It's an online app, unfortunately. When ds gets home from his CC class this afternoon, he's going to call the AFROTC guy at VA Tech and see if he has any suggestions. It's just weird!

My ds is in the process of applying for an Air Force ROTC scholarship. In the extra-curricular section, the part where he is supposed to list sports says "varsity sanctioned sports only". In Virginia, homeschoolers are not allowed to participate in public school sports, so by definition, no sports he participated in are "sanctioned" by anyone. He runs with a homeschool cross-country club that races against private schools and other clubs, he plays rugby with other public school kids in a rugby club, and he played basketball and football for the first 2 years of high school in a local league until he aged out, but obviously that wasn't "sanctioned" or "varsity" either. Does AFROTC really not want to count any of his sports, thereby rendering him out of the running for scholarships, or is there some other way to interpret that? It just seems so weird. He has applied to all the service academies as well, and none of them make this distinction. In fact, they encourage homeschoolers and athletes in really big high schools to find club sports and non-traditional sports to compete in. Has anyone else's child dealt with this? Thanks!

Congratulations!!! SO exciting! Although I have to say--we just caught up with you guys (#10 was born on Sept. 24), and now we're behind again, possibly by 2, LOL. Naming is hard for us too. We also don't repeat initials or name (first names) after people we know. We have all Bible names or virtue names. We ended up going with Verity for this baby. We figured it was a virtue name, and I am teaching Latin 1 this year, so it seemed a good year for a Latin name. I like what a previous poster said--I hope naming the baby(ies) is the hardest part of this pregnancy!

Those are soooooo good! My favorite, and I never dreamed I would ever even like a pizza without meat on it!

My dad was Air Force as well, and we lived there from 1979-1983! My memories are very similar to these--we also lived off-base (in Ishikawa, right by the beach) for the first part of our tour, although we didn't have a phone. I remember my mom walking to a neighbor's house to call! We also had a gardener, cleaning lady, and sewing lady. I remember the sewing lady making clothes for my barbies. For me as a girl, living on Okinawa was definitely my favorite duty station. I absolutely did not want to leave! We also space-a'd around a ton, which was fun. Now that I am an adult with kids, I'm sure it was harder on my mom. My dad flew, and he was TDY all. the. time. When typhoons came, the men would scramble the aircraft, leaving the women and kids all by themselves with one token man from the squadron. I thought it was all a lark, but I'm sure it was nerve-wracking for my mom! We also had to deal with a lot of water-rationing, which again didn't really affect my elementary-aged self, but my mom could only do laundry on certain days, we had a trash can in the hallway filled with water so we could flush toilets, and we had to drive to Camp Lester weekly to fill up water bottles for the days when we wouldn't have water. Also, we had terrible termites, and we had to have the kitchen cabinets replaced twice in the 3 years we were there in our base house! Ah, memories! I loved Okinawa! :)

I'm due next Thursday with a little girl, and we're planning on naming her Verity! We have all Bible/virtue names, but with this being our 10th kid, and we don't repeat initials, we were running low on ideas. We had a friend several years ago who was originally from Great Britain, and she had a daughter named Verity. And since we focus a lot on Latin in our homeschool, and I'm even teaching a Henle course this year and next, it seemed perfect! So obviously that is my vote out of your choices, lol. :)

This is what I would do too. We have a 2007 8-seat Sienna, and while we now have 9 kids and don't all fit in it, we still use it with smaller subsets as often as possible because our big 12-passenger Ford van is such a pain, lol. We have also found that 3 boosters are a really tight squeeze in the back row, so we just have 2 there, in the outboard positions (and then we usually have someone who doesn't need a booster in the middle as well). In the middle row, we have the harnessed carseats installed behind the driver and in the middle for the baby and toddler. Then someone else who just needs a booster (or doesn't need anything at all) sits by the passenger door, helping buckle the little in the middle as well as themselves, and just moving their booster to the floor to tumble the seat when it's time to get out. It works well. It can be nice to have someone in the middle row who can be helpful for the littles during drives, too.

