I strongly advise against purchases that I think are a waste of money, but I don't outright tell them they can't make them. My oldest is kind of a miser, and is very slow to part with his money anyway, so no problems with him. Middle DS made a few unwise impulse buys, and has learned from this to be much more careful with his money and to really think about what he wants before he parts with any. I think actually wasting the money was the only way he could have learned the lesson; otherwise he'd probably still be pining for the cheap piece of junk I wouldn't let him buy.

We just watched The Boys, about the Sherman Brothers (wrote the music for Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, etc) the other night. I really enjoyed it, but I'm a big Disney geek.

It's not quite as hot here lately as in some places, but it's been pretty steadily over 90 since early June...our basement feels great! We've been down there a lot lately because we're trying to get it cleaned out so we can use it as extra living space instead of just storage, and I've been really impressed with how cool it is. It starts to feel a little muggy if we're down there doing a lot of work, but the temperature is good. And ours is a walk out basement, so not totally underground...it's a garage on one end and then a basement room which is mostly all underground on the other end.

It was actually founded by Presbyterians...but I didn't meet a whole lot of Calvinists while I was there :D You know...I thought I remembered that Oberlin had Congregationalist roots, but when I googled Wikipedia told me Presbyterians...but then I found this in the Oberlin archives: So I guess it was actually founded in some sort of unhappy union of Presbyterianism and Congregationalism.

nope, you just fit them together and they stay in place. I think there are some carpet tiles that you have to stick, but these you don't. We're planning to use some in our basement (over concrete) if we ever finish cleaning it out. I don't see why you couldn't. In that room they're just on top of the wooden subfloor.

:iagree: That's what we have in our playroom/schoolroom. Flat, smooth, VERY easy to install, and easy to clean (if one gets dirty you can just pop it up and clean it), but not as cold as laminate...and it was super cheap. We bought ours from this place: http://www.carpet-usa.com/ctile.php We live close enough that we could drive to pick it up, but it was recommended by a friend who lives out of state and had hers shipped, so I take it the shipping is pretty reasonable. this is our playroom right after we finished it, btw. We got the cheapest tiles, which means there weren't very many of each kind, so we didn't have that much choice, and we needed to find two that would go together well:

The thing is...I'm REALLY picky. If nuts were one of the only things I didn't like, I'd think there might be a good reason for it. But, sadly, I think it's just one more example of how my palate is more limited than your typical five year old's. But maybe...it's a good excuse to give up trying anyway ;) Thanks--I'll try it! It's the kind from Trader Joe's. It's not a texture thing, though--the texture is actually really good with it; I make something, and it looks all yummy, and then I take a bite and that blasted almond taste hits me. thanks everyone! I have tried lots of the non-nut alternative flours. My current theory is that I can mask the stronger tastes of some of them by mixing different kinds together. Right now my blend of choice is coconut, sunflower, and a little oat flour, and sometimes peanut flour depending on what I'm making. I just wonder if a nut flour would add some versatility and work better, taste-wise, than the peanut flour (or too much coconut) in more savory or bready (as opposed to sweet) stuff. I've got a trial batch of cinnamon rolls with the sunflower, peanut, coconut combo going right now...we'll see what happens.

I'm experimenting endlessly with various low-carb and/or gluten free flours right now...and the fact that I (and the kids) don't like the taste of almond flour is really slowing me down. I know very little about nuts (because I don't really like them!)....is there a nut out there with a milder taste that I can make or buy a flour out of? Or is almond flour the go to nut flour because IT has the mildest taste, and I'm just out of luck if I don't like it?

I just started reading the teacher book tonight, but I'll give it a shot! From what I've read so far, he doesn't specify a particular amount of time for reading each book. He suggests that 30 pages a day might be good, but that some kids will want to read much faster and you shouldn't slow them down. I think he recommends informal discussions as you go, but saving the meatier questions and more formal assignments until after the whole book has been read. My impression is that he's not going to give a strict schedule so much as make general suggestions. He divides the reading process into 4 steps: preparing, reading, creative thinking, and writing, and then gives suggestions for each step (a vocabulary pre-study, discussion questions, and then suggestions for writing assignments (aimed at students of various ages/levels). He says the parent needs to read the books, too. I think the idea is that the student should be reading independently for the most part, but that you might want to read aloud for some of the book. Like I said, I'm not too far into it, but that's what I've got so far. HTH!

3 kids, about 1800 square feet.

She e-mailed you, so you knew she was up, and then she got upset when you called immediately after? yeah, I think it's her problem, not yours. I usually don't call anyone before 9, but the reason you don't call early in the morning is because someone might be asleep. If you KNOW she's up, it's entirely different.

We have it. I tried with my now 10 year old maybe two years ago? a year and a half? and we gave up on it pretty quickly. But we returned to it this past spring, and he's really enjoying it now. He took an outside class with a native speaker in the interim, and, of course, he's gotten older, so it's a lot easier for him. I just ordered the DVD (only had the book before) and another book for my 8 year old, and I'm going to have both of them work on it this fall. I'm still not in love with it; I think the format is kind of weird (like PP said, it teaches Spanish as if it's Latin, with chants and whatnot)...but I haven't found anything I like better for that age/level. DS tried Galore Park before we went back to SFC, and he HATED it.

I successfully gave a rooster away on craigslist to a woman who had one hen and was planning to get more and wanted chicks. Or at least that's what she claimed; if she was planning to eat him she put on a pretty good act. He was young (just started crowing; he wasn't supposed to be a rooster); we'd raised him with lots of handling and he wasn't at all aggressive (at least not yet), and I said all of that in the ad. I got several responses from people who claimed to want him for...non-culinary purposes. So that could work. If it hadn't, the next step was definitely to give him to anyone who would take him, though; we can't have a rooster here!

You can get a cheap glucose monitor at any drug store (the test strips get expensive, but if you won't need many if you just want to test for a few days/weeks). You can also buy a home AC1 test, which shows how your sugars have been over the past 2-3 months. Here's what I'd do (and what I have done): take the home Ac1 (or is it A1c? I can never remember) test. Then spend a week testing your blood sugar with the glucose monitor at various times--fasting levels, one hour after meals, two hours after meals, just at random. Keep track of those and pay attention to how what you've eaten affects the levels. You can look up numbers online, but, basically, your fasting levels should, ideally, be under 90, and your numbers after eating should be under 140 certainly....probably lower really. My husband, with the enviously perfect metabolism, pretty much never goes over 100 no matter what he eats. So that's really what you'll see in someone with completely normal blood sugar, I think. You would be able to handle big doses of carbs without the insulin spikes and falls. If you do have trouble, low carb should definitely help. I've been watching carbs very carefully since March, and I NEVER have blood sugar crashes when I go awhile without eating anymore.

DH went to Oberlin, and I lived there for a year after I graduated. Definitely very liberal. I don't consider "liberal" and "Christian" to be opposites, though ;). But I think that someone with conservative political views would feel very out of place there...unless they just liked to argue a lot. It's actually one thing I didn't like about Oberlin, even though I fit in very well there, politically: I think college is somewhere where you should have your assumptions and viewpoints challenged, rather than it being a safe bubble where everyone agrees with you.

My understanding is that agave nectar doesn't spike your blood sugar because it's mostly fructose...fructose does have a smaller effect on blood sugar than glucose, but it has its own issues that aren't really any better (think high fructose corn syrup). When I was pregnant with my third and worrying in advance about my glucose tolerance test (I've always failed the one hour test; passed the 3 hour two out of three times), I did an experiment involving Dr. Pepper. I carefully measured it out so that it would have the same amount of sugar as the one hour test, then tested my blood sugar an hour later...and it was great--not even close to the cut-off point for the one hour test! I was thrilled...until I flunked the one hour test pretty solidly a week later. It was years before I figured out that this was because the Dr. Pepper was mostly fructose instead of glucose. Anyway. I digress. I mostly use a combo of erythritol (doesn't upset your stomach like xylitol), stevia, and a little bit of honey. I haven't been able to find anyone saying anything bad about erythritol yet, but that may be because it's fairly new and people haven't had a chance. At any rate, I can personally vouch for its non-effect on blood sugar, and I'm pretty convinced that it's better for me than sugar. I have sucanat and use it occasionally when I bake for the kids...but it's really just sugar...it's unprocessed, but I feel like the processing is the least of your worries when it comes to sugar. Or at least it's the least of MY worries, with my strong family history of diabetes. I've just started reading about coconut sugar....I'm a little unclear on WHY it would be lower on the glycemic index, since the chemical composition appears to be pretty close to regular old cane sugar. I might have to do a personal test :)

