We had the same skipping issues with the liquid pencils, but the new frixion erasable pens I found are AWESOME. So are the Frixion erasable highlighters, now you don't want to use them both together because if you need to erase the highlighter you'll also erase the pen.

If I were you I might look at the YNAB classes, and at least download their free ebook about how the system works. You can do YNAB on paper if you don't want to buy the software. The creator started the program with a spreadsheet he made in excel I think it was. I actually just budgeted in the cost of the software over my dh's checks he would get between when I started the trial and when it expired. I timed it just right and because you get 34 days for the trial I was able to budget it out to $20 out of each of his 3 paychecks between starting the trial and it running out. You could always try out the trial and then when it gets close to expiring you can just copy it onto paper. I love that there is no cc required for the trial.

We're not doing a major living below our actual income thing, but after having $2000 in car bills and almost $3000 in vet bills come up in the last few months dh and I decided we needed to start more of an emergency fund situation, but not just one lump fund. A friend on here recommended YNAB ( www.youneedabudget.com ) and I downloaded the free trial and started it in mid Dec. It's been awesome so far. I love that it's geared to eventually get you to living on last months income. We have a long way to go in paying down debt and things, but I like that I can start budgeting for those car bills and vet bills by setting a certain amount away. It's kind of like envelopes, but it all works out on my software instead of having actual envelopes of cash all around. I didn't see someone mentioned this already. I also used to use Quicken and I still use it just to keep track of my separate accounts for the kids and my school checking, but I may switch over soon. My biggest issue is that my bank doesn't download each account separately, it's all one big quicken file when I download for YNAB, so I have to figure out if I want that or to just reconcile things on my own instead of the download.

It will only show up in the classifieds section. I think at some point they plan to get rid of the for sale forum, but have left it up because of the items that had been posted there before the switch to the new format.

If you're in the education store under your school or homeschool (yes they have a listing for homeschool) the prices you see are after the discount.

They switched to a classifieds system instead. If you look at the top you'll see a tab (next to forums/members/contact us/...) click that and you can post your ad there.

Perhaps, but I think this comes from learning cursive and then your manuscript takes on a sort of hybrid version. I don't think many of us print or write in cursive exactly the way we were taught. The essence of starting at the top, sliding down to the left, returning to the top and sliding to the right is still there though.

In light of of the handwriting rant thread, I'm curious how we all form our capital As when using manuscript (print). Poll to follow.

I have come to the realization that I just want to teach them cursive my way. No book will teach them the way I write, since I actually use a sort of cursive/print hybrid. As to you #1, Who doesn't make a capital A the way you described. I have never known anyone that made the "Mountain" part by drawing up then down. I think a poll is in order. :)

They just released it today.

I wouldn't be offended but I would be kind of irritated. This actually happened to us in a way. We were having a baby and about 5 month later my dh's cousin wife was due with their 4th. Dh and his cousin got to talking about names and dh told them that if it was a boy we planned to name him Ethan Stanley. Well I had a girl and what do you know 5 months later they had a boy who they named Ethan Stanley. I was quite ticked, when dh asked how they came up with the name his cousin said "well we figured now that you have a boy and a girl you wouldn't need it anymore" Like they just assumed we'd never have more kids, which seemed odd since they had 4 and weren't planning on being done.

We do, which is why we bought the giftcards from them. It's not real fun to spend your present on something like a school program. LOL

I agree it could very well be a case of the parents giving them cash for the gift card. Now sending it back to you is a bit tacky but oh well. I actually have about $125 worth of itunes cards I have to buy off my kids because they don't really have anything they want for their computer or ipads. They were given by my inlaws for dd's bday and solstice and to my youngest son for solstice. Dh and I mentioned that it might be a nice gift option, but my MIL tends to go way overboard when buying them. We thought maybe a $10 each, instead dd got a $25 one for her birthday at Thanksgiving and then each of the 3 kids got $50 ones for Solstice.

Thanks all, I ended up buying some beans from beanilla.com because that way I could buy just smaller amounts of different varieties. I bought some madagascar and tahiti beans. I figured I'd find my own bottles out there so I could make sure they have a good cap.

