But God knew before he created them that they were going to sin, yes? I can't quite grasp the distinction between creating people who you KNOW WILL sin and creating people who can sin but don't have to. Or, well, I guess I grasp the distinction, but I don't find the distinction particularly meaningful when we're talking about why God made people. I guess...it just seems like every argument for Calvinism I ever read is all about how it makes so much sense. Once you SEE it, you'll wonder how it was ever not clear to you before. But I hit a wall with this part every time, and then, suddenly, I'm supposed to stop trying to make sense of it and embrace the mystery. And I don't find Biblical arguments for Calvinism any more compelling than those for universalism, so I go with the one that's a bit less mystery and more sense for me. I don't know if I'm right or not--that much mystery I'm happy to accept...I'm sort of a hopeful universalist.

My question about Calvinism is more, "why make people at all, knowing what's going to happen?" That's the part of predestination I can't reconcile with a belief in a benevolent God. It might actually be the part I have trouble reconciling with anything except universalism, though....not necessarily Calvinism in particular. But, I mean, if I build a robot and program it to destroy humanity, I can't very well blame the robot when it does that, can I?

Harriet Beecher Stowe was white, though....Uncle Tom's Cabin has its own issues with stereotyping. I think it's very important historically, but not so much as literature. IMHO, it's enough for high schoolers to know what UTC was and why it was important. There are a number of excellent slave narratives (Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, et. al.) that I'd have a high schooler read before UTC.

We've camped at Unicoi State Park near Helen, GA, and it's really nice. Lots of hiking in the park and in other areas nearby. They even have a trail that goes to the town of Helen, so you could hike over and see the sights there if you're so inclined.

I used to work at a movie theater, so I absolutely always make sure to clean up after myself. I think they make it pretty clear that you're supposed to by putting trash cans right next to the exit and usually playing a little film telling you to not smoke, turn off cell phones, throw away trash, etc. I'm pretty sensitive about not making extra work for people who get paid next to nothing (or for anyone, really). The theater I worked at was in Athens, GA, and the UGA football team used to come to movies and leave dozens of spit cups full of nasty tobacco juice all over the place. Still grosses me out to think about it over a decade later.

Book adventure has book quizzes; kids can earn points by taking them and then get prizes.

We're doing Song School Latin for my 6 yo (with a 3 year old following along).

hmm...weed seeds...this gives me new hope. I have black specks in a brand new 5 gallon bucket of white wheat...I had assumed that meant it was now chicken food. off to google weed seeds!

We pay about $20 a month for Vonage for our home phone. Prepaid minutes (t-mobil) for our cell...it's 10 cents a minute, which probably works out to about $10 a month for us. We only have one cell phone right now, but we've been meaning to get another one now that we do the prepaid minutes. So...$30 or so a month. We're not big phone people, so it works fine for us.

My son failed his hearing screen in his right ear when he was 5, and we were initially referred to an audiologist. She did a full audiogram and then had us come back again to redo the test because she wouldn't make a diagnosis based on one day's testing. The ENT was our next step after the hearing loss was diagnosed. The ENT may have an audiologist on staff--ours does...our ENT experience is always that the audiologist does a hearing test if he hasn't had one lately and then the ENT peeks in his ears for 5 seconds and declares them unchanged. But we already knew when we saw the ENT for the first time that Ari's hearing loss was nerve damage and nothing to do with fluid build up or anything. So I imagine the ENT will want to determine if there is, indeed, a hearing loss (as opposed to just something funky going on with the screening) and then, if there is, figuring out why and what to do about it. For us this meant a slew of new referrals--we saw an eye doctor, geneticist, speech therapist, and had a cat scan before we were done.

:lurk5:

Susanna/h, Amelia, Delia...if I ever have a girl (not likely), I want to name her Susanna, nicknamed Sukie.

We started today...my husband's a teacher and today was supposed to be his first day of pre-planning--but then we found out they're doing furlough days, so he's not actually going back until Wednesday. But we stared today anyway--we just went on a long family bike ride this morning and out to lunch first.

Sounds a lot like my oldest. The thing that works the best for him is one on one or small group playdates with kids he likes. We've more or less given up on homeschool group parkdays because he just plays with his brother and ignores the other kids. Or gets mad when his brother plays with the other kids and he has nothing to do. The trick, of course, is finding kids for him to play with; it gets exhausting having to play matchmaker for him all the time. But I did for a long time, and the effort's been worth it--he has a few close friends now with whom he plays beautifully. The other thing that helps is finding small group activities that he really enjoys and that require that he interact with other kids but give him some structure about how he does it. Last year we started doing Odyssey of the Mind--a creative problem solving competition type thing--and he did great. His team was a group of 6 kids about his age, and he wasn't the tiniest bit shy with them. I've noticed that I tend to clam up and feel reserved and insecure in groups bigger than 7 or 8, and it seems to hold true for Ari, too. Another thing--5 and 6 was height of Ari's shyness and social anxiety. I'm not sure if it was just age or if other factors came into play, but he's really started to blossom socially since he turned 7. So being patient and trying not to worry overmuch (easier said than done, I know!) is something I can recommend having BTDT, too.

