Our 13 year old Collie died on Thanksgivng day. She had cataracts, was deaf, and 3 days before Thanksgiving she started to have seizures. I knew she was going to die so I called my vet. He suggested that we bring her in to be put down. But I just couldn't do it. So our vet told us to just try to make her as comfortable as possible. During the day, we made a soft bed for her out of an old quilt and kept her in our family room. I told the kids that she was old and was suffering and she would be gone soon. We all would take turns sitting with her petting her and telling her how much we loved her. On Thanksgiving morning we were all sitting around her talking to her and petting her. She wagged her tail looked up at us with a little smile than laid her head down and took a last breath and died. It was very sad and we all cried. Your dog's dying will not only be hard on your children it will also be hard on you and your husband too. I spent 3 days crying and and had that horrible hurt feeling deep down inside. It took me several weeks to get over her passing. Blessings Zoraida

Week 1: The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch Week 2: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga Week 3: The Book and the Brotherhood by Iris Murdoch Week 4: The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie Week 5: The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie Week 6: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Week 7: Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie Week 8: Paper Towns by John Green Blessings Zoriada

Last summer at my son's little league game everybody on his team shared the same helmet and everybody on the team got lice. I found the most effective and cheapest way to get rid of lice is to get a jar of mayonaise and generously coat your child's head in mayo. Than have your child wear a shower cap or if you don't have a shower cap wrap your child's head in saran wrap. Let the mayonaise sit for 30 minutes to smother the lice. Then take a fine thin comb and comb the mayo out of your child's hair. Than wash with shampoo. I got the above tip from my hair dresser. It works and is a lot better than using chemicals also mayonaise is good your hair. Blessings Zoraida

My niece is a 911 dispatcher. 911 is for life or death situations only. She's on a rotation schedule. Every 4 months she rotates from morning, to afternoon, to graveyard shift. She says she hates working graveyard shift because she receives more 911 calls from little old ladies complaining that the neighbors dogs are barking and keeping them awake. Or people will call to complain that their neighbors are playing there music to loud. If you have complaints like these call your local police number instead of the police. Blessings Zoraida

Oops wrong thread. Blessings Zoraida

My niece is a 911 dispatcher. 911 is for life or death situations only. She's on a rotation schedule. Every 4 months she rotates from morning, to afternoon, to graveyard shift. She says she hates working graveyard shift because she receives more 911 calls from little old ladies complaining that the neighbors dogs are barking and keeping them awake. Or people will call to complain that their neighbors are playing there music to loud. If you have complaints like these call your local police number instead of the police. Blessings Zoraida

I don't use Kolbe but I do use Seton. I think Kolbe does the same thing that Seton does. Kolbe uses a secular science text and Seton uses a Protestant text since there are no high school science Catholic texts at the moment. Every so often in the Seton science lesson plans, they will insert an essay on the church teachings about a particular topic. I believe Kolbe does the same thing. So when you come across one of the Catholic teachings you can easily skip over it. Or you could just read over the Catholic teachings and compare it to your own Christian beliefs and than have a lively debate with your child to see if he agrees or disagrees with the Catholic teachings. Blessings Zoraida

Seton Courses Religion 9 English 9 Grammar and Composition 9 Algebra 1 Physical Science Mother of Divine Grace World Geography Memoria Press Traditional Logic II Classical Rhetoric Henle Latin II I am debating on whether to use El Espanol-The Easy Spanish for Spanish. One minute I think this program looks good - the next minute I am not so sure. Electives Artistic Pursuits Senior Level Continue Private Piano Lessons Continue with Homeschool Band and Drama Possibly sign up for Homeschool Debate Blessings Zoraida

Talking about copyrights reminded me about an old youtube video about homeschool copyrights awareness. I did a search on youtube and the video is still posted. Have you all seen this: Blessings Zoraida