I had a few of those a while back and they are huge, but they also didn't have any sort of seal on them. It was just glass on glass so they weren't air tight. I'm not sure how her cereal doesn't go stale before they eat it all. I have big cambro containers I keep mine in, although they aren't very pretty so they stay in the pantry.

We are perpetual renters, but not by choice. Being military and moving more often then many (a lot of tours were only 8months to a year in the beginning) it wasn't worth trying to buy and sell a house that often. Although I like being able to up and go if we need to I hate having to run things by the landlord if we want to change something (like paint color) or having to wait to fix something and not always having it fixed in a way you would have. Right now our rental could really use new carpet but it's not something the landlord thinks is bad enough to fix, so we're stuck with it. Not that long ago I had to replace all the smoke alarms because they were 10 years old and were giving the warning beep, well my landlord is deployed to Afghanistan so he's not easy to get a hold of and it wasn't something I could wait on. This is the best rental in that our landlord being military has helped and he's also pretty easy going so he was fine with me changing paint colors as long as I promised to paint them back if he didn't like them when we left.

I think the title says it all. My MIL and FIL sent me some amazon gift cards for the holidays and I'd like to try making my own vanilla, but I'm not sure if the vanilla beans on amazon would be a good buy or not.

I'm not very creative today so for now I will honor my poor kitty who's undergoing surgery to remove the head of his femur because he has no hip socket anymore and the femur head was causing him lots of pain. ETA: I guess I'm a 4 Dotter

I don't, but when I was a teen and would babysit I would wash dishes, maybe vacuum, and make sure the kitchen was tidy before the parents would come home. I think this was more to keep me busy after the kids were in bed. My Aunts all loved that part of me babysitting. I know when my mom comes to visit I love having her here, but when she leaves it's a royal nightmare because I actually have to call and ask her where she put X, Y, and Z away in the kitchen. This is the only room she does it in though. I've had things I couldn't find for 6 months and then when she showed up for her next visit I'd see her with it. I'd say "Hey where'd you find that?" her response is always "Right where I put it away" well that place is obviously a place I would never dream of putting said item.

:iagree: My 7 year old will only use the watermelon. Usually around the holidays you can even find it in fun wrappers, this time it's kind of blue with a cute polar bear on it. Just checked and it's actually Colgate.

I think the color you're looking for is called cinnabar. It's a deeper darker red. http://www.amazon.com/Fiesta-10-1-4-Ounce-Mug-Cinnabar/dp/B0000CAQ9K/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1355961355&sr=8-5&keywords=fiestaware+cinnabar

What about IEW is he not ready for? I'm asking because that's the age I started my oldest on IEW, we had a lot of starts and stops, a lot of backing up and a lot of hand holding. I found that I could still use it if I was there to help him along. For instance in the beginning I would walk him through doing the KWO by going line by line through the source text and doing the outline together on the whiteboard, just like Andrew does on the DVD. When it came to the writing from the outline I would scribe it for him if he wasn't up for the writing or type it up for him on the computer. This actually was a way for me to teach him to use the word processing program on the computer. We would camp out on a unit or lesson for as long as it took. He's just about to start SICC B and he's able to write his own outlines, but we still go over them and then we edit his rough drafts together. I let him use the computer to type up all drafts so the "I don't want to write this, because writing stuff is SOOOO HAARRDD" doesn't come into play. If I need to I walk him through things step by step any time he needs it. ETA: I forgot to say I'm about to start my dd who is 11 on IEW, with SWI A, and I'll hand hold her as long as needed, which may be quite a while because she's my vision therapy, still working on reading fluently kind of kid. So I can see a lot of scribing, etc on my part, but that I'm sure she'll be able to do the work, just not necessarily all the reading and writing.

Usually it's around $300 each. For birthdays we do about $150-200 each. I still buy them some videos throughout the year and some video games. My kids also get about $50 each for Spring Equinox and Halloween. Yes we give gifts for Halloween and Spring Equinox because our kids don't really eat candy. Oh and St. Nick is usually about $50-75 depending on what I find.

I know it's already been cooked and consumed, but in the future just remember Bacon is never the wrong thing to eat.

My youngest is 7.5 and is about 2/3 of the way through AAR1. He's in 1st grade because I redid K with him to give him time for his fine motor skills to develop, he needed a LOT of work in that area. We'll probably start AAR 2 in Feb or so.