No

Am I understanding correctly that your "get over it" comment would be to the women and girls showering when an adult male (sex) walked into the bathroom?

Better to call it Settlers than to mispronounce Catan....🫣

The base game plays up to 4 people. The expansion of the base is to make it playable at 5-6 people. The other titles (plus their expansions) have a lot of the same rules as the base game but each has individual elements. It is not necessary to get more than the base game to play, and the base game is very frequently on sale when Amazon, among others, has board games on sale.

I have a Reuben. It is a family name. I only agreed to it if we called him Ben, because I had known 3 Reubens and didn't care for them. He now introduces himself as Reuben most of the time, so a lot of people call him that. I don't mind it now because I associate the name with him instead of childhood acquaintances.

My niece's brain tumor was discovered in 2020. She has been using immunotherapy for almost 8 months now and the tumor is almost gone. She was fortunate that her tumor shared a mutation with melanoma. Her tumor was too rare for someone to develop an immunotherapy specifically for it, but melanoma is common.

So much

I'm so very sorry for your loss.

Yes, they do.

My oldest is at a school with a lot of engineering students. She is not in engineering, but she was in the tutoring program (as a tutor) and found out that girls in STEM do not have to pay for tutoring. Boys do.

My college kid is on mine. The second kid will be added if he wants to be. I hope he does. The only way I keep up on my daughter's ever changing address is by checking her address on the account. I don't hide anything so some things aren't surprises. My daughter uses her card or mine depending on what she is buying. I imagine my son will do the same. He has a debit card for his own bank account but will likely take one of my cards to college. Due to odd circumstances we direct deposit some money in my daughter's bank account. Those circumstances won't be the same with my son, so he will have a type of allowance. He can use the cc or the Amazon account up to a modest amount each month as needed.

I'm pretty sure based on the first statement that we wouldn't approve of the same sex ed materials. I am decidedly conservative, but you aren't exactly the moderate middle.

I have about 20-30 items that I wear, including shirts, pants, skirts, coats, and shoes. I have about that many things in other sizes that I may or may not ever wear again.

I bought a vehicle 3 years ago that doesn't fit our whole family, but we kept the large vehicle for trips and church (about the only time we all rode together even though all 5 kids were still at home. We need a big vehicle to fit all 7 of us or for when we have gear bags (and sometimes guests) riding to competitions. We also visit my parents fairly often. It is also handy for moving college kids back and forth. Even discounting church trips, that is too much travel to make renting a viable option. But we don't need a large vehicle for all the daily trips to work/training/choir/shopping etc. I don't want to ever have to buy a vehicle that large again, so I really want it to last until we just have two or even just one kid left at home. It makes sense to conserve miles on the bigger vehicle. Tags and insurance on the smaller vehicle are offset by the lower gas prices, but the real savings is not having to spend so much money to replace the smaller vehicle as we would a larger one down the road. I should also mention that to make this situation work, my husband drives a 1998 Buick for commuting, so we have three cars for two of us (if we don't count the 16 year old driving mine to work). The big vehicle that we use almost exclusively only when absolutely needed, a small vehicle that I mainly use, and an old vehicle that we paid almost nothing for and is extremely cheap for tags and insurance. Assuming vehicle prices are more reasonable when the house is paid off (4 years, 4 months, but who's counting lol) we will probably get a small, nice, fuel efficient car for my husband and I'll drive a mid-sized crossover. We'll only have a really big vehicle if there is a pressing need.

I put 300-400. We currently have more than that now that Dd19 is at college. When Ds18 goes in the fall, we'll have closer to 600/person and that will be a lot of space per person. I don't want to downsize, though. It is unlikely that all of the kids (any?) will live close and I want room for them to come and stay. I agree with pps about factors that affect how space feels - layout, size of kids, space usage (home all day/homeschool/work from home/etc.), climate/neighborhood factors. A farmhouse on a working farm needs a mudroom in a way that a city apartment doesn't. Big kids need more physical space. We used to fit 6 on a couch. We need two couches now to sit comfortably. Does the layout efficiently provide both communal and private spaces? Provide enough storage?

