Thanks for all the great replies! At least I know we aren't alone in this struggle. Ds is a hard worker when it comes to chores or any physical. Now that we are managing this RV park, he and his brother do an hour of outside chores everyday plus they do a few chores in the house and practice their tae kwon do at least 1/2 hour everyday. We figure he is learning discipline through physical means. Now if we could just get him to discipline his brain the same way. :001_smile: Dh and I had a talk last night. We agree that he will never be a bookish, academic person and we need to keep channeling that physical energy. Ds has said before that he would like to be a landscaper. He is artistic and a hard worker so we could seen him be successful in that. But he also needs to read and write! :001_smile: We will keep at it. Sometimes the struggle is too much for me and I'm guilty of letting him get away with slacking off in his studies. Cadam, I've been guilty of the same things with my ds--second guessing myself about what I'm expecting of him and then backing down when I should be standing firm. And Rhonda, if I was honest, I would have to admit that I often allow it to deteriorate instead of being on top of it. That is what I meant when I wondered what other 10 year old were doing. Is it really too much to expect him to write his own narrations 2-3 times a week? He also does very little reading on his own. For history he listens to the reading on Librivox but I make him follow along in the text. A couple of times each week he has to write a few sentences using his spelling words. That is really all the writing I have required. Is that expecting too little? We have quiet time every afternoon and the choice is either read or sleep. He always picks the easiest books like Frog and Toad. I was reading everything I could get my hands on at that age. I loved biographies and anything having to do with history. Ds did tell me once that he would rather read science books than fiction. But then he would never find a science book he wanted to check out at the library. They weren't easy enough. *sigh* We will keep on though! Thanks for the thoughts! We will see how today goes. :001_smile:

Everything I read about homeschooling talks about children having a natural desire to learn. Well, my oldest doesn't. Nothing interests him. He hates every subject we are studying. He fights me every time I ask him to write, read, do anything. The only thing he wants to do is watch TV and play computer games. During the week he is limited to 1/2 of computer time per day and he usually watches about 2 hours total of TV during the day. Dh and I think we should eliminate it for him altogether. I guess the only subject he shows an inkling of interest in is art. He does like to draw and draws well. He likes looking at other paintings and copying them. But once it starts to turn into work (as in more than 5 minutes) he doesn't want to do it. He can focus when he chooses to. He takes tae kwon do and I think that has helped some. Also, I'm curious as to what your 10-year-olds are doing for work. I want to know if I'm expecting enough of my son. Part of the problem could be that I haven't been pushing him enough and making him do the work he should be doing so I've helped him develop these lazy habits. Anyone who has BTDT with advice, I would be interested in any thoughts!

Van Helsing was so awful. The special effects, dialogue, everything. Ugh! Not even staring at Hugh Jackman could save that film.

I thought The Breakup was pretty awful. Horrible and depressing. Do people really act that way? I agree that her movies (the ones I have seen) were fairly bad.

Thanks! We will keep tweaking the schedule to get it all in. Evenings are hard because we are going to tae kwon do Mon - Fri in the late afternoons and Sat morning. Once our 7 yo is on the same day as our 10 yo it will only be 4 days a week. Yay! I think that will make things easier. Then we can do more project-type stuff on those evenings. Maybe I need to get myself out of bed sooner so we can get more done in the morning before I have to open the office. On the positive side, I just got done paying all the bills. And we have a nice balance left in the checking account! I think that is the first time that has happened since we have been married. That takes care of a lot of stress right there! Now we can start paying down our debt so we can live on less.

We recently took a job managing an RV park and I'm already wondering how on earth this is going to work out. I only have Sundays off. Dh works somewhere else all but two days a week. The older boys are still doing school work over the summer. We have constant interruptions during the day and this is the slow season. We are open 9 to 4 and I'm in and out all day, pumping propane, dealing with guests, letting people into storage, answering the phones, making sure the grounds are tended. I have a desk set up in the corner of the office where the kids sit. Add to that two preschoolers and I'm beginning to go nuts! :willy_nilly: I start having doubts like Am I cheating my kids out of a decent education because I'm so stuck on homeschooling? Would they be better off in school for the next year? But on the other hand, I believe my oldest would really struggle in a school setting and I think our second would be bored silly because he is already ahead. Dh said that he has arrangements with someone to come in around October and take over some of the responsibilities. I hope that works out. Dh would quit his other job but we really need the extra income--which is why we took this job in the first place. I know someone here runs a B&B in Alaska. I have new admiration for you!

I've driven through Santa Clarita several times. "If we can just make it to Santa Clarita, we will be out of LA!" :001_smile: We are in AZ. It's a furnace. ugh. Why bother checking the weather? Today: sunny, very hot. Tomorrow: sunny, very hot.

We would have to be in the Love Him camp. Our 2 yo calls him Bob-Bob. "Bob-bob on! Bob-bob on!"

We still have some work to finish up but I'm looking to do something a little more fun too. Especially for my oldest ds who hates doing schoolwork.

Thanks! I'll check it out.