LOL, are we the same person? I do this too, and we also have 6 boys and 3 girls, and are expecting #10 soon! :)

We are in Loudoun County. We do not homeschool under the religious exemption, but good friends of our did. The one thing they ran into was when their oldest got into high school, and they wanted to do AP testing at the local school, the school put up a bit of a fuss, since they were religious exemption. You have a long ways before you are looking at high school, but if you have any intentions of testing like AP, where you have to use a local school, then that might be one reason to not do it. My friends ended up pulling their religious exemption. That all might only relate to Loudoun County, however. Other districts might not care.

We were in Boston this summer for a week because my dh had a business trip there, and we did one of the tours from the Jenney House Museum. It really was amazing! Leo is a wonderful guide--he is an excellent story-teller, and he really made the Pilgrims come alive and seem like real people. All my kids (17 on down) were hanging on his every word. We did the Plymouth history tour. I didn't want to spend the money for Plimoth Plantation, with all our kids, but we all felt like we learned so much from the tour. It was very much worth it for us, especially since we also didn't have a lot of time to spend there that day.

You said this much more clearly and succinctly than I did! I agree! :)

Mine have never voiced anything like that either. As BlsdMama said before, my kids really love having other people to play with, watch movies with, talk about a book with, whatever. And the olders (all boys) really do love their younger siblings. They will take the little ones out and play on the trampoline with them, or help them shoot baskets, or whatever, just because they think it's fun, and they like having the younger siblings respond so positively to them. I don't think any of them feel that they are missing out on stuff because they have a lot of younger siblings. In fact, I have heard several of them say at different times how they wonder what kids in small families DO all the time?? Who do they play with? It must be so boring! LOL We have a friend at church who was talking to us once several years ago. He mentioned a friend he had who had grown up in a large family and who was resentful. This man felt like he was asked to do too much of the work. I don't think that is the case here. We're not the Duggars, with every older one being responsible for a younger one. The older kids don't mind at all being in charge when I run errands so that everyone doesn't have to go, because they remember well how it was when we all had to troop along every single place! They are so glad they can all stay home! And I think we do work with the younger kids to help them be able to entertain themselves and play appropriately with each other, so it's not "babysitting" in the way most would think of it, where the older sibling is responsible for entertaining the younger ones. Mainly they do whatever they need to get done while keeping an eye on the younger ones and making sure they are not getting into anything they shouldn't, and the younger ones play--sort of how it is when I am around, actually, LOL. Because of how our family ended up coming, gender-wise, room-sharing hasn't been a struggle at all. We live in a house with 5 bedrooms on the top floor. The oldest 2 boys share a room, and so do the next 2 oldest boys. The 3 girls are all in one room, and the 2 youngest boys are in the last "kid" room. The new baby (most likely a girl) will be in the walk-in closet in dh and my room for probably about a year. Then we'll have to see how things shuffle around. But by then older kids will have started moving out (wah!). In 3 years from now, the room of the oldest 2 boys will be empty, so things may shake up a bit--maybe 2 girls in there, and 2 girls in the other girls' room. So kids have been able to keep stuff they really treasure up high in rooms with similarly-aged siblings, so there hasn't been the struggles that I have read about having no place to get away from younger siblings and no way to keep them out of the older kids' stuff. That would be hard to deal with, and I can see breeding resentment! We have also made it a priority to keep doing things we did as a family before, even though now we have a lot of kids. Like in February, we took a space-a trip to Hawaii for 2 weeks to visit friends (space-a means flying on military aircraft that have room for free). It was a logistical chore for me, but so much fun, and definitely great family memories. We still travel with dh when he goes TDY whenever possible. We went to Boston with him for a week the end of July, and we sight-saw while he went to meetings. I really don't want my older kids to say, "Oh, we never do anything because we always have little babies around." But I don't think they think that at all. We do a lot of fun things! And yes, we definitely have some kids who are bothered more than others by the stares and whispers of complete strangers! I tell them just to smile and wave! :) Most of them like the "family identity" I guess you'd call it that we have, and all of the kids have talked about hoping to have large® families themselves. Whenever they say something about that, I always try to mention that we hope they'll have the children God wants them to have, and that's it's not really important how big or small that may be. I would never ever want them to think that we would think poorly of them if they stopped at 1 or 2! And I also say, especially to the boys, that family size is definitely a good thing to talk about when you are seriously dating because even though attitudes might change (like they did for dh and me), it would really be hard to have the man thinking 10 kids and the woman thinking 1 or 2 from the get-go, especially if she is from a small family herself, as I was!

