I'm in a rental now and have to have the side by side that's in here, but in our old house (which my brother rents) we had a Samsung bottom freezer model. I Loved it. I hate the bottom freezers with the big drawer, I'm not a fan of chest freezers either, so the samsung is perfect. It has a door that swings open and inside are 3 drawers that fill in all the space. I liked having the 3 seperate drawers much better than the big roll out bottom freezer, less digging around for me and the kids were able to get their popsicles and things very easily. Also as for the top fridge being hard for them to get things. Not at all, My kids were 6 and 3.5 at the time and I kept their cups on the bottom shelf which was the one where the "veg" drawers attached under. All the snacks they like such as sticks of cheese, yougurt, veggies, fruit etc were in those drawers making it very easy for them to get at. I also liked that it had seperate compressors for the fridge and freezer so the temp listed on the digital display were exactly what was inside.

I posted other because I started dropping my kids off for My Gym classes or parties when my ds was 8 and my dd was 5. I still drop them off for things at the Y without a problem. I never thought I'd be that way but once we started My Gym I knew I could trust their coaches with their lives. They loved those kids and wouldn't let anything bad happen to them. My dd actually took a header off the bars at one party and the coach called me immediately to let me know that she fell, but was ok and after a short break was back at it. When I arrived to pick them up he made sure to explain exactly what happened and then called the next day to see how she was doing.

Mine has to do with my dh's job. He's a Nuclear Propulsion Officer in the Navy and they are generally referred to as Nukes. Thus I'm a Nukes Wife. I've used it for many things since getting married and even had a licence plate on my old car with it, although my poor dh drove that car more than I did. :tongue_smilie:

We have had both over the years and decided Charcoal is the way to go. We had a few reasons for deciding on that. 1. The movers won't take propane tanks anymore and it's a real pain to have to worry about that with as much as we move. 2. The food tastes better 3. If you've ever run out of propane right in the middle of cooking it's truly a pain, with charcoal we always know if we have enough fuel to cook our meal because we know how much we need to put in before we start. Those are just our findings over the last 11 years. When we got married all those years ago my dh had never used a charcoal grill. His dad was always paranoid the guys would burn the house down so he never taught them. I taught him how and we did the mini weber for many years. Then we bought a gas grill and found we didn't grill as much because it didn't have that char-grilled flavor. We eventually went back to charcoal after the last gas grill went caput. We have a wonderful Aussie brand Monaro grill and we love it.

I don't think you're doing anything wrong. You're just being a loving, comforting mom to your son. I do all the same things you mentioned. My son is going to be 9 in a week and sometimes he just need to sit and have me cuddle with him. Maybe he's having a bad day, sometimes when my dh is gone he'll ask to sleep in my bed with me because he's feeling lonely since he hasn't been able to spend any one on one time with his dad. My dh is in the Navy and is gone for long periods of time so I know how he feels. My dd and younger son are the same way. Sometimes they just want to feel that you're there for them and need a hug or sometime to just cuddle and watch a movie or read a book. I think your dh may need some help dealing with issues he has from his own childhood.

We kind of go in cycles. I mostly buy books for school, but for fun reading we'll use the library for a spurt then we'll forget to return things or misplace them, have to pay fines and we'll go back to buying fun reading books for a while and then the cycle starts all over. I've also found that the library in our county isn't the best for children's books, most of them are falling apart, but I recently found out that the next county over will let us have a card and has more liberal check out and renewal policies so we're going to give it a shot, we'll see how it goes.

but to me it's just who I am. Nukeswife has been something I've used since getting married. My dh is a Nuclear Propulsion Officer in the navy and they affectionately or sometimes not so affectionately (depending on who you're talking to :001_smile:) are called Nukes. I even had a license plate for a long time that said Nukeswf on it. Funny thing is my dh drove my car more than I did since it got better milage and I needed the room of the SUV to cart the baby and all his stuff around :tongue_smilie: Boy did he get razzed for that.

