I didn't actually have a problem with 30. Now, 35 is a whole other story (for me). I'll hit that one in a few days here. I think a lot depends on where you are at personally. I was too busy leading up to 30 to worry about it, lol. Now, I'm healthier and happier than I was at 30 (look better too :D ), but I'm also single (and haven't even *talked* to a guy since XH and I split) and the age my Mom was when she had me. Oh, and XH thought he was done with kids when I turned 30, but my younger DD was born when I was 31 :) I'd love more kiddos, but I'm holding out for Mr. Right first ;)

I agree with menu planning, definitely, and shopping to stock up as well. And, try to shop without the kids. What I do is shop the grocery ads to see if there are any good deals. I look at the ad for my parents' town (which is 50 miles away) and if they have good deals I will probably shop there (especially since I can leave the kids with them while I go :) ). They have a Kroger subsidiary that frequently has different deals than Kroger does, and an Aldi, as well as a Walmart. I avoid Walmart generally (because I always get "extras" while I'm there and can blow the budget), although they do tend to have great prices on a few things. I've been to Walmart once in the last 6 weeks. If Kroger or Marsh has great deals, I stop there on the way home from visiting my parents/grocery shopping (its about 15 miles to Kroger/Marsh). Alternately, when XH is not out of town I will shop at Kroger/Marsh in his town after I deliver the kids to him. I used to have a grocery budget of under $150 a month, but recently went up to $200 and I feel rich! I actually spent $206 for May, but I was under for gas so I threw the extra in and I should be able to make it to June 8/9 before I need to shop again. I watch for target prices on meat and stock up (I have a small chest freezer). I have a foodsaver to help keep the meat edible for a long time in the freezer. I don't cook a huge variety of meals because my kids like things that aren't a huge variety. When I pre-shop, I note prices. This week, Kroger had 1/2gals for $1.25 each and milk was 2.59 at aldi, so I didn't get milk at aldi (and it turned out gallons were 2.08 at Kroger, so I got 2 of those and 1 half gal). A lot can depend on what kind of eaters your family are. My kids eat a decent amount, I think, but not as much as many other kids. HTH :)

I don't know of a way to make it charge the customer the paypal fees. It will depend on what monetary amount is being sent as far as what the exact fee is, it's $.30 per transaction plus about 2.9% (think it can be 3.9%, though). The only time I think someone can decide if they want to pay the fee vs have the recipient pay it is when someone is sending money under the personal option and using a debit/credit card. I just build the fees into the price I'm charging, mentally. Sometimes people will send me money via personal option, but many won't do that (understandably; they have no recourse from paypal if the seller doesn't send if they usual personal). As for the basic vs premier account, I'm not sure what the current rules are. For me, I was selling some things on ioffer a year or so ago and someone used a credit card, so I had to upgrade. It may very well be that they don't require you to upgrade anymore, since they now charge everyone fees to receive money. HTH.

We do some work in the summer for several reasons. They do Bible every day, because its important to me. Language Arts we switched midstream, so we will also do that daily, but it only takes us a few minutes a day (and they *love* it. DD was actually upset today because she didn't feel like we covered enough :D ). My kids are young enough that they forget some things, so we do a little math over the summer so they don't brain dump it all (like 1 lesson a week). We will do periodic Latin reviews, again to avoid the brain dump. We also will do a geography lesson weekly, because we switched programs midstream and I want to finish it up. DD won't finish her copybook before our summer starts June 10, so I'll have her keep going on that, because she needs the handwriting practice :tongue_smilie: In all, it'll take less than 30 mins a day. And, last but not least for our reasons....I'm a single parent and we need something structured most days so I don't lose my ever-lovin' mind :001_huh:

October of 2004, as soon as I found the link in the WTM (revised) that I'd bought and was pouring through. I remember the political "discussions" from just before the election :tongue_smilie: It seems like they shut the board down for a bit because of it (although they may have just blocked a few IPs).

I set my budget at around $600 for the year (at $50 per month), but I've got *lots* of books that I picked up over the years that we use, especially for history and science stuff. We've got 2.5 bookcases full of curriculum and books for the kids, so that helps keep current costs lower, plus the only thing the kids get to write in is math workbook :D . I know that costs will rise as we head towards high school, but I also try to keep at least a year ahead of curriculum purchases so that I can make sure something is going to work for us. DD is at least somewhat accelerated, so that can mean that what I thought was for a year or 2 in the future could get bumped up more than a little bit (She'd be finishing 1st grade in public school and I just asked her what her favorite subject was...the answer? "Multiplication, because it's easy" :001_huh: ) I have to test my kids as part of my divorce decree, but I budget the testing separately (its $40 per kid, so currently $80 per year).

