When we had 4, I got a lot of comments. They were all 8 and under at the time, but my oldest looked a lot younger. I'm pretty sure that people just assumed they were "stair step" children. Now, we have 5. They are all girls, so I get a lot of comments about the all girl thing. It's actually more irritating than the "are they all yours?" comments. Yes, my husband is the only male in the family. Why yes, he would really like a son. No, we're not trying for a boy. Yes, I have one hand full. I'll let you know when I have two. Good grief. I'm a member of the MOMYS yahoogroup. They talk about stuff like this there. http://www.momys.net

I originally bought a student pack for each student. However, I don't anymore. I pretty much know where they are and what they need to work on. Plus, I don't generally have more than one child in any level. Two children in one level makes it a bit more difficult. I do have an extra complete set of phonogram cards and several sets of tiles. We're always losing the tiles, despite having them on a magnetic board.

Homeschool Skedtrack will let you shift entire assignments, but not portions of the assignment. http://www.homeschoolskedtrack.com/HomeSchool/displayLogin.do

We live in Texas and have a 1% deductible for all homeowner's claims. When determining how much insurance to carry, it's important to look at the cost to replace the house. FE, if there was a fire that completely decimated my house, I would need enough insurance for them to take the debris off the land, prepare the dirt and rebuilt my exact same house. So, we get quite a bit more insurance than just the value of our house. This last spring, we had an hail claim. Most of the roofers around here are waiving the deductible and just taking what the insurance company gives us. I talked with our insurance company and they did not consider that to be fraud.

Well that is just not right. My local Mardel store has the teacher books, but not the student books. However, they are expensive compared to the website price. I guess they make up their $ with the shipping.:confused:

This is correct. I'm going to take the pages out, scan them, and copy them into my dd's circa planner, so it doesn't matter how many pages each one has.

A similar, but less expensive planner is the Elan planner. They have several to choose from.

Iron can be really tough during pregnancy. During my 4th pg, I had seriously low iron levels. They just kept dropping and dropping, no matter what I did. I took more b vites, used a cast iron skillet for everything, ate grassfed beef liver, took floradix, etc. It was all to no avail. Finally, I started seeing a nutritionist and she recommended that I take a product called hematinic. Within 3 days my blood levels almost tripled. Now, it's the only produce my midwife uses when she has a client who has anemia. She's only had a few cases where it didn't work.

I am supposed to be able to run it on my Macbook, but it's old and I'm not sure what more I am going to have to do to it. I added more ram and upgraded my OS to Leopard. Now, I think I need to add more hard drive space. Egad. Anyway, we put it on my husband's Macbook Pro. He already had Windows installed on it. He can duel boot his Mac so that he can play his Windows games. It's really quite sad, but that's the way it is. Anyway, Leopard has Bootcamp. Bootcamp will allow you to partition your hard drive and install Windows. Once you install Windows, then you can install most, if not all, Windows programs. So, I've been running Windows on my dh's Mac with HST+. It's going quite well, though I am not sure how we're going to configure my Mac so that I can also run it. So far, I think I like the HST+. I need to spend a little more time with it before I make a final determination.

Wow. This may just do all that I want it to do, but the learning curve is steep. I'm just in the process of adding in all of my courses, and it's taken me a couple of hours to figure out just how I would like to do it. Now, the baby is up from her nap and my guess is that I won't have much more time to work on it. Does anyone have any helpful hints for the learning curve on this? I'm watching the videos to get ideas, but I've figured most of it out on my own. The discussion forum has been helpful. It's where I got the final idea on how to input my courses for TOG based on the class and the level. I really wish this ran on a Mac natively.

If your iron is good - say in the 13 and above range, then I would check vitamin d, b vitamins, and make sure that I was eating enough protein. 80 - 100 grams a day of protein. It's a lot, but I think it will help.

I like Dansk. I had some from when we were first married and it started to break, due to my dd's washing dishes. So, I purchased some from IKEA. Well, that wasn't such a good idea. Our forks and spoons scratched it from regular use. So I now have more Dansk. It wasn't inexpensive, but at least I know it's not going to scratch. I also don't think that there is any lead in this.

