Thanks to Hive Mom elegantlion for her suggestion on the philosophy class.

Our first day was a success! :hurray: My daughter and I are so excited about her philosophy course. Thanks to another Hive Mom's suggestion (I'll try to find her name), we are doing Philosophy through Star Trek, Star Wars, and Dr. Who. It will be time consuming, but we did some work last night and finished the first lesson today. LOVE it!!! :hurray: My son had a great day and seemed to adapt well to the heavy course load. :hurray:

I put all of the PS dates on my Outlook Express calendar and use that as a tentative guide. Our children have long 3-days sport events (swimming meets and water polo tournaments) and I try to take the Monday off to recover. Keeping those planned days off in mind, I look at the PS schedule for any overlapping dates, etc.) I am so glad I started this thread because I forgot to do two things: 1) Every year since my first day to homeschool (Sept. 11, 2001 - easy date to remember), I have taken photos of my children wearing backpacks as they leave for school. We are in a new house now, so I have to remember to continue the tradition ... I charged my camera and put it with the school supplies. 2) Every year since the beginning (thanks to an encouraging friend), I have created a theme for the year. This year it will be, "I Believe". Our daughter is in her high school senior year and our son is a freshman. Both will have a challenging academic year - our daughter will graduate (plus have an additional 30-32 college hours) and our son has a packed academic load (plus his two club sports). I honestly believe this will be our most difficult year yet ... but I am going to sell the, "I Believe" (in You, etc.) message. :001_smile:

We always start on the first Monday in August. I have everything ready, but I wish I had two extra weeks (even a month) to mentally get ready but I already have the school year planned out. We have a trip in early May, so I need to stay on schedule.

I was hoping for another update.

I remember when our children were young, I spent big $$ to fill a sand box. We had to leave to run an errand before our children could play in the sand and when we came home, we found cat paw prints and fresh scrap marks and YES, I found cat POOP when I poked around with a stick. :cursing: :ack2: My children cried and cried when I made my husband empty all of the sand, including using a wet/dry vac on the tiny grains but I couldn't get over the ick factor. We were only at that base for another year, but they still had fun playing in an empty sand box with their cars, etc. The empty box was usually a ship to sail away on their adventures, so some good came out of the nasty cat poop. :banghead:

Kinsa - thanks for the link. I am going to enjoy looking through your blog.

:thumbdown: :thumbdown: Big two THUMBS DOWN on "The Way Way Back". I watched it recently and it easily rated in my top 10 most stupid movies ever ... but OP, glad you liked it.

:thumbup: :thumbup: Our children have been involved in club swimming for the past 8 years.

In the summer of 2008, our children swam against teams that had swimmers going to the Olympic Trials. It was a very exciting summer. Summer swimming and club swimming had huge numbers of swimmers. For club swimming, one swim meet (short course) would need three 50-meter pools to run 6 courses (boys on one 25-yard course and girls on the other) just to complete the meet. Points were given per pool, etc. admin nightmare, but somehow it all worked. But we all have super fond memories of our years doing summer swimming. We are actually living in an area now that forces you to quit club swimming by early March if you want to be eligible for the summer league - CRAZY!!! I can understand and appreciate the thought behind keeping the faster club swimmers out of the summer league, but there are so many club swimmers that aren't fast and could benefit from the social part of summer swimming and from getting more competition experience.

This is how a sanctioned USA Swimming meet is run, however the OP is talking about a non-USA Swimming organization like a local summer league which are allowed to set their own rules for age group determination. It is always easier for a local swim organization to have one cut-off date. We had 10,000 swimmers in our county summer league when my children started making one cut-off date a necessity.

My daughter loves her Chaco's. She has worn them for several years and the shoes have held up very well.

Years ago, we had a Rainbow Playstation in a big backyard that didn't have a fence. Our neighbors would occassionally send their granddaughter over to play on the swing set when they saw our children outside. I was fine with that and asked that they always had an adult with the little girl because of her age, but one day we pulled up in our driveway to total chaos. The little girl was playing on our swingset when we were gone (later found out she did that all the time - without an adult). She fell and was hurt. I was afraid of the liability, but thankfully the family didn't sue us. Our children were 12- & 9-years-old at the time, so we made the decision to sell the swing set. It was sad to see the empty backyard, but we knew we were going to move later that year.

Unlike the other posts, I have my daughter's volunteer hours listed on her transcript. It will be one line - something like, "As of 4/1/14 - 121 Community Service Hours", but I also have accomplishments and activities on the same page. It is a very clean layout and easy to read. I learned the hard way that each of the hours needed to be verified (for a possible scholarship), so while it was a pain, I contacted all of the POC (person in charge) and asked them to send an email or letter (on letterhead if possible) verifying the volunteer hours. In my email requesting the verification, I listed: # hours, date, location, and task. Thankfully every single hour has been verified.

Google periorbital cellulitis images then read about it if the photos look close. My daughter had that years ago and was admitted to the hospital.

I'll take a wild guess and say you probably have cat hair everywhere, not just on the sofa. I have a girlfriend that always shows up looking "hairy" with cat hairs on her clothes. She vacuums daily, but without much luck. On the other hand, I have another girlfriend that has one dog that sheds like crazy. I always come out looking "hairy" when I visit her house.

I ordered something last month via my prime account on a Wednesday afternoon and it was delivered by UPS the next afternoon - WOW! On the other hand, my last order for a 2-3 day shipping took 8 days because it was shipped via FedEx. I hate having things shipped to me via FedEx or as I always called it, "Add-A-Week-FedEx". Why am I paying for 2-3 days when it always takes an extra week with that company!!!! :cursing:

We had a wonderful visit to Cardiff a few years ago. I hope you are lucky enough to make the trip.

Since we lived there, we had the time to explore the city at a slower pace. I have a few more places that we really enjoyed, but I'm not sure I would recommend them over the more popular places. I have fond memories of our visits to the National Postal Museum and the National Building Museum. I arranged classes/events at both places for our homeschool group. Your children might enjoy the US Botanical Gardens (near the Capitol).

When we lived there, we went to the Smithsonian Air and Space in Chantilly, VA twice and both times we had the place almost to ourselves. We had arranged for classes for our homeschoolers. Loved the museum, but I wasn't fond of the $$$ parking. Two of our favorite places to tour were the Library of Congress and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and it seems like all of the guests we had enjoyed those tours too.

:bigear: :bigear: :bigear: What'cha got going on? :D

If she is anything like me the cpap is a welcome sound. Compared to the sound of what sounds like a group of bears rough housing, snoring and choking. I was actually thinking about how awful it would be for the children if they had never tried to fall asleep and stay asleep to the c-pap and fan noise.

Have you spent the night with all of you in a small room will the c-pap and fan were running? :ack2:

Cute story! Just think how much fun she will have after the move when she gets to play in all the empty boxes. We used to make huge forts by connecting boxes together in a maze pattern when our children were young.

Last Spring, I took my children for a yearly eye exam. Since we hadn't lived here long, I asked several people where they went and the place I choose was highly recommended. I really liked the office, the service, and the doctor, but my heart almost stopped when I got the bill for $175 just to "fit" my daughter into contacts (it was $60 at her prior visits). My daughter had been wearing contacts for years and the only thing that changed was adding a fractional change to her existing prescription for daily disposable contacts. The $175 fee was in addition to the eye exam and wasn't covered by our insurance. If you or your children were contacts, how much do you pay for this service and where do you go?