They don't need a separate invitation, but it's always been my understanding that if they aren't included on the invitation (not necessarily by name, but "and family" at least), they aren't invited. When I did my invitations, the outer envelope had just the adult names, but the inner envelope had kid names on it. The one I got today had "Mr. and Mrs. [my husband's last name]" (which isn't even my name, but that's another story) on both envelopes.

I can't remember the last time my kids were invited to a wedding. And since most of the invitations have been for weddings in other states (and not for immediate family) that means I can't remember the last time we were able to actually accept a wedding invitation. Just got the invitation for my cousin's wedding today. I knew it was going to an afternoon wedding, so I thought maybe it would be family friendly. But no. It's in town, so we will go, and I've already arranged for a friend to babysit, so it's not really a big deal. But is this just how it is now? I know it's their wedding and they get to have it how they want and all that; I'm not criticizing...it's just kind of weird to me...it never would have occurred to me not to invite kids to my wedding.

My kids can have fruit or carrots before bed. They all usually have an apple; sometimes my oldest will eat an apple and two giant carrots :D. I'm not going to complain about that. My rule is that I am all finished preparing and serving food after dinner. I'll cut up an apple; but that's my limit.

Here's an article from The Economist on the decline of social mobility in America: http://www.economist.com/node/3518560?story_id=3518560 a small sample:

All of my kids take a class once a week taught by a native speaker (same teacher, but the younger two are in a lower level class). DS9, especially, has a fair amount of homework for that class, too. My youngers watch Puertas Abiertas DVDs a few times a week. My oldest spends 30 minutes, 3x a week on Spanish outside of his class, divided between homework and Galore Park Spanish.

Have you watched Lost? Battlestar Galactica? We love Friday Night Lights. We're starting up The Good Wife right now, and so far so good (it's not available to stream, though--DVDs only).

Puertas Abiertas is the best thing I've found for that age. It has a series of DVDs and a workbook/teacher book. Very simple, little to no prep time required, and my kids all love it; they watch the DVDs over and over.

My very favorite is Louis Untermeyer's "Golden Treasury of Poetry." It has tons and tons of great poems, lovely (Joan Walsh Anglund) illustrations, and very nice commentary by Untermeyer. Unfortunately, it's out of print. The cheapest one on Amazon right now is $20, it looks like, but I can't tell for sure if it's the same edition I have (I picked mine up at a garage sale or thrift store at some point).

We have state-mandated hours, technically, but we only report days, not hours. I don't really pay attention to the hours...it's 4.5 hours/day, IIRC--my younger kids do less than that, on average (depending on what I "count"); my 4th grader probably does a bit more this year.

I finished Zeitoun yesterday, and I was really, really impressed with it. It's narrative non-fiction about a family in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (full review in my blog). I'd had a couple of mediocre reads before this, so I was glad to read something I loved for a change. Now let's see if I can get back to Howard's End!

Absolutely...you can do on it on your PC, for that matter--pretty much any device that will load an e-book except a Kindle. But I find reading on the Nook a lot more pleasant than on the iphone (and if you don't already have an iphone or itouch, a Nook is a good bit cheaper, if your primary goal is to read books).

This hasn't been my experience. Free Library of Philadelphia, for example, has over 4000 e-books not including, as far as I can tell, public domain books (which they have in a separate section of the website). More often than not, when I hear about a new book on NPR or Amazon's best books of the month, et. al. it's available there (albeit often with a waiting list). It has a much better selection of new e-books than my library has of new real books. ETA: I feel like I post constantly about getting library books on my Nook, but, seriously, it's been a life-changing thing for me. My local library's selection is not great to start with, and when you add in that I always have kids in tow when I'm there, and that if I put a hold on anything I'd have to find time to make a trip out to pick it up....I'm reading tons of new books on the Nook that I would never get around to reading otherwise, and it's all FREE!

Well, you can get free books for any e-reader, so I wouldn't make that a consideration. I have a nook, and I've been very, very happy with it. In addition to your local library, there are several libraries with big e-book selections that will give you a non-resident card for a fee (Free Library of Philadelphia is one of them, the cheapest, I believe, at $15/year). We bought a cheapie netbook at Walmart, and I wouldn't do that again. It's SO slow that no one likes to use it if they can avoid it. So if you go with a netbook, do your research and be willing to spend more to get a good one. Of your choices, I'd probably vote for Nook color for the best blend of price and functionality. Like you said, it can work essentially as an Android tablet for a lot less money than an ipad or something. I might reward myself with a nook color for christmas next year if I meet my 52 books goal. the only downside (aside from being more expensive than a nook or kindle) is the backlit screen. Some people don't like to read on it. I haven't tried it, but I spend so much time reading on my computer screen that it's hard to imagine it would bother me. I have a friend with a nook color, so I've played around with it a bit, and it looks really nice.

How was it? I have it on my list, too.

Last week I finished The Irresistible Henry House and Noah's Compass (I have reviews of both in my blog). I was lukewarm at best on both of those, so I'm hoping for a winner this week. I started Roseanne Cash's memoir, Composed, but I was having trouble getting into it and someone on here had read it and not liked it, so I think I've pretty much given up on it. So now I'm reading Howard's End (my first classic of the year and the first EM Forster I've ever read) and Dave Egger's Zeitoun. I'm afraid Zeitoun is proving more riveting than Howard's End at the moment, so I suspect I'm going to finish it first. I'm also listening to David Sedaris' "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary" as an audiobook.

Wow. That's one decision I hope I never have to make.

:iagree: and that, too. I actually try to do a sort of intro to close reading with my oldest (he's 9) now, mostly by picking passages for dictation that lend themselves to analysis. We talk about stuff like "is this a metaphor or a simile?" "what does this sentence tell us about the narrator?" "why did the author choose this word instead of some other one?" etc. I've taught freshman comp classes. Trust me--if your kid goes to college knowing what a thesis is, how to construct a decent paragraph, and has any kind of basic competency with literary analysis, s/he'll be better prepared than 99% of college freshmen.

Given the new info, I'd say Michael Clay Thompson more emphatically. FWIW, my (also very visual) son disliked GWG more than FLL when we switched to it for a few months. There's certainly no color or pictures.

I can't remember the last time I took a bath. My mom takes one every night. I love a hot shower, though!

Yep....mine go together to make up a story. My kids look forward to spelling tests :)

Mine really, really, really love Avatar: The Last Airbender

I have a stack of free books waiting to be read on my Nook--I'm working on Howard's End right now. I'm also obsessed with getting library books (my Free Library of Philadelphia card finally arrived, so now I've got that plus a card to a library in Florida) on it, so another flavor of "free book." It's kind of funny--most of the books I have are either very, very recent--like the past 2 years--since that's mostly what the library e-books are, or very old so that they're public domain. I feel bad for all those books published between the 30's and 2008 :D

We're up! http://kokotg.blogspot.com/2011/01/january-24-28-2011-week-22.html Ooh, did I make the first page this week?!

We switched from FLL to MCT, and it's been a much better fit (and my son's retaining a lot more)

We've had a couple, and I really liked them. I'm considering more for next year. One thing I love about them is that they really do include almost everything. Like if you need a paperclip, it'll be in there...none of this "normal household items" nonsense :D Oh, also, the kids enjoyed them and learned a lot. I guess that's almost as important as not having to hunt down paper clips ;)