That's an incredible find! I've been trying to work that into my budget for next year and haven't quite worked it out yet. What a find!

I was 40 when my youngest was born. I wish there were more on the way, but he's 7 now and it doesn't look like it's going to happen.

We keep it set from 62 to 65 in the winter (as we can stand it), and we start at 75 for the hot, humid summer. At the beginning of our nasty weather, 75 degrees feels unreasonably hot, but a month or so into a/c season that same 75 starts feeling chilly and we bump it up a degree at a time (over a few days) until we meet resistance.

Another vote for Dansko Professional. I've worn them daily during the fall and winter for the last three years, and my feet and knees have never felt better.

:iagree: You are absolutely not being paranoid! Please call the police and keep yourself safe.

I've been reading Katie Granju's work for what seems like forever -- probably 10 years or better now. I was so shocked when Henry was admitted to the hospital and have been compulsively checking her blog for updates for since then. I just don't understand how this could happen to such a well-loved child. The video posted this morning was so beautiful and so incredibly painful. I just can't take it all in.

Heck, yeah. At 7 days late, you could get away with using a dollar store test! Here's hoping! :D

Henry died yesterday. I can't stop thinking about him and his family. What a terrible situation.

We pay $15 for a half hour lesson if the teacher comes to our home, $10 if we go to hers. During the school year, she comes by our house on the way to teach at a local private school. Her (destructive) children are home during the summer, and I'd rather not have all four of them at my house. They can do a lot of damage in half an hour!

I have two Sansa Clips, and they're wonderful! The sound is great. The voice recorder function is really very good. I can't believe the quality of the sound! I use it all the time for rehearsal purposes. It's a breeze to either email someone a file or burn it to a disc. I bought my Sansas for about $15 from woot.com (no affiliation), and they just had them again a couple of weeks ago for $12.99. I'm pretty sure there will be a woot-off again in the very near future, so you could keep an eye on that if you want to get one for dirt cheap.

He contradicts himself. His letter says But his WordPress site says Which is it, I wonder?

My absolute favorite choice would be the Silly Sisters albums, although you'll have to do some content editing. Silly Sisters are Maddy Prior and June Tabor, both of whom have incredible solo recordings. Maddy Prior was also in Steeleye Span. The Watersons are outstanding. Less clear, but also very good, is Martin Carthy. I just noticed that you said Irish music is OK. Dolores Keane is my favorite Irish folk singer. She sings less traditional stuff these days, but her earlier stuff with John Faulkner is the honestly the best I've heard.

Same here, and I require my kids to treat books carefully as well. We wash our hands if we've been handling pets or playing outside. We use bookmarks, and we write in few books (school books excepted, of course). I had to stop lending books to a local friend who would return my books looking like they'd been through a tornado. He'd bend the left hand pages back into a roll, pick the plastic laminate off the covers, write in the books (MY books!), get them wet, bend corners down, let his kids walk on them with wet shoes in the car -- if there was a destructive way to handle a book, he did it. It honestly didn't occur to him that this might bother me, and I guess he didn't notice that none of the books on my shelves looked that way. I saw books he returned to our homeschool group's library, and if I were the librarian, I would have charged him for replacement.

My experience (and this is just my experience) is that FB is all about the painfully uninteresting details of people's lives (mine included), gossip, flame wars, and games I hope I would have outgrown in middle school. Over the past year, I've watched two local homeschool groups get ripped to shreds over FB gossip. It started with one person who couldn't let things go when someone disagreed with her, but she kept bringing it up over and over until she'd worked herself into a rage, at which point she decided the other mom was completely unreasonable and began a full-out effort to let everyone know how she felt. Nasty stuff got posted on FB, which started a whispering campaign, which resulted in sides being taken -- and ultimately two well-established groups were thrown into disarray. A few families even put their kids back into school. It's a complete mess. At this point, I pretend like my FB account doesn't exist. I read way more than I talk here, but I'm so grateful for the intelligent conversation.

Did you use flour and water paste? That always gets mildewy for me. I've used wallpaper paste very successfully. It seems to dry faster, so no mold issues.

No official motto, but I do hear "So help me God" a lot. I suppose I should have more than that. :tongue_smilie:

I realized I'd crossed the line when I found a skeletonized frog behind some garden pots when I was doing my spring clean up last month. The skin on the bottom of the body is gone and you can see all the bones held together by dried skin -- even the tiny bones in the toes. I called the kids to see and we brought it in the house. As we were looking for a container, I remembered that we'd found a dried-out, partially skeletonized grass snake two years before, so I hauled that out of the silverware drawer to compare and contrast. Yes, it had been in the back of the drawer for about two years under old sippy cup lids.

I seem to have mixed luck. I've gotten several workbooks described as "Like New" that had indelible writing throughout. I've had $0.01 books packaged beautifully, and very expensive hardback books stuffed into a plain manila mailer with no padding. In one case, the envelope ripped in half and the post office managed to tape it together and still deliver the book (in shredded condition). On the other hand, I seem to have fabulous luck with buying ex-library books from various Az sellers. I've gotten some beautiful picture books for my youngest that had clearly never been checked out -- no finger prints on glossy picture pages, no smudges.

May 6! I can't believe it. We've never finished this early before, and we even did some substantial travel during the fall. We will actually finish most of our work early next week, then we're on to standardized testing. We have a picnic with our homeschool group on Friday, and that's going to be our end-of-year celebration. It can't come soon enough!

One of my friends recommended Typing Instructor, but I see that there are two versions. Do you use the version for kids or the regular one?

We have one TV in the family room. We found early in our marriage that a TV in the bedroom just leads to late nights and grumpy mornings. Facing math first thing in the morning is hard enough without a TV hangover!

My son's 6 years and 6 months and he is just now saying R and L consistently. He still substitutes F for TH (and writes it that way, too, fank you very much!), but now I occasionally hear him say an actual TH. This time last year, I was worried, but didn't take him for testing because he was very understandable and articulate despite the substitutions. When I tried to teach him the correct sounds, it only ended in frustration for both of us, so I decided to watch and wait, and it worked in our case!

I'm all about the meat. I currently have half a steer, half a pig, and assorted chickens, turkeys, and ducks in my freezer. We eat mostly grain-free low carb with plenty of meat and lots of vegetables. Life is good.

I pay $15 per half hour lesson, and the teacher comes to my home. She charges $10 for lessons at her home, but her rambunctious children are there, and it just doesn't work. I'm happy to kick in the extra $5 for the teacher to make a house call. She organizes two recitals a year, and my daughter also gets to play in church from time to time.

Nice job!