100% Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant which is how I would describe myself.

I buy bin liners in the grocery store to line my kitchen bins. And I use plastic grocery bags or small plastic bags purchased from the grocery store to line the little bins around the house (bedrooms, bathrooms, schoolroom). I live in Europe and people here do use plastic liners in their kitchen bins. I've never noticed one way or the other about bathroom bins.

Okay, I give up. I'm just going to have to be avatar-less. I just wanted a photo of some wildflowers. I checked the avatar websites that I found from googling, but had no joy. Then I just did a google image search for wildflowers and found lots of pretty pictures, but none of them worked. I even opened an account with photobucket, downloaded one of the wildflower pictures, resized and cropped it so it was nice and small, and it still didn't work. I got 'invalid file name' on that one. AAAAARGH! I'm just not computer savy. :crying:

Hey! I'm planning on lentil soup for dinner tomorrow night. :001_smile: I just use the recipe out of the Betty Crocker cookbook.

Tonight was a yummy Mexican beef and macaroni skillet dinner. Quick and easy and everyone likes it!

Hmmm. It's not animated, but I'll look for another one. Thanks.

I found an image that I like at www.avatarist.com, but I can't figure out how to make it my avatar. I clicked on it, got a url, copied that, went to my user control panel, then to edit profile picture, copied the url into the space for option 1, but was given an 'invalid file' message. What am I doing wrong?

I need an avatar too. But I have no idea how to do it! Anyone care to educate me?

Okay, there's more. First of all, I had my date confused on my dr. appt. It's the week after his Ireland trip, not his SA trip. Dh let me in on their whole story. Apparently the reason they were putting off the wedding was because they wanted to own a house first. I guess in SA it's very important to own a home before getting married. Then everything started go a bit crazy for them. The woman owns a surf school and she rented a surfboard out to someone and didn't have them sign the usual waiver (I don't know if it was her who did this or one of her employees). The guy then had a stroke while he was surfing. She freaked out and was afraid that she was going to get sued. She was so freaked out that she had to go on tranquilizers. Then she realized that the bulemia had gotten out of hand and so she went into clinic for that. She's not scheduled to get out of the clinic until the Wednesday before dh leaves. So if he performed the ceremony on his second Saturday there, it would be 3 days after she gets out of clinic. So now I understand why they want him to stay an extra week to perform the ceremony, and the reason that they suddenly decided to go ahead and get married. After the stroke incident she realized that she needed to get her life together. Hence the checking herself into clinic. And she doesn't want to be living in sin any more. So learning of all this softens me to their plight a little. I'm not convinced, though, because if dh stays the extra week in SA, that gives him only 3 days in the country before he flies up to Scotland to do a conference up there. It's only a weekend conference and he may take the oldest 2 dc with him. I don't know. Dh isn't convinced that he should go either. We're both very torn now.

They haven't even invited anyone to the wedding yet, so it's not really a matter of 'moving the date up' so much as choosing an earlier date. The problem is that it will make it a super quick wedding - not much time to plan, but really is one week going to make that much of a difference? Their other consideration is that the woman is right now in a clinic being treated for bulemia (sp?). So they want to wait a week before they start planning anything to see how she's doing. I don't know, the whole thing sounds really crazy to me. Like some kind of soap opera or something.

Dh drives me crazy when he uses 'good' when he should use 'well'. I don't really notice it in other homeschooling parents. One thing that cracked me up recently was a sign on a B&B that is under new ownership and undergoing renovations. There's a big sign on the side of the building that says 'New Name of B&B, formally Caertref'. Formally!!!! I just want to sneek over in the middle of the night and paint an 'er' over the 'a'.

Dh will be going to South Africa to speak at a conference for 10 days at the end of this month. We've spent some time there in the past and a young man that dh knows has e-mailed him today to ask if he can extend his trip by a week to marry him and his fiance. Now dh spoke to this young man a year and a half ago about the fact that the two of them should get married and it took a while before they decided that they were willing to commit, but they became engaged about 8 or 9 months ago - one of those open-ended 'we don't have a date picked, but we want to get married eventually' sort of things. So now they've decided that they want it to happen as soon as possible and they want dh to perform the ceremony. I have mixed feelings. I know that both the young people sort of consider dh their 'spiritual father' so to speak. They don't feel especially close to the pastor of their church. But they have know for the past year that dh would be making this trip. They have know for the past 8-9 months that they wanted to get married. Could they not have planned this a little sooner so that the wedding could happen during his already scheduled trip. The conference is Monday-Friday, so dh will be there for two weekends with no commitments. It could happen either of those weekends. I have 4dc at home with no real help (no parents nearby, etc). It's a strain having dh away for 10 days, I don't really want it to be 17 days. Also, the Tuesday after dh's scheduled return (7 days after his flight) I have an appointment at the hospital to get a lump in by breast checked. I'm not sure if dh extended the trip, if he would be back in time for the appt. It could be rescheduled, but I don't really want to reschedule it. It's hard enough living with it, wondering what the outcome will be, I don't want to put it off even longer. So am I being really selfish in not really wanting dh to extend the trip? What would you do?

