I think mine qualifies as a purse. I don't keep much in there other than a small cosmetic bag a wallet & the iPad. It barely fits and the purse just zips over it. I was going to provide a picture but can't figure out how to attach from the iPad. I also just bought dd the cutest little messenger bag to carry her new one around after Christmas. It will hold the iPad in it's case & her headphones. That is if dh let's her use it much. He's been playing with it and discovering all the ways he e can use it for business and I'm envisioning a 3rd iPad purchase next year after he realizes it's not as easy to share as he thought it would be.

[quote=Nakia; My little one knows and remembers everything you've ever told her and will not hesitate to bring it up even if you are in the grocery store and it's not a great time to talk about having diarrhea after eating dairy D This. Plus the words to just about every movie she's seen or song she's heard. Since she spends a lot of time with my guitar playing dad this means she often walks around singing Beatles songs along with the mostly contemporary Christian music I listen to. She's also somewhat of an expert on both Egyptian gods and Roman & Greek mythology. She has read every book we could find in the library. She knows the stories, what the Romans and Greeks called them, etc. This has made her quite popular during family game night when we play Jeopardy.

[quote name=ma23peas;3435646. My contacts on my mail server do not show up on the Ipad version' date=' also another pain...the individuals do but not my group contact lists which contain 30-40 names each...ugh. I can't use Photoshop on Ipad, the ipad can not save word documents which I use a lot of....without a doubt I would get a very very good laptop. I'm pretty sure there are apps to do most of what you are referring to here. Not that you have to use the iPad if you prefer the laptop but these functions are available. There are apps to save, create and edit word documents. There are calendar and contact apps that will do what you describe and there are versions of photoshop in the appstore. Also, for the typing everyone recommended a keyboard if you don't also have a laptop.

The fact that it fits it my purse is also a huge plus for me. I also love that I don't have to power it on and off. It's on but asleep all the time and takes less than a second to turn on and start working.

I think the gps is only on the 3G version. The wireless is cheaper and works for me. I either use free wireless somewhere or use a separate hotspot. I do all kinds of stuff on the iPad. I no longer print and take stuff for school when I travel. I put it in Notability and dd writes on the PDF. You can watch YouTube and there are tons of apps for education, entertainment, etc. You should search for recent threads on iPad, apps, notability, etc. I read on it and so does dd. she's getting her own for Christmas. So far I haven't found anything I need to do while traveling that I can't do on the iPad. Also, the battery lasts almost 10 hours. I've said this in other threads but we travel a lot and I used to bring lots of books, crayons, DVD player, case of dvd's, school work folders with lots of printed stuff, copies of worksheets for dd and teacher manuals for me, etc. now I just take the iPad. Also, many colleges now offer textbooks for the iPad to rent and/or buy.

It looks good to me also but I hope some of you who go see it will post your impressions after you go. A few of the reviews I read said it was intense in parts and I'm wondering if it will be okay for younger children.

Thanks for sharing what you are doing. I'm considering where to go next with dd and this gives me some additional ideas to think about.

I could have typed this response but since you already did I'll just say :iagree:. The only difference is I wasn't really seeking anything. I was perfectly content but a lot of business associates and friends were Christians and I began to listen a little more. For me there was no aha moment. It was more of a slow transition in my thinking and beginning to understand I wasn't quite as full of answers as I thought I was. I will say for me it was definately a head and heart thing. I don't find faith and belief in God to be illogical.

I have sinus and allergy issues and for the last several years they have gotten worse the days leading cup to my cycle. Sometimes it's minor, other times my lymph nodes really hurt and my throat gets sore. I think my immune system must we weaker for some reason during that time.

iPad with keyboard. I have both and the iPad is much easier to travel with.

: :iagree: I had a conversation with a young lady at church last year after some unfortunate Facebook quotes she should not have shared. Bad language, etc. I told her that it's best not to share everything you're thinking...especially on Facebook or twitter because you can't take it back. I think especially for young people there aren't enough filters today and social media makes the lack of filters more evident.

I am no help either. In previous years I've done better with keeping it simple but just this week I bought three additional gifts because I saw people post about cool things I hadn't heard of before. I say if it's not a financial burden do it. 4 gifts a piece isn't unreasonable. I would say keeping it simple means not going in to debt or ruining your budget in an effort to win your child's affection with material things. That doesn't sound like what you would be doing at all.

That made me snort..why would you select that photo to mail out? I hardly ever send out cards any more. Even my aunt who the family lovingly calls Martha Stewart stopped sending them. I do give small gift bags out to friends and relatives with ornaments that dd makes in them. We generally include some stuff we baked and a good photo or two from the year. We rarely go take official portraits so it's often a vacation photo. It would never include bathing suits or hooters but that's just not something I would send out to represent our family.

This is excellent advice and the need to do this is one of the reasons I appreciate this board and the abilility to discuss these issues and get feedback both from those who have btdt and others who are in the middle of navigating the process like I am. It is very difficult to talk to my local irl homeschooling friends who have similar aged children about curriculum, etc. I started before my 3 closest friends who now homeschool and they love us and dd but no one really wants to hear that your child is 3 levels ahead of theirs in math even though their child is 3 years older. I try very hard to downlplay dd's abilities in front of them which probably isn't the right thing to do but it's hard to know what will come across as bragging or make someone feel bad. Instead, I try to talk about things we have in common like behavior issues or scheduling. I also struggle with keeping dd humble and appreciative of her abilities instead of getting arrogant. This was really becoming a problem in Sunday school at our small church where she was singled out constantly for being so "smart" and knowing all the answers. We decided to leave the church for other reasons but an unintended benefit of switching to a larger congregation has been that due to the large number of students she's not singled out as much and doesn't get to answer every question which has been a good character building exercise for her.