I plan on using this one next year with my kids Don't know much about the 50 states They have one on the Presidents too which I plan to use. HTH

I've used Saxon k-2 and have always only used the front side of the worksheets, unless the kids really bombed a section then we'd review that part of the lesson and do the question that correspond with it on the back. I don't think there is a problem with it. From my understanding the worksheets were originally made for a PS setting, with the front side being done with the teacher in class and the back side being done at home for homework.

Well I didn't read all the posts before I voted. So I chose other. I am "from" WI that's where I was born and raised. I left there in 1997 when I got married. I married a Navy man so since getting married this is what we've done. Newport, RI (married there and lived there 1 week) June 1997 Bremerton, WA July 97-July 99 Muskego, WI July99-Oct 99 Virginia Beach, VA Oct 99-Apr 2000 Atlantic Beach, FL May 00-Apr 01 Muskego, WI Apr 01-Aug 01 Newport, RI Apr 01-Apr 04 Muskego, WI Apr 04-July 05 Virginia Beach, VA July 05-May 06 Jacksonville, FL May 06-Nov 07 Currently in Cheasapeake, VA

And I love them. I've tried about every eco-friendly dishwasher detergent out there and the Sun and Earth tabs are the only ones that work without the white scum and get the dishes clean. They are a tab that looks like a gel pac but it's filled with powder. I got them at Sun and Earth and they have other wonderful products too. I use all Sun and Earth for my cleaning and laundry. I also love that any order over $45 has free shipping even if it's big cases of laundry detergent. HTH

Thanks ladies. I've very excited about our new name. I liked Voyager Learning Center enough, but not enough to keep it forever. It was kind of something we came up with to answer the "so what school do you go to?" and "Is your school off today" questions when I'm out with the kids. My oldest is going to be 9 so it's obvious he's school age but my dd who is only 6.5 is only an inch shorter than the 9 year old. When she was 3 people would ask why she wasn't in school because she just looks older than she is. Also I wanted to give the kids an answer that was better than when we were at Walmart and an older lady said to my son who was trying to add a few prices for me (you know math at the grocery store) "Why aren't you in school?" She said it in a very snotty tone and my son, who's like me and will just spout things at times, replied with ".I am and your disturbing class." I think now they can just say "We go to Fawkes Academy" it will help. I've noticed where we are there are a lot more homeschoolers so we're not the odd ones anymore.

Hi all, After some thought and some family pow-wows, Voyager learning center is no longer in existence. The kids requested a new name and hated being called a learning center. We've settled on Fawkes Academy. No not after Guy Fawkes, after Fawkes the Phoenix from the Harry Potter series. We think this is a name that we can stick with through high school. Our new motto is Soaring through home education. This may change but the rest we're set with. My new blog address is in my signature

I called my bro who works at the PO and he said as long as it's a basic sqaure card not really heavy because it's stuffed with other papers it would be $0.58 That's the usual .41 postage plus a .17 surcharge because those size envelopes can't be run through the sorting machines etc. They have to be hand sorted and processed. HTH

I just bought a Bissel Pet Hair Eraser vacuum about a month and a half ago. I love it. I have 2 dogs that shed heavily which are light brown in color. I also have a black area rug so you can easily see where the dogs lay. It was about $140 at Target. I had a Dyson which we paid almost $500 that was about 2 year old and the part inside the canister seemed to keep clogging even though they aren't supposed to. I called Dyson and they're reply was well it's probably just getting old. WHAT??? It was 2 years old and cost 3 times as much as my last vacuum which lasted 6 years. I love that you can completely take apart all the parts of the collection canister area on the Bissell, rinse them off in the sink, let them dry and your ready to go. It has both a sponge pre-motor filter you just rinse off and a HEPA filter you replace every year or so. After we bought it I did a test and vacuumed with the Dyson and then vacuumed again with the Bissel. I was shocked at home much the Dyson was leaving behind. I will definately never buy or recommend a Dyson again. Just my .02

Now keep in mind my kids are still elementary age. For me though things would go like this Math Science English history geography

There is a small reference to the Vikings in SOTW 2, chapter 23 about The Rus. It is not large though.