I grew up in a very small, rural town. We had exactly one homeless person in our town. Several of the local churches got together and bought him a house. It wasn't a fancy house (there were very few fancy houses in my hometown), but it was not a dump either. There were no hoops to jump through. He wouldn't stay in it. As a teen, I assumed he was mental ill because who would rather live under a railroad overpass than in a home? I have no idea what the reason actually was, but my first picture of homelessness showed me that the issue is complex.

I have no idea, but we received my husband's yearly compensation summary last week and benefits (including health insurance) were close to 1/4 of the total compensation. When he was starting out and made less, it was probably closer to half. So I'd figure what health insurance would be and figure that, too, whatever portion the job would cover if it isn't a full time position. My uncle owned a construction business and he mentioned (probably 20 years ago) that to employ someone in the $20/hour range (I don't remember the exact number) it cost him $50/hour.

My best advice is to meet your child where he is academically and not worry about his age at this point. He'll learn best that way and it will be less frustrating to both of you. In other words, adapt the pedagogy to the child and not the child to the pedagogy.

You might not become an intense sports family, but, alternatively, you might. Both dance and gymnastics both have a way of becoming bigger commitments as time goes on. I never thought our lives would become heavily invested in an activity. My family does TKD, and I remember when my husband and I wondered why people would go to a tournament one hour away. 🤣🤣 On four of the five weekends before Easter, my family competed in Dallas, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Lincoln. My 16 year old also traveled to Fargo for a special training seminar the other of those five weekends. We started with going to one class per week in four 8 week sessions per year thirteen years ago.

Philosophically I mostly agree with you. Lol And yet here we are. I do feel like family time is different for homeschoolers, especially since my kids do their main activity with their dad. The part I disagree with a bit is that kids can definitely be the ones to push for activities before age 10. My 8 year old would really love to be doing "real" ballet and gymnastics as well as TKD (real meaning full programs that are both bigger time and money commitments than what she does) if we would let her.

We are spending roughly the same, but we would be spending less if not for two things - an expensive vehicle repair and extra travel for a sport. I have been more careful on weekly expenses, I'm not spending much on curriculum, and we've made some big cuts on things we've done for years.

6 hours from my sister, 8-10 times per year 20+ hours from my brother, almost never for reasons influenced by life circumstances and not affection

My oldest is almost 20 and a sophomore in college. I regret the missed opportunities we had for her main extracurricular. I regret it enough that we are all in for the younger kids. I typed up a lot of details that no one wants to know lol, but I mean it when I said all in. We pay our bills (that I try to keep low) and tithe and everything else is fair game for the kids to do their activities. Yeah, we are activity poor right now and it takes a huge amount of time, but no more regrets. I'll get back to reading and buy myself some decent clothes when the kids are grown. That will be all too soon.

My kids have done the Foerster Alg. II/Trig and Precalc books. I like the presentation of the trig information better in the Precalc book.

He would probably say he didn't want to study anything. I tried to describe him recently to someone else and failed horribly. I could make so many contradictory statements about him and be entirely truthful. For example, I could say he is lazy. He doesn't like getting up in the morning and tries to put as little effort into his schoolwork as I'll let him get away with. But, also, he will do any task I ask him to, has a reputation at work of being a good worker, and works really hard in training. Oh, he also volunteers at AWANA and does really well with that. Everyone he works with loves him. He enjoys the Old Western Culture videos a lot. He likes the Traditional Logic enough to do TL II. He enjoys reading, but the OWC reading has been a bit of a slog. He really enjoyed The Brendan Voyage, which I got him to read while reading about St. Brendan this year. His history will likely be good (by good I mean anything from interesting, to informative, to fun) books specifically chosen for him by me. Outside of school he is a martial artist. He is very good has thought about running a dojo someday. He teaches private lessons as a side job a couple hours a week and helps coach the team sparring events. He enjoys that. He also likes other sports, but he doesn't have time to play on official teams. He just plays with friends. He likes video games but doesn't spend a lot of time playing. I don't think he'd like me making school out of those interests. Other than that, not much. He has never had deep interests in things like the other kids. Growing up, he always echoed his older brother's requests for Christmas gifts and then never played with most of the stuff.