Keep seeing PE and Health coming up again and again. So I may only need 2 more credits to feel like I'm comparable to the local high school.

Ok--overall, it sounds like our 25 credits aren't bad for our goals. It's really looking like the PE and Health credit (.5 half credit each) is doable. I also am thinking of getting a few Great Courses about critical thinking and watching them and answering the questions that usually come with the lectures. We could watch them over the next two years and then assign another credit for "Intro to critical thinking" or some such thing. It would be a bit of fluff, but I know he'd enjoy that a lot.

We're hoping he can go to a 4 year college if he wants. We are not shooting for an elite college. He has no ideas of what he wants to be/do when he grows up. My DH works at a community college and if my son still has no clue what he wants to do by the end of 12th, we very well might just have him start there to save money. (With my dh working at the college, we'd only have to pay for books and fees...so almost free education!) But if our sons suddenly realize exactly what they want to do and they need to head off to a 4-year college right away, I want them to be ready. I don't want any mistakes on my part to hold them back. *Edited because I was rambling too much.

ETA: I made a mistake. I double checked and the local high school only requires 26 credits. I read it wrong originally. So, I'm not as far off as I thought. I was going to shoot for 25 credits. That's 6 classes a year, plus one credit of home ec spread out over all 4 years. We do school for about 8 hours a day. A lot of the home ec projects are done in the summer. But then I found out that my local high school graduates the kids with 28 credits. Uh oh! That's three more than us! So, how many credits do you make sure your kids have when the graduate from high school? Because now I'm nervous about my plans. Do I need to have us do 7 classes a year for 10th -12th? He does karate as an extracurricular. He bakes cookies and cupcakes for homeless people about 4 times a week. I don't want to count those as classes. Well, certainly not the baking, but I suppose the karate could be a class, though I'd rather it be an extracurricular. And that's it. I can't think of anything else I could honestly count as a credit that we do around here. We're quiet introverts who stay home a lot.

Can you change the title to show "UPDATE IN POST 118". I know people will want to read the update, but might miss the post if they've already read the thread before today.

When I was college-aged I remember leaving a message on my best friend's answering machine. She and her boyfriend kept it and would listen to it over and over and laugh. I didn't think it was particularly funny, but the message went something like this: "Hello?? Are you there? I'm bored! Bored! Booooooooored! Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored! Call me! Pleeeeeease! Because I'm booooooooored!" I have often felt bored in my life and I was around well before electronics. My kids tell me they're bored sometimes. I give them suggestioins for things that I would like to do, but they never like my suggestions. Eventually they wander off and find something to do. Once in a while I'll realize that it has been a boring day and we might do an activity together, but nothing too fancy.

We bought ours used about 20 years ago for $50 (including the giant plastic bin the people used to store it in). It still looks great. I guess it depends on the tree.

I can't stand funerals either. I do know of some people who didn't have them. A friend's brother didn't have a funeral, but a few months after his death there was a memorial where all his drum group people got together and played on their drums and everyone talked about him. But no funeral. When the pastor of my tiny church died (like 20 members) on a Friday night, the church members came to church on Sunday morning. It was just the 20 of us and we all sat in a circle and told memories of him, one by one. The official funeral was the next day, but in my mind that was just a formality. It was that gathering on the Sunday morning that had significance. A man who died recently in my church (a new one with a large congregation) didn't have a traditional funeral. He was greatly loved and the church was filled with hundreds of people who came and lots of people got up to speak about him, but there was no body or casket or meal afterward. Just the gathering of people to share memories.

We didn't want our kids to have to travel around all day Christmas, so we have the extended family Christmas celebration on Christmas eve night. On Christmas day, we get Chinese food with a group of people, but that's it. Eat the Chinese food together, come back home. When the kids get older and get girlfriends/wives, I know things will change, but at least it was low key for them growing up. As you said, getting together on Christmas Eve makes for a longer time together and everyone is fresh and not exhausted from running around all day. (Well, except for my SIL who worked at GameStop. She came to the celebration exhausted because she'd worked in a popular store the day before Christmas and it was crazy. She finally got a degree and quit that job a few months ago and is looking forward to her first Christmas Eve off in decades.)