My husband was an English major at St. Joseph University in Philidelphia. His English adviser was an old Jesuit Preist. When this Priest asked my husband what he wanted to do with his English degree my husband said he would like to become a writer. The old Priest started to laugh and said in order to learn how to write you need to read your way through these guys - and the Priest started grabbing books from his shelves and tossing them to my husband. My husband said he walked out of his advisor's office with about 20 books. Most of the books were written by Marcel Proust and a couple of other French guys he had never heard of. My husband never did read the books his adviser gave him. He never did become a writer. But he did become an English Professor and has been teaching at Dallas University for the past 23 years. So I guess something did come out of my husbands English degree. Blessings Zoraida

Just the first hour. That's when they usually do most of the entertainment and movie collages. Than I'm switching over to PBS to watch part two of Oliver Twist. I didn't really enjoy part one. I'm hoping part two is a little bit better. I think the reason why I didn't like it is because the background music is a little bit annoying. It sounds extremely modern and doesn't fit in with the time period. Blessings Zoraida

My Family and Other Animals was on Masterpiece Theater a year or two ago. It was about a boy who collected a wide variety of animals. He has an eccentric family and eccentric guests come to stay at the family's villa. It was very humorous and enjoyable. Blessings Zoraida

Back during the summer on one of the Lost fansites, someone posted a link to an article written by a College English professor. In the article the lady claims that Lost is filled with symbolism, motifs, and themes from children's literature. She talked about when the castaways first meets Ben he tells them that his name is Henry Gale (the name of Dorothy's uncle in The Wizard of Oz). The balloon which he lands in is a symbol of the wizard's baloon. She goes on with other points about the hatch being a symbol of Alice's rabbit hole, and the heart monitor that Locke was trying to keep from blowing up last season is a symbol of the tin woodman's heart. It was a very interesting article and she had some very interesting ideas. I have been searching for her article for the past hour and can not find it. Does anyone know what I am talking about. If so can you give me a link to the article. I was thinking about this article as I watched Lost last night because I think I may have picked out some other things from children's lit. When they were in the secret room and the old lady said the room was called "the lamp post", I imeadiatly thought about the lamp post in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. At the ending when Jack puts his dad's shoes on John Locke's feet, I instantly thought about the ruby slippers that got Dorothy back home to Kansas. Jack's dad's shoes are going to help John Locke get back home to the island. Has anyone else noticed any children lits themes, motifs, symbolism in the series? Blessings Zoraida

Week 1: The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch Week 2: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga Week 3: The Book and the Brotherhood by Iris Murdoch Week 4: The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie Week 5: The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie Week 6: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Week 7: Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie Blessings Zoraida

I'm not a computer person and this advice might be worthless, but try going to your settings/control panel and click on users settings and delete any users you no longer want on your computer. I don't think you can get rid of punching in a password. You need this in case you have more than one user using the computer with their own personal desktops. We have one computer shared by 6 people. Everyone has their own log in names, passwords, and their own desktops. Blessings Zoraida

I would use the 3 - 5 level. The 6 - 9 level is basicaly the same as the 3 - 5 level except it just has a couple of extra vocabulary words added into the lesson. In fact some of the workbook pages in the 6 - 9 level are replicas of the workbook pages in the 3 - 5 level. Blessings Zoraida

We used The Fallacy Detective and The Thinking Toolbox and than went on to do Traditional Logic. Traditional Logic totally different than the above books. You can see sample pages and table of contents at Memoriapress.com. Martin Cothran says not to begin Classical Rhetoric until both Traditional Logic Books 1 and 2 are completed. Blessings Zoraida

I would highly recommend Flip Flop Spanish for younger children. You can purchase this from Amazon. My kids really enjoyed these books. The only thing I don't like is on the front cover it says it is for ages 3 - 5. Don't be fooled by this. These workbooks work well for kids ages 6-10 as well. There is a lot of vocabulary memorizing, different types of activities for conversational Spanish, and lots of translation exercises. The lady that wrote this series has started a new set of books for ages 6 - 9. I ordered Level 1 of the new series for my 9 year old daughter I think a 12 year old could use this text without feeling that it is babyish. For 13 year olds and up I would like to second Spanish Now. I had two of my older kids work through this text slowly. It has tons of vocabulary. The way I used this text was to type out the vocabulary list for each lesson. I would have them spend the first week memorizing and reciting the vocabulary. Than the next week we would do one page per day in the workbook. Our Spanish class took as little as 10 to 15 minutes per day doing this alternating pattern. Blessings Zoraida

