Well, since my thread got resurrected, I'll say what wound up happening: we tried AOPS pre-algebra for a few months, and it was, as predicted, a struggle. I finally decided it wasn't worth it for the character building thing I was trying to accomplish, so we switched to Jacob's Algebra, and he's doing great with that. Somewhere in there we got his Explore test results back, and they were really strong, and that reinforced my decision to stop overthinking the math thing....he's really good at math, he's "ahead" in math, he's mostly enjoying the Jacob's, and that's good enough for me at the moment. Now excuse me while I go obsess over my 4th grader's math curriculum for awhile instead.....

We use a 50/50 blend of coconut flour and parmesan cheese as our breading of choice these days.

These chocolate chip cookies: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/the-chewy-gluten-free-recipe/index.html are my favorite recipe EVER, GF or not.

Much better, beaners! Nice woodwork! We're having showings steadily still. One on Saturday, one on Tuesday, another today. They say you should get an offer after 10-12 showings....and sure enough, we DO get an offer every 10-12 showings. So maybe next time it will actually result in a sale. Our realtor has been quiet this week, too. I get nervous when I don't hear her cheerful in the face of adversity updates every couple of days. One thing I'll say for this thing dragging out is that any nostalgia I might have had about the house I raised three kids and brought two babies home to is GONE! I just want to be done with that place!

My 8 and 10 year olds read for up to 45 minutes (assigned reading) this past year

Our old house had the master on the main level, but we used one of the upstairs bedrooms as the master because it was too hard being so far away from kids when they were little. We just moved back downstairs a few months before we moved, and I did kind of like it while it lasted. But we're back upstairs in the new house, and that's fine, too. Especially since we're expecting another baby now. My ideal floor plan when we were looking was actually space for us and a potential baby/toddler/small child on the main level (so 2 bedrooms) and then room for the big kids either upstairs or in a nicely finished basement. But that was a little too specific to make a deal breaker!

We always do one gift from our family to the birthday child, and that's how all of our friends do things, too.

Don't know if it's true or not, but I've heard that the doppler that they use to hear the heartbeat every visit actually emits more.....of whatever's bad...than ultrasounds do.

Have you done that long of a train trip recently? DH and I sleep horribly on trains, even WITH a sleeper car. This isn't unusual for me, but DH can usually fall asleep immediately pretty much anywhere, so he was very surprised. If I spent 2 days on a train, I'd spend the 5 days in Chicago trying to catch up on sleep before I had to head back. But maybe you've done this and you know you all sleep like babies on trains, in which case never mind :)

Well, I'm just north of Atlanta and it was around 70 here today (and raining). But I'm sure it will be 90 again in a few days!

It's kind of sad, because I LOVE looking at houses, but we never seem to look at very many before we buy one. First house....it was the only one we looked at. We weren't planning to buy yet....we went to an open house just out of curiosity, but the house turned out to be perfect for us, so we bought it. Second house we were moving to another state, so we only had a few days to look...looked at maybe half a dozen houses and bought one. This house....we looked at 10-15 houses altogether, but then wound up coming back to the 5th one we saw, I think. We didn't think we were ready to buy THIS one yet, either (still trying to sell house #2), but it was a foreclosure and we felt like it was too perfect and too good of a deal to pass up. Hope it works out as well in the long run as our first impulse buy!

With our cat, DH stayed with him, but I didn't (home with the kids). Neither of us would have ever considered not staying with our dog, though. My oldest (10 at the time) decided he wanted to be there, too.

My 6 year old got one when he was five. probably wouldn't have bought him one if his older brothers didn't have them, but we do a few long car and/or plane trips a year, and they're GREAT for those (and, as someone else mentioned, you don't have to buy a bunch of expensive games for them like a DS).