No, I can say that for me at least, your family size would probably never even be a thought in my mind, unless you said something to me about it. Like Martha said, pretty much everyone has a smaller family than me! We are part of a large elementary co-op at a different church than we attend, and that church had a big group of big families that all had kids starting about 15 years earlier than me. So by the time I got to the group, I knew moms with lots of kids, but they were all dealing with kids getting married, off at college, etc. down to upper elementary, so they weren't really in the same phase of life as me, with lots of littles running around, and me being pregnant a lot. So I wasn't really hanging out with those ladies. And now I sort of am the token person in the group that is still having babies! Most of the moms seem to join the co-op after they are done having babies! But that's fine--hey, they are more available to volunteer! I have friends with kids in high school, and that is very helpful as I navigate those new waters. I have friends with kids in the elementary years, and that is good because they often know of new curricula that I would never bother with because I don't have time anymore to research things like that, LOL. I have friends with babies and toddlers only, and I love being able to reassure them that their kids/struggles/parenting are all perfectly normal, and that they don't need to compare themselves with others. I don't think I have any friends with kids in all those categories, and that is perfectly fine! I can find things in common with most people, and I am close friends with several women who only have 2-3 kids. Really, family size never enters my mind when thinking of friends! I would say that common spiritual beliefs, common educational goals, common interests outside of kids--those are a lot more indicative of potential good friends than family size! But again, although we are very conservative evangelical Christians, we are not of the patriarchal, quiver-full mindset, so maybe those who have big families out of those convictions wouldn't be comfortable with us, since we wear shorts and pants, swim, let our kids watch movies, etc.? I don't know. Most people who follow more of that philosophy are a lot farther west from us, and go to different churches, co-ops, etc.

Hmmm, I've never thought about it much, but I think I agree with this, as I think back over other big families I know or have known. We lean more towards the second approach as well. When the kids were all younger, we did things like AWANA and Upward sports, where we could all do things together. Now that the older kids are older, we don't really do the things we used to do, and the older ones are more free to go in their own direction. My oldest 3 are all in Civil Air Patrol, and probably the other ones will continue joining and participating in that. It makes sense--we're an Air Force family, it's fairly cheap, and you can go a lot of different ways as far as interests in the program. But it also doesn't start until age 12, and it doesn't require a ton of parental involvement, so that is really nice. We could never do scouts at this point. My oldest 2 played several years of youth football, but the next 2 aren't interested in that. Now the older 2 run cross-country with a homeschool team, and the younger 2 are becoming interested in that, so they will probably start doing that next year. There is a house basketball league just a few minutes away, so several of the kids play in that league during the winter. It's fun and low-pressure, plus again--it's close, so not too inconvenient. My oldest started playing in a rugby club last year, and he LOVED it, so now he's trying to recruit his next brother to play this coming spring. And since he can drive now--go for it! The middle kids do summer swim team, but the older ones were never that in love with swimming, so that has actually been nice--it's given the 3rd and 4th boys something to do where they aren't following in their older brothers' footsteps, which has been really good for them. Again, we didn't start them all that early though--just 2 years ago. My second son was interested in speech and debate this year, but I think we have (jointly, not just dh and me) decided it is just not going to work this year, but we will try next year. With a new baby coming this fall, and with the amount of parental involvement the speech club required, and the fact that the meetings were a good 40 minutes away, we just couldn't see how to make it work this year. We're doing the same thing with our 3rd daughter. The older 2 girls take gymnastics once a week at a local community center, and we had thought we would start the 3rd girl this fall. But with the baby, we couldn't make any of the times work out. But she is going to be in a little co-op for kids her age one afternoon a week doing science and art that a good friend set up (and will take her to!), so she is going to be able to do something special, and she'll do gymnastics later. The other 2 didn't start gymnastics until they were 7 and 6, and she is just 5 now anyway. I don't see any resentment or anything--they know we are trying to work things out, but sometimes things don't work, and that's just life. Look for other options (cross-country, for my son, since it would have conflicted with speech and debate, but now he'll get to do it). One thing we have not really done is music lessons. I played the piano when young, and then the clarinet for many years, but dh's family wasn't musical at all, so it wasn't a priority for him, financially. And I was always pretty stretched and couldn't figure out how to work out a bunch of different lessons for different people/ages, so it just didn't happen. My 4th son is very artistic, so we have done art lessons with him. His teacher had a premature baby and had to stop teaching for a time, but we need to start that up again for him. We really do try to accommodate each child and their different interests, hopefully with activities that are not too expensive or require too much of a time commitment from other family members. It is always a juggling act, but I don't think anyone feels like their natural gifts don't matter. If one of the kids really did desire music lessons, I think at this point we could make that work (after the baby though, LOL). So we haven't worried about starting things very early, and you know what--it's worked out fine. Our boys aren't going to be Olympic swimmers, for examples--but then most boys aren't, and they have been competitive. I think that having them play a ton of different games, climb trees, ride bikes, etc. for years, with their siblings and neighborhood friends gave them a lot of coordination and athletic ability without them having to follow a formal practice schedule, run around hither and yon to games and so on. And they're not burned out by the age of 12 either! We live in Northern VA, though, where it is pretty much expected, it seems, that your kid will start some esoteric sport at the age of 5 and excel at that through college, so we are definitely following a different path than those around us. Oh well. It's working for us.

