What?!? The military has always been our ally, not the Turkish government! Oh my goodness, I'm really ill now. Turkey has always sent military officers over here to get their advanced degrees at our military institutes (like the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio). My parents have had wonderful relationships with so many of these officers and their families. Single ones have lived for 18 months with my parents, and the married ones my dad helps the men with the grammar on their theses, and my mom teaches English to the wives and does social things with them. They're like grandparents for them. I know so many of these officers and their families. The older ones are probably ones involved, and the younger ones have been so worried about Erdogan and his policies. This is very, very bad.

Ds2 got 4's on all 3 of his exams--bio, stats, and US gov. The exam weeks were tough for him too. The national mock trial tournament was the second week, and so he was under the gun prepping for that because his team won our state championship back in March. He took gov and bio right before he left, and he had to take the make-up stats one right after he got back. It was crazy! I really wish he could have taken stats before he left though. I think it would have made a difference. Oh well!

But it sounds like she is asking about requirements to live on campus, so that would fall under resident life.

I've always been called by my middle name, and I really hated it. I think it was more personality, though. I grew up in an Air Force family, so we moved a lot. It was mortifying to me to always be the new kid, explaining that I wasn't called "Barbara" (my real first name, named after my father's oldest sister who had died in a car crash years before my parents even met), but rather Claire (a name that *no one* else had in the 70's/80's, at least no one I ever met). Anything that made me stand out more was horrible and embarrassing to me. I got married after my sophomore year of college. When I went back to school my junior year, I showed up at the registrar's office and told them I wanted to now be called Claire MaidenName NewLastName. The lady was a real snot about it, and she eventually told me I would have to have my name legally changed for her to make that change. So I walked out of there and legally changed my name. Two months later, after having taken out an ad in the paper and having met with a judge, and whatever other hoops I had to jump through that I can't remember, I walked back into her office with the piece of paper. She was quite surprised I actually did it! I firmly told her I did not ever expect to see one piece of mail addressed to "Barbara" from them again. And I never did! All our 10 kids have Bible or virtue names, and we don't repeat initials. We didn't start out thinking we were going to do that, but after a few, we realized it would be weird to have 3 boys named Bible names, and the next one called Logan or whatever. We did have to branch out to the virtue names when we started having girls though. We didn't want to be like every other stereotypically big Christian family with a Sarah and a Rachel, although the ones we have are definitely not uncommon, except for Verity. We named her that because I was teaching a Latin I class the year she was born, and how fitting to give her a Latin virtue name! Plus we liked it! :)

Ha! I am so thankful for this thread! I've been on a bit of a cozy mystery kick lately, since school's been done. I love the Her Royal Spyness series also, and I've just recently read a few Kate Carlisle ones (not British themed though). I have been casting my mind back, trying to remember this one series I started several years ago about an American lady who now lives in England with her husband, a retired investigator/police type man. I really enjoyed the 3-4 or fthem I read, and I could even remember some scenes in my mind, but I couldn't find them just by randomly walking down aisles in my library or anything. It has really been bugging me! So I opened one of the links in the first post, the British Themed Cozy Mysteries Unlimited list, and there it was! The "Dorothy Martin" series by Jeanne Dams! I'm so happy to get that mystery out of my brain! And now I have several other series to look into as well . . .

Here's what I posted back in May 2015: I taught anatomy and physiology in our small co-op this past year. I used Essentials of Anatomy and Physiology (4th Ed.) by Valerie Scanlon, which was recommended by someone else on this board. [There are newer editions out--this one is available very cheaply though.] I *really* liked it. I thought it had good, clear explanation, but it was not so incredibly detailed that it was fit for someone heading off to medical school in another year or so. Plus, you can also get a student workbook to go along with it. This has activities for each chapter, as well as 2 multiple choice practice exams for each chapter. I ended up giving 5 exams over the course of the year, instead of one after each chapter, but I pulled a lot of questions from these practice exams, which was really helpful. For labs, I used a lab book by Marieb, which was good. I used some of her activities, and we dissected many sheep organs, which I got from Bio Corporation (they had the best prices). [ETA in June 2016: They seem to have gone out of business because I can't find their website anymore. Too bad, because their prices were excellent.] I think we dissected a sheep heart, brain, eye, and kidney. It really fun year--my favorite high school class to teach, I think!