We're in a finish 8th grade, begin 9th grade mode. Finish CW Older Beginners and Start Diogenes Outside Writing Class Analytical Grammar 1/2 pace TOG Rhetoric Literature TOG D History Y2 U3/4 and Y3 U1/2 and Geography TOG Government LOF Algebra 1, maybe 2 Rosetta Stone Spanish 1 Biblical Hebrew 2 Swimming at least once a week We are going to put science on hold until the spring. If she finishes Algebra 1 by the end of December, then we will find some kind of chemistry to do. We may do music and art appreciation a la TOG. I'm still working this all out and not sure how it will all come together.

One of our office supply stores had them last year. Wal-mart also carries them at certain times of the year. I won't go back to any other pencil if I don't have to.

Have any of you seen this or tried this? http://fithomeschoolmoms.ning.com

Bloodwork levels need to be between 50 and 60, unless you are in Canada. Then, the numbers are different. Not all labs are showing this, though. They are showing adequate levels at 40.

I have a Singer sewing machine that my grandmother purchased in the mid 80's. Every so often, I get this idea that I am going to sew! and get it out. It has to be serviced because it has sat for so long. I get it back from the shop and my momentum has left. So it sits again. <sigh> I would recommend a Singer again because it doesn't seem to break, just needs to be serviced. I'd really like to figure mine out, though. Maybe I should just go and take a class...

When we are trying to stave off a cold or flu, I give my kids extra vitamin A. They get 100,000 IU of gel cap vitamin a for 3 days in a row. They take extra zinc, echinacea and c every couple of hours. How much d are your kids taking now? For a maintenance dose, on a daily basis, my kids are taking one of the 2000 IU drops per every 50 pounds of weight.

6 women in one house is going to be a royal pain in the arse. Anyway, I've found that the years from 10-11 can be slightly tough. The girls tend to cry for no reason. It was hard the first time, but this second time it's a bit easier. My 11 yo is not as dramatic as her elder sister. But, lately, the bickering between them all has just been terrible. And I'm frustrated. When I'm frustrated, I tend to be harder on the girls. They, in turn, dig their in their heels. It doesn't help that dh and I are rather strong willed. This morning, our 14 yo decided to dig in her heels. She doesn't get mad often, but when she does, she gets really angry. And, it's one of those angry from the inside out type of things. Not fun. Hormones, I'm sure, are part of it as well. Lots of this stuff is me, and I need to act rather than react. I usually have a plan for how to manage myself when I dig in *my* heels, but it seems like it's time to help this dd do it for herself as well. Oh, and do we feed off of each other when both of us are mad! We'll get through this, but I know it will take time, patience, and an open line of communication. It's not always easy to do when anger is at the forefront. And really, it was just me bickering. :tongue_smilie: My sister lived with me her senior year in high school. I remember some of this drama, but it was at a whole 'nother level. This too shall pass.

That is all.

I just take some apple cider vinegar and put it into a small cup or bowl. They come, they feast, they drown.

Yes, but I think I need Leopard in order to get bootcamp. Is that right? I'm so out of the loop with computers these days...

I have a Macbook and I love it. However, I would really like to run HST+ on it since there don't appear to be any great tracker programs that run only on Macs. <sigh> I've tried a bunch of stuff and I really think that HST+ is going to be the one that works for me. Anyway, I'm running Tiger. LOL And I know that I need to upgrade to Leopard in order to install Windows on my computer. Is this the best way to run HST on a Mac? I've read in other places that running HST with Parallels and/or VM Fusion ends up with it running very slowly. That's the last thing I need. ;) If you are using HST+ and a Mac how is it working for you? What system are you running and what additional software are you using? TIA,

There is a chem for 12-15 yo's at Noeo Science. It's level 3. Maybe it will give you some ideas. http://www.noeoscience.com/chemIII.html

Faithe, Have you emailed Stan? He's always been prompt with his responses to my dd. And, he welcomes calls and/or email.