I need new shoes. I tend to wear the same pair or 2. Over the summer I wore a pair of Earth sandals that I loved. Either that or my Birks. The last few winters, I've worn Danskos, but I've twisted my ankle one too many times in them, and I'm ready for something new. Since I like my Earth sandals so much, I'm looking at a pair of them. But I can't decide which. I prefer something that slips on, but has a closed back because of the snow around here [not deep but enough I don't want to be wearing clogs] Here's the Zappos selection: http://www.zappos.com/search/brand/380/filter/categoryFacet/%22Shoes%22/gender/%22Womens%22/productTypeFacet/%22Shoes%22/sort/isNew/desc/productPopularity/asc/ I wonder if any of you have personal experience with any of these. I don't want anything too dressy, but nice enough to wear with trousers or khakis. Something comfy, easy to slip on, good arch support. Thanks!

Wait! Where do you find dark chocolate MINI chips?!?! Ok, maybe it's cuz I'm particular and don't usually buy Tollhouse or Hershey, but all I can ever find is the HUGE dark chocolate chips. Ya'll are making me hungry. I'm definitely going to try some tonight. All I have is regular Quaker rolled oats, so we'll see how it goes. :D

Mmmm, chocolate! :lol Where do you find unsweetened dried cherries? Is that something I need to go to the HFS for?

In the age of the internet, I don't think WHERE he lives would make a difference.... ;) ETA: I wish I could find a sample page like the one we did today. It had animals driving vans, and it really could have been right out of one of Scarry's books: Officer Flossy the fox, a pig that looked just like the Pig family, etc. It was eery!

Did Richard Scarry illustrate the Singapore Math workbook? Even my 6yo noticed how much like a Richard Scarry book the pictures looked.....

Sounds great! Did you use rolled oats or steel cut? What are some of your favorite toppings?

I love the name! Josephine is also one of my favorite names. :D

Not knowing an exact floor plan and dimensions, none of my ideas may work, but here's my thoughts. :tongue_smilie: Upstairs * Could your Hubby's man den be moved to the master bedroom? * 3 bedrooms for sleeping, the 5th room upstairs as a guest/respite care room, and maybe the music room? Downstairs * Eat-in Kitchen---clear out all schooling stuff, and reserve it only for cooking and eating * Laundry--same idea, only for laundry, obviously ;) * LR/DR--toys and stuff in the LR part, crafting area on the DR part? * Family room--turn this into the school room & library. We totally rearranged our office so that we have one table in the center to work on, and then storage and bookshelves around the walls. We left one spot free to hang a white board or chalk board, but everything else [posters, timelines, charts, etc] I plan to hang off the edges of the bookshelves [we're still finishing this redesign] * The last room for computers and family space? Basically, completely forget the current room's purposes. We turned our small den into the dining room, and the dining room into the office/study [this was before homeschooling; if I were doing it now I'd probably made the den the office/study, and leave the dining room] and then turned the "formal" living room into the family room with toys and TV. We do family game night in the dining room after we clean up from dinner, so we store the games in the dining room. Not sure how big the foyer is: could the piano and other instruments fit there if you moved the fish tanks to the "classroom" or family room? I would also think about how you could use the "guest/respite care room" when you DON'T have anyone living there, but also keep in mind the need to have less access to that room when you do. That's a bit of sticky wicket, but not unworkable. Gotta tell you, I love thinking about this stuff! :D In some ways it's hard not really knowing what your house is like, but in other ways, I don't have preconceived notions of how the rooms "should" be used since to me, they are just blank spots on a sketch.

I'm not sure I know them well enough to rattle them off! [course, my eldest is only 6, and we haven't gotten there yet!]

I know what he does, but for many reasons it's best if I speak only in generalities: my husband is a software engineer focused primarily on cyber-security.

Egypt cake? Please share!

Awesome!!! I looked at "more pics by this person". I love the one of, is that your dd?, looking cross-eyed at that yummy-looking dessert!

