Do you mean we cultivated community among homeschoolers near us that continue to be our community when we're done homeschooling? No. I only have 1 in person friend from my homeschooling community that fly back and see when I visit family or we make plans to see each other when she's within a state or two of me on this side of the country, which has happened twice in the 4 years since I moved. Once in VA and once in SC. Otherwise I see here once or twice a year when I fly back to AZ to see relatives. Most have moved on to new locations or to other social circles more relevant to their current lives. Quite a few went back into the workforce limiting their time to the most immediately relevant relationships: family, co-workers, places of worship if they attend regularly, hobbies, etc. Do you mean we learned community cultivating skills as homeschoolers that transfer to building community outside of the homeschool community for the rest of our lives? Not necessarily. While that's true of me and other homeschoolers I know, plenty of homeschoolers aren't particularly interested in building community of themselves after the kids are launched for various reasons. That's assuming they built community during the homeschooling years, which isn't always the case. Plenty of people in my life who never homeschooled have built community for themselves through different stages of life.

Mom (born '45) only surviving child, older sis died in infancy her parents (born '22) had 9 and 6 siblings has 2 bio kids who have 2 &3 kids each, 3 step-kids with 0, 2, & 4 kids each Dad (born '43) 6 surviving siblings who had 0-4 known children, he didn't maintain much contact with them in adulthood parents born in late 19teens and early 1920s has 2 kids who have 2 & 3 kids each, 3 former step-kids with 1, 2, & 4 known kids each Me (born '73) 1 bio sibling 3 current step-siblings 3 former step-siblings has 3 kids: 2 bio & 1 adopted immigrant My 2 married adult bio kids have no plans for children due to serious inheritable medical issues. Oldest has bipolar diagnosis, a nervous system disorder, and has severe emotional reactions to hormonal changes while her husband, raised by addicts has 3 generations of bipolar and his own mental health issues (not bipolar) going on. They are seeking sterilization at 26 years old. They're considering foster care for teens in the far off future if their treatments result in long term stabilization. Middle adult daughter is married to someone with a severe genetic issue that caused neurological issues in his estranged bio-dad that resulted in several years of paralysis. The spouse showed symptoms (not paralysis) during engagement, which is unusual; it usually shows up in late 30s at the earliest. Since middle daughter was never interest in having kids (not the maternal type) she was only interested in dating people not interested in kids. Spouse wasn't interested in kids before diagnosis anyway, so diagnosis was a non-issue in the kid deprtment. Youngest is 17, so who knows what she'll want in the future. She's said in the past she's interested in having a child in the future. I'm an adoptive parent with no hang ups about not passing on DNA. If we need to grow our population through immigration, that's perfectly fine with me. We are a nation of immigrants after all. Nothing new about that. I know I say it a lot here, but I'm inclined to avoid preventative care after youngest is an adult because I don't want to increase the odds of the end of my life being the long, slow, dwindle. I'd rather live an active life and then die quickly of something catastrophic (massive stroke, heart attack, advanced untreated cancer) at a younger age-like in my 60s. I have helped care for 2 generations of elderly who had access to high quality healthcare and eldercare and it's not anything I want for myself. I'm still trying to decide at what age I'll decline preventive treatments (cancer screens, blood pressure meds, heart assessments, etc.) I still plan to live a healthy diet, physically active lifestyle, robust social life, and such but I'd rather focus on living and dying more naturally instead that in between state of avoiding death with constant preventive treatments while I watch tv for a decade and have people change my diaper. If others want preventive care for themselves, they should get it. I think about and accept all the possibilities of my own care should I need it in the future: in home family care, in home hired care, in family member's home care, assisted living, nursing home. It will be whatever makes the most sense for everyone involved (me, spouse, adult kids, possible adult grandkids) at the time. It's ludicrous to think I can demand one particular form of care in the future. Who knows what finances, lifestyles of adult children, cost of living, cost of care, access to caregivers, and medical issues will factor in then?

It's tie for me: swings and shade trees. I grew up in PHX, so I really appreciate shade trees on playgrounds.

This is personality and generation specific, not generally true. Many think paper invites are just wasteful and bad for the environment for no good reason: the tree cut down,the water wasted on making/coloring the paper, the land contaminated with water run off, the fumes released into the ozone during processing and transport, etc. instead of just sending a digital evite.