I've been too discouraged to post again after my last cheerful update. Our buyers backed out after the inspection. No one saw it coming except the buyers themselves. My agent told me I should be relieved, no big issues, let's wait and see what they ask for. THEIR agent said, "nothing major; just a lot of little things. We're having a contractor out for estimates and then we'll be in touch." And then....wham! they backed out. The biggest issue seemed to be a buckling retaining wall under the front porch. Which I understand, but....we offered to fix it! Or give them an allowance at closing! Honestly, we would have done any vaguely reasonable thing they asked for to avoid losing the sale, but they didn't even ask. Just backed out! We've already had the retaining wall repaired...it was money I didn't want to spend, but really not that big of a deal in the big scheme of things (we haven't gotten the final bill yet, but the estimate was just over $1000). I can't understand walking away from a house you love over a few minor repairs. Unless they just got nervous about buying a house in general. Sigh. So we're back to the beginning. But with a brand new retaining wall. And an inspection report so we can get every little thing fixed in advance next time.

We've always said that if we ever had twin boys they would be named after our two paternal grandfathers: Jasper and Leo. But my good friend just named HER baby Leo, so that one's out for me. I think if I had b/g twins I would do Susannah and William.

Unless it was the only chance I'd ever have to go for some reason, I wouldn't do it.

with my third baby, things didn't get unbearable until an hour or two before he was born. I was very pleasantly surprised. I finally understood what people meant when they said things like, "I just never felt like I needed an epidural." But, yeah, right up until transition they stayed 5 minutes apart and varied between "huh....that one barely hurt" and "ouch...that feels bad."

Here are some trip reports detailing individual experiences (more of my geekiness for you!) I really don't think he'll have problems with the vast majority of the rides. http://allears.net/tp/rid_trip.htm

Why does he think he wouldn't be able to ride anything? Disney rides are very accommodating to people of all different sizes. Revealing the extent of my Disney geekiness here....but I listen to the Dis Unplugged podcast, and I know one of the guys on there is something like 6'6" and over 300 pounds and rides plenty of stuff. It's a whole different ballgame from typical amusement park rides.

Eh....I've never heard any reason that makes sense to me why boys/men should be the ones who pay. But then I feel the same way about women being the ones to change their names. I'm not especially....gendered in a lot of ways, I guess. I need more of a reason than because that's just how it's done, traditionally. DH is the same way. It's funny because we DO fall into fairly traditional gender roles in lot of ways....I stay home with kids while he works outside the home (although one could debate how "traditional" that really is....the separation of home and work spheres being a fairly recent invention itself ;)).....but I at least like to think that we do things the way we do them because they make sense for US, right now...not because people did it that way 100 years ago. Like boys paying for dates in an age when boys and girls are equally likely to have jobs.

I voted regular clothes, because I usually send them up to get dressed before we start school, so we don't have to scramble around to get ready when we need to go somewhere. If we're not planning on going out that day, though, I'm fine with them staying in pajamas if they want. Their "pajamas" are mostly knit shorts and t-shirts anyway, most of the year, so they can play outside in them, too.

You all made me curious! I looked up our new city....the rule here is, according the website, that you can't leave a car parked on the street for more than 10 continuous hours. So I guess if you have too many overnight guests to fit in the driveway, you'd better make sure they don't like to sleep in.

Right now I'm mostly keeping it on 74 or 75, but I'm guessing that will creep up as the outside temps do. It has to be that low right now or it won't come on, and I need it to run to keep the humidity down. Once it's hotter outside, I'm thinking (new house, so I don't really know yet) I'll probably keep it closer to 77 or 78). Our old house was completely surrounded by trees and the temp inside very rarely got above 80 or so no matter how hot it was outside. But we still needed to run the air to keep it dry inside.

ugh, what a pain! It seems like the vast majority of houses on the market these days are vacant (at least that was our experience), so I think people get to the point where they forget that not all of them are! We had that sort of experience a couple of times....realtors turning up and knocking on the door without making an appointment at all....just assuming the house was empty.

Around here, most of the high schools keep lists of teachers who are available for tutoring. There are also plenty of companies that employ tutors in all different subjects. And there's always Craigslist.