Updated 2022/2023 schoolyear plans: Dd13-8th grade: -Dd has decided to take AOPS's AMC 8 Basics course this Fall, followed by Intro to Number Theory in the Spring -English/Literature with me, still hammering out all the details, finish up R&S Spelling, typing -CLRC Intro to American History -CLRC Physical Science -CLRC High school Latin 1, Immersive -Memoria Press Traditional Logic1 Still deciding on piano. She is really wanting to start gymnastics again, and I am worrying whether it is too soon after she has had a very slow recovery from a break to the growth plate on her femur. ETA: DD13 is going to school. This is a first for our family. I think it will be for the best. I hope. Dd11-6th grade: -Foerster's Algebra with Math Without Borders' Home Study Companion, xtramath -Essay Voyage, Practice Voyage, and Caesar's English with ds10, AAS 5, typing -CLRC’s Intro to Ancient History. -Collection of Life Science resources and the Story of Science -German. Combination of some Languageconvo with a native tutor, some reading children's books in German with me, and some watching kid shows in German. -Orbiting with logic -CLRC Art History Drawing Club -Dance class. Ds10-5th: -Finish AOPS Prealgebra, possibly start Algebra towards the end of the year -Essay Voyage, Practice Voyage, and Caesar's English with dd11, SSS 4/5, Pictures in Cursive, typing. -Oxford University Press Pages from History & SOTW with ds7. -Collection of Life Science resources and the Story of Science -Spanish tutoring LanguageConvo.com -Orbiting with Logic -Cello Lessons -Judo Ds8-3rd: -Finish BA, then start AOPS self-paced Prealgebra, xtramath -Finish Treasured Conversations, tag along with olders for Caesar's English, AAS 1/2, Pictures in Cursive. -SOTW with ds11 -Collection of Life Science resources and the Story of Science -Logic Liftoff -Violin lessons -Physical Therapy ETA: and Japanese tutoring for ds8 from Language Convo, because he walked past the computer and saw my post, and was concerned that I hadn't made any plans for foreign language for him and told me he really wants to pick back up with Japanese again.

My 8 to 13 year old kids regularly cook themselves eggs for breakfast. We'll also do brown rice for breakfast (I put it in the rice cooker the night before, they eat it with brown sugar and milk in the morning). Or rice pudding in the rice cooker overnight, but that one is a little more work.

My 8-year-old is head over heels in love with his baby brother. Today he said to me, “His cuteness exceeds the cuteness of all other babydom tenfold!”

I think there’s some confusion that’s conflating anti-abortion sentiment with anti-sterilization. In general, a majority of pro-life/anti-abortion proponents tend to be in favor of preventing unwanted pregnancies rather than ending existing ones. I recently read an article from a liberal perspective about rising sterilization rates in response to abortion laws. It portrayed this as a negative effect. But as a pro-life reader, I think it is wonderful if people who know they don’t want children are preventing instead of killing in utero.

Large extended families are common in my religious subculture. In college I had a similar conversation with my 5 roommates one time, and I had the fewest cousins by far (8 surviving cousins at that time, 10 now). My dad is an only child. My mom is one of four, and her brothers had 4, 8, and 0 kids, but each brother with a family lost a child. One generation further back, though, it was reversed. My mother had 2 cousins, as one grandparent was an only child and the other had one sibling. On my dad’s side, I don’t even know how many cousins he has. 4 on grandma’s side. Grandpa was one of 13 kids, so no idea how many cousins on that side. I’m one of 5. My oldest sister and I each have 5 kids. My second sister is probably not going to have children. My younger brothers are both fairly recently married and planning on having children. One wants 1 or 2, the other is talking about 3 biological kids and adopting some siblings as well. My kids’ generation will probably be the same or a little bigger than the last generation on my mom’s side.

Well, we have spent a lot of money this month. We made an offer on that house and it was accepted, but with the contingency that we had to list our house for sale in a very short length of time. We had not been planning and preparing for a move, so there was a ton to do. There was costs for paint and brushes, mulch, a couple tools, wood filler epoxy, power washer rental, storage unit to move stuff out for staging, etc., etc., etc. I just about killed myself trying to get everything done in time. Then the inspection on the new house($460) came back. It had standing water in the crawlspace. The sellers were willing to put in a sump pump, but not to address the grading issue causing the problem. So that's not happening. We are pretty disappointed. Still waiting to get our earnest money back. And this week, our air conditioner stopped working. In 105* heat. It is two years old, and was serviced last year. Three days I have sat home with six grouchy, overtired kids (trouble sleeping in the heat, and my former foster daughter is staying with us for the week) in the hot house, waiting for different repairmen to show up. The guy they sent today actually seems to have fixed it, for a lot more than I expected, but the house is starting to cool down now.

On the bolded statement: I wholeheartedly agree. How can it be prevented or discouraged?

