I'm glad to hear she is not letting it worry her. But it is a sad situation. Enjoy your trip.

Is it possible to buy the phone elsewhere and have them activate it? Sometimes buying directly from AT&T may cost you more. Did you ask if they have new "promotions"? Meaning do they have any new cellphone plans that take some $$ of the phone. You may need to change your phone plan but that may work out to your advance if they have a special going on.

Since we homeschool year round I take days off, sometimes weeks off. We just had a family reunion last weekend and went out of town. I decided to let them have the rest of the week off also. So today we are starting back up. I find sometimes when they are not getting a lesson down to just stop. Take a day or so off. When we start back up they are more energized and work better. Don't feel guilty.

I think the underminding part is the adult daughter telling her siblings "Not to tell their mother". What other things would she tell the children "unrelated to schooling" and say "don't tell your mother". The OP obviously has a good relationship with younger daughter as the daughter told her what was said anyway.

Wow, Ok I'm in frederickburg so that is very close had it been a gunman. lol Stories being blow out of porportion makes me remember an exercise our teacher had us do when I was young in school. She whispered something in the first child's ear and then she told them to tell the next person. The next person then had to tell the next first and so on entil it got to the last child. When the last child told what she heard it was completely changed from what the teacher had said. Over the years I am reminded of this when I hear people tell me things that they heard or that someone told them. lol

I really need to plan ahead for meals. But since I am not that type of person at this time I sometimes use a "nuwave oven" to cook my meats because it does it much quicker than cooking it in a traditional oven. I just sent the timer for 1/2 the cook time. Come back when the timer goes off. Turn the meat over and set it to finish cooking. 15 minutes before the meat is done I put on my veggies and cook them. Last night I cooked a whole chicken in it. 1 hour on each side and it was done. Although it took 2 hours to cook the chicken I didn't have to stand over the stove. I was able to surf the net, watch tv, etc. My prep time therefore was only about 30 to 1 hour (for the veggies and turning over the meat). It's the best investment I have made. But now if I can only remember to take out the meat the day before so it can defrost as I don't like the taste as much if I put it in the oven frozen. Beside I want to wash my meats off before I cook them. I also bought a nice steamer off HSN. I was surprised how good steam chicken and red potatoes taste. Hubby needs to watch his cholestrol so I started getting things like the new wave oven and the steam so I could cook things fast and without oils.

I saw something in a doggy catalog where you have a hole in the ground and rake the stuff down there. Then there was a chemical you put down there every so often. I don't remember the catalog but I thought it was an interesting idea.

From my experience growing up I had no clue what I wanted to do after I got out of high school. I just signed up for college because that was what everyone was doing. I changed my major so much that they finally had to say no. As I went past a computer class I said "that looks boring I don't know why anyone would want to do that". They were using punch cards, etc. I had one database class and I just suffered through it. Fastfoward years later and I worked in the computer field, majored in information system in college, etc. The same person that thought computers were boring. If I had taken the time to really figure out want I wanted to do I would have saved so much time, money, etc. I therefore told my daughter the following because I saw her going down the same path in high school; Take courses in high school that teach a skill such as "typing, computers, etc.". Then apply for a job when you get out of school. Normally that job will have "tuition reimbursement" so you can go to school while working for them and they will pay a portion of your tuition. This will also give you time to figure out what you want to do but at the same time you are getting "job experience". My daughter listened and she recently earned her AA while working and her job helped pay the tuition. She still has a loan to pay but not as much had it been her paying it alone.

Yes times have changed drastically. I hated sending my kids off to PS. My heart breaks for those kids that have to go and endure bullying, unruly classmates, etc. daily. I heard on the news last year a little boy got so tired of being bullied he committed suicide. It brought tears to my eyes. The school administration knew it was going on and did nothing. If you don't want your child to be bullied people with the "kids should go to public school mentality say" you are "not allowing" your child to deal with real life. I don't know about others but in my adult life I've never dealt with bulling so how is it real life? At least fall will be here soon and you will not have to send yours there anymore.

I went to my 10th and 30th. No one changed much at the 10th one. But the 30th one was wild. I hardly recognized a lot of people. The funny part was listening to people say... "I don't have my glasses on right now so I can't see that too clearly" when people were exchanging pictures, notes, etc. By the end of the night I heard that several times. So I realized everyone was walking around "blind" knowing they wear glasses so that they could look "cute" I guess. lol

A fellow homeschooler told me about this forum. I had heard of the "WTM" way of teaching homeschooling but I wasn't aware there was a forum by the same name.

I was born in NY but came to live in VA as a young child. When I left NY I was old enough to remember things about NY. However since all my history, experiences, etc. were mainly in Virginia I consider myself from Virginia. If someone asked me where I was from I instantly say "Virginia". I never even think about NY as I wasn't raised there.

I usually search amazon first, then ebay. While I haven't bought from overstock.com you may want to try there also. Have you tried visiting "local" used bookstores? You can find out when the local libraries are having "book sales" buy some books there.

My twins are quite opposite. I have one that loves to learn new things and the other hates learning. She doesn't want to read, she doesn't want to do phonics such as sounding out words, etc. I have stopped reading to her and insist she reads/try to sound it out herself. She can do it she's just lazy about it. But put winning a prize or a special treat as an incentive and she'll go overboard to try to do it. I have the claw arcade game I let them play periodically where they put in coins and then they can use the machine to try to win a prize. They love it and it makes them want to work to earn the coins to play the game. I also got a suggestion from my Aunt to take a box, put a special prize inside and say "whoever does/gets ...... this week wins what's in the box". Boy did they work hard then. I actually "gave them both" what was in the box because they both worked really hard. I didn't keep up with box incentive but it worked. A while back when they were in Pre-K I tried awarding stickers for them doing chores and going to bed on time. I saw they were excited coming home from school with stickers. I told hubby I have such a hard time getting them to go to bed and remembering to keep their rooms clean that I was going to try to award stickers for those things. After a certain amount their prize would be to go to Chuckie Cheeze. I was surprised the stickers worked. Boy, they actually worked "too good" the twins were asking to go to bed earlier than normal and both of their rooms were spotless. lol That was back in Pre-K, I don't think stickers would work now because I print custom stickers in my business and they get the excess so they are used to them now. But for others it may be an incentive that work. Of course whatever you do it has to be "age appropriate". I remember when I got my coursework from Calvert when they were in kindergarten in their literature it said to offer your kids incentives to learn. I was thinking at the time why should I pay them to learn they should want to because it's going to help them in life. My thinking was wrong. They do need incentives. It's true incentives do work you just have to find what interest your child. Even on a job employers sometimes offer incentives to get their employees motivated.

lol I never thought about it in reverse. You know these days I can't stand the heat either. I think if it stays spring all year round I would be happy. Actually here in VA we got the worst snow that I can remember this past year. It meant overtime for hubby so I did all the shoveling around our house. Twins loved it but I say it was no fun. If I had my way it would be "no snow" for me.:001_huh: