I ordered a Grow a Frog kit yesterday. I know what I'm getting myself into, I've been researching ACFs for a few weeks trying to decide if the committment was worth it. After all, we have a pond across the street that might have tadpoles in it come spring, and those can be released afterward. Eventually it came down to whether we wanted another "odd" pet, and the answer was yes. I know there have to be a few Grow-a-Frog grads here, likely with frogs still kicking, so to speak. Can we get a roll call? How old are your frogs, how many do you have, and what are they *really* like as part of your family? Do you keep any other animals in with your frogs? Most importantly, knowing what you know now, would you do it again? Also, do any of you have the "rare, white frog"? My 6yo ds really, really wants a white one, but I'm not sure if it's worth it, kwim?

I'm throwing in my vote for hissers, but only if you want a longer-term project. They can live 2-4 years if you care for them properly, maybe longer. Pros: --They're clean creatures. They don't make nasty messes that require daily maintenance and the worst we've ever had from their tank is a faint earthy smell that isn't unpleasant. --They're sturdy enough for smaller children to hold without hurting them, unlike butterflies, and slow enough that they're less likely to get dropped or escape while being handled. --They don't need special food!! You can feed them vegetable and fruit scraps from your kitchen. Mine get a varied diet of lettuces, carrots, cabbage, apples and apple peels, oranges, etc. Add in a little cat or dog food (for the protein) and the hissers will thrive. --They survive just fine at regular room temperature. We keep our house colder during winter (61 or less at night) so we do have a stick-on reptile heater under the tank, but at normal temps it's not necessary. --They don't bite and have no claws. The worst thing they do is hiss when threatened or scared. --If you have a breeding pair, you will get babies eventually. These can be sold on craigslist, though most people buy them for feeder insects for large lizards. I've never done it, but you can apparently sell them to some pet stores, too. It's something to look into. --Unlike the pest species of cockroach, hissers don't have thousands of babies at a time and aren't "born pregnant" so to speak. It takes about 6 months for them to reach sexual maturity. Cons: --They're pricey. We bought our original 3 from carolina.com. If yours have babies and you sell them it can offset the cost, but it's still not cheap up front. --People are creeped out by roaches. I have friends that won't go anywhere near our hisser tank. --You aren't getting a short-term project unless you have a place to rehome them. They can live for several years, and if they have babies you're looking at many years and many generations of roaches. --Babies are harder to contain than adults because they can fit through very small cracks. The easiest way around this is to smear a strip of vaseline about 1.5-2 inches wide around the entire top of your tank. They don't like the feel and can't keep their grip, so they can't get out. Neither can the adults. Hmmm, that's all I can think of right now. Hope it helps.

Ooohhh, I love KCRF!!! I haven't been in a couple of years, since I moved to south-central KS basically, but I have friends up there who do festival every year. Some are even actors/participants. Things to avoid...hmmm, well if they still have the show "Get Shrewed", it is VERY not family-friendly, though it is a hilarious battle-of-the-sexes sort of production. I've never laughed so hard at a festival act before or since! If the LimeyBirds are still there, you should probably avoid them, too. I recall them being rather suggestive and hard to explain the jokes to small ears. If you're only going for one day, you aren't likely to be able to see the entire scenario. It's basically an extended play put on by the court and actors, with scenes spread throughout the day. If you're lucky, you might catch some of the scenes here and there, but I always found that with kids it was too hard to follow the scenario and still get in quality shopping and fun at the other shows. No need to dress up, either you or the kids. KC does have a lot of die-hard patrons who are as well dressed if not better dressed than a lot of the paid/volunteer performers, but your average visitor is going to be wearing regular clothes. No worries about not fitting in, in other words. That said, it can be lots of fun to dress up and if you're interested in doing it, you should be able to toss something together pretty quickly and cheaply. Just whatever you do, don't fall for the outfits being sold at festival unless you don't mind blowing lots of money. They are generally extremely expensive, and the vendors are good at getting you into them "just to see how you look". :glare: BTDT, many years ago. Biggest suggestion for KCRF...take your own water/drinks. Seriously. Theirs are way overpriced, and you'll get thirsty walking the lanes. Oh, and if your kids like to dance, be sure to stay for closing gate at the end of the day. It's a great way to exhaust them before leaving. :D