But what check is there when the court goes beyond interpreting law to creating it? For whatever reason, neither party has ever had the political will to legislate on abortion at a federal level. But despite this lack of legislation, Roe was the de facto law for fifty years.

I could get behind expanding the court to a number logical to keep up with their cases if it were written into law to then keep it at that number. But if it’s done to wrest control from one party to another as I have frequently heard suggested lately, that would undermine our judicial system and set us up for it happening over and over again as each party temporarily gains the upper hand.

Personally, I think that term limits might be a good place to start. Even if it were possible to select them again for another term, I think that needing to be selected and affirmed again by a new president and congress would go a long way towards limiting chance from having an outsized result in the power balance for decades to come.

Whatever side one may be on concerning the recent SCOTUS decision revoking Roe v. Wade, it seems to me that there may be common ground to be found over concerns about the power of the Supreme Court. One position has been very concerned by SCOTUS going beyond interpreting what is clearly written into law to inferring unwritten content, what is often referred to as “legislating from the bench”. These people may be happy with recent rulings, but the precedent is still there for this to continue in the future. Others are very angry that a changing makeup of the Supreme Court has resulted in the revocation of rights established by judiciary precedent when the political makeup was different that people had relied upon for decades, and fear what other rights and precedents could suffer similar treatment. Some believe it is unfair that the chance circumstance of however many justices dying when the executive and legislative branches are controlled by the same party should result in one party holding sway in the Supreme Court for decades going forward. Some support “stacking the court” by simply adding more justices favoring their politics whenever they come back into power to retake the Court to prevent this outsized effect on the political balance. Others believe this would completely neuter the judiciary branch’s ability to provide any checks or balances on the other two branches, and would turn them into a flip-flopping extension of the two main political parties in this country. So whatever your personal politics, my question is: What changes would you suggest to check the power of the Supreme Court? Or would you be against any changes for this purpose?

When my kids were little and struggled with wanting to keep all the junk, a couple of times a year we would go through their stuff and empty out everything. They would each get to choose ______number of items/toy sets to keep, we would put their choices neatly away together, and by then they were very eager to be done and go play. So I would send them off to play and "take care" of the rest, aka trash or donate. I wasn't getting rid of things without their knowing, but this was far less difficult for them to choose what they wanted to keep than to choose items to get rid of, and less difficult, also, that they weren't seeing their items getting tossed. It also solved the problem of the more hoarder-like child feeling put upon for being expected to get rid of more stuff (because she collected so much more) because everyone got to choose out the same number to keep.

We are taking a very anti-frugal step. We are making an offer on a house. If it works out, the changes to our budget will be painful. Not quite double monthly payments, and we’ll lose the charter school funding and the kids’ secondary insurance through the state. But it would relieve a lot of stressors. The older kids who want to go to school could go to a good school there. There’s even a classical charter that does ability-based grouping. Keeping up with our 8/10 acre yard has been difficult, and dealing with the neighbors worse. The new house has a small yard to maintain but a large shared community green space, park, and pool, so there’s still lots of room for the kids to play. There’s lots of other families, and the boys want more opportunities to make friends, but it’s close enough it would still be easy for the girls to get together with their friends. We would be far less crowded. Telehealth appointments for some of ds8’s specialists will become an option. We would have lost the secondary insurance based on income in a year or two, anyway, but we may be able to get secondary insurance for ds8 through the new state based on his diagnosis and disability. I can see it simplifying a lot for us, but I am nervous about our ability to save up for college and retirement expenses if we make this move. Dh is confident that even if we have a few tight years when we can’t save much, we will be able to put away more in a few years as he gradually buys into a larger percentage of his firm and make up the difference then. We are only five years away from college, though.

I had a copper IUD. The insertion was very painful, didn’t work right, and she had to have me come back another day to try again. Painful again. But not like childbirth. What was really painful, though, was when the IUD became embedded in my uterine wall. That was extremely painful, and removing it was excruciating. I know that’s really uncommon, but I couldn’t bring myself to ever use an IUD again for fear of it, even though it’s very convenient for birth control. I have the arm insert one now. I was concerned about going with a hormonal method again, as I’d previously reacted badly to hormonal birth control pills, but after the first couple months it is just as convenient as the IUD was. Those first few months while my body was adjusting I had issues with random bleeding and one awful 12-day heavy period.

On the other hand, the outlets on the corner of the house where we just had an irrigation pump installed cannot be used, because they were put in wrong/illegally. So our new irrigation pump might as well be a lawn ornament until we get an electrician to run a new circuit there, which will cost nearly $900 we weren't planning on.

Well, last week we had water leaking through our dining room ceiling during a rainstorm. Thought that would be very expensive, but the roofer recommends just buying some snow seal for $40 and putting it on ourselves. He also says that our roof has about five more good years in it before it will need to be replaced or start having issues. So there's that to budget for, but I know a good roofer when we need one. We went to the kids' church group activity last night. They provided fried chicken, sides and desserts were potluck. I made challah bread to take. They vastly overestimated the amount of chicken needed, and were trying to give away all the extras afterwards, saying it would just wind up thrown out otherwise. So I got about four family meals' worth and froze it, some as fried chicken and some I removed the breading and bones and shredded the cooked chicken for other things. My dog loved eating all that fried breaded chicken skin.

