You need the textbook and the workbook. You may need the HIG as well, depending on how comfortable you are will the subject. I personally haven't gotten one yet, but may for 5 or 6. I personally use the US Edition. I have the extra practice, intensive practice and challenging word problem books for all levels, because I'm an overkill kinda girl ;) Alas, the kids don't seem to need them. When little sister comes up through the grades, all she will need is the workbooks, although the textbooks may be a bit ratty by then.

I have now changed my change ;) I'm going to return Calvert 4 and look into some other programs. We can stumble along for a while, until I figure out what will work for us.

I'm probably not any help, since we had chicken ;) Ours was mock Olive Garden chicken con broccoli, though. Super yummy, and lots of left overs for lunches (DS isn't into it as leftovers, but he loves hotdogs and the rest of us don't so he can have those for lunch).

I have 3, and while I would love to have at least 1 more....I require a husband for that and not only do I not have one of those handy, I don't have any candidates on the horizon. So, I'm enjoying the 3 that I have.

My 7yo is a natural speller, but she is *way* obsessed with spelling workbooks. She can easily spell at a 4th grade plus level, I think she likes it because she's so good at it ;) I suddenly remembered today that I had a calvert spelling 3 cd from last year with DS. I've had to limit her to 2 chapters a day, but she'll be done with it by the end of January. So, I'd like to get her some cheap (but still have some learning value) spelling workbooks. Or, websites I can print sheets from would work too, free or pretty cheap. TIA :001_smile:

I have to test as part of my divorce. We used the CAT last year from Kolbe Academy, but looking at the Brewer Testing website for the ITBS made me realize that although I don't have my Bachelor's degree, my Mom has hers, so she could administer the tests for me (she wouldn't mind). I'll have to decide if that is what we want to do this year. And, then, there's the "what level do I test my just turned 7yo at" question (she'd be in 1st grade in ps, but she's doing at least 2nd grade work for everything. Tested her at 1st grade lvl last year). Decisions, decisions.....

I'm with Heather, with similar ages (9, 7, 3). They know what their good clothes are, and we also don't go many places so they can wear play clothes a lot (my budget works so much better when I don't leave the house ;)). ETA: I tried pairing up outfits for my 3yo, but she would just grab a shirt from one outfit and pants from another anyway. As long as her shirt covers her tummy and her pants (that aren't capris) cover her ankles and its all relatively unstained...we just flow with it (unless we aren't leaving the house, then I don't care).

LOL, my DS is Ethan Alexander :D I wanted to change it at the last minute to Ethan Gabriel (and my brothers calling him Ethan Allen proved that would have been a decent idea....), but his Dad was too attached to Ethan Alexander by then (we'd picked it out within a week of finding out we were expecting). Grace might be a good middle name for either of your girl names.

My optometrist growing up had the last name Ball and the middle initial I. (Dr. Stephen I. Ball). The head of the local ER is Dr. Slaughter and mistreated both my brother and father (nearly fatally for my bro, my Dad just wanted to die since it was gallbladder). One of my commanding officers when I was in the Navy was Richard Bump, but he went by the old-timey nickname (and boy, was it ever apt...). And, I know that there is a last name Bobo (like the clown) because I was lucky enough to be stationed on the MV 2nd Lt John P Bobo. "Hey, what ship are you on?" "Oh, I'm on the the, um, <cough, mumble> Bobo." Although, I had my own stateroom with my own bathroom, desk, minifridge, etc as an E-5, so it wasn't *so* bad to be on the Bobo :lol: My grandmother was Myrtle Jane, and my mother wanted to name me after her in some way. Jane really isn't a bad middle name. She was freqently called Myrtle the Turtle. Our last name is frequently mis-pronounced like Dunn, but is actually pronounced like Dune. So, I turned down XH's vote for Soren as a name, and he turned down Benjamin for me (sore and done, ben done; he actually has ancestors name Soren, apparently it's a good Danish name...). Lorna was also out. One of the older civilian guys at one of my commands (in the mil you are called my your last name) always called me Sandy Dune so he could say it right (note, my name is *not* Sandy). I'm sure I've got more, I just can't think of them now :D