My dh comes from a larger family, and my sils like to post these sorts of things about their children. I really don't, mainly because I have a strong support network around me so have never felt the need. I did, however, post a picture of the letter announcing ds1 had made the commandant's list his first semester. There had been some whispers from these extended family members (all of whom like to gossip about each other!) that maybe ds wouldn't be able to hack it there. Posting the picture quieted the gossip, and I didn't feel the need to do it again for the second semester! I also didn't tag ds in the picture. He did know what I was doing (and why, lol), and he was fine with it. Again, though, not something I would do on a regular basis!

We also bought a table from the Amish, over 13 years ago now. It has 4 leaves and extends to 120 inches. We leave it all the time with 3 leaves in (96 inches), and we can fit all 12 of us around it. We got the wide table that is 48 inches, so we can fit 2 chairs on each end. We also bought one bench when we bought the table, and the youngest kids not in high chairs sit there. It fits 3-4 little kids. We then have 8 regular chairs around the rest of the table (and a high chair beside it!). Our table and chairs are *so* well-made. I love them and can see us with this table for years and years to come!

That was amazing! So sweet!

That's the one my boys used for both micro and macro. My good friend taught it for our little co-op, though, and she has a PhD in economics. But she was very happy with it. There's a study guide as well, I believe, that they used. The 5 boys got 5's on both exams, so it was a success!

I think it's different for different exams. When they redesigned the biology exam, they decided it would be scored by a "gold standard", where a student had to get so many multiple choice correct and so many points on the FRQ to receive a 5. It wasn't correlated to how others did on the test, or how real college students did, or anything else. But I don't think that is how all AP exams are scored--and maybe they've backed down on that for bio, who knows. I haven't kept up with that aspect of it!

My dh frequently loses his wallet, causing much stress as we all search around frantically. He's also a tad defensive with questions relating to what exactly he was last doing, so our searches usually aren't that logical. It's stressful. So I was thinking about getting one of those devices, like a "tile" that theoretically allow you to find things that are lost. There are a bunch of them out there on amazon, and most of them don't get the greatest reviews. It looks like the best one might be the "MYNT". Does anyone have any real life experience with these things?

I have one from Lands End that I love. In fact, I need to order a new one because it's falling apart under the arms, but it is probably 8 years old. I just looked, and it's this knee-length night shirt (NOT the mid-calf one, which I think is a lot longer than what you are looking for).

I don't think it looks like that heavy of a schedule, considering she's already had, basically, most of those classes. My son took chem. (review of high school), calc. 2 (review of community college class that for some reason took a long time to get into the system, so it was too late to get into calc 3), a lit class that dealt with short stories (since he had AP'd out of freshman comp, and it was an easy, fun class) intro to engineering, plus his corps class (he's a cadet) and his ROTC lab. It looks like a lot for a first semester, but he didn't find it so. He had a lot of extra physical training and other corps-related stuff that would be somewhat similar in time to playing a sport. Again, it's only because all those classes are basically review for her that I would say it's okay. If they were all new, or she was going into the 200 level of the courses, I would say it would be too much for an athlete. But I would still try to get out of at least the basic English stuff (and definitely not go back down to college algebra! How mind-numbingly boring after calc!).