But see, at this point, for me, there really isn't a lot of negatives about having another baby. That is the easy part for me! I've got that! It's much harder to have high schoolers (although very rewarding as well)! That is a complete difference from 10 years ago, when my oldest was almost 8, and I was expecting #5. I didn't know how I was going to handle things, and I did feel maxed out. What I discovered, however, is that it is much easier to have babies when your older kids are older. They are so much more helpful and independent. And once the oldest turned 13, we started letting him stay at home with the younger ones, so I could go to appointments by myself, or dh and I could go out for a date without worrying about child care. Wow--what a life-changer that was!! (I do realize, from reading other threads on here, that we are probably not in the majority as far as how much freedom/responsibility we give our kids.) And now he can drive!!! It just gets better and better! :) Also, now that my oldest is a senior, I do think I have better perspective on what things are really important in the younger years, so I have become more laid back. Now my oldest is hoping for an appointment to the Air Force Academy, so I am not talking about dialing back on the rigor of academics, especially in junior high and high school. But I know where I am heading, so to speak, and I don't need to worry so much about the younger kids. I realize they do not need to be pushed so early necessarily. I would say that my life is much busier now than it was 10 years ago--although I felt back then that I couldn't possibly be any busier! Teaching high school level classes *is* difficult (I also teach, in different years, AP biology and honors chemistry). But having high schoolers around is really great too, though, because I can have real conversations with them during the day--very mentally stimulating! And we can laugh at things we find on the internet or whatever. I definitely feel more mentally challenged and fulfilled now!

My grandparents did, and so does my mom. I have before, but I don't usually bother. I don't think it's nuts or anything though, since I grew up with it! Is it a southern thing? My grandparents were from Mississippi.

I can honestly say that has never been an issue for us either. Except for the 5-6 weeks post-partum every 20 months or so, nothing is unavailable. In fact, as I prepare to give birth, things get more and more active, in hopes of stimulating labor, LOL. I think dh is tired by the time I actually give birth, and could use a break! ;) And since we're not worried about not having kids, there's no time during the month that is off limits either. It's pretty freeing, actually, to not be worried about getting pregnant!

We have 2 extra flip phones that our oldest 2 kids (a high school senior and a sophomore) use. Like others have said, it is really nice to be able to communicate about rides, etc. when they are gone all day at events. I do love that because they are so difficult to text on, I do not have to worry about anyone being tempted to text and drive or anything! When our oldest goes off to college next year, I think we will get him a smart phone. When he was at the USAFA summer seminar this past summer, his element leader (a current cadet) said that everyone (professors too) pretty much assumes you have one and can access email, etc. all the time. Also, as someone else said, it will function as a camera/for music/gps, etc., and that will be useful. I *think* we will keep him on our plan, but have him pay his share, especially if he does get into the Academy and has his monthly pay. That is how friends of ours did it with their son who was at USAFA, and it worked well. Right now, I am the only one in our family to have a smart phone. Even dh, although his is nicer than a flip phone (at least you can text on it!) just has a dumb phone. He could upgrade, but he just hasn't. I do like mine, but it's only 2 years old, and I got along without it just fine for plenty of years. I know I am not using it up to it's potential, but I don't have the time or inclination to spend time learning about it! I like that I can check my mail when we're on vacation, and that I can post pictures directly to facebook, LOL. That's about it! Maybe when ds1 does get one, he'll enlighten me about the amazing things I can do with it!

