I just recently bought a Bissell pet hair eraser vac from target. It was something like $129. I bought it to replace a dyson. I had my Dyson for 2 years and in the beginning I really liked it, but after a while the inside of the "cyclone" area would fill up with compressed dust. I followed all the directions for care and despite them saying it never looses suction it would and did. I have had the new Bissell for about 4 months now and really like it. I have 2 dogs and 3 kids and I'm amazed at what the Bissell pulled out of the carpet after vaccumming with the Dyson just prior. I would have loved to get a vacuum with bags but you'd be amazed at how hard they are to find now a days. Sure you can buy the bags at target, but the 3 targets in my area didn't sell a single vacuum that used bags. HTH, good luck on your search

you're so lucky. I'm in VA so I'm hoping to get my shipping notice soon. Once it ships it shouldn't take long to get here.

That mom was SOOO out of line! I don't care if you disagree with him or not but you don't yell at an elderly man to shut up. There are many other ways to deal with the situation. It doesn't sound to me like he was trying to discipline her children but obviously someone should have and it wasn't her so someone needed to step in. Maybe that's how she was seeing it, but that still doesn't excuse the behavior. Also I think as a store employee he had the right to tell them to stop throwing the merchandise around no matter if it was a flag or not. Just my 2 cents

Rebecca, You don't have to vote to see it. There should be something to click near the bottom of the poll that says "view poll results"

I always make freezer jam with strawberries. I hate the taste of cooked fruit jams. I usually follow the recipe for mixing and then just put it in whatever jars I want. Sometimes glass, sometimes plastic. I never measure how much is in each jar I just leave about and inch at the top for expansion. I've never had a problem with it setting up. HTH

I was a little less than a month from my 23rd birthday. We just recently celebrated 11 years together although for fun we discussed how much he's been on deployment with the navy and we figured he's actually only been around about 5 of those years. We are still very happy and very much in love. I definitely love my life and the only thing I wish I could change is not starting to homeschool from the very beginning with my oldest, he was in PS for K and half of first.

For my 4th grader Daily: Math Grammar Spelling 4 Xs a week Science 3 Xs a week History Writing For my 1st grader Daily: Math Spelling Phonics 4 Xs a week Science 3 Xs a week History Writing Grammar Reading is done as family reading time which is usually 20-30 minutes 7 days a week.

That's the one craft I just DO NOT enjoy. I'll cross stitch, knit, sew, crochet but please oh please don't ask me to scrapbook. I love that all our stuff is digital.

Yep, if you go to the Saxon homeschool site there is a placement test to print out and give your child

You are so right. I'm lucky to have kids that will speak up instead of just waiting for me. It helps take some of the stress off of me in a way to always pick what they'll like. I'm glad they spoke up. The more I replay things in my mind the happier I am with the decision. I'm sure my dh will be too, he always says that they should speak up if something bothers them or they feel another way would be better. Last year I finally woke up and listened to them about how they hated Horizons math and wanted to go back to Saxon and we had a wonderful close to the year where Math was fun instead of tears.

I have been sitting here patiently waiting for Aug to come so we can start our new year. I've had all my curriculum since Feb. I was stoked that I was all set to go, then I come downstairs from taking a shower to find my kids have pulled out R.E.A.L. Science from the shelves. I was somewhat happy about this choice but had wished that something more like NOEO (which we tried 2 years ago) would be more to their liking. I asked my kids what they are doing and they say "We're checking out the new stuff for next year, it all looks great except this one" I asked what was wrong with REAL Science life level 1 and was told "It looks boring,where's all the 'real books' all this has is one little page about stuff then a bunch of worksheets" I said "I thought that's what you guys wanted was worksheets" and got "That's for math and English, not history and science, we want real books for science" I asked how we'd record what they did if all we did was read books (just curious for their answer) and got "can't we just do those sheets where we draw a picture and then tell you what we learned about so you can write it down for us to copy" They meant narration. Here I thought they hated narration! So we went and looked at the NOEO site and they decided Biology 1 looked interesting and covered the topics they'd like to learn about. Luckily I have the funds available. I'm just going to have them sit down and explain it to DH when he comes home so that he knows it's not just me second guessing myself. I know I'm the parent, but I love that they're giving me input. I think when we tried NOEO in the past the failure was due to me not understanding how to do narration with a 4.5 and 7 year old, it was our first year of hsing and I was still trying to figure out how it all worked. I'm glad they chose this though as it's something I feel would benefit us all, they always seem to retain tons of information from our read alouds and history readers so hopefully this will work for science. Kel

