He loves Clint Anderson lol! That's what got him started on wanting to learn ;-)

We are looking for an already broken horse that just needs some more training to be more gentle for him to start with. And this is still a few years off, we are just looking for options at the moment now and getting ideas on how much it will cost. If ds had his way he would adopt all the horse...and dogs... and cats... lol Thanks for the tip though. That's good to know. ;-)

Ds is interested in learning how to break horses so while he learns to ride on horses that aren't his own, it's going to be a while before we can get him his own horse to show ride or even just pleasure ride. We are neighbors with a family that keeps a yard art horse and they let ds help take care of her. Ds loves Sassy and he is very good with her even though she's not broken and as old as she is, it's unlikely she could ever be completely broken, if at all. I'd feel safer with him learning to further tame an already broken horse before he tries to tame an unbroken horse lol. He has people willing to teach him, we just need to find a horse for him to practice with. ETA: Meant to say also, that is very cool about the BLM. I had not heard of those programs before! Thanks for the tip.

People keep herds of feral cats on their property around here to control rodents so I guess being more rural is part of the equation. And all the shelters around here are no-kill shelters hence the reason why they spay or neuter every animal that comes in, in order to keep the population down as best they can.

$300 does seem unreal to adopt a cat but so does $25 for two cats. The shelters around here (there are 3 that I can think of within 2 hours of where we live) charge $75 - $100 adoption fees, younger animals (puppies and kittens) are more expensive. Sometimes they will negotiate the price if you donate items they are in need of but most of the adoption fee is to cover their costs to spay or neuter the animals. I do agree with the suggestion above to talk to the shelter again. They might be able to set you up with their vet. And social media is always an option if nothing else, as was mentioned. We have a shelter dog that is the best dog we have ever had really. We also have a bassett hound that came to us so emaciated, she smelled like death. We are pretty sure she was within a week of dying of starvation. We kept her and brought her back to health, we put up ads but no one ever claimed her so I think we've had her for two years now, maybe 3 this summer. No regrets on either of them. P.S. Ds wants a horse, if you know where to get a horse for less than $300 that is broken, I need to know where this is happening. There is a horse rescue about 2.5 hours away from here but it is still $400 - $500 to adopt them and most of them are broken and about half are gentle enough for children.

Bleach is too corrosive and doesn't evaporate fast enough to not damage the phone. All rubbing alcohol is watered down when you get it, it evaporates quickly and when it does, it helps water evaporate away with it so the phone doesn't doesn't sustain water damage.

An RO unit wouldn't even begin to address our well water lol. It's seriously horrible. We considered an RO until we realized it would probably cause more problems than it solved for us.

If I must use water to rehydrate the wipes, I would use distilled but that is mostly because our well water is crappy to begin with and we keep distilled water in the house all the time anyways. You could just spray the surface with water or alcohol and use the dried up wipes to wipe the surface that way.

If you'd rather not bring in a plumber if you don't have to, ask the hive about your plumbing issue. Surely someone has had the problem you are having and may have a solution you haven't tried yet. It's worth a shot to avoid paying a plumber if nothing else.

IMO, yes, it is worth the cost IF you need help as the teacher learning how to explicitly teach phonics. It is doable for the average first grader but I wouldn't use it for a child who is reading any amount of above grade level. I would just let them read, read, read to build fluency and gain more exposure to more and more complex word patterns. Then, when they are 8 or so, start them in Essentials instead. I don't think a child who is even a little above grade level needs much explicit instruction. Just lots and lots of books to read. If the child is already 7 going on 8, I might go ahead and just start Essentials if I just really needed something to fill the time and I wanted a curriculum to fill it with. You could also just get the LOE games book and playing cards as a way to pass the time and still keep learning fresh.

I too live within 20 minutes of a state border. I don't see closing borders being very practical. There are so many little mountain roads around here that cross the border, it would be mad to try and close them all of put border patrol on all of them. Plus I can think of 3 cities within a day's drive of me that straddle state lines and you can literally stand on one side of the street and be in one state and stand on the other side of the street and be in the other state. It wouldn't even make sense to tell people they can't cross the street because the border is closed. These aren't little towns, but medium to large sized cities and one metropolitan area. I really just can't see it being terribly practical to close state borders.