See for me it would be "don't even bother trying until your last baby weans." Which is unfortunate since I went 8 straight years nursing, pregnant, or both. I could eat everything or nothing and I'd stay pretty much exactly the same. But I dropped the first 15 pounds with very little effort once the little one finally did wean! Now for the rest of it... Gum + cans of seltzer water. And vitatops. I love vitatops.

We're reading On the Banks of Plum Creek and re-reading (first time for my 6 year old) The Invention of Hugo Cabret

My understanding is that the laws vary by state as to whether public schools are required to provide special ed. services to homeschoolers and private schoolers. In Georgia they are, and my son met with a speech therapist at our local elementary school for a short while after our new insurance company turned us down for private speech (he'd been seeing a private therapist before that). Our experience was mostly positive; we actually had a shorter wait to start seeing a therapist in the public school than we'd had a the other place. They were much quicker to declare him all done with therapy, though, than our private therapist.

I've had one of each so far. My oldest more or less taught himself to read when he was 3--and it was almost all sight reading. I wanted to make sure he had phonics, but it was a challenge finding a program for him because he knew all the words on sight; when he did come across a word that he needed to sound out, it was clearly a challenge. I don't think it's anything I did; I think he's just a very visual kid, and that's how his brain works. He sees a word and remembers it. DS2 is a different story entirely. He can read a word 10 times today and still need to sound it out when he sees it again tomorrow. Learning to read is much slower going for him, but it's progressing much more "by the book." He's slowly getting the phonics rules and being able to sound out more and more. And, yes, at 4? Don't worry at all!

...and Joaquin Phoenix, back when he was Leaf. I loved Space Camp when I was a kid!

We get the Costco brand, and I've found that it's actually much easier to deal with when it's refrigerated. It gets too runny if I leave it in the cabinet. That said, I haven't had any problems with spoilage leaving it in the cabinet for a week or two.

I've lost 20 pounds since the beginning of the year doing WW. It's slowed way down the past couple of months, but I'm still going in the right direction, so I can't complain. In my past attempts, I either tried to give up chocolate and failed miserably or I wound up using too many points on cookies. So this time I buy the WW ice cream so I can have something sweet when I want. And I buy Vitatops, which are these chocolate muffin things that are awesome and are just 1 point each. And they have real ingredients in them; not lots of weirdness. So there's my vitatop commercial. They're expensive, though. I just found out they sell a mix that's way cheaper than buying the muffins, so I'm excited. Also, I drink carbonated water constantly--Kroger sells it in 12 ounce cans, so I get my fizzy drink fix with those. And I chew a lot of gum. I mostly cook/eat the same stuff I used to for meals; I just do smaller portions.

Thanks! I went ahead and ordered Figuratively Speaking.

Thanks! I went ahead and ordered Figuratively Speaking and I think I'll get the Norton guide next time I do an Amazon order.

We have 5 (in spring/summer we get 3 to 5 eggs a day; fewer in winter). They have a 6 by 10 dog pen with a hutch inside that they stay in at night and until we get around to letting them out in the morning. They free range in our fenced yard during the day (it's maybe 1/3 of an acre? maybe a bit less. we have an acre total, but they don't go outside the fence). We pay $12 for a 50 pound bag of food; it usually lasts ??? 1 to 2 months? It varies a lot depending on the season (how much food they can find on their own plus I think they just eat more in winter) and how many scraps we have for them. I like having variety so that we can tell them all apart (which is helpful since naming chickens is fun) and so that the flock looks pretty :). We have a Buff Orpington (very friendly, gentle, lays HUGE eggs), a white leghorn (she's, uhh, very quirky. She has the most personality of any of them, but sometimes she can be a pain. She's also, oddly, the only one who goes broody. When she's not broody, though, she goes months without taking a day off from egg-laying), a Barred Rock (very talkative and curious), and two New Hampshire Reds (we got these when they were about 3 months old, so they hadn't been handled as tiny chicks. One is still very skittish and standoffish, the other got used to us and is super friendly now). We used to have a Silver Laced Wyandotte, but she died mysteriously a few weeks ago :(. She was really pretty and friendly enough. Getting the pen set up was kind of a pain and they need a lot of care when they're tiny (well, not so much a lot of care as frequent care; you have to check in on them every few hours at first), but overall it's been about what I expected, which is to say it's been a lot easier than my husband expected. As far as either pets or livestock go, chickens are about as low maintenance as it gets.

Mine are generally better behaved for other adults than for me. I think that's pretty normal; they feel more comfortable with me, and it's safer for them to test limits. Also, they're just fairly shy kids (especially my oldest), so if they have a problem with something when another adult is around, they're less likely to speak up. Heh--they're also more likely to be brotherless when they're taking outside classes, and they're much more angelic when they can't conspire with each other ;). I've often thought that if my oldest were in school, he'd keep everything in during the day and we'd have to deal with all the pent up energy and anxiety being unleashed in the evenings...I can certainly see how, if I didn't know better, that would lead to me thinking I could never homeschool him.