I think if you're financially able, and it sounds as if you are, it would be wonderful of you to buy her the tires. I agree that she needs to learn responsibility, but it's not as if she's been taking advantage of you or another family member. This will be a first time gift (from the sound of it) with no strings for further involvement from you. I do agree, however, that you should go with her to buy the tires, not just give her the money for them.

I've never heard of cleaner just combusting. Weird. :confused:

Yikes! I'm not going to complain about mice any more.

We've set a trap for mom mouse. We don't want to let these little guys live free in our house. The kids wanted to get a cage and make these our pets. The more I think of it, the more I think that it's not a good idea. We're not allowed to have inside pets, so these would have to be in a cage out the the coal shed, not really a pleasant prospect as winter approaches. Thanks for your input. I think dh is going to have to make these guys disappear when the dc aren't looking.

I found mouse droppings on my towels this morning and asked dh to take care of getting all the towels shaken out and put in the washing machine. Dh discovered baby mice in the folds of the towels! These have got to be very young - no hair, not able to stand up (just sort of wrigling and squirming), can't open their eyes yet. So dh & my first thought is, "Toss them over the back hedge and let nature take it's course. Well, our dc are now desperate to try to keep them as pets. I don't think they have any chance of living without mom. Should we dump them before the dc bond with them too much or try to keep them alive? And if we should keep them, what do we do? Put some drops of milk into the plastic container they're in? As you can tell, I'm not much of an animal person. I can't believe that I'm even considering this!

((((Tanya)))) No real words of wisdom. I haven't experienced that sort of loss, so I don't pretend to know what you're going through. When I do go through difficult times, though, praying helps. A good Bible study is always a really good thing. I love the material by Precept Ministries. Kay Arthur's book As Silver Refined is a wonderful look at how God uses trials in our lives. Is there anyone at your church you could talk to? Maybe a grief support group? Our old church had a program called GriefShare. You may be able to google it and get ahold of the materials - videos and Bible study workbooks. Sorry I can't be more help. I'll be praying for you.

((((Mom to Aly)))) I'm so sorry that you had to go through all that. What a horrible experience for you and your dd. I haven't read all the responses, so I don't know if this has been suggested, but if I were you, I would ask the police to be present when they come to pick up Dy's stuff. I don't think that it matters that you told the parents not to come. They don't seem to have had much respect for your wishes in the past, so I can't imagine them respecting this one. And, while you can call the police once they arrive, there is, of course lage time for them to get there. I'm not saying that the dad would get violent in a few minutes, but he might make it very unpleasant again. I'm sure you don't want to repeat the restaurant scene. In addition, the police would act as witnesses that Dy has gotten all her stuff, so that she and her parents couldn't make accusations later, something that I wouldn't put past them. Call your local police department, ask if an officer can be there at x time and then let Dy know that she must come at that time. Hope it all goes well tomorrow. Megan

We're in a similar situation. I have a 1st grader and a pre-K. I don't want to start the history cycle until they are 3rd & 1st, so I'm filling time with my oldest. I elected to do world cultures this year and American history next. I looked at WP, but had the same conclusion as the other posters. I've decided to put together my own thing using A Trip Around the World and Another Trip Around the World for craft, cooking ideas, as well as maps and flags. I supplement with Children Just Like Me, How People Live, and Children from Australia to Zimbabwe. And we're reading folk tales from the various countries we study with The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book, Children's Book of Virtues, and Stories From Around the World, as well as some miscellaneous picture books that we had at home. For science we're using the One Small Square books and studying a book after a related country (ie Arctic Tundra after we study Russia, etc). So we're doing 2-4 weeks geography and then a week of science. So far it's working really well.

Are you crazy? I've lived here in England for 8 years, and I won't say that I miss the Florida heat and humidity (I lived there for 10yrs before moving here), but this English weather is so crazy! We're finally getting some sort of summery weather and it's September. We had a few nice weeks in June, but other than that the summer was a complete wash-out, literally. It was rainy most days and cloudy the days that it wasn't raining. And it barely broke 70 degrees. Instead of getting 10 months of sweltering heat and 2 months of not-so-sweltering heat, we get 12 months of cloudy, rainy, windy, sea-stormy weather with an occasional couple of days of sun scattered. I'd rather have four normal seasons, like I did in New York where I grew up - summer, autumn, winter, and spring, all when they were supposed to occur according to the standard pre-school curriculum. Sorry, rant over. It's been a baaaaad year.

Have weather patterns changed that much? I went to college in Williamsburg and I remember very hot summers, but there were a couple of months of fall, a couple of months of winter (with snow and all), and a couple of months of spring? Or is Hampton Roads just further from Williamsburg than I remember?

Congratulations!!!!! Great story. And your dd was able to see her new baby sister, too. Yea!!

So sad. Ds came told me the news while we had some guests here. The teenage visitor had no idea who he was. I couldn't believe it. He's a legend! How can she not know him?

Can you borrow the TG from anyone, just to familiarize yourself with where she's coming from. You really only need to read through it once, take a few notes, and that's it. I don't continue to refer to it daily.