I agree. I've not had to plan the funeral arrangements for anyone, but I've often wondered how anyone can bear to be thinking of planning for a party when their loved one has died. Because isn't that what the dinner afterwards is? A party where everyone brings food or goes out to eat? If it's in a home you have to plan about paper plates and extra seating and make sure there's enough toilet paper etc. Just like planning a party. I'm sure other cultures handle death differently from us.

DS14 inhaled meconium at birth. With very serious faces, the midwife and nurse showed him to me for about 2 seconds after he was born and whisked him away to the NICU. The nurse quickly tended to me for a few minutes then left. I sat there in the delivery room completely alone for about an hour after he was born. I had pretty much no clue what was going on. Dh was in the NICU with DS14. I didn't touch him at all for many, many hours--and then it was just my hand on his back-which set the alarms beeping and I had to stop. I didn't hold him for a day or so. He was hooked up to a billion machines that all beeped nonstop and set off alarms if you looked at them wrong. Holding him was like holding an octopus with wires for legs that all set off alarms when they jostled. He was being stuck with needles a few times a day which made him miserable. He had to lie in a hooded box to get oxygen with a little Darth Vader mask on. I didn't give him his first bath. I didn't give him his first bottle (had to pump for a bit before he could come out of his breathing apparatuses.). Didn't do his first swaddle. None of that. The second I saw him, though, I felt a bond like nothing I'd ever experienced--firstborn so I wasn't prepared for the LOVE. And when I touched him, there was no holding back. I honestly believed he was the most beautiful baby in the world and was so surprised that a baby could be beautiful (until then, they all seemed a little creepy looking to me.). Besotted. You know DS14 and me. We're are sooo bonded! This is a 14 year old boy who almost never rolls his eyes at me or flounces away (well, sometimes there is a flounce) and listens to me and laughs at my jokes and mostly does what he's told when he's not being spacey. We've never not been bonded even though I got to hold him so rarely for those first few days. There are no guarantees, but I don't think that you'll have trouble with bonding, knowing you and how you love your kids. ETA: Wait...the midwife must have been the one to stay with me and tend to me before everyone left. She handed DS14 off to someone who left the room and DH went with them, while the midwife stayed.

For the SAT Biology test and the SAT World History test, do you prefer one of these over the other? Choice A: The Barron's books: Barron's Biology Barron's World History Or Choice B: The Official Study Guide for all SAT Tests (This is the big blue book for sale on the College Board.) Do people use just one or do they use both? And if you couldn't use both, which one would you use?

I went to a training class with a group of people. As we sat waiting for the class to start, a woman was talking about Christmas in her house the previous month. She said, "My youngest son was so bad that I took all his presents back. I didn't give him anything! But my oldest son gave my youngest his old bike, so he got something." She sounded so proud of herself. It was sickening. I really hated that woman that day. I could just see the oldest boy's heart breaking as he watched his younger brother get nothing. So the oldest said, "You can have my bike." You don't want to be that woman. It's been 25 years and I still remember her and I still have strong feelings of dislike toward her. I think of her every Christmas. I can only imagine what her kids think of her every year at Christmas. This is the sort of thing that makes people hate Christmas and get depressed every December. We can help you figure out how to teach your kids not ruin things for you. I remember feeling so worn out and defeated many times when the kids were younger and being terrible to deal with. I was often at my wits end. So many of us understand. But stopping Christmas won't help. It will just cause a lifetime of hurt.

There needs to be a lot more detail in what's going on. I would never in a million years punish kids by taking back their Christmas presents. If you've been telling them, "If you're not good you won't get presents!" then stop. That's manipulative and well...mean. Refusing to give your kids presents at Christmas because of behavior is a big mistake that most parents would deeply regret once they're out of the trenches of dealing with 5 and 9 year olds. They will never in their lives forget the year that you didn't get them Christmas presents and I doubt they'd ever forgive you for it. That's just going too far. If the kids are having behavioral issues, deal with the issues and keep Christmas separate. Do not tie behavior to Christmas at all. We can help you with behavioral issues. And the first step is to separate out the behavior from Christmas and stop threatening them with taking away their Christmas.

I am so sorry. My sweet kitty had to be put to sleep a couple of months ago. I still cry when I think about him. Sometimes our pets leave a big, gaping hole in our hearts. I am so sorry that you are hurting.

