Try the prepared foods section of your local Whole Foods, Trader Joes ... They often feature great, inexpensive dinners with all organic ingredients. While it's not finger-food; it is no prep, no clean-up convenience for Mom!

The warning message is gone now. I think they solved the problem, but they really did get hit and infected by a hacker.

If you are looking for actual child's costumes, Overstock.com often has wonderful ones on sale after Halloween. I also like Vision forum for period pieces.

Ask your local library if they subscribe to Novelist. This is a program that lets you search all published books by plotline, character name, dozens of parameters. You may even be able to search from your home computer if they offer subscription databases online. Just an idea.

My Mom is only 20 years older than I, so we have developed a very close and open relationship.

We are at the other end of the spectrum and chose to eliminate screen time of any type for young children. Our two boys (ages 10 and 7.5) have just begun working on a computer math program for 15-20 minutes, every few days.

I started to give you fun and quick answer about this and then realized that the more thoughtful question is how do we stop comparing ourselves to each other? When will we accept that the giftings and calls on our lives are uniquely individual? As God speaks into your heart the needs of your children and shows you the road that you are equipping them to travel, please know it won't look like anyone elses', and it will often feel imperfect and uncertain. That is so we will continually come back to the One who sets our paths straight. You may never cook gourmet meals, keep an impeccable house, raise the next nuclear genius, or ..........(plug in your expectation/comparison/perfect ideal here). But you have been uniquely created to minister into the lives of your children. Go forth boldly, unshaken in that truth.

North Carolina is a notification state. We are required to keep attendance, yearly standardized test scores and immunizations records on site. Any reporting is voluntary. NC is a great state for homeschooling with a large HS community.

North Carolina

We use the Sonlight spiral-bound book for the timeline portion and Homeschool in the Woods CD of printable figures. I like that the figures can be sized making them easy to turn into flashcards or paste into the book.