I tried to pm you but it didn't work. I have two copies and if you pm me with the isbn you need, I can check ours.

Did you find one yet?

Can you explain how the class works? Mostly lectures?

We run a small s-corp manufacturing business and I do the books. I am not a natural detail person and I do my best. Over the years we have also acquired several properties, some of which we rent out. The record keeping details have gotten more complex and I am looking for a way to streamline and organize. I feed data to our accountant, but it really takes me a long time to analyze what goes where and I have to break out credit card payments and other consolidated invoices that are relevant to different things. Itemizing for tax deductions is my primary motive at the moment. I use Quickbooks for invoicing in our biz. Does this sound like something you've figured out? Can I learn from you? Thanks.

Hugs to you because this must really be hard for the whole family and good for him that he has hung in this far. That sounds miserable for him. Is there not another position the store can put him in indoors? There might be sensory overload too with all the people and hustle/bustle. As was mentioned, two week notice, stick it out, ask for something in a quieter setting in the store like re-stocking? and focus on getting ready for school. Best wishes to you all!

I'm the OP, and your comments have been so helpful. Thank you for taking the time. Some of you had asked: Yes, ds does get paid for mowing and machine shop work. He prefers mowing because it works out more per hour. By mid-summer the mowing hours decrease. Dh likes ds working in shop because he really needs the help, and he absolutely wants ds to be handier than he is inclined to be on his own. That's how dh sees it as important for balance. Not all book smarts. I think ds has realized that he has more free time than he thought, so he will be able to practice and read as much as I think he hoped. He pays for his own guitar lessons, and we pay for piano and voice. It does add up. He has decided to put piano lessons on hold for a couple months but he is will still practice every day as usual. He plays banjo, electric bass and congas without lessons. I think the issue is settling down into something workable, and your responses helped me see that there is a valuable mix of opinions. Thank you for being a sounding board that is beyond what my face-to-face friends and family can provide.

Any experience with this? Ds 16 absolutely loves school, practicing multiple instruments and reading. My dh is a hands-on guy always doing, building and making. Opposite passions. Summer is when this clashes. Ds works in our machine shop and mows 5 yards during the summer but he can't stand the machine shop. Dh's rule for him in the summer is that he must work 20 hours a week combining the two however he wants. Dh sees the endless hours of study, practice, etc. as being out of balance and told ds he must give up one of three music lessons/practice for the summer to free up some hours to get to 20 hours of work. Ds earned some CLEP college credits during the school year and would like nothing more than to read all summer long and take some more CLEPs. He already wakes up at 5:30 am on his own to get some studying/music practice in before we get up. We go camping for about 3 weeks each summer so it's not all work and no play. Because I'm academically inclined, I would let him mow the yards and spend the rest of the time studying this summer. I appreciate the "life balance" principle but I disagree with dh about cutting out one music lesson/practice for the summer. Dh says if ds or I can figure out a better way to free up time to make 20 hours of work happen, go for it, but he sees three instrument and the daily hours of practice as excessive. My question isn't how to figure out where to cut hours, but I'd like to hear your experience if something similar ever came up in your family. I want to honor both dh's and ds's views, but I also don't want to shelter ds from the real world of work. Thanks

A homeschool co-op friend of our 16 yrs old ds didn't return to his classes after Christmas break due to what we were told involved a mental health inpatient stay, maybe for depression, but the family not sharing any info. It might involve more than the son, we really don't know. No one had heard from him since Dec. but the boy reached out to ds this week through emails and they have chatted back and about books they are reading. So glad he's reaching out. If he is still inpatient, he probably has plenty of time to read said he's been enjoying Dickens. Ds just finished Moby Dick so they like classics. Do any books pop into your head that would be good for ds to send to him? We might send a poetry anthology too. He's very bright, only child, always homeschooled, sweet parents, was loving his very challenging Physics and pre-calc classes at the co-op but teachers did notice him withdrawing, losing weight and even falling asleep in a two-student class through the fall semester. He is what some might call overly sensitive to the needs of those around him and is therefore is very kind in a very quiet way. A special kid and we are saddened by the circumstances. If you could hold him in prayer, that would be appreciated.