After we had #10, I realized that it's getting harder and harder for me to straddle such wildly different ends of homeschooling--nursing/sleepless nights and college applications--along with everything else in between (potty-training, teaching reading, all the other homeschooling, teaching people to drive, everything!). So we made the decision to be done permanently, although dh never went back in to get a final all-clear or anything--because if he wasn't, and we did have another baby, we would totally be fine with that. Obviously it would have been what the Lord wanted. I can't wait for grandchildren! All my kids are sad for our last baby, because she'll never get to be a big sister, although as I pointed out, there's always a last one, lol. But hopefully there will be grandchildren before she is grown up! I had my last when I was 41, and it was a fine pregnancy and delivery. All mine have been, really. I did have gestational diabetes for the last 3, but I think that really watching my diet and being faithful to exercise allowed me to feel better for those pregnancies than the ones right before. I'm sure I have less energy now, but you know, it really doesn't matter. Now I am mentally more tired from teaching high school science and Latin classes, which was a factor in us stopping. Physically, though, I never was the kid of mom who took her kids out to a bunch of activities. In fact, maybe having a big family was an excuse for me, lol. Even for my first grandchild, I'll probably be the grandma who reads to them and does crossword puzzles! I agree with other posters--I LOVE seeing my older kids with my babies. It is so heartwarming, and really, it makes having a baby a completely different thing now than it was when all I had were littles. My older ones are so very helpful (and my first 4 are boys, so it's not like they are naturally little mother hens or anything). It is SO nice to be able to leave them with the littles and run out to doctor appointments or to get groceries without dragging everyone along. They don't feel burdened because the younger ones all entertain themselves and play by themselves really well. They're just around in case something happens, or if a squabble breaks out, lol. I will say I have been glad to start getting rid of baby stuff. For so long, we have never gotten rid of any stage of anything; we've only added more things as older kids got older. And for the last few babies, we kept thinking, "We're not going to buy another [baby bathtub/bouncy seat/exersaucer/whatever] for #8 or 9 or 10, since s/he might be the last one . . ." So we've been making do with things that it has given me great pleasure to finally throw out after all these years! I've been a bit sad--but all the new space in our storage room makes me very happy! (Well, not that happy, since any new space seems to immediately get filled up again . . . how does that happen?! We've gotten rid of a LOT!)

DS2 took bio yesterday and government today. He felt confidant with biology, and I think with government as well, although he definitely didn't spend anywhere near as much time on gov. as on bio! I teach bio, so I definitely have much more invested in that score! He would be taking the stats exam Thursday, but his mock trial team is heading to the national championships, so he will have to take the make-up next Wed. He'll be glad when this next week is all over!

I know we had a negative thread on this book a little while ago, but The Great Brain series takes place in Utah! Also, books by Richard Peck, like A Year Down Yonder and A Long Way from Chicago take place in a small Illinois town. On the Wings of Heroes does too. We're listened to a lot of Richard Peck books on trips, and we've enjoyed them all. I know you didn't specifically say Illinois, but the books are like any small midwest town.

Ah, this is interesting. I'm doing a Whole30 this month, and at the first week, I made my homemade spaghetti sauce for my family to eat with noodles, while I tried it with spaghetti squash. It was the first time for me to eat spaghetti squash since I was a preteen, and I was SO bloated and gassy-feeling the next 2 days! I also wondered if it were just the general increase in veggies, but it was definitely right after eating the spaghetti squash, and I haven't had any problems since then.

I just finished teaching 2 years of Latin 1, first with Henle, then with Latin Alive. I greatly preferred Henle, but only because it enabled me to effectively teach it without having a great deal of background in Latin--only Latina Christiana 1 and 2 with my own kids. The scope and sequence drives me crazy (he introduces all 5 noun declensions, plus a very few selected verbs, and then eventually he gets around to how you conjugate. I wish he was more balanced.) But there are *tons* of exercises, so if you check your work, you can know that you are in fact doing everything correctly. With Latin Alive, I did like the sequence of how they introduced things better, and I also liked all the interesting tidbits of Roman history and culture they have. Evenutally we stopped translating the readings, though, because they got pretty complicated, and a huge majority of the words would be words you had ever seen before and had to look up in a little section after the reading, as opposed to vocab you had learned. Also, there were quite a few times they used a word that had never been given as a vocab word or anything. Usually they were words I knew from Henle or other previous study, but still, it was weird. Maybe those were just words from LFC that they assume you know? They weren't in the glossary at the end of the book, either, which could be frustrating for kids. My biggest complaint with Latin Alive, however, was that there simply isn't enough practice. There are also not anywhere enough examples either. Now we weren't using the DVDs, so maybe they are chock-full of helpful examples, but the teacher's guide doesn't give any more examples or explanations than the student text does, and it's just not enough. I ended up making extra practice sheets for my students to do during the week, and we used the exercises in the book during class time to explain the concepts. That was all fine and dandy until we got to maybe lesson 19 or 20, when I started being a lot less confidant in some of the concepts. Then I would try to make up practice sheets, but I wasn't sure I was using the words (cases, whatever) correctly, and I spent a lot of time in Henle and Wheelock's, trying to figure things out. It took me forever, and was a huge stressor in an otherwise very busy year (I also teach AP biology). But like I said, maybe the DVDs are fantastic, and we should have used those. I don't know. I do know that it was hard for someone who doesn't already thoroughly know Latin to teach from Latin Alive with any degree of certainty, and I know I could never do Latin 2 with it!