Back at the start of January, DH was laid off. We filed taxes really early and got a decent tax refund, and since I'd started reading up on Dave's plan on my own, I made sure that $1000 of it went into our savings right away. Unlike most previous layoffs (DH is in a skilled trade/construction, it happens a lot) this layoff lasted...and lasted...and lasted. Meanwhile, unemployment was *barely* covering our base expenses. The mortgage was eating up over 75% of it, and basic utitilities the rest. No cash for food or anything else. We used the rest of the tax return to cover the difference and were pinching pennies like crazy. I didn't touch the emergency fund until it was dire. In very early April, we were at Sam's Club, and there in the book section was a Total Money Makeover starter kit -- book, workbook, budget software, etc. It was $40. On impulse, I bought it, even though we couldn't really spare the money. Less than a week later, DH and I were both on board and making plans to get through the layoff and get started on our debt snowball. Finally, at the start of May, Dh got a new job with overtime. The first thing I did was take the overtime pay and put it into our baby emergency fund. Good thing, too. Almost exactly a month later, DH was laid off again. In the same week as the layoff, our roof was damaged in a storm and the resulting leak damaged our dining room ceiling. The next day, while starting the insurance claim process, I received a letter informing us the IRS had audited a previous year's taxes and found a $830+ error. Our homeowners insurance would only cover 70% of the repair to the roof, so we had to fund the rest out of pocket. Oh, and my DSS flunked two required classes in school and we were going to have to fork out $300 for summer school so he could get his diploma. It was like Murphy threw a HUGE party in our house, and he and all of his friends were sleeping in our spare room. If it weren't for our baby emergency fund, that month would have sunk us because we were so close to the edge!! As it is, DH is finally back to work again, and we're plugging along on refilling the fund. He's going to be getting a LOT of overtime in Sept. and Oct. (over double what he's getting now) and I'm confident that if Murphy shows up again, we'll be ok.

Wow, you gals are awesome! Thanks for all the links and suggestions!!

Wow, that's great! Thanks! Thanks for the input, gals. Now I'm off to see if I can find something free for art/music study online. There has to be something somewhere, right?

I'm definitely not an auditory learner, but I might just try that. Does this lecture basically outline the info in the WWE text, or is it something else?

We're finally heading into our first "real" year homeschooling, so of course it's this year that DH ends up unemployed for all but 6 weeks since January. :glare: He's just now back to work, but we're going to be catching up and paying off debt (Dave Ramsey style) for a good while. So, I'm trying to plan everything using resources I've already collected and have on hand, or ones I can find online for free. How does this look for a high-energy 6yo boy? History: SOTW Ancients w/ AG and lots of hands-on projects Phonics: Phonics Pathways (we're somewhere in the middle already...he's advanced a good bit on his own since we stopped in the spring) Grammar: FLL Literature: Myths, legends, and fables (synced up w/ whatever culture we're studying at the time when possible), lots of misc. read-alouds from our home library. Science: WTM-style human body, animals, plants & gardening; we have Everybody has a Body, Mudpies to Magnets and More Mudpies to Magnets, and a lot of other resources for this one. We'll be able to do at least one experiment/project a week. Math: RightStart B. Extras: I have Hooked on French (all 3 levels), which at one lesson per week or so would get us through the year. (I took 4 years high school French, plus 2 years in college, so this should be pretty easy.) We also have lots of hands-on crafts books, project books, and arts & crafts supplies (several storage tubs full!!), mostly donated from a SIL whose DS is too old for such things anymore. What we don't have is a spelling program, a handwriting program, a writing program, art, music, or outside activities. I'm probably going to use PP for spelling once handwriting gets easier for him, but I'm sort of stuck on the others. Any ideas? TIA!! Oh, and if it helps, I'm mostly interested in non-consumables when possible, since I have a 1yo DS who will eventually be following in his older brother's footsteps. Tweaking to fit I can do...affording to buy everything new again in 5 years, not so much!

:lol: My cat will sit on TOP of the roach terrarium with nothing moving but her tail tip. Twitch...pause...twitch...pause...twitch. I swear, it's her favorite non-eating-related occupation. And YIKES! on the escapees. Giant roaches, I can manage; ants running around free would get me twitchy. I can't stand the little buggers, they always seem to get around my anti-ant defenses and invade the kitchen. Did you manage to avoid getting bitten while rounding up the daring adventurers? And while we're at it, which brand of ant farm do you have? I've been eyeing the fancy AntWorks gel ones, but haven't heard any personal reviews.

Oooohhh...are they the big harvester ants?? DS wants some of those, too...I told him we had to wait until spring, since we have so many bugs already.

