Very little. Ds knew nouns and pronouns. I never bothered with grammar until fifth grade. We started JAG this year and are almost done -- he now knows exactly what he would know if I'd badgered him with grammar all these years. Glad I didn't waste the time -- there's just not that much to know. Next year we'll begin AG more or less at the recommended pace.

Any favorite secular guides? The one recommended above appears to support a Christian worldview.

I've used them before. I'm using Key to Fractions now. They are the best books I've found for achieving mastery of the subject.

I read Virginia Wolf in college. The professor that assigned her was a big fan and raved about her work. I was singularly unimpressed. Many years later I re-read one of her books thinking that I was older and better able to understand and appreciate her work. I either gained nothing in the intervening 20 years, or Virginia Wolf was a marginal writer who became famous for whatever reason.

:lurk5:

They're not "giving" her anything. She is entitled to this service. The person who made the threat is not doing her a favor. She's a government servant. She works for the OP. The program is supported by tax dollars and it is the OP's right to have the services if she needs them without undue interference. This is undue interference in my book. Now if she was going to a private church where she was receiving goods or services and they required her to pray if she wanted milk for her baby, then yeah -- pray or starve. But not in the case of WIC.

You can't feel any other way than drained. You've spent a week doing the things you must do to honor your mother. Now you must do the things you need to do to take care of yourself. Get plenty of sleep, eat well, take care of yourself, and let your friends do their job when they offer help or just a shoulder. From personal experience I can tell you that the pain will pass, and there will come a time when you can think about your mom with joy and not pain. :grouphug:

Text messages do not have to be answered immediately. They're happy to sit in your phone until you're ready to answer them. Of course it's rude.

My mother in law taught me to cut the blanched and peeled tomatoes in half and squeeze all the seeds/liquid out, then cut, bag and freeze them. She threw the water away, but you can save it and put it into soups and stews. A chemical in the jelly surrounding the seeds helps prevent prostate cancer, but it has to be raw. You can offer the liquid/jelly to your husband to drink as is or mix it with another drink.

Really? There's a difference in taste? Come to think of it, I've never frozen cooked hamburger, so I don't know.:bigear:

Yup -- that's the last time I did business with those people. They were actually selling implements for hurting children. They had crops or long sticks -- I don't remember -- with instructions on how to hurt children without leaving marks. HSB was happy to sell child abuse instruments on their website. I never went back.

Love it. My son loves to dress up for school -- sometimes we dress up together. ;)

We have it and we love it. The kids just love it on principle -- all the games we've bought are a huge hit. I love it because the kids don't sit there slack-jawed staring into a monitor. My personal favorite game is Wii Fit. We also have Wii trainer which is a blast. It's the only thing that has gotten me off my butt and moving. Whatever works.

While preparing my Christmas ornaments and decorations I began to wonder how others who do not celebrate the birth of Jesus celebrate the season. We have a Christmas tree. Along with the expected Christmas ornaments, we also hang dreidels, pentagrams, moons, stars, and little gold foil suns. We light up the back terrace and pool area with twinkle lights everywhere. We also have a nativity, but it celebrates the rebirth of the sun and there is no manger. We cook and bake and play world holiday music, from Celtic Wiccan to Christian Gospel (which I love) to Indian Festival of Lights chants. We send cards -- they don't say, "Merry Christmas" because only a portion of our friends are Christians, but we do reach out to friends with wishes of Happiness and Health for the New Year. Some of our friends celebrate other festivals during this time: Hannukah, Christmas, Winter Solstice (as we do), Kwanzaa, etc. We read books about all the different ways people around the world celebrate winter festivals. We have friends over. We throw a yearly Winter Solstice party and show our Christian and Jewish friends how we observe the Solstice. Our Christian and Jewish friends invite us to their celebrations and we learn about their way of observing. It's a time of magic and joy in our home. It is a time of mindful contemplation of one year passing and another one, full of promise, about to begin. How do you celebrate?

No, not really. That's just a mindset some people have -- someone is always out to get them. My housekeeper in Florida is on WIC, as are her married nieces, and they have never had anything but good to say about it. They don't meddle, and they don't tell them they have to join programs they're not interested in. However, when one of the babies was in the 1% of weight and height, the doctor ordered tests, prescribed nutritional supplements and requested that the baby come back more often. I guess some people could see this as meddling and a secret agenda. That being said, the WIC deals with a great many children who are not being provided the best possible care by their parents. It looks like the OP's office is a bit over-exuberant. She should report this threat IMMEDIATELY to the supervisor of the person who made the threat. She should tell them that if she hears one more threat she's going to Legal Aid. They'll back off. They have no right to force their programs down her throat.

Sometimes, members of the family are just simply not that interested in sharing time with others. It's always awful when it's the grandparents, but from what you write it sounds like she's just not into the kids. If she was, she'd find a way to see them often. That's the sad truth, but it's indisputable. Blow her off.

They do not have a case. What they do have is a lot of chutzpah telling you how to homeschool. Generally, I reply to these types of gentle pressure with something like, "We're happy with the way we're doing it. We have no plans to change."

I disagree. If he's coming in to snoop around, the last thing he's going to do is tell you he's snooping. He's not your friend. You do not have to entertain him. If he's curious, he should buy a book on homeschooling. I feel strongly about strangers inviting themselves to my home to see how we're doing.

If this man is not your personal friend, he has no business "dropping in." You're busy teaching. Tell him so.

We eat white rice with everything. You can substitute it for potatoes any time. We eat rice with beans, beef and chicken stews, fish of all kinds, with fried eggs and sweet ripe plantains, you can make rice pudding with it. Go to http://allrecipes.com and search for "rice." There will be hundreds of recipes.

Every potato I ever bought has sprouted if I leave it long enough. The author got the potatoes wrong -- that makes me wonder what else he got wrong. I'd also be very interested to know who the writer works for, and more importantly, links to the research. I'm not easily swayed by vague references to "research" the author is not willing to link to, iykwim. I'll have to double check the tomatoes. We consume a lot of canned tomatoes.

:lurk5:

Put the turkey breast the crockpot. Drape it with lots of bacon slices. Turn it on high for four hours. If you're feeling industrious, you can make gravy with the drippings and it will be amazing.

Get a full-spectrum lamp and make everybody sit under it every day. When I'm in Canada in the winter, the snow and the frozen lake are gorgeous for exactly one week. After that, I start getting gloomier and gloomier until my mood perfectly matches the dark, gray, dreary sky. Seven or eight hours of gray, watery daylight is NOT a good thing for a tropical flower like me. When I discovered full-spectrum lamps it changed everything. I get up in the morning, sit under my lamp for 45 minutes while I read a book, and the rest of the day I'm cheerful and energetic. I, like many other people, get Seasonal Affective Disorder. The full spectrum light is the cure. If you're very affected, talk to your doctor and he/she will tell you for how long and when during the day you should sit under your lamp. It's amazing what a few (trillion) well-placed photons up your optical nerve will do for you.

This is the second post I read that says to freeze and add salt. Is there a reason for adding the salt when you freeze them, or is that just to save time later? We're building a chicken house soon and I'm looking forward to eggs, so I'm curious to know. Pioneer Woman's Eggs Florentine Casserole. To die for and it uses 18 eggs.