The majority of older people in our lives (my kids' older Baby Boomer/young Silent Gen grandparents and their siblings) are not on any social media and only about 50% of them have smart phones, so it's been paper invites with numbers to call to RSVP for them. Everyone else younger than that is fine with evites and responding with texts. Many Millennials and younger are not on FB, so I wouldn't use that for invitations. Society is now at a transition point between the old world and the new, so it's been necessary to do a variety of types of invitations for the last 10 years. I imagine 10 years from now it will be the norm to only do digital invitations. I think the end of the RSVP age is already upon us. I no longer expect anyone to RSVP even though I include contact info to do it-I plan things so that I'm able to save whatever wasn't used due to people not showing up. I'm a cold hard realist, so I'm not wasting my time lamenting the fact that so many people don't reliably respond. They don't; I'm over it. I do a lot of bulk cooking and freezing anyway. I also won't go killing myself planning a shin dig that requires a lot of cooking or catering with people I'm not certain will reliably give me RSVP feedback. No point it setting myself up for a hassle. I've hosted neighborhood events where it was just people showing up and I bought premade 2 liter containers of lemonade, water, and store bought cookies. I only open the packages according to how many people actually show up. Easy peasy. Another option is cake or cupcakes and drinks. Not everything needs to be a meal. If people don't show, baked cake goods can usually be stored in the freezer and in the future thawed on the counter without losing their texture or flavor-not ones with very wet insides like rum cake, but most sponge cakes will be fine.

We do that group camping. Each unit provides one meal for everyone, usually dinner, but sometimes there are enough units to cover lunches too. That helps everyone cut down on meal planning, prepping, and cooking.

I ate cupcakes after dinner tonight that I pulled out of the freezer right after lunch today. They were regular muffin sized. They were exactly the same texture as when we ate them fresh for husband's birthday last week. You can do an experiment with cupcakes you make at your leisure and then let them thaw at room temperature for different amounts of time and see how you like them. If it works, it can make the next get together easier for you.

It sounds like maybe you're finding ways to avoid the party prep? I only let myself work on my list and I keep it physically near me in a plastic page protector with a wet erase marker on hand to mark the items off as soon as I complete them. I like the feeling of momentum building as each item gets marked off, making the list shorter and shorter each step of the way. I like to be relaxed before people arrive, so that's the high I'm chasing. The only way that happens if everything's done in advance. Glad it worked out. Yeah, our get togethers in various social circles have been less attended due to Covid too lately.

I go that way too. Corn, beans, and squash are The Three Sisters of SW cuisine, so throw in some pinto beans, corn kernels, and whatever Mexicanish type spices you like and wrap it in tortillas with or without cheese or top a bowl of rice with it. You can go with fajitas too by adding fajita spices with chicken or beef.

My adult children and their spouses have dinner with us (me, husband, teen) for a total of 7 people every 7-10ish days, alternating between houses, so I do this all the time. Sometimes I cook and sometimes I purchase. I'd make and freeze big batches Italian meatballs and homemade marinara sauce (I do this regularly) and serve it with a huge green salad and crusty bread one night. (I only serve 1 carb, so either pasta or crusty bread, and I can buy very tasty crusty bread already made at my local grocery store.) I'd take a break the next night and have precooked spiral ham, some sliced salami, varieties of crackers, varieties of cheeses, olives, and easy fruits like grapes and/or a pineapple (I have a corer/slicer) for charcuterie type foods I can just buy already prepared. Then the last night I'd probably have grilled hot dogs or burgers.

I bake, cool, frost and freeze cupcakes a week before. They just need to be set out the morning of or the night before to thaw slowly and get back up to room temperature. It's a huge time saver and they taste just as good thawed as made that day or the day before. When it comes to kid birthday parties, if I'm serving ice cream along with cupcakes, I set cupcake papers out on a cookie sheet, scoop ice cream into them and cover them in plastic wrap and put them back int eh freezer the day before. The day of the party I can easily hand them out with cupcakes quickly and easily.

There's a reason event planning and catering are paid professions-they're full time jobs. I have a couple of decades experience hosting for my side of the family/friends, which typically means 30 people if everyone doesn't attend to 40 people if everyone attends. I'm a cold hard realist, so I don't even bother to try to get something done on just the day and the day before. That's not enough time for me- I need at least a couple of weeks. When I host big events like graduation parties (I've done 3 so far) and Independence Day it's like this: 10-14 before: create master list of every.single. chore and task to be completed, assign between different family members, discuss and adjust if needed, give each family member their own copy that includes what day and time they will do those chores/tasks and talk through it. Then put the lists in a safe place to be used the day(s) the chores are being done. 5-7 days before: trimming, weeding, mowing; haircuts, special clothing selected and laundered (that way if there's a problem with clothing there's time to shop for new clothing), 3-4 days before: shopping, food prep, house cleaned 1-3 days before: cooking everything that can be reheated, linens laundered, tables and chairs set up, table settings placed (assuming there are no pets that could jump up on tables), hang up decorations, arranging fresh cut flowers day of-cooking/assembling anything that can't be done beforehand (usually avoided by careful selection of food items), getting myself dressed, handling any unforseen problems, inflate balloons if using, tidy kitchen, icing drinks, canopy set up, deal with food related stuff after event with my crew assigned to those tasks day after-finish cleaning kitchen and breaking down event set up For me, really big holidays like Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving require a month of planning, prepping, and executing if it's more than 12 people.

