I don't know. Something very similar happened to us this year. DH and his ex-wife share custody of their daughter. We planned a family vacation way in advance to get tickets and reservations. Well, then her dance class that her mother signed her up for and took her to scheduled a dance recital at the same time. It happened on a week that was our time. It was important to her but the vacation was much more important to the whole family. Should one person's fun be more important than family fun? In my opinion a non-refundable family vacation ALWAYS trumps extracurricular activities of one.

I went to a VERY large engineering school but it's been my experience that the only large class sizes I had were in the basic freshman classes. All my upper level engineering and science classes were all less than 40. Freshman calculus though ... that was a big one.

I said Patrick Swayze because I liked Dirty Dancing and to die so young from cancer but I wasn't really affected. Good answer. I would have gone with this one too as an avid skier I'm now going to wear a helmet.

Oh that's scary. Those poor parents! I can totally see something horrible like that happening. I took some cute bath pics of the girls playing barbies in the bathtub and purposefully got them all from the waist up because of concerns like that. Hope Costco doesn't doesn't have me arrested!

Aubrey - You keep cooking with your cream of whatever soups. I was militant about cooking from scratch for about two months and didn't use any of those soups. Well, some of my recipes just didn't taste as good as the other ones. Tuna noodle casserole can be made completely from scratch but it doesn't taste quite like the recipe my grandmother gave me that uses cream of mushroom soup. So I gave up and added a few of those beloved comfort food recipes back into my menus. My family loves them. I'm interested in your recipe for thai chicken and coconut milk. I've got a can of that sitting in my pantry and I don't know where it came from or what to do with it. (I suspect DH bought it!) LOL. So funny!

Good suggestions so far. I'd add some Sherlock Holmes in there too.

This would be me. I could probably guess an artist by what I've seen in the news lately. Yeah. I'm a dork. I only know Jay-z and Kanye because I read foxnews.com. Ditto this. I'd probably do better guessing songs in the top 10 on country radio.

Me too. I just love it. I can sit and read a cookbook like it's some fantastic piece of literature. Menu planning makes me all happy inside. I can sit at work and get excited about trying a new recipe at home that evening.

Only one for me but I'm DH's second. He's stuck with me forever though and we're both happy with that. Of course, we've been married less than a year so we're still honeymooners.

That is so cute. And an appropriate book too. :001_smile:

Thank you for posting this. DH came home from a business trip with what appears to be the flu. Might be swine flu might be the regular flu but I don't know how to tell the difference. I think we'd have to go to the doctor. Anyway, he had me worried sick last night but he's doing better today - lots of chicken noodle soup.

I'm kind of surprised by the type of work the school seems to be doing. My two are in a public K right now and they seem to be doing more than that actually. They're working on reading a few words (by sight - gah!) and addition/subtraction. I would talk to the teacher to see what her educational goals are for the year. Maybe (hopefully!) they just start out slow and then really pickup speed in a week or two. If not then I'd probably try to push to have him advanced a year. That's what my parents did when I went from homeschooling to public school. I was supposed to be in 2nd and they started me in 3rd. I'm not at all impressed with our *award winning* public schools here. Our future plans involve homeschooling full-time. Good luck.

Since this conversation turned to engineering and Texas schools I feel I have to join in. :) I *ahem* got my civil engineering degree at Texas A&M. I chose it based on reputation and that has served me very well professionally. Even though I'm in Kansas and Missouri working now people still have a lot of respect for an engineering degree from A&M and UT. I know they're considered big schools but once you get into your degree program it won't feel nearly so big. And I had a great time without being a wild college kid. My sister went to UT and she loved her time there - she was a party kid in college though! I wouldn't recommend UTSA for an engineering school. It doesn't have nearly the reputation that UT or A&M have. Good luck!

I made this one last night: 10 oz peas 1 lb imitation crab - chopped or flaked 8 slices bacon - fried and then crumbled 1/2 c mayo 1/4 t onion powder splash of lemon juice Mix everything together and let sit overnight or a few hours at least for the flavors to meld. Serve on Hawaiin rolls. Very good.

Totally off-topic (sorry OP) but I love the Marx brothers. "The Big Store" is one of my favorites.

So I've spent the last hour at homeschoolshare. How cool. I've got printables for us to start off with an "All About Me" lapbook and then start with either a country in the world or state lapbook. I can't wait to get started because it looks like it will be lots of fun for all of us.

I'm getting it now. So this is something the kids would do (I would assist) and not something I would do and then they would learn off of. Shucks. Looked like something fun for me! Thanks for the links. They'll keep me busy researching this afternoon. I think I'll have to girls do one this week.

Poor thing. It'll be a good opportunity to talk about talking to a doctor about sensitive issues though. Hope everything is okay.

I keeping hearing and seeing examples of lapbooks and I think I’m missing something. What exactly are they? From the pictures I see it looks like they are file folders with little books or tabs of information on them. It seems like they cover all sorts of information – math, science, books, history. If we read something like Boxcar Children would we do a lapbook on it? What information would we include? I can see having tab for characters, places they lived, maybe a timeline. Is there other things we’d want to include? As you can tell I’m very interested in this idea. My kids would love it but I’m also a little confused about what is included and how to get started. Is the point to reinforce information they’ve already learned or introduce new information? For example, if we were to do one on the Vikings would we first read about the Vikings and then make a lapbook with what we’ve learned? Thanks for putting up with my questions. I’m sure you guys are realizing that I’m the world’s slowest newbie!

I agree. Is it too soon to RSVP for this fun? I'll bring cookies or brownies - your choice!

It sounds just wonderful. If it was me with that opportunity I'd start packing and holding garage sales to get rid of the extra stuff. Lucky girl! Go for it and enjoy your adventure.

Oh! Now I get it. I kept coming back to this thread to read the information and wonder why we we're giving deployment tips to people that were scared of bees. Very confusing. Now I get it though - Apiphobic is a person. Geez. Sometimes I need to just return to bed with a good book and cupcake.

What a sweet friend you are! I'm probably won't be much help because I'm usually lacking tact but what I'd do would be to pick up a few things anyway and completely down play the whole situation. "I saw these on sale and I had a coupon so they were practically free. My kids don't like this type of juice anyway. Besides it gave me an excuse to run over here and see you!" I've done this with my little sister before. She's young with little kids and still in college so she's had some financial hardtimes. She likes being able to keep her dignity and I love being able to help her!

I'd certainly try. I think I started reading them by myself at about 8 or 9 and I don't remember anything that stood out to me at the time. I've read them recently and still nothing questionable Recently I read our little girls one of the Junior Nancy Drew books. Awful. I'd just skip those and go straight to the classic Nancy Drew (or Hardy Boys) books. I prefer the original stories also and not the Case File books or whatever those were called. As I remember those were a little more mature with dating and jealously and what not. I'm a HUGE Nancy Drew fan though. I can't wait to get my girls reading them!

Oh my goodness. My step-daughter is like this! Non-stop talking and if we tell her not to talk she'll hum or sing or make silly noises. DH finally broke down on the camping trip last weekend and told her to just shut up for a minute. It wasn't polite but I'd been wanting to say it mayself for awhile. :glare: I enjoy quiet. Not every minute of every day has to be filled with noise of some sort!