We've only been doing gluten free for a little over a week now, but my kids quickly decided they'd rather have just the the insides of the sandwich than eat them on gluten free bread (I haven't given up finding a GF bread they like, but it's not a big priority for me at the moment). I roll up deli meat (Boar's Head is gluten free; not all deli meat is) and serve it with cheese and fruit. We also do nachos a lot and leftovers. Here's a post from Everyday Paleo about packing (GF/dairy free/other stuff free since it's paleo) school lunches: http://everydaypaleo.com/2010/09/11/school-lunch-and-a-trader-joes-find/ Oh--I also have big plans to start making a big batch of meatballs once a week, using them first for pasta (despite my kids' bread complaints, they love tinkyada pasta) one night for dinner, then saving a bunch for lunches during the week.

:iagree: I think it's trendy because we're realizing that a whole lot of people have trouble with gluten. DH just had a celiac panel mostly because of psoriasis. We're waiting on the results, but in the meantime the whole family is doing a 30 day gluten free trial. I thought DH's doctor would scoff when he asked for a test, but he was surprisingly in favor of it; he thought it was definitely worth checking on and even said he sort of hoped it was positive so that DH would have something that might actually help. It certainly doesn't hurt to try it, at any rate. A low carb diet is necessarily going to be LOW gluten, but it probably won't be gluten free unless you deliberately make it gluten-free. If you actually have celiac, low gluten won't cut it.

I found loose-fitting, uni-sex swim shirts/rashguards at Costco a few weeks ago...I think they were around $20, which is the cheapest I've seen. Don't know if they still have them or not this late in the season....

That's the only situation where it would make any sense to work for so little; if you're doing it more out of friendship than as a job. But I do think those situations have a lot of potential to turn out badly and for you to start to feel taken advantage of. So I'd just make sure to think through all of those aspects of it as well as the economics of it.

what do you mean by full time? do you mean the tutor would be at their house for a full work week? and then need to plan on top of that in the evenings? if that's the case (and I don't see how it could be much less than that for kids those ages), then I just don't see how/why anyone would do it for what you report local private schools charge per student. $10,000-12,000 for a full time job (albeit with good vacation time, I imagine) with no benefits? It would be a HUGE favor to the family if someone took on that job, it sounds like.

and bacon!

I don't have any problems with cravings coming back if I stick with a couple of squares of really dark (85 or 90% cocoa) dark chocolate a day. About once a week I make some kind of low carb dessert, usually with a stevia/erythritol blend. This is my favorite recipe site: http://www.healthyindulgences.net/ I haven't had anything I've made from it not turn out well...and her molten chocolate cake is incredible.

So we're 4 days in to the big gluten free experiment. All of us are doing it, in hopes that we'll see positive changes for everyone. My youngest just got an asthma diagnosis, so I'm hoping it might help with that, too. My normally quite tempermental 10 year old seems a lot more even-keeled over the past couple of days, but I'm trying not to read too much into that. DH doesn't notice any difference, but I don't think he would yet. The plan is keep at it for 30 days. I'm sort of freakishly enjoying the whole obsessive research part of it. It's like homeschooling! Or planning a trip to Disney World!

DS10 has gotten very into blogging this summer would love to have some more readers/other kid blogs to read. So I suggested I could start a thread here where people could post links. Here's his blog: http://everybodygoescrazy.blogspot.com/