I hung out here for nearly 3 and a half years before I started homeschooling. I was in the Navy before that, so homeschooling wasn't possible, and DS had so many issues at school that we were having to do nearly all his "in-class" work at home after dinner, in addition to the regular homework that *2nd graders* brought home, so after schooling wasn't *at all* possible. I wasn't really sure I'd ever be able to homeschool but finally got to take the plunge a little over 2 years ago. Everything I'd learned from here gave me to confidence to start :) Like a PP said, it was nice to be able to hang out with people that cared about the same sort of things like the quality of education (even if it was being offered at the school, because I couldn't actually homeschool). I learned a lot about homeschool (and bikini waxes, and placenta, and....wow so much more :lol: )

Indiana appears to have a new program called Double Up for 11th/12th graders and those who qualify for Free/Reduced lunch apparently get some kind of a waiver. Not sure if homeschoolers will be able to use it too, though.

My son was 9 when we discovered LOF, but he wasn't really interested in learning his times tables until I told him he couldn't do the Fractions book until he learned them :D Amazing how fast he picked them up. I agree that knowing math facts and long division would be necessary, as the publisher said. My 7yo is working hard on her math facts so that she too can get into Fred :)

It depends on what you are talking about. If we're having pork chops, then, yeah. I make one for each of us, but they can have seconds on mashed potatoes or the other veggie if they eat all of their regular servings. And, if we are having something that's going to take a while to cook (like hash browns) and they want something to eat after they've finished the rest of their food, then they can have peanut butter on wheat bread or something. Some things we don't get frequently or in large quantities, like canned fruit. They can only have their serving of that (unless someone else doesn't want theirs), but they can have something else to eat if they are still hungry after their fruit is gone. My kids do snack, usually twice a day (at bedtime and then either a mid morning snack with a later lunch, or an earlier lunch and an afternoon snack, although I don't generally let them snack after 3pm or they won't be hungry for dinner). They can generally have bananas or apples whenever they want (except 3pm-dinner time) unless they've already had 2 bananas that days, or if they didn't finish their last piece of fruit (3yo is especially bad about this) and that is mostly because we've got a finite quantity and I only shop once a week.

I got 15.5" on my 3.5yo :)

I used Leapfrog videos at the beginning of the year to entertain my little, who turned 3 in November. About 3 days into it, she came up to me and asked me to draw her some letters. Wouldn't you know it, the little bugger had learned nearly all the letter sounds when I was just trying to keep her quiet so I could do school with the other 2 :001_huh: I had to find Blue's Clue's colors video before she'd figure out any colors besides "lello."

The best one is the one you can get into, frankly. There are not that many pharmacy schools and there are many, *many* applicants for each spot. Competition is fierce. I can't tell you how many times I've kicked myself for giving up my guaranteed spot in pharmacy school to join the Navy, although I wouldn't trade my kids in for a pharmacy degree (and I met my ex-husband through the Navy). ETA: I looked into pharmacy school a few times in the not-too-distant past and was floored by how difficult it is to get into school now, especially daunting since I'd have to retake nearly all my pre-reqs (courses are too old, they want math/sci in the last 7 years and my courses were from 93-95) and there's no guarantee I'd get into pharmacy school then anyway....

I've intentionally resurrected an old thread ;) Of course it was the Free stuff thread, which continues to be relevant :) I was also concerned about someone's posting volume on the For Sale board, so I checked the Board Rules/FAQ thingy and it requests that no more than 10 posts per month be made to the For Sale board. 18 active posts from one person seems a bit much....could I sell my extra stuff faster if I made a separate post for each item? Probably, but then I'd violate the rules of the board and I try to save that for special occasions ;) (although...he's an ex-husband now, I still try to avoid bashing him...)

I own but have not used the Pre-Algebra book (hey, why pay for shipping when it nearly pays for a book we'll use eventually anyway...). Just from glancing at the introduction, I can tell you that the author is at least Christian leaning (book is dedicated to the greater glory of God, mentions sermons) and that he says he doesn't mention Evolution. I can't go any further in depth because I haven't made it past the introduction yet :D

Just to add a little into the mix, I was reading a handout from Dr Wile (of Apologia's high school science fame) on homeschooling high school. He recommends Videotext Interactive for Algebra 1 and 2 (he also says MUS "works concepts well but has weaker problems" so maybe doing the Singapre Intensive Practice or CWP workbooks could help there). And, I love what I've seen so far from Life Of Fred, we will be using that when we finish with Singapore Primary Math :)

