My oldest two are the sorts I have to bribe to try new things, so I was a little taken aback when my youngest hit 5 and wanted to do EVERYTHING. Our mysterious little extrovert. I do think it's different for homeschooled kids; if he were in school full time and THEN we spent our evenings running around to activities, I'd be more hesitant to let him try so many things. Last year he did tap dancing, drama classes, and a couple of plays that required rehearsals 2 or 3 times a week for much of the year. He also did swim lessons and homeschool soccer in the fall. He was fine. He never seemed burned out or at all hesitant to go to any of his scheduled classes/practices/rehearsals. So I think it depends on the kid. It would have been way too much for my older kids (who are just recently starting to appreciate and ask for outside of the house activities) at that age, but it seems fine--good, in fact--for my youngest. There's also the issue of how much time YOU feel comfortable spending shuttling her to various activities.

:grouphug: MY kids are 1/32 Native American.....in this part of the country (and many other parts of the country, I imagine), it'd probably be hard to find anyone who WASN'T (at least anyone whose from-this-area ancestors go back a few generations).

really? interesting! I can't remember where I read it's rarer in small dogs. Maybe I'm just making it up :D and he probably was a terrier mix.

I'm sorry :( My dog Oliver tested positive for lyme disease--he wasn't having any symptoms; it just came back positive on a routine blood test--so maybe years after he'd gotten it. Vet put him on antibiotics, and he seemed fine. But he did wind up down the road with congestive heart failure, which is pretty rare in little dogs and which can be a long term complication of lyme. He lived 3 years after that diagnosis with medication, until he was 16 1/2....but I do wonder if he would have had more completely healthy years without the lyme. So it's good that you're catching this early!

I'm going to echo others and say that it should be very easy to find something rural and affordable within a short drive of Athens. I mean, 45 minutes outside of Athens one way and you're pretty much in Atlanta. DH grew up in Athens--he lived inside the city limits (on the eastside) in a big, nice house on 4 acres of land, and last we checked the zestimate on that house (his parents sold it several years ago) was right around 200,000. So your money goes a long way in Athens. ETA: it's making me chuckle a bit to hear Athens referred to as a "big city." It's all relative, I guess!

We closed! It all went very smoothly. It turns out the buyers bought the house for their daughter/son-in-law/granddaughter to live in, so that they could move closer. And they (the people who will live there) have chickens! Just like we did :). And the son-in-law brews beer, just like DH, so he'll appreciate the hops plant we left behind in the garden. I'm so glad that we're all done and that, as a bonus, someone's moving in who will appreciate all the same things about the house/lot that we did. Best of luck to all the people still trying to sell!

Thanks! these look good! I was sure if I dug around enough I'd be able to come back and post some that I found, too, but I'm not having much luck. argh! digging through all the math stuff (we just moved, so I'm pulling it all out of boxes). I have pattern blocks, attribute blocks, 1 inch square wooden cubes, colored tiles, geoboards, tangrams, clocks.....umm, maybe too much stuff.

Disney is about the easiest place in the world to be gluten free. When you make your dining reservations, you can note it on the reservation, and the chef will come out to talk to you at every restaurant. For counter service places, you just tell them you're gluten free and the manager will come out to talk to you, usually bearing a giant book with all the allergy information. It helps to do some research in advance so you have an idea of what you can eat in each place. Every place has something, but the selection's better at some places than others. They do have gluten free pizza and they even have gluten free chicken fingers (which are way better than the regular chicken nuggets) at a lot of locations. They'll also do baked fries for you if they don't have a dedicated fryer. Desserts get a little monotonous, as most all of the counter service places give you a french meadow brownie (or at least this was true a year ago when we were there). Kona has a flourless cake that's gluten free (they served it to us when we ate at 'Ohana, which is right next door), and it's awesome. And Babycakes is a bakery in Downtown Disney that's vegan and gluten free. We picked stuff up there a lot to bring back to the room for breakfasts the next day (you can use your snack credits there). Here's a link to my not quite finished trip report....it's very long, but there are links to the individual posts, so you can just read the restaurant stuff. If you google, there are quite a few gluten free at disney reviews out there, too: http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2806318

I know! But, at the same time, I don't want to slip too far in the other direction, where I have no idea what my blood sugar's doing, and I'm like, "I'm sure it's fine....ooh, look--cookies!" :D Moderation. That is what I must work on!