I heard that by 5/4 they mean For the average 4th grade student or slightly below average 5th grade student. I used Saxon 2 for my oldest last year and we tried Horizons 3 this year and it was a disaster. We then tried TT which was ok but he kept asking to just go back to what he was using, meaning Saxon. We recently sold some stuff we don't need anymore since our year is over and I bought him Saxon 5/4 (where he placed on the placement test) he wanted to start immediately. He did the 1st lesson today and said "mom it's so nice to have the math I like back" He enjoyed the lesson and can't wait to do more. My dd was doing Horizons K and was very frustrated with there approach. She asked back in Jan to use "what Everett used last year," meaning when he used Saxon2. I went and got Saxon1 for her and she's been happy since. I think for us Saxon is our best fit.

I too said Sunday as that's the first day on my calendar, but to us that really is the weekend. I know when talking to my mom it's Saturday but that has to do with her job at the Post Office and how they figure their time cards etc.

Tracy, Thanks so much for your suggestions. I'm going to run them by the kids and my dh to see what they think. Your's are so much better than mine :001_smile:

Hi all, Well we've been pondering a new school name. Ours is currently Voyager Learning Center. Which works well for my little ones, but my oldest is starting to grow up a bit and thinks learning center sounds babyish (yes he's only going to be 9 oh well). I don't like Academy as it sounds to stuffy for us. I think Voyager School sounds weird, so I'd like to come up with something different all together. Can someone tell my how any of these would translate into Latin. We've just started SSL so I'm no expert and I couldn't find any help online that would work for me. Here's my list Educational Journey Knowledge Quest Learning Adventures If you have any other suggestions feel free to throw them out there. I'm just about ready to put a bunch of descriptive words and nature words in a hat and pull 2 out and use them. Thanks in advance for your help.

Not really sure what you should do as in dh's family it's quite common for people to go by their middle name. Almost all of his Uncles go by their middle names. My youngest BIL's name is Todd but everyone calls him Stump or Stumpy. Apparantly he was a big fan of the show Ren and Stimpy so a friend tweaked it to Stumpy and it stuck with him. Even my kids call him Uncle Stump and he loves it. In my family my grandma was a stickler for calling people by their given names. She named my mom Diana Lynn, and always insisted her name was DIANA not DIANE. She to this day hate when people call my mom Diane. We've always called my brother Tommy, because he's a Jr. which is a real pain when people call and you ask Jr. or Sr. and they say "HUH" like they've never heard of that, so we did big or little for a while, which got confussing when my brother got to be bigger than my dad in his teens. I still call him Tommy, although all his friends call him Tom. My dad's mom used to call my brother MeMe because that's what my dad's youngest brother called him when they were really little as he couldn't say Tommy right. My dad goes by Papa now that I have kids but all his friends call him Smurf because he's only 5'3" and they are all almost 6 feet or over. The real oddball though is my dad's brother. His given name is Robert but he goes by Mel, why you may ask, well he had a rather large oval head when he was younger so my dad started calling him Melon head which was shortened to Mel, and every one calls him that. Even before they died my grandparents (his parents) called him Mel. All that to say it could be confusing but then again sometimes things just "stick" with them and those people are fine with it.

:lol: That is hilarious. What a man!

Well a leapster and a L-max are the same thing except that you can hook up the L-max to a tv if you want. My 2 oldest each have a leapster and they've been used a lot. We always take them on car trips (we're military and move a lot) as well as on plane trips etc. Even my son who's going to be 9 in 2.5 weeks still likes to play his. They've definately been worth the money.

I use expedia about 4 times a year at least to buy plane tickets for my mom to come visit us. We've never had a problem.