I have a Toyota Sienna and three teenage cellists. If we fold down the two-seater part of the back row, then we can fit two cellos (barely -- it depends on the cases) and four passengers (one in the far back next to the instruments, two in the second row, and one in the front passenger) plus the driver. The space where we put the two cellos head-to-foot would fit one bass.

We saw the last eclipse from outside our house. But we are driving to Paducah (also 2 hrs away) as well for this one. Not sure where, exactly, in Paducah we should go, though. Also trying to figure out what time to leave in the morning -- I assume that the traffic will be ghastly, especially coming back.

I got a Roborock Q5 with mop on Black Friday and I love it. It does not seem to scratch the floors and it does a great job picking up dog hair. The mop feature does not do as good a job as would a human with an actual mop, but that it is outweighed by the significantly increased frequency of mopping. DH was opposed to the robot vacuum. IIRC, he said, "You can buy this if you want but just for the record I think that it is a waste of money and will not clean the floors well." I am pleased to report that I was right and he was totally and utterly wrong, which probably amplifies my appreciation of the thing. 🙂

Congratulations!! What a great set of choices he has. Would he do music at Oberlin? I hope everyone has noticed just how long the 2024 list has gotten!

Hurrah!!

This is really great! Such good options.

Me too. Often when I need a little inspiration I think about Nancy Pelosi, who stayed home with her five kids for many years and only ran for office after the youngest left for college. And my mom likes to remind me that Sandra Day O'Connor stayed home with her kids, too, although in fairness that was just a few years.

We did this last summer. In fact, IIRC, I asked the same questions as you on this very same board and got some very helpful advice. DH ordered the foam on amazon: this is what we ultimately bought. However, we discovered that we also needed to add quite a bit of batting to both sides of the cushion, especially the top; otherwise, the seat was too low. An electric knife works MUCH better than does an electric saw to cut the foam. It was kind of an annoying project, but it was certainly cost-effective and my couch looks and feels a million times better.

I start from the basics of English, science, math, social science, foreign language, and religion every year, and then add on if someone wants to study something else (and can make the case to me that they can handle it). I assign credits afterwards, just for the transcript. I count music as an extracurricular and honestly, it never occurred to me to give credit for PE. My current senior has had an intensely academic high school experience and will graduate with about 26 credits. My current sophomore is much less academically inclined and I imagine he will have a couple fewer credits at the end, but who knows.

That sounds wonderful! What a great opportunity.

I had to read this several times just to make sure I was reading correctly. OP, I know you know this, but just for the record, this sort of behavior is not even in the vicinity of normal. It is seriously disturbed, and frankly, disturbing to even think about. Seconding this. You are an amazingly devoted daughter, OP. Your mom can't see it but we sure do. I (fortunately) don't have personal experience with this sort of thing, but the advice you're getting to hold tight to the hard-won boundaries that have made it possible for you to sustain a relationship at all strikes me as very sound. Sending you many hugs.

Congrats! Is this Lincoln University? I went to add it to the list and discovered that there are a LOT of institutions of higher education named Lincoln!

I have never even heard of Desmos. This information about the digital SAT is not encouraging. I suppose I'll have DS16 take both a practice SAT and an ACT over the summer and see how he does on each. If they're similar then perhaps we should focus on the ACT.

Yes yes a thousand times yes to this. I work with both my 7th and 10th graders for hours every day. My 12th grader works more independently but honestly, that's because at this point I have a lot less to teach him. I still devote several hours a week to working with him one-on-one, though, and I spent dozens of hours last summer designing his courses.

My oldest's final transcript should have 26.25 credits, 2 of which were dual enrollment. A few classes were with outside providers, but the vast majority were homeschool classes done with me at home. DS was admitted early decision to a very selective school, FWIW.

Same. No honors designation (and I didn't weight grades) but I used the school profile and course descriptions to explain the level of coursework.

I went through a similar period of medical uncertainty last year and can really empathize. I will say that I did not handle it well AT ALL. The anxiety was overwhelming and my response was to obsessively ruminate about where I had gone wrong, what I should have done, etc. It was super not great. Finally my husband was like "Look, you have got to find some better way to cope with this situation. Whatever this is, we will deal with it together, but right now you have to manage your anxiety because I can't do it for you." Which of course was easier said than done but at least it pushed me to step away from the edge a bit. As it turned out, the medical situation was far less worrisome than originally thought (thank G-d) but it was a wake-up call for me, in that the coming years -- hopefully decades! -- are likely to include quite a lot of health uncertainties and I need to not totally wig out every single time there is a problem. All that is to say, I get how you are feeling and, as others have said, encourage you to be gentle with yourself and do whatever you need to do in order to get through the next couple of weeks. You can stress about drinking enough water another time. And I hope that your biopsy results turn out to be a big nothing!

Thanks so much for posting those videos. What a performance! Just wonderful.

I can't speak to churches, but FWIW a few years ago one of my sons and I spearheaded a redesign of our synagogue website and just thinking about the experience makes me want to bang my head against the wall. The website itself came out very nicely, IMNSHO (and heaven knows it was a significant improvement on our previous website) but getting everyone moving in the same direction was just exhausting. Also, it took FOREVER. I would urge you, then, to figure out ahead of time just how much scope you are going to have to make changes, who has to be involved, and who truly has veto power. Is the pastor fully on board with you guys doing a major overhaul? Who is going to draft the description of, say, the Sunday school program -- you? or the head of the Sunday school? What about each other subgroup or project? Separately, you can't have enough photos. And it's surprisingly hard to find good photos, with nice lighting, that include everything that you want to feature. If you have any photographers in the congregation, you might consider asking them to do a photo shoot.

Yes, this is very similar to the A.S. post from a couple of days ago.

While I agree that as a general rule TJ's produce is pretty meh, the exception is whatever seasonal item they are currently featuring. IME, Ii something is in big piles up front, it's usually fantastic. Boxes of peaches and nectarines in the summer, new apples in the fall, heirloom oranges right now.

I'm so sorry. This whole process feels so random at times. And I totally agree with kokotg that Georgia Tech has become incredibly competitive. I live in TN and piles of STEM kids here apply to GT. Fingers crossed that your son has a good visit at the other school!

Yes, DS planned to do both classes this year (his senior year) so I put Mechanics as 0.5 credits for first semester and E&M for 0.5 credits second semester. DS just finished up the Mechanics curriculum so after he takes a final exam that's done. (We couldn't get a seat for the AP Physics C exams so this will be an at-home exam.) However, a couple of weeks ago an opportunity came up for DS to take an upper-level math class at a nearby university. He plans to major in math and has already been accepted to his first-choice college, so he asked the admissions office if it would be all right for him to drop E&M and substitute the math class. They said fine, so now it will be math credit and not physics credit. DS did AP Physics 1 and 2, AP Bio, AP Chem, and now Physics C Mechanics. So I guess that's 3.5 credits of science? He also took a couple of computer science classes but I didn't categorize them as science. Like Alice, I focused more on the classes themselves than on the credits assigned. In general, I assigned 1.0 credits for all full-year homeschool classes, including APs. I only assigned a full credit for semester classes for the few classes that DS took at a university.

I assigned half a credit for each.

I just looked up the oral surgeon who took out my DH's failed implant yesterday and he has both an MD and a DDS. The oral surgeon who took out my DS18's wisdom teeth some months ago has a DDM degree. So I guess it varies?