I can answer some of the questions as well. I am 35 weeks pregnant with #10 right now. I can honestly say I never ever dreamed of having this many children. My parents only had my brother and me, and I thought that was incredibly boring and predictable, so I knew I wanted more than 2. I thought I wanted a "big" family, which to me meant 4 kids, because that was the biggest family I knew, LOL. When dh and I got married, he was a captain in the Air Force, but I was starting my junior year of college (he is 8 years older than me). It was very important to my parents and to dh and me that I finish my degree, and I was on birth control at that time. Shortly after we married, I developed a blood clot in my right shoulder because my first rib was constricting my vein. I had to take Coumadin for 2 years, until I had surgery to remove my 1st rib. Coumadin is very bad for unborn babies, so again, I was most certainly on birth control. After I had the surgery and graduated from college a few weeks later, we moved to CO. All the change, stress, something did something to my body, and I just sort of shut down as far as my cycle went. I had stopped the birth control pills (and now I can't ever have them, because doctors assume I have a propensity for blood clots, which might be exacerbated by birth control pills), and I thought I would get pregnant right away. Hey, we'd been married for 2 years already! But nothing happened. In fact, I had just stopped having periods at all! After awhile I saw a gyn, but there was nothing they could see was really wrong. I would take clomid every so often and something else--provera maybe?) to stimulate a cycle. I just sort of thought at that point that maybe we would never have kids. My dh was working a weird operational shift job with this rotating schedule at the time. But right when he was selected for a different (regular-hour type job), I was astounded to find out I was pregnant! I had a completely uneventful, fairly easy pregnancy and delivery. We never really used any other form of bc because we thought it was a minor miracle that we had ever conceived in the first place. So imagine our surprise when I discovered I was pregnant again when ds1 turned 1 year old! After ds2 was born, we did use barrier methods of bc for about a year, and then we stopped and I got pregnant with #3 and #4 (who are 20 months apart, after about a 2 1/2 year break from ds1 and ds2). By the time ds4 was 1, we were preparing to PCS to the DC area. When we moved, I was pretty overwhelmed with 4 little boys, finding new friends and support groups, homeschooling a 2nd grader and kindergartner, etc. I told my dh to not even touch me when I thought I was having fertile signs, even with barrier methods! But a few months later, things were settling down, and I thought we might have 1 more. But I didn't get pregnant right away. Not for several months. I started charting, and I was having these 55 day cycles, with a tiny fertile window. We thought we might not have any more, which made me realize that I really DID want to have another one. Eventually I did get pregnant, with our first daughter. I was absolutely SHOCKED to find myself pregnant again really soon--she was 4 months when I conceived, although I was nursing, no solid food, etc. Had never been fertile that early before, nor after, as far as I could tell! At that point, we really came to the realization that although we thought we were in control of our fertility, the Lord was teaching us that he was in control, and we were better off trusting him. So we really haven't used birth control since then, although we have occasionally. I would say we are definitely not strict quiver-full type people at all, since we don't have that strong a conviction. Dh and I have always been on the same page as far as feeling like most forms of birth control are a total pain and hassle, and we'd much rather have the babies than mess with any of that! And we are very pro-life, so there are definitely forms we would never consider, like IUDs. Right now we are both thinking this one will be our last (and dh might do something permanent). I am now 41, and dh is 49. I still have relatively easy pregnancies, I would say, but they are harder for me now than they used to be. Also, I have had gestational diabetes with 3 of them, and it has been harder to manage with just diet and exercise this time around, so I know it is taking a toll on my body (type 2 diabetes runs very strongly in my family history, so I am sure I will eventually have that, although I am hoping to stave it off for as long as possible with diet and exercise!). The biggest reason, however, is that is really is hard to be spanning the spectrum of ages. My oldest is a senior in high school this year, so I am wearing the guidance counselor hat and helping him with college applications, etc., as well as teaching the science classes for our rigorous small high school and junior high co-op (anatomy and life science this year). I'm also trying to keep junior high/upper elementary/lower elementary kids on task, as well as teach my 5 year old to read, and keep the younger 2 out of messes, potty-train, etc. And soon I'll be nursing again. It's very stretching! If I could just have the babies--I feel like I actually have that part down now, LOL. My babies have all been laid-back personality-wise, and very good sleepers from an early age. They're not picky eaters, they don't have sensory issues, learning disabilities, really anything major. I freely acknowledge that we would most likely not have had so many if any of ours did have issues that took up a ton of my time and coping abilities. That is one reason why I feel like God has called *us* to have a large family, because that is what he has given us, and he hasn't given us big reasons to not have more. I also have never had any issues with pregnancy, labor, delivery, or post-partum recovery. I'm in general a pretty laid-back person, so I know that helps too, although then it leaves our house always looking somewhat cluttered because I just don't care enough to be rigid about a chore chart or whatever, LOL. You will notice I never reply in threads about "how do you do it?" because we just muddle along, and things don't really bother me all that much. We have a pretty happy house, and it really is a lot of fun. I never dreamed I would be in this situation, but really, my life is so much richer than I ever could have dreamed of back in high school! I love, love, love seeing my older boys interact with their younger siblings--they are going to be such awesome dads!