My dad got me started on the podcasts from White Horse Inn.org. It's four guys sitting around discussing different topics about theology. The current series is titled Christ-less Christianity. (Let's just say they don't like mainstream Christianity and Joel Osteen.) I guess if you don't agree with their theological point of view, it wouldn't be very fun to listen to. :001_smile: I started listening when I was doing mind-numbing data entry work from home and needed something to occupy my mind.

Our local Barnes and Noble doesn't have them. bummer

I miss shopping at a real store. If anyone knows of a homeschool store in Arizona, that would be even better!

I'm sorry about your pregnancy. I went through the same thing this past October. We told the kids about the new baby and then when I went to my first OB appointment at 12 weeks, after an ultrasound, I was informed the baby had died. I went ahead with a D&C because it was obvious the baby had died some weeks earlier. My one son was 6 at the time. Sometimes he still draws pictures of me with a baby in my belly. I asked him if he understood that the baby was no longer inside me but was up in heaven and he said yes, but that he still liked to draw the baby in my belly. The kids knew I had to go to the hospital and the doctors had to take the baby out because it had died. Sometimes my 4 yo dd will talk about the baby up in heaven and how one day we will get to meet her (she's convinced it was a girl). She even gave her a name once. Don't be sorry you told your son. I think it is sweet that he wants the baby to sneak away and visit. I can just hear one of my dc saying that same thing. Just keep talking about it with him whenever he brings it up. I'm sure he thinks it is sad but I don't think they dwell on it like we do. He is processing it in his own way.

I just have to laugh at this. My oldest gags if someone even breathes near his cup. Particularly his younger brother. lol Funny how he never minds when he is sneaking sips of daddy's soda.

Thanks guys. It's nice to know I'm not totally whacked out in my thinking. :lol: I didn't think she could charge us to clean the carpets and for the normal wear and tear but I haven't found the Arizona law on that sort of thing. Dh has already told her what he thought of her idea to pay $300 to a landscaper because of a few weeds in the backyard. I think the stress is just getting to me. I want to be out of that house but with this new job, I'm manning the office here 9 to 5 five days a week and 7 hours on Saturdays. Add to that moving, a dh who has been sick for two days, 4 kids (two still doing schoolwork), and one landlady who calls me at least twice a day and I DON'T CARE!!! I'M TIRED!!! Too tired to even throw something. ;) But not too tired to LOL at Scarlett's dh painting the carpet. Now that is funny! So why am I on this computer at 11:30 at night?!

Am I the only one who loves leftovers for breakfast? Soup, meatloaf with some mashed potatoes, grilled chicken, even coleslaw, mmmmm...... I wake up HUNGRY!

Does anyone ever get their security deposit back? We signed a one year lease on a house but had to move out three months early because of a job change. We honestly didn't think the landlord would re-rent the house so we figured we would have to pay the last three months of rent. We asked for a week or so before she listed the house so we could move out, get the carpets cleaned, touch up the walls, etc. She waited one day before calling us and telling us that three people wanted to see the house. Now even though we paid for the month of June, this new person is moving in on Monday. She said we would get half our rent back for the month but I don't think we will see any of our security deposit back. We haven't had time to clean anything yet so she wants to hire a maid service, landscapers (because there are some weeds in the non-landscaped, dirt backyard) and painters because there are some handprints on the walls that I haven't had time to wash off yet. And the tile floors need to be steamcleaned. That sounds a little like overkill to me. Oh well. I should just be grateful we don't have to pay the rest of our lease. :) I think we will still ask for an itemized statement for what our security deposit paid for. Legally, she has to provide one within 14 days or else return our deposit. (I have a feeling her brother will be doing all the work for her.) :D I guess I just feel liked I'm being pushed and pushed when we told her we wanted until July 1 since we had paid the month and that would have given us time to get the house properly cleaned.

Ds (1) named after his great-grandfather and great uncle. Ds (2) named after two of his great-great-uncles (and still ended up with the number 1 and 2 most popular boys names of that year :lol:). Dd (3) shares the same middle name with me and my mom and her first name was an old-fashioned name we liked. Dd (4) has an old-fashioned first name we liked and her middle name Rose is in honor of her great-aunt who has always grew the most beautiful roses until health problems forced her to give up all but a couple of her plants.

Oh I'm hopeless!! This is the formula I wrote but I couldn't figure why it wouldn't work. I just realized I was using the wrong cell number in my formula. DUH!! Thanks for your help! At least I know I can figure out these formulas now.

I've been trying to figure this out for awhile but I haven't come up with the right way to do this. I'm creating a spreadsheet to calculate how much people owe for the electricity they have used. The problem is that the cost of electricity is figured two different ways. If the Kw hours used are 700 or less, the number of Kw hours used are multiplied by 0.125. If 701 or more Kw hours are used, the the total hours used are multiplied by 0.1423. How can I write this as a function? Is this possible? I already have cells calculating the number of Kwh used based on the meter reading that I put in. Can you tell I'm still learning spreadsheets?

You can get free audiobooks from Librivox.org. They are older books because all the copyrights have run out on them but that just means lots of classics. :001_smile:

Just throwing in my Me, Too! I remember my mom's knees always doing that when she went up the stairs. Now I do it too.

Yeah, my sons are 10 and 7 and still find this stuff hysterical. I just don't get it. :confused:

Well, Dunkin Donuts got a lot of free publicity. :001_smile: