:grouphug: . I'm very sorry. Both he and you have been a consistent testimony for God through soo much pain. Lord, we know that Your godly ones are precious in your sight. We know that eaglei's son is now in Your presence. Please comfort his family, help them to find peace and eagerly anticipate the day when they will be reunited for eternity. I'm so looking forward to meeting your son and you as well. You can be proud of such a fine man your son has been.

Yep, I'm in the BJU camp too. We did Apologia with the olders, and the did okay, but BJU especially with the videos is soo much better.

We were just there again this spring. We've enjoyed the museum quite a bit. Some of my guys were impressed with the old generators that were there. Our guys were all about 6-12 when we visited. There are also a number of vintage cars and agricultural equipment there is this is of interest. The steam engines were also a hit. If we hadn't all ready done a tour of the Cami plant a few years ago, we would have done the tour as well. I seem to think that it was more of a video tour than an actual walk through the plant. I don't think there was much hands on activities. We've never been to Menlo Park, but there are some displays of Thomas Edison's lights.

Still praying for all of you, but especially for your dear boy. :grouphug:

Wow, your cat looks just like our Private Flint! The guys had to do a double take to know the location was wrong. Chipmunks are cute too.

And I'm close to the Port Huron border! One of the bridges is closed right now, but traffic is still flowing very smoothly. There's rarely wait times. Access to the plazas is easier than at Detroit. Customs leads directly onto the 402 (like an interstate) which is also easier than the last time I took the Windsor access to the 401. ETA: If you exit right next to the bridge, there is a lovely walk under the bridge and next to the river.

:grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug: Praying, praying and praying.

That's wonderful. Congratulations to her (and you).

My olders used Apologia and would agree with your kids. It got the job done, but. . . Ds12 has used BJU science since grade 5. He did Life Science 7 online (the $99 December special with used texts) and is now doing Space and Earth 8. It's much more interesting than the other program. The teacher also is able to enhance the classes much better than I could. Ds11 has used BJU science 5 and is now completing Science 6 with the texts. He loves it as well. I help him orally as well as with lab setups. Texts etc are easy to find used. Ds17 did BJU Chem. and was well prepared for entry into high school. I'm relying on the experts here who say it's a very thorough program although everything I've seen of it would support this.

Praying for your whole family right now. :grouphug:

Praying.

Pads are gross. I only ever use them as insurance. Tampons were the only way to go for many years. Now that things down there aren't aligned the way the once were, tampons are less efficient. Recently I switched to a cup. Love it.

:iagree: :iagree: :iagree:

Our older children are treated as adults. They have their own laptops/ipods which they often use in their rooms. The younger two must keep all electronics in public rooms. They are only allowed to use them for school, reading and music during the daytime. In the evenings, they are allowed to play games as well. None of our guys are very into social media. We have open DNS for general screening. All the guys including the adults know that we retain the right to check histories and adjust controls accordingly - not that I generally do. They've never given us any reason to be concerned.

Michelle. You just added to my wish list. :laugh:

4 boys here. They're not likely as active as yours sound to be. Here are a few of our ground rules. -no verbal nasties, put downs, zingers etc. This isn't much of a problem since most of the guys get along most of the time. -it's only fun, if it's fun for everyone involved. -wrestling with your brothers has ground rules just like competitive wrestling -no punching, kicking, elbows, knees or groin kicks -the olders must be appropriately gentle with the youngers. They can follow the example of their dad wrestling with them when they were younger. The living room and basement have very few breakables in them for this reason. One key note is to have them get enough exercise and weight bearing exercise so they have less need to wrestly together. Video games do not do this. Around here this has included moving and splitting firewood, moving dirt and gravel and other activities that help the whole family. In a pinch, I'll have them run or bike for a good distance. I always try to do this before there's too much pent up energy. At Christmas, I had considered buying a large mirror for the LR. Instead I bought a large pic of 1 Corinthians 13 (the love chapter). A few weeks later, a fairly boisterous wrestling match put it on the floor (with minor damage) and just about broke a glass jar. So glad I didn't waste the money on the mirror! DH stopped wrestling with all of them a couple of years ago when he got a black eye. The days of keeping them all down are over now!

I've been at this for 14 years now. For the first few years I jumped around more. I had a really tight budget and it took a bit to find what worked. Now with the second set of guys, I still evaluate what we're doing and tweak, but we don't make any major changes without a huge amount of research. I've found that running wholesale after shiny new ideas just burn energy and money, but don't get great results for the most part. I've made a few switches as the guys approach high school age as well. Part of this is allowing for more teacher time since I only have 2 to school now. Some thing that hasn't worked: Unit studies. Nice idea. Lowsy for kid's interest and quality learning. Some things that worked: modified work boxes. Actually ours are drawers where they hold each subject's materials. I don't stock them. They mainly maintain themselves. The guys will switch them up if the subjects need to be in a different order. They're neat and easy to use.

We finally gave Stampy the boot. I'd never let them hang with him IRL. Other than that, Star Wars, Blender and minecraft all qualify.

Grammar nazi moment here. "wa-la" is actually a misspelling of voilà . I couldn't believe it when I heard that it had been changed.

I can't help you with science 5. We did that level out of the textbook. We have done science 6 online. For the online option, all we needed was the student text. Quizzes and tests were also online. Some experiments would be a good idea, but demonstrations were done on the videos. I would think this would be similar for the DVDs. Yes, I would say that they are definitely rigorous enough for high school science.

We just read and enjoy. I agree that analyzing books can easily kill them. When we do novel studies, I don't use favourite books either.

I thought I had a schedule out of one of their books, but I can't seem to find it. Usually, we tried to get through each section in 1-2 days. We always finished within the year. I would also recommend the workbook for extra practice and tests if you can find it. My oldest 2 used this. While they did okay, I found that it didn't have enough review and I wasn't on top of doing this myself. We switched out of it after book 2. One went to a text that would be used in our province and the other to Saxon. And no, we didn't use calculators except when being taught about them. A cheap scientific calculator would work.

I've had a daughter with anorexia. It was a terrible time. For us, inpatient was the only way to restore the weight for quite a while. They will also monitor the heart issues. I'd echo other posters in saying that it, as well as much of the emotional concerns are part of the disease. With weight gain, thinking and emotional challenges will improve. My dd spent the greater part of 15 months in hospital. When she was at home, we had to watch her almost every minute for food avoidance behaviours and suicidal/irrational decision. Please also monitor internet activity. There are so many blogs, twitter accounts and chat rooms that encourage harmful eating.Luckily here, it was covered by our provincial health plan. A couple of difficult cases were actually sent down to Remuda at taxpayers expense for help. My dd was nearly one of them. In our case, eventually, dd did begin to eat decently as she realized the futility of what she saw her eating disorder fellows doing. Anxiety has still been an ongoing issue many years later.

I said 2-4 times per week. The kids either vacuum or set the roomba twice a week. The do it twice because they aren't very meticulous. I would only do it once if I were vacuuming. We have a short haired dog, and lots of mud during some seasons.

A tom around here has been chasing the girls in -20 C weather. It could be a couple of weeks before you see him again.