoons and then have an hour of quiet time after we come back inside. We start at 9am, so we have roughly 3 hours to do 4 of these things.

Thanks, everyone. It helps to know I'm not crazy to be unwilling to leave the kids with a strange sitter in a strange city. That's the sticking point for me. I can't agree to leave my kids with someone they aren't comfortable with, even if *I* am comfortable with the sitter. Add to that the fact that ds has food allergies.... there's just no way I'm going to be okay with a sitter while we're out of town. I'm really quite willing to make things work other than that. DH may end up going alone, or we may pop in to say hi but not stay for dinner. The kids are invited to the reception. The bride has kid brothers, so maybe that has something to do with them not wanting kids at the rehearsal dinner. Or it may be the restaurant they picked. Honestly I don't mind; I think she has a right to have a stress-free dinner the night before her wedding day, and I do think my cooped-up-in-the-car-for-two-days kids will take away from that. I don't want them to come and then have to apologize for their behavior. They're good kids, but they have limits like any other kid. We are leaving tomorrow as it is, so there's no chance of us leaving earlier. ;-) We have busy bags and music and books on tape and lots of special snacks. My biggest worry is that in spite of all that, there will be chaos with the three kids squished so close together. Hopefully the stuff we've prepared will fit in the car, lol. We do have a car-top carrier we can use if needed.

DH and Savannah are in a wedding on Saturday. DH is a groomsman and Savannah is a flower girl. We will be driving two days to get up there, staying one day for the wedding, and driving two days to get back. In a compact sedan. With three kids side-by-side in the backseat. Two of them in diapers. I am petrified. :-P There is no rehearsal for the wedding, but there is an adult-only rehearsal dinner. The bride said my baby would be exempt, but that we would need to find a babysitter for the older two (a 2yo and a 4yo). We moved away from this city when our middle child was 3 months old and our oldest was 2, and neither of them remembers any of the people up there. I don't feel good at all about making them drive for two days straight and then dropping them off at a strange place with strange people so dh and I can enjoy a fancy dinner. So we declined. The bride was okay with this. Now the best man (and maybe the groom, too?) is saying we really need to be there -- both me and dh, but without the kids. I don't see how we can do this. Of course it is very kind of the bride and groom to invite us, but I just don't feel like it's fair to the kids to push them away at the end of what will surely be a rough day. *sigh* I don't know if I'm asking anything, but I really needed to vent. Why do weddings always have to be so stressful?!?

Oh, you could also bring canned tuna along. I used to eat it straight for breakfast sometimes. If your grocery stores carry country ham biscuit slices, those don't have to be refrigerated until the package is opened. You probably have to cook it, but they cook quickly. They would be really yummy on some English muffins.

We're not big into camping, but hopefully some of these will work for you... Jerky, mixed nuts, candied nuts, Can eggs be an ingredient? You may be okay travelling with French Toast, at least at first. Or you could bake some high-protein muffins. Kashi makes some high-protein cereals I really like. Can you have other nut butters? Almond butter on something bready, like a bagel or pita bread, makes a nice breakfast. They recommend refrigeration, but I wonder if that's a long-term thing? Lara bars are pricey but have a lot of nuts in them. Homemade ones are even better (and cheaper). Good luck!

I'm a FlyLady dropout, but I had great success with Habithacker (I ended up getting a profanity filter on my browser for it... ymmv). A lot of similar ideas, but the tone is completely different. And no shoes, lol. But FlyLady has more content. No teacher resources at Habithacker AFAIK.

But I don't think the issue is the squares -- it's the units. And I'm not sure the units of "square inches" existed before Descartes. Euclid described area as a ratio -- this rectangle is so-many times the size of that square -- rather than in units with the multiplication built-in. So if I'm not mistaken, the Cartesian coordinates were the entire reason we can say "inches squared" (which I now prefer over "square inches" because it's so much less likely to cause confusion between the multiplicative squaring and the grid squares). Under Euclidean geometry, we could well swap out squares for triangles, because there are no units, just proportions. (Quote taken from http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/bookVI/propVI23.html.)