I have a lot of trouble with my girls bdays because they are 4 years and 1 day apart. I end up correcting myself on a fairly regular basis when telling their bdays :tongue_smilie: I do remember how long I was pg with each, because they were kind enough to be 3 days early, 6 days early and 12 days early respectively. DS was born on a major holiday, so I don't forget his birthday and I remember the weights of the older 2 (7lb12oz and 8lb even), but I'm a little hazy on the 3rd (7lb3oz, I think...). I remember times for the most part, too. I was in labor with DS for 22 hours, 2+ hours of it was pushing. Around 6pm (~1.5 hours into pushing), I told the nurse that I was giving birth to him before her shift ended at 645pm. I made it by 1 minute ;) Older DD was born in England and I had a *very* fast labor. I woke up at 235am when my water broke and she was in my arms an hour and 45 mins later (we did make it to the hospital, but if I'd been willing to push in the car it could have been about an hour and a half). I thought it was funny, because it was a different day back home. Younger DD was born in the same hospital as DS, but she didn't show up until about half an hour after shift change (I had 2 male nurses with her labor, one was a trainee and he stayed for her birth because he hadn't been able to see many and he figured if I was that close, he might as well wait around :lol:). If you are modest, I don't recommend giving birth in a military hospital at shift change. If there were less than 10 non-family members in the room for either birth, I'd be shocked. I didn't particularly care, and by the time I was paying attention to something besides pushing most were gone anyway.

My long term plan is a little difficult to plot out because DS is the oldest, but I'm not sure he's much more than bright (and, he's lazy enough to counteract that...). We started HSing at the end of March of his 2nd grade year and he was going to be held back in public school 2nd grade had we stayed in VA. We started Singapore 1B then and he's on track now so that he *could* finish 4B in Feb next year, but we may slow things down to drill math facts, and throw in some LoF. At the same time he started HSing, I started his little sister in EB1A (she was PK age at the time because of her late fall bday). She completed the entire EB series in 3 weeks and started on PM 1A. She's slacked off, taken a few months breaks, etc and she's finishing up 2B in Feb as well. She pretty much does everything he does except that she is 2 grades behind him in math (and, she frequently does things better than he does, especially LA things, except that her manual dexterity still isn't great so she takes a long time to write things). I'm trying to do my long term plan now, not so much as a "do this in this grade" thing, but as a "complete this series of goals and move onto this". I'm fortunate in that I live fairly close to Indiana University, so I can enroll my kids in IUHS when they get into their jr year of high school academically and then take dual credit courses (online or in class, technical requirement is 20 high school credits to be able to do the dual credit courses). I'm also going to look into the OPEN program when we get a bit closer (although, I think DD may be ready for that in as little as 3 years, at age 10. Eep!). We do tend to go pretty broad in a lot of things, so that we aren't racing ahead *too* fast. It can be exhausting. And, of course, there's the newly 3yo sister, who learned her letter sounds in the 1st 3 days of the school year when I turned on Letter Factory for her to keep her quiet while we did school :tongue_smilie:

My weak point is follow-through. I make *great* plans. And then...those plans meet my DS :001_huh: And, now, his little sister is working on about the same level as him. I *have* FLL3, but it doesn't really seem to have connected with them and I have to provide test results as part of my divorce, so I'm concerned with making sure that they can do at least moderately well on the tests, sigh.

You. Are in my head. (well, except for the dh part ;) I just talk to myself instead) The worst part is...we just started something new 2 weeks ago (although, I think I can buy the whole 6 part MCT series *and* the whole LoF series for less than another year of Calvert would cost us...).

I took the test at one school in the fall and then went to another school in the spring, which I went on to graduate from. I didn't hear about from NMSQT people until I was at the spring school (not sure when while I was there, but I know it was while I was there) about my qualifying scores. Incidentally, I was a finalist but not a scholarship winner and I don't remember my exact score, but I went on to score a 1360 combined on the old SAT (1992) and a nice academic scholarship from my school of choice.

We don't know any public schoolers, but all my DS's friends are really into bionicles (up to age 13).

I've been working on reducing my grocery bill for a while. Menu planning is one key. I shop around the sales flyers (and, I do my grocery shopping when I can have my parents watch the kids or when they are with their Dad 90% of the time). I also spend a lot of time at http://www.livinglikenooneelse.com and glean lots of great info from the ladies there. I keep my grocery spending between $120-200 (including HBA, diapers, etc) for my family of 1 adult/3 kids by running a well stocked pantry and freezer and only buying what is on sale and then just a few things to round out our meals for the week. We don't skimp on food at all, we normally have a meal a week at my parents and we don't do fast food (which comes out of the grocery budget) unless it is really necessary (my 3yo had to go to the doctor for an ear infection and so we were away from home for a meal, that is the 1st time in a month the kids have had fast food). I agree with the potatoes and eggs ideas. We do breakfast for dinner at least once a week, lots of things like chili (we do chili with spaghetti noodles in it), spaghetti (we don't add meat), etc. It is pretty starch heavy, but none of us have real weight issues. Oh, and beans/rice are pretty rare here, DS has a sensitive tummy for beans, and beano doesn't really do enough.