Homeschool co-op friend of 16 yrs old ds didn't return to co-op after Christmas break due to what we were told involved a mental health inpatient stay, maybe for depression, but the family not sharing any info. It might involve more than the son, we really don't know. No one had heard from him since Dec. but the boy reached out to ds this week through emails and they have chatted back and about books they are reading. So glad he's reaching out. If he is still inpatient, he probably has plenty of time to read said he's been enjoying Dickens. Ds just finished Moby Dick so they like classics. Do any books pop into your head that would be good for ds to send to him? We might send a poetry anthology too. He's very bright, only child, always homeschooled, sweet parents, was loving his very challenging Physics and pre-calc classes at the co-op but teachers did notice him withdrawing, losing weight and even falling asleep in a two-student class through the fall semester. He is what some might call overly sensitive to the needs of those around him and is therefore is very kind in a very quiet way. A special kid and we are saddened by the circumstances. If you could hold him in prayer, that would be appreciated.

Congrats! I love the circumstances - what a great surprise accomplishment.

Ds loved biology and Zumdahl chemistry which were year-long classes with labs taught by strong teachers through co-op. This year he is working through and loving Life of Fred trigonometry and statistics on his own, and because he prob won't major in STEM, we went with Hewitt/Conceptual Physics. From Sept until last week, he read through all the sections, worked the extra problems booklet and it's the only class he has actively disliked and grumbled about. He worked quickly to get it over with. To assess his comprehension, I found a final exam online last week and ds worked through it over a couple days, showed his calculations, and then corrected the few he got wrong to make sure he understood his mistakes. He just started using his daily physics time to start Python programming which he is thrilled about. . . Can we call it a day with physics? Do I award a full credit even though he worked very quickly through it? Im not sure how to grade him in this case - he made some mistakes but knew where to go to correct himself and cement the concept.

Sparkly, can you share you typical meals and favorites?

I would like to pull together some materials for our jr/high school co-op to help the kids as they think about career choices, personality types, skill sets, etc. Can I get some recommendations?

Things are getting funky at our hs co-op so we are thinking of options. Ds is signed up for Physics and Pre-Calc. He prefers live teachers or self-taught textbook learning, doesn't like online or computer classes. He gets A's in math and science and wanted to move faster than the pace of his co-op classes in Bio/Chem, Alg1/Alg2 but didn't complain at the time. He doesn't want a STEM career (Now, anyway, but who knows if that will change.) Is there something you'd suggest we take a look at? He started Geometry on his own this summer but will he be able to do Pre-Calc self-study without finishing that first?

If ds 11th grade does physics at home, is Hewitt really a good choice? He says he doesn't want a future in STEM even though he has scored high A's in math up through Alg 2 and in Bio and Chem. He will take Pre-calc this fall. He does not like online classes and the physics class at our co-op is at a time that doesn't work.

This looks interesting http://www.logospressonline.com/BritLit/

Does anyone remember Support For Homeschooling in Yahoo groups? Maybe ten years ago? That was the first homeschool forum I remember reading.

You really can't go wrong with therapeutic massage. Why not call the one you found and explain your concerns or reservations. You could probably schedule a half hour intro to test things out. Massage therapists use different methods depending on the issues and he/she should be able to give an idea of what would work best for you. It is a wonderful adjunct therapy with chiropractic.

The nurse practitioner I see for bioidentical hormones told me my saliva test shows high progesterone at over 20,000 pg/ml. Yikes - it should be around 200 and it's not a typo. Estriol should be around 10 but it's over 100. She has me tapering down on progesterone cream. She didn't seem alarmed but should I be? Any suggestions?

