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Thea

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Posts posted by Thea

  1. My dd is using Connections Academy this year . She is in 7th grade. I have found the curriculum to be fairly challenging, the teachers responsive and the assignments meaningful. I can't speak to the other students as he avoids LiveLessons like the plague and only participates in them when required.

     

    She is very motivated by grades and I rarely need to intervene. She is very independent.

     

    I love the Connections interface.

  2. I've lived in a smallish town (6,600) for the past 15 years. I *did* get very involved in the county (small county approx 45k residents) and had an awful experience. I won't be accepted and I'm perfectly ok with that. Thankfully the kids have done pretty well even though we've homeschooled.

  3. having teenagers? :svengo: I am not feeling... optimistic about those years.

     

    Don't be. For all the complaining I do, I love my teens. They can be sooo much fun.

     

    Their problems are bigger, the consequences more heartbreaking and a kiss from Mom doesn't solve all problems--those are the things I struggle with.

     

    Oh, and, of course, my 18 yo knows everything about everything. It's quite amazing actually. ;)

  4. Actually Intel corporate headquarters is still in Santa Clara, California. The new fab in Oregon has been in the works for a long time and is to replaced the old closed fab in Santa Clara. Intel is also building a new fab in Arizona.

     

    Correct--sorry-they have a large manufacturing/research presence here and, supposedly, have plans to build more large (or larger) facilities here as well.

     

    Word on the street is that the project in Arizona is not going well.

  5. I hear mixed things about IT. If you have skills & experience in mobile app development or social media related stuff, there is apparently a huge bidding war for talent. OTOH, my DH just told me on Friday that the big tech companies like Intel, Cisco, HP, etc. are going to be cutting jobs big time soon because of the shift away from PCs to mobile devices.

     

    Intel headquarters are here and they just finished building a new fab. There are talks of this type of expansion here over the next decade or so.

  6. My dh is an electrician/instrumentation technician and, although he has had to travel away from home some, we've seen his income increase steadily for the past 4 years.

     

    He may soon be traveling to North Dakota--I'm against it, but the money offered for Superintendents there is obscene.

     

    For him, the key has been having a skill set that is in high demand, yet somewhat scarce. In addition, he has had to be willing to travel to where the large jobs currently are (Eastern WA, here-Intel, and now, possibly North Dakota).

  7. I've spent a lot of time in both. With the motor home, it isn't really safe, it it's not as comfortable traveling for the kids and when we get to our stops, we can't really go anywhere as we can't drive a big motor home down most city streets.

     

     

    We always take a car. We trailered a Corolla on our cross country trip (what a pain!) and have since bought a Jeep Wrangler that we can tow with all four wheels down. Much easier.

     

    I agree that trying to maneuver a motorhome is a bear--we stuck to the major roads and used the car to explore/shop.

     

     

    And yes, they are expensive to maintain. New tires on our smallish (31 ft) ran almost 3k.

     

    I hate tent camping. I love having a bed and a toilet--and a microwave.

  8. We have access and my ds just started playing soccer for the high school. He has to meet all the academic requirements that the ps school students do and adhere to the same code of conduct and follow the same rules.

     

    There has not been a problem in the past, at all, with homeschoolers participating -- in fact, the high school track coach homeschools his children. And they have all (so far) run track for the local high school.

  9. We've only ever had a Class A RV. I lobbied for its purchase over a 5th wheel/travel trailer mostly due to the the time spent going from place to place.

     

    We did a cross country 8600 miles trip with 3 older dc and I couldn't imagine traveling that much with them squished together in the back of a truck, no matter how large the truck may be.

     

    If you are concerned about an accident (RV's are typically very safe, ours is a mere $27.00/month to insure) then I would go with a Winnebago. They are the only manufacturer (IIRC) that bolts the couches and benches to the frame of the RV.

     

    In addition, go used. RV's lose sooo much of their value within the first 5 years.

  10. I am actually in favor of a progressive income tax, just one that isn't as ridiculously skewed as it is now.

     

    When our income was 1/3 of the previous year's but our tax bill was 1/10, there is something pretty screwed up about that. Yes, we were better off in the good year and should have paid a higher percentage of our income but we were not THAT much better off such that we should've paid so much higher a percentage of our income in taxes. And had it not been for the AMT, I think our tax bill for the good year would've been fair (Turbotax shows us the calculation for what we would've owed minus the AMT and then what we actually were forced to pay). The AMT was originally designed for millionaires so it really burns me up that it is whacking us at a significantly lower income level (even in a good year we are nowhere remotely close to a seven figure income).

     

    This happened to us.

     

    My dh made 2.5x more than the previous year and we paid 4x more in taxes (I'm including both federal and state) because of the AMT.

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