I organize all of my fiction alphabetically by author. I use to have a problem with non fiction. I never knew how to organize them. Now whenever I get a non fiction - I go over to http://www.librarything.com and enter the non fiction into my account and select the dewey decimal option instead of library of congress option and it will tell me where to put my book on my bookcase and between what book I already own. It has made life a lot more simpler and stress free. Blessings Zoraida

Are you planning on doing full enrollment or just taking a single course. If you are doing full enrollment, Seton will send you a placement test to see if your child is ready for 10th grade English. I have a friend who enrolled her son in Seton for the first time. After taking the placement test, a counselor called my friend and recommended that her son enroll in 8th grade English and Literary Analysis 1. They said the 8th grade English would be counted for 9th grade English credit. The Literary Analysis 1 is a new course they started for 9th graders that have never done Seton before. They also have a Literary Analysis 2 for 10th graders. These would replace the regular 9th and 10th grade courses. If you are just wanting to do a single course enrollment you might call Seton and talk to someone in the English Department. Ask for either Mr. Solis or Christine Collins and explain your situation and they can tell you what would be good for your child. Blessings Zoraida

I have used all 3 levels of Artistic Pursuit. I am amazed at my children's art skills. I also like how book 1 of each level focuses on drawing technique and then book 2 goes into painting and water colors. One more thing that I like is the incorporation of art history in each lesson. I think it is a nicely put together program and the lessons are easy to supplement. If you do use this program, use their bundled art supplies that they offer on their site. Its much easier to get the supplies all at one place and at one time instead of having to run all over town tracking down art supplies. Blessings Zoraida

We have had all of our children use Seton English. My husband teaches English at our local university. He said that Seton High School English is probably harder and more demanding than any of the English courses offered in the university English department. My son is in his second semester as a Freshman at Our Lady of the Lake University. The First Semester he had to take Freshmen English which was just an intro to composition class. They had to write different types of papers and than do a research paper at the end of the semester. He found the class to be a breeze and made an A. This semester he is in an introduction to literature class. The class is mostly reading, taking class notes, having an occasional pop quiz, taking essay type of tests and he has one literary analysis paper due at the end of the semester - that's it. In Seton Grade 9 English they were required to do 4 literary analysis - one per quarter, different types of papers -arguementive, persausive ,ect, plus a research paper. Seton Grade10 - 12 they are reqiured to do 8 literary analysis, and a research paper as well as other papers like character sketches. Blessings Zoraida

I read the first book in Charlaine Harris series just before Christmas and decided to put her book as number 1 on my worst book of the year list. It was just a yucky read. Blessings Zoraida

I got a case of vertigo last spring. I woke up in the middle of the night and went to turn over and oh my goodness I thought the world was coming to an end. The whole entire room just flip floped and spun around. I went to the doctors the next day and the doctor concluded that I had an inner ear infection and gave me a handout with exercises to do to help clear it up in a few weeks. It took almost two months to go away. The worst part was trying to sleep at night. Everytime I closed my eyes the spinning sensation felt worse. I would never ever ever wish vertigo on my worst enemies. It is a horrible experiance. Blessings Zoraida

I read the first two books. While reading the first book, I thought yuck why am I reading this twaddle. Sometimes I liked the book some times I didn't. I think the reason why I had mixed feelings was because the writing seemed inconsistent. After reading the first book, I thought I wouldn't read the second. My daughter insisted that I read the second book too. So out of boredom I did. It turns out that I liked the second book better than the first. It felt like the writing style had improved and had matured. Blessings Zoraida