I understand what you are saying. I am often the one to stop what I'm busy doing if I think of a friend I haven't seen in a long time, and I will text or drop a note. There are some I never hear from in return. I quit after a few unreciprocated attempts and just scratch my head if they were people I might have had a time of deeper sharing with like women might do in confiding or sharing a life problem - like we developed a bond of some sort and maybe that meant more to me at the time. I am impatient with people like my mother, or other friends who say "I've been meaning to call so-and-so for ages but I'm so busy." Then three years might go by and it never happens. I try to live to minimize my regrets and I remember feeling so bad when I was younger and dropped some friendships with the excuse of being busy and I don't like that guilt. On the other hand, some friendships fizzle out simply because there are only 24 hours in the day.

I am starting to think about how I could develop a high school class for our co-op that would be a survey of Great Books that are Christian classics. I am not equipped to go deep into the texts since I'm certainly not a literary scholar but I would like to lead the kids in encountering the ideas of Augustine, Dante, Milton, CS Lewis and others using a framework of truth, wisdom and beauty. I would want it to be relevant, cool, and get them excited (is that possible?) without diluting the material. I think it's so relatable for teenagers to see how Augustine, for example, struggled with issues these kids are or will be encountering. The co-op runs 32 weeks a year, for an hour and a half two days a week. Or I could just teach one semester or one day a week. I wouldn't want to do church doctrine because there would be Protestant and Catholic kids (if anyone signs up for the course). I would want to talk about transcendent Christian ideas in these Great Books. Do any ideas pop into your mind to help me?

An exceptionally great teacher in our co-op who has been coordinating our high school STEM offerings will be moving out of state this summer. She has lined up teachers for next year in all areas except for geometry and chemistry. I'm trying to think outside the box and recently read a Cathy Duffy review of Discovering Geometry by Michael Serra and am wondering if anyone here has used it. It sounds like it's best implemented in a group setting and we may be able to recruit an engineer/math person to oversee and guide the kids through it. This person is a retired engineer/IT professional and will be offering a computer programming class that he has developed. He is hesitant to take on a second class his first year into co-op teaching but perhaps this type of curriculum would work in our situation. There could be as few as 2 or 3 students or as many as 8. Do any of you have experience with a hands-on program like this that doesn't require intensive preparation by the instructor? Any other ideas or input? Is it crazy to even consider streaming an online class in the co-op classroom if we had only 2 or 3 kids? They could work together there and we could enlist the help of our new teacher on an as-needed tutor basis. The kids in the co-op mostly love being together for these classes and would be in the building for the other courses anyway. We have a nice lab in our building, and if a chemistry teacher isn't located (ours is heading off to graduate school,) would an online streaming course work in that case with labs coordinated by one of us parents?

My mother got me started on the raspberry lemon flavor which she mixes with raspberry Emergen C. Dissolve a tsp of Natural Calm in a small amount of hot water, fill the rest of the glass with cold water and mix a packet of Emergen C, add ice and it's great. She mixes one packet of truvia in hers but that's too sweet for me. For those of you with restless leg, I find the homeopathic sublingual tablets by Hyland's called Restful Legs really help. My dh gets a severe leg cramp once in a while and dissolves a couple of their leg cramp tablets and they work right away somehow.

We all have lyme in our family and I remember that fatigue and I say let her rest and take the test later when she feels up to it. The brain fog and crushing exhaustion you describe make it really hard to function. She needs all her energy to heal. We were diagnosed over 2 years ago and while we were really sick, I want to give you and dd hope that she will feel better. It might feel like forever, especially at her age, but find a good LLMD to guide you through treatment options. There are some really good online support groups for lyme and pm me if you want some info on that. Big hugs to you and your dd at a very pivotal point in her education. Her long term health is the most important thing right now and she might feel big relief without the stress of the test.

A family member is in the middle of court hearings for child custody. The court-appointed counselor who assessed the parenting skills of the divorcing couple said he is recommending 50/50 custody because they are both capable parents. He also noted that their personalities are such that they probably never would have had a successful marriage because one has a narcissistic personality (score of 75) and the other has a paranoid personality. Which assessment tool measures those traits? What is a score of 75 on a narcissism scale? As an aside, if a psychologist can explain after the break up why their personalities are a toxic mix, why can't that same assessment be used as a tool before the marriage?