Isreal. I'd love to go to England again and see all the places I didn't see before, or go to Ireland, but neither of those 2 in January :lol:

We actually made our change just before break (and aren't really taking a break, just Christmas day and New Years day off). I'm required to test the kids as part of my divorce and I didn't feel like I was getting enough done and DS especially wasn't connecting things together. Being able to HS is too important to me to leave it to "I think this will be good enough for the tests," so I ordered/started Calvert 4th for DS. DD just turned 7 last month, but she's been sitting in on all his lessons, and actually doing better than him at the spelling :001_huh: We will probably compress some lessons so we aren't going too far into the summer (we need to test by mid June anyway), but we are all really enjoying it. I'm not crafty *at all* and the kids are most excited about the fact that there is scheduled art :lol: I'm also having DD(3) sit at the table and play/read quietly while we do school, instead of running around destroying and distracting. Figure it will help her to sit quietly better at church, too.

It's hard for me to qualify it as an actual hardship, but my kids are only getting a small gift each from me (and, we're talking about $10 each). Of course, my parents gave me $100 to spend on each kid for gifts from them, so the kids aren't missing out at all (they do this every year, so not just because we're tight this year). And although I have a pretty tight budget, I'm amazed what a $30-35 per week grocery budget gets us (this is actually the everything discretionary but gas budget). God's provision has sustained us for the almost 19 months since I officially got out of the Navy, so I am well able to trust that He will continue to provide for us.

I'm about to invest in some plastic for the windows and probably after the holidays we'll get the thermostat looked at because I have it set to 70, and yet the bedroom is 60-64 degrees and my pantry area (where my desk/pc sits) is currently 58.4 (and, I've got sweats, 2 pairs of socks, slippers, a long sleeve shirt, sweater, blanket and hat on). My heat bill isn't too bad so far, though (only moved in here in June, so this is my 1st winter here, but I rent from my church so they know what the bills have been in the past). I hate to sleep in the cold, too.

I don't seek out people I don't know well/remember fondly (and I send relatively few friend requests), but I almost never turn down friend requests (except XH, which was just weird to get anyway...). But, as others have said, I don't post info I would mind having out in public. I even accepted my ex-MIL's request (although, I did have to think about that one for a while...and delete a single post that mentioned her before I did so). But, I've not got a huge friend list, either.

You mention that your DH doesn't make enough at work to support your family. Is it possible that YOU would make enough to support your family and your DH could keep them home? It wouldn't give you the satisfaction of being the one to do those things with your kids, but it could save them from public school. Also, if you still needed more income, he could be home with them during the day and then work weekends or some nights....Just helping brainstorm, as well as praying for you.

I'm VERY sorry that you are having to go through this. My situation is a bit different in that I have a portion of my income from VA disability, but I do rely on XH to pay support (which he has done continuously from initial our separation agreement in late 2006, through attempting reconciliation for 18+ months and kept our agreement almost in total with no input from a lawyer other than the court appointed mediator). In my case, he works for the federal government and I think garnishment would be fairly easy if he didn't pay, but it is something to consider. While he is gone, I'd say to definitely sit down and do a budget based on a child support calculator for your state. If you don't see enough there, then you will need to figure out what else to do. Since he's probably already done it, think of all your assets and liabilities and what you want to end up with. Definitely, get him to put his agreements in writing ASAP. Be as nice to him as you can, and definitely avoid saying anything bad about him in front of the kids. I'm able to be home full time (well, technically I'm currently unemployed, but jobs aren't happening in my area anyway and my budget works for me staying home after unemployment runs out) because I'm selling my minivan for a paid-for beater (14 year old station wagon with rust but with all wheel drive for my icky driveway) and I live in a low cost of living area and keep a tight budget. I got rid of everything we didn't need, don't run the air all the time, have a small garden, etc. Since you mentioned your pastor, I'd say definitely spend some time in prayer, asking for guidance. The Lord can do amazing things .

My best friend's son (10) lost feeling in his leg and arm and had a very bad headache. They took him to the ER, where the Doc order a CT scan. Based on that, they transferred him to another hospital for an MRI. What the doc didn't tell my best friend at the time was that they were prepping for surgery for him. She called her Mom (who was on vacation at the time) and her Mom let everyone know to pray. In the 2 hours between the CT and MRI, the aneurysm shown on the CT was completely healed. The doc actually told my best friend that she should thank God, because that was the only way he could have been healed.

My older 2 kids learned their alphabet from Leap Frog letter factory (although I think we have all the dvds now). Now, my little is watching them (we lost Letter Factory in a move, so I bought it again, if that is enough of an endorsement). Can't say enough good things about it. I give it as a gift for nearly every 2-5 year old I know.