We have a plastic one I bought years ago and the boys loved it. I'm not sure they'd have loved a wooden one better. They adored the plastic one. Do the pieces lock into each other on the wooden one, or do you have to balance them? The plastic one would allow the pieces to nestle into each other so that if you bumped it, the top wouldn't fall off. I can't tell if a wooden one requires balance, of it the pieces nestle together. I would wait for the boys to go to bed and play with it myself. :) It looks like I might have this one. ETA: I can't remember the ages when the boys played with it the most. I believe it was the 8ish and 10ish ages. I got it when they were a little too small to do it and had to set it aside and wait for them to be old enough to do it themselves. I think it was when they were 8/10 that I pulled it back out and they had a lot of fun with it.

Rice Bubbles is waaaay more fun that Krispies. And chilly bin is so much more fun that cooler.

We joke that whenever the kids eat Dum-dum lollipops that they need to eat some Smarties fast to counteract the Dum-dums.

The only time I had Jelly Babies was when I went to a Doctor Who convention and a Brit brought them over to sell. Golly, what I wouldn't give for a lemon-lime Sprite and a 3 Musketeers candy bar right now. :)

Nothing special and I am only dimly aware that it's a thing for many people. Hmm. I wonder if it's worth starting a new traditional this late in the game. I think I won't. I'll let my boys not have a breakfast tradition and when they get married they can do whatever their wives want to do. And when they're gone, my DH and I will start our own breakfast tradition.

My husband is an adjunct professor at a Community College. He gives no mercy for computer trouble. If you tried to email your assignment on the day it was due and had computer trouble, tough. You lose the points for turning it in late the next day. You should have found another place to email it from, or you should have anticipated trouble and emailed it the day before it was due. My nephew wrote a ho-hum college application essay. I told him I'd work with him making it better (not writing it for him, but I had some pointers that could have made this kid shine.) I was telling him that to write a good essay, you have to expect to write numerous drafts. He's in DE classes and told me, "Oh, Aunt Garga, *I* don't have to write multiple drafts! I just write one out the day before it's due and it's always been fine." And I want to throttle his DE teachers, because I've seen his writing and it's not fine at all. But maybe it'll be fine for the classes he takes. I just don't know anymore. I guess my standards are too high. I'm still very controlling with my 9th grader and his outsourced classes. His outsourced geometry teacher told him on his most recent assessment that she could tell he wanted to learn. Ha! He's got a controlling mother who sets time aside for him to do his geometry work and makes him rework every single problem he gets wrong until he gets it right. I'm gonna have to start letting go soon, and not be the "keeper of the calendar" so that he can learn to manage his time on his own, but I'm scared to after reading this thread. Maybe next year.

School first. But our school day lasts from 8 until 4 (or longer) plus one of my students has ADHD and take meds for it which wear off by about 4:00ish. A person's ADHD meds can be worn off and they can still wash dishes. But if a person's ADHD meds wear off before Geometry or Biology is done--woe to that poor student! I am very careful to plan the easiest classes for the end of the day when my student's brain starts spinning its wheels.

It all hinges on the tone of voice and body language. I can see this going either way. I have a sniffy friend who likes to feel superior to everyone else about how the cold doesn't bother her. If your sweeper was like my friend, then she was being very annoying. But there are other people who are prattlers. They like to prattle on and on about things and don't really think too hard about what they're saying. If she was just prattling merrily about hiking and the cold, then it might have been annoying to introverted you, but her intentions weren't to annoy.

Between my state's requirements and college entrance requirements, there's not much I can skip. We tried Latin, but it never took off. I guess that's the one thing that lots of classical homeschoolers do that we never did. I taught the kids cursive because I like it. We did art classes because the boys liked it even though they're not necessarily artistically bent. I can't think of anything else to skip. Well, sort of health. My state requires health sometime between 7th and 12th, so we did it in 7th to get it out of the way so we wouldn't have to do a high school level course in health, which I feel is a waste of time in a household where the parents are on top of things. I always figured health was to catch the kids whose parents were somewhat neglectful and never taught their kids the basics.

I recently learned that if you want thick pancakes that you pour the batter into the pan and wait for it to semi cook, then you poor more batter on top of the semi cooked batter. That way, the batter won't continue to spread the second time you pour, so you'll have thick pancakes. You don't let it cook too long, but long enough so that when you pour on more, it doesn't spread in the pan anymore. Those were some good pancakes. I have a friend who (unlike me) loves to cook and I'm always learning things like that from her.