Nothing changed for us. Just heard that schools here are cancelled for two weeks. Doesn't affect us at all but all the more reason to stay home. We don't have any outside activities right now. For us it is just school as usual. We are homebodies anyways. Even extroverted ds can only handle so much socializing before he's ready to go home. We are perfectly happy to stay home. It IS our normal.

Six kids. 1 home birth and 5 hospital births. Only the last hospital I gave birth in had a separate L&D entrance. None of the other hospitals did but they were all military hospitals. The one with the L&D entrance was a civilian hospital. Honestly, if I were pregnant and it were up to me (i.e. no life threatening complications that we knew about before labor that would make it dangerous to give without a doctor present), I would definitely do a home birth again in the current state of affairs in the world. I just wouldn't want to risk getting sick in the hospital simply because I was in the hospital. Dh almost died of a staph infection he contracted while in the hospital. So that probably colors my perception more than a little.

Five In A Row is good for short (week long) unit studies. It might be hard if they don't have a library open around them but it shouldn't be too hard to order a few of the books for a reasonable price. Plus it is something they can do in the summer too if they end up liking it. There isn't much religion in it unless you get the separate Bible supplement. It would be best for maybe up to 2nd grade for Volumes 1 - 3 and Volume 4 and the additional digital units would be good for a 2nd or 3rd grader. Beyond FIAR does chapter book unit studies that are meant for 3rd grade to about 6th grade. I honestly think the FIAR series would be lovely educational work without being too much when schedules and routines are turned upside down right now.

Bullet points are easier to read, and more likely to be read, than a wall of text Here are some ways you can help us serve you better during this time Use the drive thru window to minimize the spread of germs and viruses for yourself and pharmacy employees You can pick up OTC medications and items through the drive thru as well, just ask! If you have a noisy vehicle, please shut your engine off to help us hear you and others better. Please remember to be patient! Use the inevitable extended wait time to catch up on FB, text or chat with a friend on the phone. Thanks for your help! Together we will make it through these trying times!

I live in a small remote town. The next nearest towns with big stores are two hours away no matter which way you go. I had to make just a normal quick run into town to Walmart. Toilet paper, paper towels, bottled water of all kinds, beans of all kinds, rice of all kinds, all but the most expensive ground beef, eggs, milk, sugar, any type of wheat flour, canned vegetables of all kinds, ramen noodles, boxed mac n cheese.... all of it is just gone and none of the employees know when they will be able to get any of it back in stock. I was going to try making some lentil soup for ds's Egypt studies but guess what, all the lentils were gone from the store this morning... I didn't even go to the gm side, but I can imagine which items were sold out over there.... You would think that in a first world country, basic staple foods would be available everywhere, but nope...... I did at least manage to get what I needed to make potato soup....it's Italian potato soup not Egyptian but the Romans ended up in Egypt so maybe we could tie it in somehow that way??? Doubt ds would have eaten the lentil soup anyways but it still makes me irritated that people are reacting the way they are to current events.