I am just recovering from being very sick the last few days, so trying to keep it light. My girls are at young women’s camp, so I only have the three youngers. -Go for a walk. -Clean the kitchen with the boys’ help. -Get hose splitter and reattach watering hoses. -Water flowers. -Feed goats. -Foot bath treatment for ds8’s feet. -Wash and dry a few loads of laundry. I’ll save folding for tomorrow. -Order mulch for garden bed. -Make something to contribute to the potluck at the boys’ church group activity tonight. -Get kids ready and go to the splash pad for activity.

About the same as other minor federal holidays. The only differences I really noticed in its treatment were lots of individuals saying they didn’t really know what it was about and asking questions of those who did, and the stores didn’t have the buildup to it like they have for Valentines, 4th of July, etc. as they try to turn everything into a commercial event. I’m sure within a few years the stores will figure out how to commercialize Juneteenth, too

Don’t be saddened by my post, Heartlikealion and Jenny in Florida. We actually had good news from the scans—for the first time, ds’s tumor shows some slight shrinkage, and is slightly less engaged with his spinal cord! And his “hospital weeks” are now only needing to happen every three months, instead of every month. I just have been letting stress be the excuse for living unhealthily for too long, and I’m glad to be making progress on learning to live healthily despite the stress instead.

I made it through hospital week still on track with my fitness goals! I get very stressed around time for ds’s quarterly scans, and my normal pattern is to either eat nothing or stress overeat during these times, and I can’t not eat because I am breastfeeding. Also, Wednesday and Thursday were very long hospital days with no chance to exercise. I’ve come down with a sore throat/sinus issue the last few days, but made myself go out walking for exercise anyway yesterday and today, and I have hit my weekly goal. I’m currently at the lowest weight I’ve been in nearly three years.

Our local Waremart, which is owned by Winco, but I don’t know if they keep the same pricing as Winco.

Yup. It's especially annoying when it messes with established recipes.

I discovered a great deal the other day. Tillamook extra creamy sea salt butter was 98 cents a pound (normally $4.60). Not close to expiring. There were no special sale signs or anything. I more than half expected to get to the checkout and be told that there was a mistake. I bought 18 pounds of butter and froze it. I was tempted to get more, but wanted to leave enough for others. This week is an expensive one mainly on gas. We’ve been trying to avoid driving when possible, but ds has two days at the hospital in the city this week and we drove out to help thin peaches at the church orchard yesterday. It was a win to get ds’s seven appointments arranged onto just two days, so we only have to go out twice. He will probably ask for Chic-fil-A when we’re over there, and even though we have mostly not been going out to eat, he will get it, because anything that will get more calories into that boy is worth it.

I went grocery shopping yesterday and honestly, it’s got me worried. How much longer can this trend continue before most of the population is in truly dire straits? A month ago the cheapest bread at the bakery outlet store was 4 loaves for 5 dollars, up from 5 loaves for 4 dollars pre-pandemic. Now it’s at 2 loaves for 3 dollars. (This is the stuff you take home and either use right away or freeze, because it’s approaching the expiration date.) The cheapest price for milk around is $3.19, when it generally ran about $1.89 a few years ago. A large bag of flour has gone from $18 to $29. When the most basic food staples increase this much, how long can people keep absorbing the hit?

Copycat recipe for homemade madras lentils: https://foodess.com/madras-lentils/ (She calls for canned beans and lentils, but I buy them dry in bulk and presoak and cook my beans in large batches, then freeze so they're ready for use like canned. The lentils I put in dry and add about 3 times the water she calls for, then let simmer for about 35 minutes instead of the 10 she calls for.) Ice cream cake was surprisingly easy. Line a pan the size of the cake you want with plastic wrap, let ice cream sit out enough to soften, then place in pan and put a plastic baggy on your hand before pressing the softened ice cream down into the pan to form a cake layer. I had to really smash it down to get the center to flatten. Stick it back into the freezer to reharden, and then you can pull out the layer by the plastic wrap and then repeat for as many layers as you want. I also used the same pan, lined with parchment paper, to cook a thin layer of fudgy brownies to go between the ice cream layers. Once it was cool I pulled it out and stuck it into the freezer to harden before stacking the layers on a cookie sheet. This creates the basic cake, but the edges look rough. Then I drizzled lots of chocolate and caramel sauce back and forth across the cake and crushed some oreos to press against the sides and sprinkle on top to cover the rough edges. I also added some honey roasted peanuts, put whipped cream around the top edge, and used more with a cake decorating tip to write 'Happy Birthday' across the top. Just put the cake back into the freezer between each step to keep cold.