Oh wow! I've been wanting to kayak at Pictured Rocks, but a backpacking trip sounds wonderful too.

I have my kids do early college, but since we live close to two large universities, my kids take dual enrollment classes at a 4 year university. They are the same classes taken by freshman and sophomores at the university. We wait until senior year of high school and they go to college with a semester finished, but we could do it earlier. DS tested out of 3 levels in foreign language and then finished two semesters in high school so he started junior level classes as a college freshman. Not all early college is done at community colleges.

Very unlikely. Medical waivers are available for previous injuries, but ongoing meds of that kind probably won't qualify. PTSD makes it even more unlikely. DS missed out on West Point because of a previous knee surgery despite the fact that his knee was better than ever after surgery. He was finally able to join the military, but it took 6 months just to get the waiver approved and that was after he'd already been regularly working out with them for over a year.

I'm not a fan of these microschools. They're nothing more than unregulated private schools and they will do major damage to homeschooling. They allow parents to say they're homeschooling without having to actually be in charge of their child's education. They damage homeschool co-op and social groups. They lose the point of providing an education for your unique child because you know them better than anyone. There's a homeschool facebook page for a group near me and every other post is from a woman marketing her microschool. It's interesting that nobody seems to like or respond to her posts, so I'm hopeful that most homeschoolers are rejecting it. They're not inexpensive either and most of these parents would be better off sending their kids to one of the excellent private schools in the area.

DH is 64 and not likely to retire anytime soon. He'll get Medicare and the rest of us will use ACA.

We were never co-op people until last year in DD's sophomore year. All of my older kids were out of the house and DS wasn't here anymore homeschooling with DD so I decided to try a co-op for the first time. It's been a surprisingly good experience. A new co-op started that's less than 15 minutes from my house, it's enrichment only so I don't worry about rigor, there are lots of teens, and I found I enjoy teaching the teens. DD made some new friends and looked forward to going every week and we've decided to do it again this year. It does have some downsides such as requiring me to prep and teach classes, offer a teen night, be part of one of the committees, pay a fee, and take one day of the week out of academics (so adding more to our already busy schedule). In your case, your list of cons looks like you're trying to talk yourself out of doing the co-op and your pros don't seem too optimistic. The hour drive and the fact that your DD doesn't really want to do it, would make it a no for me. Since you already have a friend group, I would try planning regular outings and go with whoever can attend or even just with your DD if necessary and put off a co-op until you see if that will work.

That's how CNN10 was and it seems to be very similar. A to Z is just using different names for the short segments. We've started our day with CNN10 for years, but DD liked Carl Azuz and complained when he left. She wants to switch to The World from A to Z this year.

Umm, where I live bad weather can last days or weeks. Honestly, many people would consider it "bad" for months. I do try to fill up whenever I see that it's below half a tank, but other people drive my car and they don't always do that.

It's often embarrassing to try something new in public though, especially when others have been doing it for a long time and think it's easy. Last year I was filling up my gas tank when an older man asked the guy working if he could show him how to fill up his tank using a credit card. The poor man couldn't remember his zip code for some reason and that became a big problem, the man got embarrassed, and ended up just paying with cash. Sometimes you go to different gas stations and their pumps work differently than the ones you're used to and you have to pause for a minute to figure it out. It is easy once you've done it a few times, but for someone who's lived their whole life in a state where they've never had to do it, I can see it being intimidating at first and many people aren't patient with someone learning something new.

I only have two years left and I'm trying to decide how my "retirement" will look. I may need to work since we don't have any retirement savings, but I'm not sure what or how much. I'm also thinking about if it will involve big life changes or not. Anyway, I realized the other day that I need to stop worrying so much about where I'll be in two years and really enjoy these last two years of homeschooling and parenting while keeping the future in mind.

I just got up from a nice nap, so I know my answer. We were supposed to go to a free outdoor festival and concert today, but the weather report doesn't look good and we decided to stay home.

What is EK? Early Kindergarten? Extended Kindergarten? We don't have that here. Kids do preschool and then full day K. Many younger boys with summer birthdays start K at age 6.

My community has a spring clean up where everybody puts stuff they don't want on the curb, people drive around and take things they want, and whatever is left is picked up by the garbage service. My husband found a bunch of like new children's books and brought them home. It included a complete set of hard back Captain Underpants books. My 33 year old son was excited, pulled them all out of the box, and took them home. LOL! ETA: My kids really liked "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" and it's one we keep on our shelves.

My very thin teen, who's also a dancer, uses either U by Kotex ultra thin pads or OB tampons. I had her try a variety of supplies and these are the ones she chose. She has heavy periods.

Oh, that's terrible. My mom doesn't read. I've never seen her read a book in my entire life, but I love to read. As a teen, I used to ride my bike to the local library branch. Sometimes I'd ride to the nearby city to the bigger county library. I'd spend hours just wandering through the stacks picking up whatever book caught my attention. Not being able to do that as a teen would have been sad.

Wait! Your libraries aren't open on Saturday!? My local library is open seven days a week. Our library gets tons of use.

The advantage of this is that they can text my homeschooled daughter for help and get explanations of their math and grammar lessons. LOL!

Almost everyone I know hires a professional or semipro photographer (often someone they know), goes somewhere interesting outside, and takes pictures in different outfits that relate to the student's interests. I don't personally know anyone who does it themselves unless they're already an amateur photographer. Photos in one of our downtown public parks on the river with local landmarks in the background are popular here. Dancers I know often get pictures in their leotards, but in some interesting old building or outside. One of mine got pictures at the Boy Scout camp wearing his uniform and others in the woods wearing nicer clothes. Another got a few photos in his goalie uniform and then wearing nicer clothes but holding his drum sticks.

Yes, they do make doggie life vests!

My DD was not willing to do dissections of animals. We did flower and mushroom dissections and for animals we used paper dissections from gettingnerdywithmelandgerdy.com.

I think this is one reason that it's hard for parents when kids give up something that's been a big part of their life. When DD quit a sport she had done since she was little, it was hard for me. I liked going to the competitions and there were people there I enjoyed seeing that are now out of my life. I was thinking of this recently when I was at a dance competition. So many of the parents were wearing shirts that said "Dance Mom" or something about being a "Dance Dad" and I think many parents get much of their social life and identity through their kids activities. It's just one more thing on top of seeing your child give up something they've loved doing for so long, having to redefine them because they're no longer your "baseball player" or whatever, and maybe having big changes in the rhythm of your family life (no more traveling to weekend tournaments or Friday night games or whatever fits your child's activity).

In her defense, we don't have the proper emojis for this post.

What a cool adventure! Good for you! One of my boys went there on a canoe trip years ago and said it was beautiful. He also met some moose!

I keep my keys on a lanyard because it's easier to find and grab them from my purse. Also, my homeschool co-op uses nametags and many of the kids disliked the clips used to hold them on. Someone donated a bunch of lanyards and that made many children and parents happy. All this to say there are groups that could find a use for them, so I would donate them somewhere.

I watched an interview with Tim Ballard that was filmed two years ago. He talked about how they had limited resources and decided to focus on countries and areas that had local law enforcement that wanted their help and had the ability to sustain the efforts and also had local organizations that could provide post-rescue help to the children.