Yes, I assumed I would lose weight because friends of mine have--about 15 pounds, on average. I also assumed that because I was eating less and had cut out dairy, all sugar except a piece or 2 of fruit, all grains, etc. that I would lose. I think the purpose of the whole 30 is not just to find out about allergens and help autoimmune disfunctions, but also to break a dependence on carbs, so that's why you cut out beans as well as sugar. And I do think it's helped me with that. I've certainly become more mindful in my eating, and more careful about reading labels. I also feel good on the diet--but I would like to add back in beans and rice, for example, and I also don't want to immediately gain everything back. But I feel like 8 pounds is not a very big buffer, so I most likely will.

I'm at almost the same point (22 days in), and I've had the same results. Although I have been *very* faithful, I've not lost that much weight, which is discouraging. One of my friends said that to lose weight on whole 30, she had to be faithful about entering calories into myfitnesspal, and she had to really work out a lot. Sigh. I feel like it's helped me get into better food habits, and I've felt good on it, but still--I don't have any big aches or mysterious rashes or poor sleep or whatever that I was hoping to help. I just have the weight. One year ago in August my 10th (and last!) baby stopped nursing on her own, and then I proceeded to gain 10 more pounds over the next 9 months. I've lost 8 of those pounds this month, so yay, but in my mind, getting those 10 pounds off just gets me back to the starting line--where I have 10 more pounds to lose to get back to where I was before I got pregnant with #10, and probably 15 more to get back to where I'd like to be. I'm starting to think I'm not ever going to be able to really lose weight, because I have no doubt that as soon as I stop adhering so strictly to the whole 30 diet, I'll gain those 8 pounds back. I think about other approaches like intermittent fasting or whatever, but honestly, I don't know how I can actually *do* that. I still have 9 children at home. I'm teaching AP biology and other high school science classes at our co-op, as well as junior high sciences, and I'm still teaching people to read and potty-training, plus everything in between. I can't be starving myself and nonfunctional, even 2 days a week. So I guess I will continue looking like I am several months pregnant, and having random strangers ask me when "this next one" is due. Sigh.

DS2 is taking bio in June. He's taking the AP exam as well, but a friend of ours, who got a 4 on the AP exam 2 years ago, would get credit at some school (can't remember which one!) for his SAT 2 score, which was 780, but not for his AP score of 4. So we're going to knock out the SAT 2 as well. DS1 took it after he finished AP bio, and he did well on it. He also waited until June. The bio one is different enough from the AP exam that one needs some time to brush up on what isn't covered during AP bio, and he is too busy in early May with AP exams and with the mock trial national championships to do that.

My oldest 2 sons took it and did very well. We noted it on their transcript where we listed scores, and we also noted it whenever applications asked for "other academic achievements". Why not mention it? It is just like the National Latin Exam and other tests like that. :001_smile:

In some book I read in the past few years for my AP biology class--The Violinist's Thumb, perhaps? or a different book on epigenetics?--talked about this very thing. People (maybe just women?) who were starving for a period of time that ended so they were able to have babies later on had babies who consistently were obese. So epigenetically something happened to make the bodies of the babies store fat much more efficiently and readily than babies whose mothers had not had any period of starvation. They specifically referenced some people group, from Norway, I believe, during World War 2. Sorry I can't remember it more clearly, and I don't have time to serach for the reference right now, but it was really interesting. So maybe it didn't so much affect their metabolism permanently, but it certainly affected the metabolism of their children,

Whoa, that was really interesting, and a bit depressing. I'm on a whole30 diet right now, and I hope to high heavens my metabolism is not slowing down like that! I don't think it is, but wow--those poor people! It's definitely NOT simply "eat less, exercise more", though.