It's a HUGE mistake to leave information off the invitation and have it only at the website. Many people won't bother going to the website if they got an invitation. Invitations should always include every.single.thing. a guest should know about everything related to the wedding: time, location, meal or not, gift registry, venue specific note (like needing to avoid heels due to outdoor terrain, etc.) Guests are not as enamored with weddings (Sorry, brides, most people don't really care that much) enough to sink extra time into checking more than one source for info. Basically, if they have to reference a second source for anything they needed to know, the person writing the invitation and the bride failed at something. Row by row dismissal is very common in my world. The bride should have been strongly discouraged from greeting every guest as people leave. It's obnoxious to demand guests wait in what will become a line for that-she should plan to move herself from table to table during the reception and greet every guest while they're free to sit, walk, chat, eat, drink, dance, etc. She make care about interacting with each person, but most people I know hate reception lines and most don't want a personal token interaction with the bride. Kill.me.now. I have always been able to sneak around them because they're just bad ideas and it's disrespectful to guests to force it.

Most attended: Valentine's Day Tea and Exchange (where it stated on the invitation it was impossible to over dress for it: flower girl dresses, princess costumes, dress up clothes, etc.) NOTE*** Be extremely careful who you invite to this. We had people who received handmade Valentines with treats give them back to the people who made them because they don't eat sugar. Uh, if you don't eat much or any sugar, or if your diet doesn't allow whatever someone makes for you to be eaten, don't attend a Valentine's Day exchange or keep your mouth shut and take it home and throw it away without the giver knowing about it.*** Moms and kids stayed. Most enthusiastic feedback from Moms: Homeschool Mom's Shopping Day in November. Kids were invited to my house for the day (all potty trained and no one who regularly napped) and told to bring their lunch with them so Moms could get Christmas shopping done kidless. We had unstructured play outside and inside, a make and take ornament craft set up indoors, and walked as a group around the corner to the neighborhood park for lunch and a couple of hours of park time. Moms dropped off kids from 10am -6pm.

He asked for the original recipe card, framed it, and put it on his wall when Grandparents went into care about 12 year ago. Grandmother had the recipe memorized and squirreled it away in one of her recipe boxes-it took us over an hour to flip through them and find it. She always adoringly mentioned I doodled on the card with a pen when I was a toddler. No one loves toddler doodles like a grandmother. So when he had it printed onto the sea glass as a housewarming gift after I moved across the country 4 years ago, the doodles, scotch tape that had yellowed, and liquid spots it had accumulated over the years were visible on the plaque.

-quality time together doing a shared interest, discussing a topic of shared interest, working on a shared passion project, brainstorming a project together -being physically near doing mundane tasks (usually in comfortable silence or collaborative brainstorming/troubleshooting) -not adding unnecessary work/frustrations to my life -considering/asking my preferences (because I consider/ask about other family members' preferences all.the.time) -only doing acts of service I specified I want done and doing in a way that's actually helpful -asking and never assuming (people rarely get it right when they make assumptions about me) -being treated like a peer with respect Things others like that I don't: Most non-consumable gifts that I didn't specify I wanted (I'm a minimalist) with the exception of highly sentimentalized/personalized gifts like my brother gives me: pen he carved out of a dead tree from our favorite campground, our grandmother's (who helped raise us) holiday jello salad recipe he had printed on a sea glass colored plaque, and a Scandinavian dragon's head he custom made for my kayak because we did that together for years. A close friend gave me a a lovely gift of a gargoyle figurine to "keep away my demons" in classical architecture style in reference to some confidant type conversations we've had. But if it doesn't rise to that level of sentimental and personalized, I'll probably just donate it, so save your money and energy. And no, if it's not a Lowe's Home Improvement or Amazon gift card, it's probably of almost no use to me, so it's work to use it or get rid of it. It's not a gift, it's an errand. Touching if you're not my spouse or kid is not something I want people to do. I can give and tolerate a quick hug for the sake of a relationship and convention, but it's not a way I want others to shoe me love.

She might be addicted to anger. Addiction isn't rational. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-shrink/201508/angers-allure-are-you-addicted-anger

NC-Raleigh Firefly season is early June to early July.

