I've only been at this HS thing a couple of years, but I finally feel like we have a schedule that is working. M-Th is pretty strict. Fridays are looser and often when we get errands done. FWIW, here's what I do. I have our schedule on a google calendar (because my laptop is always on and nearby during school) and have broken our subjects into blocks (e.g. math 9-9:30, language arts 10-11:30). This way we have a little wiggle room if we are running behind, but it also works as a motivator for some play time between subjects. In between subjects I throw in a load of laundry, pay some bills, check facebook, etc. Everyday after lunch we do about 90 minutes of physical activity: swimming, ice skating, a walk/hike or a trip to the park. We've also been known to spend the entire 90 minutes raking and bagging leaves. :lol: After "PE" everyone has an hour of rest time. Before the kids can come out of their rooms after rest time, their rooms must be picked up. Then we have chores, which take approximately 15 minutes: vacuum the kitchen/family room, dust, clean the bathroom. Since history and science are the favorite subjects around here, my first grader puts up no resistance when we do those in the aftenoon. By 5:00, if all schoolwork has been completed and chores are done (including putting away their laundry, if necessary), the kids get to play Minecraft. OK, now you know my secret: Minecraft. Best. Motivator. Ever. I love being able to cook dinner in relative peace. Minecraft is motivating ME to stick to our schedule. School work is done, my house is clean(er), we all get some breaks during the day. One kid sets the table, one kid clears the table, one kid empties the dishwasher. We swap chores every week. I don't know what I'll do when they get sick of Minecraft. -Z PS My kids are 6, 4 and 4

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not seeing how this feature is different than the thousands of other websites that use it. For example, you go to cnn.com and read a nice story about a cute kitten saved by a fireman. The story made you feel all warm and fuzzy and you want to share it with your friends on Facebook, so you click the "like" or "share" link (the sites seem to display it differently) and the kitten story will post to your wall. If you are already signed into Facbook (say, on another open tab in your browser), the link will post immediately. If you are not logged into Facebook, you will be asked to log in before the link posts. The link will be seen by anyone you have allowed to view your wall (friends? friends of friends? public? you decide in your FB privacy settings). My understanding is the same thing will happen here. If I want to like/share/link this--or any WTM---thread on my FB wall, my friends will see it and they may click the link to get here (just as a random person performing a google search would). Since I logged in with my WTM credentials and not my facebook credentials, any of my friends clicking on the link on my FB wall would be clueless as to who I was in this thread or even if I actually posted to this thread. And as far as the "Likes" widget, lots of other sites do it, too. Here's an example: http://www.cbs8.com/ So, this really doesn't seem to be something unusual. I'm not saying I'm a fan and it doesn't sound like many other are either, but if you really want to keep your WTM identity separate from your FB identity it seems you should: 1. have a WTM username and picture different from your FB username and picture, and 2. lock down your FB privacy settings. Thanks to everyone for their hard work. I lurk here all the time and have learned so much.

We had to make the same decision when we bought a new camera. Here were some things we kept in mind: HDD: if the hard drive failed and we hadn't moved all of the video off, it was lost (or else required the time and expense of finding someone to try to save it). DVD: cool, but they take some time to finishing "writing" to the dvd. Not usually a problem, but if you're in the middle of shooting, say, a birthday party or a soccer game, you could miss some good video opportunities waiting for the DVD to finish until you can pop a new one in. Flash: we almost went this route, but I'm so disorganized that I would likely forget to empty the flash drive, then we would go on vacation and realize the memory was full and we wouldn't have enough room on the laptop to move the video off of the camera. MiniDV: the quality is good and we thought of it as a 'backup' in case our computer storing our video crashes or the DVDs are destroyed--we save the little tapes and can always make another copy on the computer or a DVD. My $.02, FWIW.

Are they digital? The Microsoft Movie Maker that comes with Windows XP (part of Service Pack 2, maybe?) is the cheapest (FREE!) decent option out there. Pretty much plug and go. I had a bunch of tapes that weren't digital, but we bought a Digital8 camcorder a few years back that allowed playback of the analog tapes. We were then able to get them on the computer and DVDs with no problem. If you are all analog, then you will have a more difficult time.

Checking your own credit report does not show as a "hit." I don't know if you live in Canada or the US, but in the US you can check your credit reports free once per year. There are 3 credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. We check one of them every 3 months (Equifax in April, Experian in August, TU in Dec, for example) just to make sure everything is as it should be. Go to www.annualcreditreport.com. If you have any questions about your credit, now is the time to be checking. That way, if there is a problem, you are aware of it and have time to work on cleaning things up before you try to buy.

I've only been hanging around here for a couple of years, but I've already seen this topic at least a half dozen times, maybe more. No one is going to feel happy and accepted all of the time. Carry on.

Very simplistic example: I know my child. If I put chocolate in front of him, he will eat it. He has the free will to eat it or not, but I know what he will do. I imagine the same thing with God but on a much larger/deeper scale.

Did I miss a baby announcement?? Details! Details! (Or please point me to the baby announcement thread.) :D

I think most people would agree, but the problem is we haven't yet figured out how to do this. In a typical cycle, let's say a doctor is able to retrieve 13 eggs. Of those 13 eggs, 10 eggs are mature enough to proceed and 8 are able to be fertilized. Of those 8, 5 make it to the blastocyst stage. Of those 5, 3 are implanted. Of those 3, only one makes to to a full term baby. And that is generally a best-case scenario. (And to add to the best case scenario, only 1 of those 2 remaining frozen blastocysts survive the thaw and become a live baby for the second round.) The success rates in IVF are something crazy-low, like 30%. At $20K a cycle, it is hard for many people to justify only retrieving 2 or 3 eggs, hoping not to have "extras." You can't generally tell who is going to be successful (i.e. all eggs retrieved fertilize, grow to blast, and become a live birth) vs who isn't; people going through IVF are generally doing it because they haven't been able to get pregnant any other way. I don't have an answer, but I also don't think there is a simple solution. Sorry I got OT. Maybe we should start a new thread about this.

Thanks for the great feedback. Just to clarify, we aren't moving. This was just for my own curiosity (I think I've just been watching too much HGTV lately). Our house is quite roomy and I think it is laid out reasonably well, but I always wonder what people mean when they talk about a well laid-out home. We do need to remodel the kitchen at some point though... I've never been a big fan of the "great room" and it looks like I'm in good company. :001_smile:

That's a really fun site. Thanks for the link! Your description is very helpful. Thank you.

I read the small house thread with interest. I saw many people commenting about the layout of the house making all of the difference. I'm curious what you mean by this--do you have some specific examples? Are long hallways bad because they take up otherwise livable space? What kind of flow makes the house good? I'm assuming lots of big closets are good. I tried to find some floorplans online that we could critique, but I don't know if that would help. some KB Home plans a DR Horton plan. This one has a great room. Is all of that open space desirable or not?

That is correct. DOL COBRA info