Thanks guys :) I've tested several more times today (this is why it's not good for me to have a meter; I get a little obsessive), and sugar's been completely fine. 104 an hour after a meal; 92 at a random time in the afternoon. So maybe the low blood sugar episodes were flukes. I also remembered that I'd had a handful of potato chips shortly before my 140 reading this morning....so that may not have been as big of a deal as it seemed when I thought it was 3 hours after breakfast. We'll see. I'm so terrible at being pregnant. Fortunately, I'm great at having babies :)

I know the primary answer to this is probably, "go to an endocrinologist," but until I get around to that..... background: I'm about 16 weeks pregnant. I found out I was hypothyroid after finding out I was pregnant (a blood test last year showed borderline TSH, but I never did anything about it). TSH was over 6. Midwife/ob put me on synthroid, and I started taking it maybe 8 weeks ago. They ran another thyroid panel about 2 weeks after I started the meds, and the TSH was down to just over 1. Then they tested again 3 or 4 weeks later, and it was down again to .47. So still at the low end of normal, but it seemed to me that it was coming down awfully fast. My very laid back midwife was unconcerned. Okay, so last test, where it was .47, was just over 2 weeks ago. In the past few days, I've started having some hypoglycemic episodes for the first time in over a year. I have a strong family history of diabetes and was diagnosed with gestational diabetes with my first pregnancy, so I keep an eye on things. I used to get low blood sugar pretty frequently, but a year and a half ago I started watching carbs, and I haven't had any trouble since then. My A1C, taken at the same time as my orginal thyroid panel, was normal. Yesterday I was feeling low blood sugary, ate something (I think I had a square of 85% dark chocolate, some milk, and some leftover steak). STILL felt bad a couple of hours later, so I went and got a meter. My blood sugar was 67. I ate again, tested again a couple of hours later, and it was fine....right around 100. My fasting level this morning was 85, so great. Then I tested again 3 hours after breakfast, and it was 140. crap. So I'm blaming the thyroid medicine. I'm worried that the dosage is too high, and I'm hyperthyroid now,and word is this can make it really hard to regulate your blood sugar. But I don't WANT hard to regulate blood sugar! Anyway....anyone else had similar issues? Am I right to blame the synthroid? how hard is it going to be to figure this whole medication thing out? I really wish I'd known about it and done it before I got pregnant. sigh.

I have a big collection of math manipulatives right now that are mostly sitting around not doing much. Like I have all the stuff from Right Start B, though we haven't done Right Start in a couple of years. I have geoboards, pattern blocks, tangrams, a judy clock, etc. What I'd like to do is put these to work for activities my younger (2nd and 4th grade math) kids can do on their own while my oldest works on algebra (although activities that would work for him would be great, too). I'm thinking someone out there must have put together some printable sheets or cards with self-guided activities on them. right? I have visions of neatly organized bins with geoboards, rubberbands, and a stack of cards with activities I can turn them loose on. So who has found or made this awesome thing I have in my head?

If you look at the next two after that....the one on Nat Turner and the one on Indian Removal, you definitely get culturally/ethnically varied perspectives in the primary documents (I'm wondering if a lack of written records is an issue with some of the earlier topics dealing with native americans) I can see it working as a socratic dialogue sort of thing rather than group discussion, though group discussion would probably be ideal. Now I'm contemplating teaching it in a co-op setting later this year. Which is probably crazy because I'm also planning on giving birth later this year.....

We had 1900 square feet in our old house. As the kids got older, it started to feel a bit small, but I think we could have finished a room in the basement and been pretty comfortable long term (even going from 5 to 6 people). Right now we have 2800+ square feet, and it feels HUGE. I like it, though. I like having space to spread out, plenty of wall space for bookshelves, etc. And since it's the same number of bathrooms and bedrooms, it doesn't feel like that much more to clean. It pretty much just takes longer to vacuum. We looked at several houses around 2200 or 2400 square feet before we moved that felt very cramped. Around here, most of the older construction houses (and by "older" in this part of Georgia, we mean late 70's through the 80's :D) are colonials....so usually a 4 over 4 or 5 over 4 floor plan. With that floor plan, we found that anything under 2500 square feet felt pretty claustrophobic. Our old house had just 7 rooms, and the downstairs had absolutely no wasted space--dining room, kitchen, living room, and master bedroom with no hallways. Stuffing 2 extra rooms into just a bit more square footage (and putting in a useless foyer and center hallway) did not work well in the boxy colonials.

couple of thoughts, just to play devil's advocate: I know you say you're going to live there forever, but you might want to give some thought to resale anyway---if for no other reason than because your kids might eventually need to sell the house. I'm not clear on which bathroom you're talking about eliminating (one of the upstairs ones, right? but the master or the hall bath?)....but around here, at least, a house without a master bath or without a secondary bath near the other bedrooms would be a very hard sell. Another thing to remember is that YOU won't have 3 bathrooms to clean as the kids get bigger--you can farm out at least 2 of those :) I do think 2 bathrooms for 5 people is perfectly reasonable, but I just wanted to throw that out there to be contrary ;)

ooh! It does look interesting. Might be just what I need for my 6th grader this year :) thanks!

The "Constitution" at the end there is referring to state constitutions. The US Constitution and federal treaties take precedence over state laws and constitutions.

DH is a teacher--he just transferred from Cherokee to Fulton, so he's getting a little extra summer right now, but he's dreading the lost September break and the LONG stretch before Thanksgiving. And I'm really sad about losing our uncrowded Disney week :(. I really wish they'd go to a year round schedule with shorter breaks spread throughout the year. I'm not sure what the reasoning is for starting so early in Georgia....maybe it's so the semesters will line up neatly with winter break? I know they start after Labor Day in MA and don't get out until mid-late June....but up there it's still very much spring in June. We often go to Cape Cod in June, and it's definitely not beach weather yet most of the time. One year it rained on us almost every day and the temperature almost never got above 65.

I think the problem you're likely to run into is not with Island but with moving on to Town with a 6/7 year old. Island is very gentle, and the writing can be dictated if the child isn't up for the actual, physical writing. But there's a big leap between Island and Town. I'm kind of in the same situation with my 6 year old--I don't want to start Island with him yet, but I'm running out of tricks for what to do with him for language arts. He did the Aesop books last year, and he LOVED them, so I think that's a good plan. I wish Island were something I felt I could stretch for two years for younger kids, but I just can't see it happening--my oldest son did it in half a year with no problem in fact. As it is, I'm going to keep looking for something he can do this year and put Island off until he's 7. I think it'd be tricky to do the lit trilogy (or at least to get a lot out of it) before the child's been exposed to MCT grammar--the 4 level analysis and all that. We used the books some last year, but I wasn't super excited about them. They're very heavy on analyzing the grammar in the books rather than on literary analysis (there is some of that in the teacher's guide, but not enough to justify buying the program, I didn't think).

Make sure you take into consideration all the costs associated with owning....not just the mortgage payments. Our mortgage payment for the house we're selling was MUCH lower than rent on a comparable house would be (because we'd done very well on the house we sold before that, and were able to put a lot of money down)....but when you look at how much money we put into it that we wouldn't have if we were renting, I doubt very much that we came out ahead on a monthly basis (and, of course, things being how they are, we're selling for considerably less than we bought for). There's stuff you can predict like property taxes, homeowner's insurance, etc. But then also stuff you'll certainly need to replace if you stay in the house long term.....HVACs might last 20 or 25 years and replacing them is thousands of dollars, cheaper roofs only have a 15 year life expectancy, and then of course all the smaller stuff--appliances, gutter cleaning, painting, plumbing and electrical repairs. I've noticed a growing trend of people arguing that renting makes more sense than owning in a lot more cases than we're used to thinking. Of course, there are non-financial benefits to owning, too (freedom to do what you want, have pets, not be worried you'll be forced to move before you're ready), and those make it worth it to me even if we don't come out ahead. But from a purely financial standpoint, it's hard to argue that owning our house for the past 9 years has been a better decision than renting, even though we did everything "right"--bought below our means, put down a lot of money, had a 15 year mortgage, etc--even not taking into account the house losing value (had it GAINED value, it would be a different story).

We're drawing some from these lists this year: http://www.nsta.org/publications/ostb/ostb2011.aspx National Science Teachers Association publishes a list of outstanding science books every year.

We're signing the kids up for archery club....they've been a couple of times to try it out, and then last week I asked for the membership form so we could sign them up. I was surprised to learn that it's actually a 4H membership form. I'd had no idea 4H was behind the archery club. So I guess we're about to be 4H members....but I doubt that will help me understand it better.

I saw the gold medal handball match in Atlanta in 1996 (the scalper was selling the tickets really cheap!). Croatia won. But I still have no idea what the rules are.

We've already replaced one side door handle ($300!) and now the one on the other side has fallen off AND the rear handle just snapped. I see old Siennas with missing door handles all the time, so it must either be more common than in other cars or more expensive to fix. BUT we're closing on our old house on Monday (I have to knock wood every time I say that), so I think we'll be able to use some of that money to get a new (old) van. We're looking at a 2008 or newer because of the 8th seat. I thought about looking at Odysseys or even Kias, but after how great the Sienna has been for us (door handles excepted) I can't see going with anything else.

I'm counting 17 that are actually being used for books right now. But we just moved and I have neither unpacked all the books nor implemented my grand plan for built-in looking Billy shelves yet.