LOL, this is so very, very true. When we had our last baby, people from church brought us meals, and seriously, out of 6 or 7 meals, 5 of them were some sort of pasta and red sauce. And in big, huge disposable containers as well, so we really had to struggle to finish it, with left-overs! We were so very thankful, but by the end of the 3 weeks, my kids were like, "Ahhh, pasta and red sauce again . . I can't wait until you start cooking again, Mom". The funny thing was, during that time, we were over at a friend's house and she had said she would make chili for all of us. We were looking forward to it (something different!!), but as we walked through the door, she said, "Oh, I changed my mind on dinner--I didn't feel like making chili, so we're just having spaghetti and meatballs . . ." I had to tell my kids the change with my forced smile, you-had-better-respond-politely eyes on them, LOL. The nice thing about sites like takethemameal.com is that you can look and see what the people prior to you have been bringing, and thus avoid 3 weeks of pasta and red sauce!

Well, technically an AP is a 3 hour test, not 1 hour, like the SAT 2! Although the point still stands--you're basing an entire year's grade on one exam.

Ha! My grandma used to make this! Our second duty station after we got married was Colorado Springs, where my grandparents had retired, so dh and I went over to their house for dinner quite a few times. Once she had canned pear halves in bowls at each place setting, and then there was a bowl of white stuff and another bowl of shredded cheese on the table. Well, we were having baked potatoes as well, so dh and I assumed the white stuff was sour cream, and we used both it and the shredded cheese on our potatoes. Grandma was amazed that we were putting those things on our potatoes (because you only use butter and/or salt and pepper on potatoes, don't you know) and told us the mayo and cheese were for the pears, which absolutely amazed us! Blech! And mayo isn't that great on baked potatoes either, LOL--it's definitely not sour cream! My mom is a really good cook, though, and I use a lot of her recipes. One thing that helped was that our family was stationed on Okinawa when I was in 1st though 4th grades. My mom had some good Japanese friends who taught her how to steam veggies, make stir-fries, etc. I think that before that assignment, she boiled stuff like broccoli, but never afterward. And stuff that she liked but no one else did (even my dad), like liver and onions--well, she would order that in restaurants for herself, but never cook at home. Whew!

Very interesting. Thanks for bringing the article up! I'm not teaching AP bio again until next year, but research on viruses like these will certainly go right along with the course.

This is exactly what we have done for years, and it works fabulously. We replace the clear plastic every few years, but it is so worth it. We put maps underneath ours, one on each end of the table. I buy the sheets of plastic from Joanne's--we have a really huge table, so I buy it 4 yds. long.

We never got paper copies. i think it's all electronic now. I just downloaded them and printed them off.