Jackie, you are a lifesaver. I've been pining for this series for months now and wondered why the only ones available cost $500. Thanks so much for posting this. I have it in my cart ready for pre-order now.

Absolutely cool. We actually live in Chesapeake and order chicken and eggs from their farm. We've not been able to actually go out to the farm but plan to for a kind of field trip sometime later this year.

We got our Wii at Target when not expecting it at all. We were there for other things and they just had 6 of them laying out at the counter. So as another poster suggested if you see one grab it because we haven't seen one since. As for favorite games. We love the Wii sports it comes with and really enjoy our Wii fit. We have Wii play which is ok, but we don't play it as much. DH and I also really enjoy Smartypants which is a trivia game. We just got Lego Indiana Jones and that's been a hit with ds and dh.

I have an Everett, that we call Ev and he loves his name. Most think that it must be a family name but it's not, I got it from a very short lived TV show called Relativity. Our youngest is Lucas which is getting to be more common than it used to be, although we call him Luka for short.

I have relatives that do this all the time. My dh aunt once sent a check to our 2 week old son. Our bank just has me sign their name followed with "by mother" and then sign my name.

I hate cleaning the bathroom. I struck a deal with DH, I do he taxes (which are easy) and he cleans the bathrooms when he's not out to sea. Unfortunately though I've still got to do them when he's gone. I don't dust much which I used to hate but my dd has become a dusting freak and loves to just go get the swiffer duster and have at the house. I'm not going to complain she can have it LOL

We so want to build a bat house. I used to live in an area where they had an old water pumping building that the church bought and used for storage. It had bats and we loved watching them fly around eating all the mosquitoes

What is RS4K Earth/Astronomy. I thought RS4K was Real Science for Kids and I thought they only had Chemistry, Biology and Physics am I missing out on something?

Since they come 3 hole punched already I also just take them and have the binding cut off and then keep them in a binder and take them out as needed.

:iagree:LOL I hate those commercials with "Bob" Although sometimes on those medication commercials it's funny to hear the announcer say so calmly that one of the side effects is death. WHAT?? Don't they think that warrants more than someone rambling on a mile a minute in the most calm and soothing voice, saying things like "Side effects include but are not limited to, dry mouth, runny nose, headache, and death"

Congrats on your 11 years of wedded bliss. We just celebrated our 11th anniversary on the 13th. I know how things can crop up and seem to all go wrong at one time. I was just happy my hubby was actually not on deployment. We may have just celebrated 11 years of marriage but when we sat down to figure it out he's only been home about 5 of those years. Hope things get better for tomorrow.

I would just go for option #2. I look at it as what's the point of putting a bandaid on the one you have if it's only going to cause trouble anyway. I mean in another couple years you could be right back in the same situation, why suffer through that and all the problems that will most likely come from having a system that's less than what's really needed and fixing the one you have could over those couple years keep nickel and diming you to death. In the long run option 2 could end up costing less money than having to keep fixing the other one. Just my .02

Just wanted you to know I was responding to another poster. I don't think you did anything wrong. To each person a planner is a different thing. I took it to mean she was looking for a paper planner where she'd write things in. Someone else thought that my post about a place to generate forms to make your own customizable planner wasn't what was being looked for. Maybe I should have been more clear that mine was a "form generator" and not a planner.

I didn't see anywhere in the original post that they were looking for an online planner or interactive tool.