Yes, it's rude and would bother me. Not everyone can process conflicting noise-humanity isn't actually designed for that kind of thing, it's the curse of the modern world. Can some people do it? Sure, but that doesn't mean everyone should be subjected to it. And yes, I would say something very directly while making unbroken eye contact. "Why are listening to that without your ear pods when we already discussed why it's a problem?" And then I'd wait for an answer while looking expectantly at them. That way that have to say out loud what's going on with their thought process even if it's, "Oh. I didn't even think about it." And I'd follow up with a very matter of fact, "When you're around others you have to think about how your actions affect them. "

If it were me, I'd remind daughter (because she already talked to me about it) that she can't have her way in every particular. (Thank you, Rooster Cogburn for that insight in True Grit.) She wanted brother to respond and connect with her and he has responded in a reasonable way. If she continues to reject people making a genuine effort to connect with her, they'll see that her words may say one thing (let's connect) but her actions will say the opposite (I don't really want to connect you.) And we all know that actions speak louder than words. So the questions are, what does she really want and do her actions align with what she really wants? If they don't, it's time to adjust accordingly. Life is very lonely for people who reject attempts at connection from others just because it wasn't done exactly to their specifications. She doesn't get to dictate the details. To son I would say that if he has made a genuine, reasonable effort to respond and connect with his sister, he's done his part and can enjoy a clear conscience. It's on her to respond appropriately and if she chooses not to, it's her problem. We can only control ourselves, not others.

We live 25 min. SE of downtown Raleigh (when there's no traffic.) The housing market is insane right now. We bought a second home in the area a year and hour motnhs ago and we were very lucky to get it. Our choices were extremely limited. We needed tens of thousands of cash on hand to make an offer and were usually one of twenty or more offers. That's nothing compared to now. People are paying cash for double the asking price in some areas. Outsourced classes for homeschoolers are very much the norm here. Independent homeschoolers are the exception, not the rule in my area. We're in the outer suburbs up against rural areas and because of it we get a more stereotypical conservative, evangelical Christian homeschooler, so be aware. It's not a good fit for my family. Homeschooling has sucked here socially. There aren't many philosophical homeschoolers and there's a bizarre dependence on the imagined authority of a local homeschool curriculum store and owners to advise newbies. Don't get me started on the insanity of the idea that people who sell curriculum are experts on all curriculum they have in stock. You can't explain to a local born and raised newbie around here why that doesn't make sense.

She was obnoxious when she said, "Oh, I guess when my kids were little, I would read to them every night and it calmed them down, I would have thought you would have done that too. " No one should have a reading schedule in mind for a recipient when gifting books and they shouldn't ask about rank ordering them either. I gift books for littles often. I have never once asked anyone if they have read them yet or which was their favorite. If they volunteer that info, great. If not, no problem. I am aware of the possibility someone might not like a book I give or might not prioritize reading aloud as highly as my husband and I do. But then my mother always warned us when we were kids, "Never ask a question unless you actually want to know the answer and have considered that you might get an answer you don't like."

I'd assume nothing. We don't live in a world where it pays to make assumptions. It's time we all let go of the myth that there are universally accepted norms for weddings in the US-there aren't. I'd take food in a cooler to leave in the car, and I'd eat a high protein/high fiber substantial snack before I arrive at the wedding just in case. That way I could still eat a meal at the wedding if it's provided, but wouldn't be uncomfortably hungry if there's only cake, and I'd have more of the substantial snack in the cooler for after the wedding just in case cake was the only thing served.

The punishment needs to fit the "crime." The "crime" was knowingly putting lives at risk and cruelly mocking their vulnerability. If that were my kid, she wouldn't be at camp anymore-she threatened serious harm to other kids. She can't be around them. If it were me, all privileges would be gone for a month-no socializing, no electronics, no screens. There would be extra chores assigned. I'd also have Grandma talk the kid about what it feels like to be manipulated by a loved on into helping put children at risk. I'd revisit how serious food allergies are and how incredibly serious this offense was. This is up there with finding out your teen was driving drunk/high-knowingly doing something that puts other lives at risk. I would also be on alert for sociopathic behaviors from here on out. Am I saying I think your kid is a sociopath? No, but when a red flag pops up, you keep an eye out for others. Odds are higher this will end up being an isolated incident, but on the smaller chance it isn't, being alert and prepared to call in appropriate licensed medical intervention matters. I live adjacent to the world of children who are risks to others. A friend did fostercare placement and coordinated treatment when needed for more than a decade and vents to me about it. She also ran children and youth programs for years and had a few incidents with a couple of kids, not foster kids, who displayed sociopathic behaviors, altered the parents, the parents minimized it, and it escalated from there causing harm to others for too long before the parents were finally willing to consider medical intervention was appropriate. Denial in parents who minimize serious incidents where children were threatened puts more children at risk. There will also probably be more liability in the future if the parents knew the child had threatened kids more than once and didn't intervene.

Mmmm hhhhmmmm.