I would agree with pp about moving forward if he does well without distraction. My dd who is advanced has the same problem with making careless errors. In her case it is boredom. If your son can do the word problems and he knows his facts I would just move on to delta. In the early chapters where the problems are very easy you probably don't need to spend a whole week per lesson and do every worksheet. Watch the DVD, complete a few of the d-f worksheets since they include systematic review and then test and move on. You might have to slow down and do more practice when you get to the later/harder chapters. While mus suggests knowing the material before moving on I don't think that means he can't ever make mistakes. If you know he knows his addition facts without counting on fingers then move in and don't worry about the placement test. Eat: if it makes you feel better dd tested in to beta and I started her there but after 2 weeks decided to go back and cover alpha because I realized she didn't really know the material. One idea you MIT consider if you have a VCR is looking on eBay for a tape of the old curriculum. I paid $10 for one which we used to review alpha so I didn't have to buy the whole set. I just mailed it to SIL so she can do the same thing. The old tapes have portions of alpha, beta & gamma on them. I emailed my local rep explaining that I had the VCR tape and wanted to use it for some review and they sent me a chart showing which lessons on the tape corresponded to alpha. I'm sure they would do the same for you. Also, dd found it motivational to do good work so as not to have to do all 6 worksheets every week. I sat down and mold her our plan to move faster if she gets the concepts and how that would be done and suddenly she stopped making so many mistakes. I still have to remind her to focus every five minutes but hopefully she'll outgrow that one day!

Today all we've had so far are eggs and toast. We slept in and ate breakfast late. Yesterday we did the same and then ate grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch and again for dinner. This is vacation time for us so we're pretty relaxed with our meal planning. Tonight dh and I might go out because dd is going to Grandma's house. Eta: I would happily eat any of the other things listed here if someone would just bring them over for me instead of my having to prepare them.

I've had this one on my app watch list in app shopper. It is normally $9.99 but is now on sale for $4.99. It looks like a great option for viewing art for art studies. I am going to download it on dd's new ipad after I drop her off at Grandma's house.

Thank you! I looked at recipes online but was having trouble deciding. This sounds perfect.

I am too lazy to list all the things I'm supposed to be doing:lol: Instead, I'm still sitting in my bed surfing the Internet, reading this forum, talking on the phone and generally avoiding work. Dh called and said he would be home around 2 for us to start errands together and dd just said she's hungry so I guess I have to get moving.

I am generally dragging. I feel better after a shower. Unfortunately, dh is the jump right up type most days. We get up at 5:30 two days a week to go to the gym and play basketball. I usually am quiet and still in the process of waking up until we get to the gym and play for the first 10 minutes or so. He jumps right out of bed singing and bounces around the gym saying good morning and smiling.

Check http://www.homeaway.com for rentals. I've used it multiple times for different destinations and always had good results. I found a 4br/3 bathroom condo that we are renting for a week for $600 for our early Feb. trip. Be sure and email the owners asking for a special rate if available.

The video camera is a lot better than the still camera. I read an article that said the developers did that intentionally because most people have good cameras on their smart phones.

I'm also enjoying hearing what others are doing. Since we're still early elementary here I'm just trying to figure all this out. I don't know if what we've done will be helpful for others or not since my daughter is still so young but I'll share since someone asked:) We skipped level two of both FLL & WWE. We probably should have moved even farther ahead in FLL. We're in the middle of level 3 now and it's really very easy. We won't do 4 but I haven't decided where to go next. I was planning on using the new one that peace hill cancelled. I think we need more of a writing challenge too but I'll address it when we finish wwe3. So next year when dd would be starting 2nd grade we'll be doing somewhere between 4th & 6th grade grammar and maybe 3rd to 5th grade writing. For math I was uncomfortable skipping too much so we went mastery approach. This has been discussed on other threads but we use mus and just accelerate. I wasted well over a year making dd complete every worksheet even though she never made any mistakes. In an effort to make her enjoy her math more we started watching the DVD, working a few problems and if she gets them right I let her test. We've gone through Beta, Gamma & all but 5 lessons in Delta over the last year or so. If we continue to move at that pace we will finish mus pre-algebra in another year and a half and then start AOPs. We are also using life of Fred for fun because dd likes it. We're also doing Latin for children A now instead of waiting until 3rd grade age to start and added Song School Greek at dd's request last month. Those are the areas we are accelerating now and I'm constantly re-evaluating what to do in other areas. Right now we just use Apologia elementary science which can be used for any grade. Once we get a little further along in math we'll start stepping up the level in Science.

I don't find this to be as much of an issue in Notability because I use the zoom writing tool at the bottom of the screen. This means my hand touches the edge of the ipad or the case instead of the screen and feels more natural.

That's what I did the first day I had my ipad2. Unfortunately I didn't know what I was doing and bought an ipad 1 case so the device doesn't fit snuggly. I knew I was going to buy the reburbished ipad for dd and dh for Christmas so I figured I'd just keep it until then. I'm going to check the link provided by crazyforlatin but if I don't find something I love soon I'll be going back to Walmart.