Everyone has cover the basics here for you. You will need a wireless router or a wireless router/modem combo. Many cable companies now give the wireless router/modem combo as the baseline unit for internet. Check the modem that you or the internet company should have installed when you signed up for service. It will be a plastic box with lights, usually black, but the cable from the wall will connect into it and a wire from the box will connect to the Dell desktop computer that you have. That box is your modem. To find out if it already has wifi, look at the lights on the box. If they are labeled, it might say something like "Wifi" or look like an antennae with a circle around it. If it has something like that, you have a wireless router/modem combo. You don't need to buy anything to set up wireless internet. You already have it. Your son should be able to search for your network (the wifi that the router/modem combo is already transmitting) and connect to it. He may need a password. If there is a password, it should have been in the paperwork they gave you at install. If nothing else, call the internet company and they should be able to walk you or him through the process and get his laptop connected at home. If your modem is just a modem and doesn't have WiFi routing capabilities, you can ask the internet company if they offer a combination box that they will install for you or you can buy your own wireless router and install it yourself. If you want to buy one, Netgear, TP-Link, Asus and Linksys are all good reputable brands. As someone mentioned up above, it will be in the ball park of $50 to $75 and for your needs. Since I don't think you are doing any thing more than surfing the internet or doing online classes, you could probably just close your eyes, do eenie, minee, mynee, mo with the brands I mentioned with models in that price range and you will be fine. They are all roughly the same if you aren't doing anything specialized with the computer. The good thing about buying the router is that it is yours to keep. When you move or if you change internet providers, you can keep reusing your router. If you buy it from somewhere like Best Buy, you could get them to install it for you as well and show you how to connect to it. Another option is to hotspot from his phone IF your cell phone provider allows hotspot connections. This is actually the option I use because the cable company doesn't come out this far. I have unlimited data and unlimited tethering (connecting a computer to my phone's hotspot wirelessly and my computer uses my phone's data). It does slow down after you hit a certain threshold but it really doesn't affect us too much and we are what they call "super users" because we use more data than 90% of their customers. If he has a phone capable of hotspotting (most newer phones are) and the plan on his phone allows him to share his data with other devices via hotspotting, he just needs to turn on the hotspot on his phone (it will eat the battery like no one's business, best to have it charging while hotspotting) and then look for his phone's signal on his laptop. If he needs to get a different plan provider to be able to hotspot, we currently have post-paid T-Mobile who has no problem with us hotspotting and we were also able to hotspot when we had their prepaid plan as well if he's rather have a prepaid phone. We highly recommend them to anyone, especially if you need internet as well as cell service. I looked up Zoom and it seems to be a wireless internet provider but if you are happy with Century Link and just need wireless internet for his laptop, there is no reason to switch, there are lots of other options before jumping to a new provider. Colleges almost always have campus wide wifi for students if he wants to just use that for now until you can get wifi working at home. Sometimes they will help students on financial aid with internet costs at home. He should also be able to go to any place that has free public wifi with his laptop. When I was in college, I would often get a milkshake or coffee at McD's and do my homework over their free wifi. You can have the desktop hardwire connected as it is now and still let your son's laptop connect wirelessly if you have the wireless router. If you want to go completely wireless, your Dell desktop will need a wireless internet adapter or card. There are several options for this that are as easy as plugging it into a USB port to replacing the Ethernet card in the computer with a wireless card (or sometimes you can have both but especially in branded computers, you usually have to replace). With a home wifi network, you can also use your cell phone to make calls over wifi. You just have to have your phones connect to the network and turn on wifi calling. Just trying to think of all the questions I've had people ask when I've helped them set up internet and wifi. If there is something I didn't answer, feel free to ask.

Not doing anything we aren't normally doing this time of year... avoiding going out in public as much as possible, keeping hands washed, not allowing anyone who is sick or has been around sick people in our home, not visiting others if we are showing any signs of illness though since we adopted this regimen during cold and flu season, we don't get sick hardly ever any more... The only difference is people aren't calling us OCD, anti-social or otherwise mentally unsound for doing these things because we don't want to get sick. :-/

We had a human body model similar to this one. I found ours in a thrift store though. It was one of the most played with "manipulatives" in the house even after my big kids went to public school. Definitely worth the money in my opinion.

Nope had not heard of Jitterbug. Thanks for the suggestion @Patty Joanna I'm looking at it right now and it looks like a solid option if we can't talk her into the smart phone. They use the Verizon network which is the carrier with the best coverage in this area.

She needs the phone so her customers can call her and so she can call a tow truck if her truck breaks down on her route. She is a rural letter carrier. She drives just over 100 miles of mostly dirt back roads every day. Walking to use someone's phone on those rural back roads is really not safe for her since she had both of her knees replaced about a year and a half ago. So yeah, the cell phone is kind of an necessity for her whether she likes it or not.

She was given a brand new Kindle Fire by a friend of hers for Christmas a couple of years ago. She gave it to us because "I won't use the thing". We even showed her how it could be used for reading and how she can change font size and all. But nope, it's electronic and she doesn't do electronic devices. Sigh.

She wears bifocal glasses and she goes to the optometrist regularly. Not yearly like she's suppose to but about every 18 months or so. I was able to take a look at the Samsung Galaxy phone we had and Easy mode looks like something we might be able to get working for her. It might take a few months but maybe we can get her talked into giving it a try. Thanks @gardenmom5 for the suggestion!

I grew up reading actual books too lol. Some books I still prefer the paper books and some I don't mind the conveinence of being able to carry it with me without carrying anything extra around too. I understand her point, I really do. But she's being so stubborn about that she's kinda painted herself into a corner and refusing to back down on anything and just wants ST to make an exception for her phone so she can keep using it. lol

Meant to say before, we have some old Samsung Galaxy phones. I'm charging it up right now so that I can check to see if Easy Mode might work for her.