1. I just turned 40, and I am *all about* my 40s. Looking forward to an amazing decade! 2. I have lived in 36 houses, and am contemplating another move. Staying in one place feels stifling, and I love to travel. We've been in our current house almost 10 years, and like another poster - I have rearranged the furniture a lot! 3. DH and I met after a Depeche Mode concert when I was in high school. (Including that for Mrs. MacGyver :) ) 4. DH is my first intense, crazy, head over heels love. But it took us many, many years to be ready to get married. 12 years now, and loving every minute of it. 5. I wanted to be Indiana Jones, and pursued my dreams accordingly. 6. In my 20s, I collected mountain ranges. I think I spent more time back country trekking and sleeping in tents than I did in houses. Fortunately for my Indiana Jones dreams, it went with the territory. 7. By the time I hit my 30s, I was ready to release the Indiana Jones dream, get married, and settle down a bit. 8. I have recently, within the last few years, fully recovered from a life altering illness that almost destroyed my life before it was diagnosed. I am grateful every day for the little things that I could not do before getting well. It even makes me appreciate being able to do [gasp!] laundry! 9. I deeply detest ticks as a result of that illness. 10. I always wanted to adopt kids, if I had any. And DH and I did. :)

Checking in to say that our copy of Apples arrived yesterday, and my 7 year old devoured the first 6 chapters. We read together, and only stopped for dinner. Love it!

Just ordered a ton of goodies, and can't wait to receive them! Then I read further on this thread, and found the coupon code - oops! Oh well, great price anyway! I'd love to find the cute counters, too, but maybe those are gone already? Still, found some great goodies. Now, someone stop me from further shopping, please? :D

Another one: We had guests recently, and my son wanted to show off his cartwheels (what can I say? He's a ham.) The guest said, "But he's homeschooled. How does he know how to do that? It's so normal!" :glare:

Kung Fu, I was thinking along the same lines... I will ask him if he's spoken to these people. It may well be that they don't care if their clearance lapses, as long as it's a job. They're looking into posting on the career centers of various colleges now, too, so that should help. Thanks for all the brainstorming help!

I declined to be in the bridal party, and to attend, the wedding of a friend in an abusive relationship. I could not support their choice to marry, after all the days and nights she had spent crying on my shoulder. I did tell her the reason, although it was hard to do, and hard for her to hear.

"I couldn't stand to be around my kids all day" ... Makes me want to say, "I couldn't stand to be around your kids all day either!"

Thanks. I'm going to suggest that they post through Linked In and the Washington Post. Both make sense to me, and the current postings are not productive. Seems like they're not reaching the right people. Scarlett, I find it somewhat comforting that there's another person out there who can't find someone to hire, albeit in a different field. Thanks for sharing that story!

I met my DH when I was in HS. I loved him then. It *was* intense. It broke my heart when we split up so I could go to college. It was truly physically painful. It took us 10 years to re-find each other, and he was always my gold standard. Married 12 years now. :) But, yes, I think maybe they are using love interchangeably with infatuated. :)

We hadn't thought of FB. We are probably the last FB hold outs. But DH is on Linked In, and maybe that's a route he should explore. Thanks! I keep thinking he could contact universities somehow and list the job? Grrrr, I just want him to find someone so it takes the stress off of him - and therefore us. I am simply shocked that it has taken so long in this economy, but maybe the job market is not so bad in our area. It's bizarre.

And - yes. Just pm me. I'm not DH, and I don't know all of his details on the particulars, but I know enough to help you figure out if it might be a match. And I can ask DH to a link for the job posting so you can see it.

You know, I thought of that! I'm new enough here that I don't know what most people's DHs do. DH needs someone in the DC area, no clearance necessary (which is why so many people are over-qualified, DH's co is not going to pay annually to maintain an employee's unnecessary clearance). That someone would need to be able to work at home, sometimes in DC at client's, without a ton of micro-management. And occasional travel. They'd need to do computer things. It is a great company, with wonderful benefits. :)

So sad. This amoeba is sometimes found in hot springs as well.

At a loss here. DH has been posting a job offering, with very little luck. He's posted on Monster and Dice (I could have the spelling wrong on that last one). So far - he has only one lead for what we thought was a great job opportunity, probably for someone younger, just out of school, and ready to get started. Or even for someone with a small family, depending on their needs. Most responders are either terribly over-qualified or, well, there is only one other responder. Which means DH has only one choice. If you have recent experience or stories of experiences about job-hunting - where did you (or anyone else) look for postings? 2 - 3 years ago, DH used craigslist, but the respondents were less than desirable. Any ideas? (I know this is very off the subject of home schooling, but since DH is covering for this position while we hunt for someone, it's having a huge impact on our family!)