I don't think you can sell live bugs on ebay, and I'd worry about mailing them to people even if I could. Can you imagine what would happen if the box got damaged/ripped?!?! Not to mention, several states require a special permit for the biological supply company to ship you roaches, I'd hate to see what it would take for me to ship them somewhere myself. I might sell them locally, maybe see if any of the homeschoolers around here want a few. For now, I think we're just going to keep them all and watch them go through the 6-month growing up stage.

...your household menagerie includes countless roly polies and sowbugs, 2 jumping spiders, a very hungry brown recluse, 2 wingless fruit fly cultures, a rather confused worm, and 30+ Madagascan Hissing Cockroaches (mostly babies!).

You know, I hadn't even thought of that. Maybe I should. :D

Ah...that's the really cool thing we learned about Hissers. The female carries the egg case inside her body, and the eggs hatch there. Then they're "born" live. We missed the birth part, which I'm guessing probably happened yesterday or the day before.

I can't remember where, but I remember seeing a blog recently where the mom had her barely-writing preschooler write out her letters for this program, then used the resulting font to "write" dictated letters to family. It's a neat idea, and I'd considered doing it myself.

Nah, not that cool. Is there a "Homeschooling Bug Freak" award? I might qualify for one of those...

Possibly a bad idea to do this outside, since they're a non-native species and all of that. I guess they are pretty creepy looking, probably why they feature in so many scary movies and reality stunts. I'm a bug person, so I'm biased...I think they're really neat. I found some other batteries for the camera, so some pics on my blog here. DS's comment: They're so CUTE!! :lol: I think he gets it from me.

Hehe...my camera batteries were dead. I'm charging them now. :D

*NOT for the bug phobic or squeamish!!* This is probably the only place I can post about our exciting discovery this morning without being thought weird. Er, ok...*too* weird. Last month, as part of our Plants & Bugs study for my Ker DS, I ordered 3 Giant Hissing Roaches. When we got them, I noticed we had 2 males and 1 very fat female. Ok, cool. We set up the terrarium for them and have been happily feeding/watering/tending them ever since. When I went to feed & water our roaches this morning, I found baby roaches everywhere. I finally gave up counting at 25 of the little guys, who not so surprisingly can move very, very fast and fit through very small spaces. Suddenly I'm very glad I opted for the super-fine screen top for this particular tank! Anyone interested in a Hissing Cockroach unit study, complete with living baby cockroach? :lol:

Well, we're currently planning an extended-family cruise for late December (over Christmas) so I can't really say we're worried much. We will be taking the usual health and hygeine precautions, maybe being sure to be a little more careful about them, but that's about it. Honestly, I'm more worried about my ds5 or my little one getting a stomach bug while on ship.

Mmmm...it all sounds so yummy. I'd even take the mountain oysters. We're doing a roast with carrots and potatoes, plus a salad and rolls. Nothing fancy, just tasty food that allows me to stretch out leftovers for part of the week.

I think the cutoff for any sort of heroic effort lies around the 21+ week mark, and survival rates then are extremely low even in the best NICUs. Technology can only do so much. ETA: I think that comfort care is/can be offered to babes born alive but too young to survive, or to babes born right around that gray area where they *might* survive but the parents choose to forgo heroic measures. That makes this case even more tragic...they couldn't even put the poor babe in a warmer to ease his short time here!!

I won't get into the universal health care debate part of this, but I will say that it's extremely tragic this happened, and will continue to happen to other mothers. I can only think...I was sure of the conception of my now 3-month-old son only to within 3 or 4 days, since my cycles were strange when it happened. If the mother had been in the same situation, her babe could actually have been 22 weeks instead of 21w5d, especially since early ultrasound has a margin of error and he was bigger than normal for that gestation. I think I'm going to go hug my little guy a bit tighter tonight.

I plan on using it as a supplemental resource for my ds, but we'll be using it rather than letting it use us. The pathways I've saved to our planner so far include some of the Science and History, but by no means all or even half, and we'll only be using a few "stepping stones" from each one. Overall, the idea behind LP is great, but it has quite a few kinks that need to be worked out. I'm interested to see where this goes as it develops.

In my teen/college years, I tested mostly ENFP, but occasionally INFJ. I think the I/J was more revealing of my coping mechanisms than my true personality, though. My Dh is very strongly an INTJ. I haven't been tested in years. Maybe I should dig Please Understand Me off the shelf and give it a look.