Gotcha. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I agree with you. I would say to the op, even if we counted triangles to establish the area (which we could totally do), it wouldn't make sense to describe the result in terms of "triangle inches" -- we would say the figure is "24 triangles big" or something similar. (And of course you'd have to establish the dimensions of the triangles you counted.) Likewise, when we count squares, we could also say it's "12 squares big." But if we want to bring inches into it, we have to use square units because we're not even really talking about the squares or triangles we counted; we're talking about the multiplication we did of the units. "Square inches" is, I guess, a lazy way of saying "inches squared." You could also say "inch-inches." But you can't say "inches traingled," right? Because "triangling" isn't a mathematical operation like squaring is.

But it does have something to do with the shape. If you're measuring area the simplest way, you'd make a grid and measure how many squares the object takes up. The grid lines could be spaced out every inch ("square inches") or every centimeter (square centimeters), etc. ETA: Okay, dh pointed out that at the most fundamental level, it's simply the multiplicative "squaring" of the units. But that terminology probably evolved from the fact that the physical representation of multiplicative squaring *is* finding the area of a square. It's kind of a chicken and egg question, but the point is, it's all related.

Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions. I'm mulling it over... we're in kind of a unique situation, as we are part of a very small, new church that does not yet have a building of our own. We are borrowing a day care, and are not allowed full use of the facilities. Clearly I need to find out if we are allowed use of the playground! But even if that doesn't work out, I am determined to find some way to spend time around those dear old ladies, and others in our church family, without distressing them so much. :-D

We stay quite a while after church is over, and the children play. There isn't anywhere to play outdoors except the parking lot, so the littlest ones play inside. I'm trying to think of ways to reel them in to be more respectful of the older members of our congregation who find this overwhelming. Is it realistic for a 4yo and a 2yo to at least cut out the running and squealing after sitting still for an hour for worship? (They have a Bible Class for an hour before worship, then they join the adults for worship. Bible Class is interactive but not very physically active.) I keep reminding them, but still we get complaints -- all of us with small kids do! I feel defeated and need some ideas for controlling the behavior better.

It exists, but it's called a spreadsheet, lol. Seriously, with my picky family I can't use any of those services. But we have a small(ish) rotation, and I've gotten my spreadsheet to be semi-automated (lots of copy-paste, very little thinking involved). It works for us.

Wanted to add, I would recommend against just deciding on "beige" or "white" -- there's a huge variation in how nice a color looks. If you are on a budget, I would get a designer color matched in a cheaper paint. And check samples in the room you'll be painting it in. (At least paint cards.)

I agree about the greige idea. We painted our room Grant Beige (Benjamin Moore), which is a low-saturation beige. Our kids' rooms are Edgecomb Gray (also Benjamin Moore). I love both colors.

I've watched samples and it's just too much stimulation for ME, lol. Anyone have any recommendations that are a little calmer and quieter?

For those of you who have made that transition, what did it look like? Did you ease into things, or did you have a big First Day? If the latter, what did your first day look like? If the former, how long did it take to get to the point where you were consistently doing enough school for it to "count"?

We just bought a house on a septic tank, and the sellers got the septic system cleaned for us before closing. Now we're moving in and every time I run the sink, it smells like something died there. :thumbdown: I've tried the baking soda and vinegar trick multiple times, to no avail. I'm going to pour Rid-X down the sink today, but I'm ready to call a professional. With a freshly cleaned septic tank, what could be causing this problem? Do we want a plumber to clean/replace some pipes? Or did the septic company not do their job cleaning the system? Or is there something else the septic company can do to address this?

Really? It seems pretty reasonably priced for a wool rug of that size.

MBG, we have a separate office/media room in the basement that will have our TV and couch. What I'm calling the family room (the homeschool room/game room) will have an oversized chair for reading to the kids, probably another comfy chair, plus some bean bag chairs, and a table w/ chairs for the adults and a table w/ chairs for the kids. The school/art cabinet and white board will be in the room also.

I'm trying to pick out a rug for the family room at our new house. We've decided that we want to set up the room primarily to accommodate homeschooling and board game playing. So when I came across this hopscotch rug I thought it might be a great fit. My question: is this going to distract us while we're doing school? Are my kids (now 4, 2, and 4mo) going to outgrow this too soon and think it's lame to have a hopscotch rug in the middle of our family room? Am *I* going to think it's lame 10 years from now? Or will it (as I hope) give us a way to play some school games, or to break from school for a little physical movement? There's no telling if dh will go for this anyway. But if y'all love it maybe I'll try harder to sell him on it, lol.

I agree about keeping one warm outfit -- complete with heavy coat -- in case you go visit Utah in the winter. In Florida, you can probably get away with layering sweatshirts even at its coldest. Although consider that you may acclimate to the weather there and soon find 35 degrees colder than you used to. ;-) If your kids are young, they may end up being total wimps about cold in a couple years. At least, I can say that the reverse worked for me when we moved north for a few years. If I were you I'd get rid of the ski stuff and just rent it if you ever go skiing. Generator sounds like a good idea. Double check that your house will have heat, but I bet you won't need the space heater. Never had a wetsuit, even in Florida, so I can't say one way or another on that.

I picked up some Crayola dry erase markers the other day hoping they would be a lower-odor, washable option for dd to use on her dry erase sleeves (the they had at Target -- I think they're the same ones that Rainbow Resource sells). But they don't show up as well as the low-odor Expo ones. (They look a lot better on an actual whiteboard.) Has anyone found anything they love for these? I thought of trying some of those glass/window markers from Crayola. Has anyone tried those? Or something else that's low-odor and washable?

Tuesday: Crock pot beef stew Wednesday: leftovers Thursday: Breakfast for dinner Friday: Frozen pizza or leftovers Saturday: Potluck with friends Sunday: Eat out, or potluck leftovers Monday: Sausage pasta (spaghetti and meat sauce, with easy homemade chicken sausage) At the beginning of the year I developed a template for my meal plans, so that we cook every other night (in general -- our potluck this week is an exception) and have a two-week rotation that looks something like this: Sunday: Roast chicken or baked chicken pieces or baked ziti Tuesday: Crock pot beef stew or pot roast or chili Thursday: Tacos Saturday: Chicken & dumplings or shepherd's pie or breakfast for dinner Monday: Pasta w/ made-ahead, frozen meat (sausage pasta, chicken parmesan, spaghetti & meatballs, fettucini alfredo) Wednesday: Crock pot chicken (we like thighs) Friday: Hamburger macaroni or sauteed chicken breasts or Greek pitas I've worked it out so that our busier days have easier meals, and on days when we need to be somewhere in the evening, or when my dh gets home later, I plan crockpot meals. That way I can meal plan every other week and just need to decide, for instance, which of the three Friday meals we will have. And I have some built-in variety that takes some of the decision-making out of meal planning. Beef is expensive here, so this plan also allows us have beef regularly but infrequently. I prepare make-ahead things every Tuesday.

Ugh. I was afraid of that. As someone who agonizes over Amazon reviews for $5 items, I'm not exactly keen on rushing to spend many thousands of dollars without giving it a week or so to consider if I'm still going to like the house in 5 years. :-\

A couple weeks ago I found a house on Friday that I liked. On Saturday there was an offer on it, and by Sunday it was under contract. I LOVED this house and still want it. Yesterday I looked at houses again and found a foreclosure I liked. Bids were due by February 19, but guess what, this morning I woke up to an e-mail from my agent saying they revised the deadline to TOMORROW. This time we scrambled to look at comps and decided we weren't confident in the neighborhood based on the enormous number of expired listings. But it was stressful having so little time to make that decision. I've been looking at these houses by myself and intending to take dh to see my favorites, so we don't waste his time. But we're never getting a second chance to look at the houses before the time crunch comes down. Is this normal these days? Do we really have to be prepared to make a decision in a matter of a couple days?