Thank for the review! We are awaiting our copy of Apples... It's on the way! :D

Tucking that one in my bag of responses! Good one!

I would be interested in this, too. I'm never sure where to post about DS, so, generally - I don't. I just read, and wonder, and try to find answers.

3. But they won't be properly socialized!

This year we're making a little book with all of his "stats" as part of the first quarter of school. All the usual stats, plus some extras like how many pancakes he can eat at once (that's our first day of school breakfast), his height in drinking straws, just little silly things. I'll put them all into a little notebook for him to keep. On the first day that the kids here go back to school, we do a few silly fun things - picnics, day at the museum, play dates. Our not-back-to-school celebration. :) I take lots of pics, too. Oh, and we do give him a school cone filled with school supplies and fun little goodies. These are traditionally only for the K year, but we somehow slipped into the habit of doing a cone each year. I get way too excited about school supplies!

I think there are a few threads about Scholaric on the general board. Or maybe they are on this board? Eek, I don't remember! But what I gathered from those threads is that there is more to Scholaric than I use, so my input here is limited because I don't use all the features. Apparently, the developer is fairly open to suggestions, too, so if there's a feature you'd like, asking about it might be worthwhile. I love that it's online, and so I can pull it up from any computer. Haven't tried, but I imagine that I can use my iPhone too, or our iPad. Haven't needed to that yet, but will soon! I love that it looks like a real, paper planner. It's easy to see a week, and see what we have planned. Skedtrack wasn't as easy for me, in that respect. It's very easy to bump the schedule forward or make changes to our plans. My kiddo likes that I can print out a checklist for each day, and he just checks off items as he's finished. :) Oh, and if you need to count school hours for reporting purposes, Scholaric adds the total hours for you. Signing up for the free trial, for me, felt strange as I didn't know much about the site, and the website wasn't very informative. But... I am so happy that I did it! (Wow, I sound like a salesperson for Scholaric, and I promise I'm not. I don't have a clue who developed it. Just happy to have found something that works with my Mac and with my brain.)

What would I do? ...Give them a box of thank you notes, as their next gift? :tongue_smilie: Yes, I think it's reasonable to hope for a call or a thank you note, if you send the gift. I think it's clear you can't expect one though, unfortunately. Maybe when you see them, if it's not too awkward you could ask them in person if they liked the gifts? Maybe that will give them the opening to say thank you. This isn't confined to boys. I have 3 adult nieces who have never sent thank you notes, and never mention having received gifts at all. I put a lot of thought into their gifts, and so spent years feeling hurt about this. I don't need a card, but just to know that they received the gifts would be nice. Last year, I did not send them Christmas gifts at all (total disclosure - I was also trying to cut down our gift list a bit). But, you know, *not* giving the gifts hurt me probably more than it did my nieces. And this year, I am planning gifts for them again, with the expectation that I'll never hear a word about the packages we send.

Thanks! This is good to know. I'm happy to hear that the "save for later" items work - yay!

I have only seen small price drops, but I've only just learned this trick! Sounds like it's worth watching. Quick question: does Amazon note if there are changes to prices of items that you have marked "save for later" or only items in the actual cart? I am always afraid that I (or DH) will be in a hurry and accidentally purchase everything in our cart, if I leave a lot in there. Oops. And, they don't note changes on the price of items in one's wish list, do they? Or have I missed that? Thanks!

Won't your pediatrician Rx this for your kiddo? Maybe just at your kiddo's annual well child visit? Or mention it at any sick visit, if you don't do well child visits? Once we had our initial inhaler from the ER, our pediatrician was happy to handle refills. Our allergist does as well, but that's the person handling our kiddo's allergy-induced asthma, so that makes sense on our end. If your daughter's asthma is so intermittent, then maybe your pediatrician could just write a refill every so often, just to keep the inhalers up to date. [sigh] It does get old lugging around inhalers, doesn't it?

Welcome to the world of Mac! I love my Macbook Pro! ...We are such Mac Geeks... We even have apple stickers instead of those little family stickers on our car... 2 big apples, 2 little apples. :) I'm going to check out Planbook, too, although I'm happy with my recent planning find. I've just started using Scholaric - which is online, and has worked out well for 3 weeks. It's not free, but at $1 per month, it's close. I really like it, so it will be a tough one to beat. Enjoy your Mac, and congrats!