We are in Fractions right now. DS *begs* to do 2 almost every day, but I've only let him once, maybe twice. He doesn't seem to pick it up as well when he does 2 in a day. He's mostly likely to be allowed to do so if he's just gotten everything right on a bridge ;)

I was on it for a while when I was having chronic daily headaches. Yes, I felt fuzzy and I didn't notice it helping my moods any. The scary part to me was having to carry a slip of paper saying I was on it, because stopping it suddenly could cause you to have seizures :001_huh: I ended up weaning off it it a couple of months after they tried it for me, and I found out I was pregnant with my youngest the day I took the last pill so I just put up with the headaches until they stopped on their own, a few weeks before DD was born.

You can get a month's free trial, I believe (you could before, when I tried it). Its a nice program and many like it, but for my particular circumstances it just didn't work well enough to justify the cost; I had to tweak it too much. I just use a spreadsheet.

My trio is the same age as yours, approximately (my boy will be 10 a month earlier than yours and my girl 8 a month later, and our bonus is 4 years 1 day younger than her sister) and we didn't use any other writing program (although we do the Memoria Press copy books) and use CLP spelling. For Lit we do WTM Lite ;) staying close to our history cycle with some other stuff (Narnia, Little House on the Prairie) thrown in :) We're still on Island and will be through part of next year (my older 2 do it together, but DD is quite advanced and is sticking right with her brother on everything). HTH :)

Ah, see, that's why you "tweak" curriculum ;) We've "tweaked" SOTW this year into: listening to the audio CDs and looking at some books dealing with the time period (since we are still in middle ages and finishing up grade 4....) :tongue_smilie: Our "hands on" activity came from Days of Knights and Damsels and involved rolling out some refrigerator biscuits, plopping some cherry pie filling on one, sticking another on top, baking for 10 mins and eating middle ages pies. One kid even drew a picture of some knights. Well do the memorization and other stuff some other time. We've still done *way* more history than the public school thought about doing. Since I've got elementary aged kids, if they hit 5th grade knowing parts of speech and basics of grammar, can read and have their math down pretty well...then everything else is gravy. We'll ramp things up more later, but there's a lot of fun that needs to be experienced here and now :001_smile:

We had DS do Fractions after he finished Singapore 4B, he's trying to find a way to finagle doing Decimals and Percents before we finish 5B sometime next year ;) I may do as others have said, doing regular assignments Mon-Thurs and Fred on Fridays. We will probably work the Pre-Alg in with 6th grade because DS *loves* Fred so much. He is always asking if he can do an extra lesson (unless he's on a bridge, those aren't as fun ;) ).

The last time I moved, it was a 100 mile round trip and it took more than a few trips. One of my friends must have made the trip 10 times or more, and I had to put money in her purse for gas, she didn't want to take it. The guys that did the heavy lifting of furniture and stuff did that for lunch, although I did make homemade caramels and share them :D After all my junk was here, several friends helped me sort through everything and price it for a huge yard sale, and one of my friends hosted it at her house. It took several trips to get everything to her house and she gave up several days of her time. The friends the drove stuff, I gave gas money, and the 3 friends that devoted a week or more of their time to helping unpack and set up I got gift certificates for out of the yard sale proceeds, although they expected nothing. I have an *awesome* church :001_smile: and I'd better go finish getting ready to head there :D

Yes, they seem to believe that they will starve to death without it. The worst punishment possible is to be deprived of bedtime snack. My almost 10yo DS barely weighs 50 lbs, so I have trouble with not letting him have food whenever he wants it (he was excited yesterday, he thinks his size 7 pants may be getting to small at the waist, finally, he was still wearing 4T shorts last year, although they looked a wee bit short :001_huh:). But if they have been dinking around and it's past bedtime, or we've just come from my parents (where they eat almost non-stop and we frequently delay leaving so they can finish their snacks....) then I will make them forgo it (and they attempt to protest). They usually have fruit, pbj, oatmeal or something else filling but reasonably nutritious.

The less you have to move, the less it will cost you, so get rid of everything that you can now! And, moving is a good time to start fresh. Avoid tossing stuff into boxes, and instead make sure that each thing that you pack has a reason to go (and a place to go in the new house!). The 6 weeks will fly by, so try to pack a few things that you won't use for a while (winter clothes, half the toys the kids are keeping, books you don't need right now, etc). I had *way* too much stuff when I moved the last 2 times, but some wonderful friends helped me go through everything. We had a *huge* yard sale with everything I got rid of, too :001_smile: Good luck!