DS CLEANED HIS ROOM!!!!!!!!!!111!!!!!!!!!!1!!11!!! His father had started the process a couple days ago clearing the trash [DS likes to make things with paper and boxes and stuff, and that's great, but they end up just piling up as he makes more]. But this morning he actually finished the job himself by putting his hot wheels and other stuff into his bins that I'd bought him months ago. It wasn't perfect, but it was SOOOOOO much better. So then we spent the rest of the morning with me helping him sort through the last of it, and getting all but his huge pirate ship off the floor. Yay!!!! Course, there's a catch. He finally did this because I'd said the other day I wasn't going to let him buy any new toys until he'd cleaned his room, and he finally decided he wanted a new toy badly enough to do it. So I guess now I need to let him buy a toy, eh? ;) He wants a Viking toy, not sure what that will end up being. But still, I'm thrilled!!! :lol::lol::lol::lol:

Of course he can, but he wants to do it during school time. ;) I will readily admit I'm still struggling to find that balance between overly relaxed and overly structured. I used to teach in P.S. in a situation where I had to be fairly INflexible in scheduling, so that's my leaning even though I recognize I don't need to be that way at home. I'm fighting to overcome that tendency. Look, I feel, like I didn't word my original post wel--a problem I have, actually. I don't want to NOT let him pursue his interests, suppress them or anything, I would just rather do both, and wondered how to best make that happen. As Jean said, I go to a lot of effort to organize whatever it is that comes next, and I do believe there is SOME value in organizing one's learning. One thing I've done already -- even before the Vikings came up -- is to give him the choice for at least one read-aloud a day so that we can read something HE specifically wants. And today we did read about Vikings, AND still did our lesson on Sumer. This afternoon we went to the craft store to buy the clay we needed to do the Viking craft project he wanted to do [which I already had at home, but I couldn't find!]. When we got home, his father helped him get it started--it needs several days to dry. Tomorrow I hope to squeeze in a library trip after his speech therapy to find some Viking stuff. So I don't want ya'll to think that I'm trying to beat this out of him or something. I just want to do a better job of following 2 paths. :D LibraryLover, thank you for clarifying. I'm sorry if I read you wrong; I tried to account for the facelessness of the internet, but.... :tongue_smilie:

Lots of interesting stuff here! Thanks! So funny you should say this! When we went back to read some stuff about Egypt--AFTER we'd done some reading about Vikings--he made some comparison between the two or something, and so I did a quick sketch of a timeline to show him how far apart Ancient Egypt and Vikings were. I told him we're going to make a big timeline on our wall, but we just need to finish getting the furniture in place [we've completely refurnished the room both for HSing, and just cuz I was never happy with the way that room worked]. He wanted to make the timeline NOW!!!! :lol So yeah, I gotta get that done this weekend so I can get the timeline up!!

Thanks, everyone, for your support. I am going to do my best to accommodate him. We're still working on our efficiency..... But I certainly don't want him to think I'm not listening to him. LibraryLover, I gotta say, though I'm not disagreeing with what you are saying, I do find your tone off-putting and almost aggressive. :confused:

I really want my son to explore things he's interested in, but there are only so many hours in the day, and days in the week. Does anyone else struggle with exploring topics of interest to their kids, and still covering the stuff you've planned? For example, DS really wants to learn about Vikings. We're doing SOTW, and have been studying Ancient Egypt. I don't want to put him off, but I want to finish our Egyptians stuff too. Another example is that he wants to make a volcano. I plan to do this when we get to Pompeii, but that's much later in the year. *sigh* I keep reminding him that it's coming, but..... Any tips?

Breasts are amazing. They will learn the pattern, and make the milk when it's needed and where. Overall your supply will not go down, though maybe one side will make more at different times of the day. :D <3

I haven't read the other responses yet, but it's so ironic that you asked this. I think I asked the same questions a few weeks ago! I finally decided on Posterous.com Mostly cuz it's what my hubby uses, but I also like that I can email in my posts. And then it auto-posts to my FB and to my LJ. Mostly I blog as a record of our homeschooling [ie for me and my portfolio], but also, when I email the post to Posterous, I CC my MIL so that she can keep up with what we're doing since she doesn't get to FB very often. I named mine after our homeschool, which is a variation of our street name: the Hearth Stone Home School. Enjoy! [now off to read what everyone else said!] ETA: posterous is free. I had a bit of a learning curve, but it's not terribly hard. The templates were the hardest part to figure out.

I hear what you're saying, and my kids DO bathe every night. That is to say, their father puts maybe 2 inches of water in the tub, and they splash around. About once a week, maybe twice, he soaps them up a bit. It's not about getting them clean, it's just part of their routine. They know that after their baths, they go to sleep. DH is in the "shower every day" camp himself. I on the other hand, feel lucky if I take 3-4 showers a week. When the boys were babies, it was considerably less than that. Sleep always wins out, yk? I do NOT find it weird what the OP said about her kids' bathing schedules. I know we are in the minority with our nightly baths, and I fully expect to phase that out eventually, but maybe not; we'll see. :D

My 6yo has difficulty articulating several sounds including l, r, w, s, & j. He got an IEP when he was in school last year, and this year he's able to get his speech therapy at the same p.s. he attended last year. That's great, I'm VERY grateful that they allow it [even if I have to roll my eyes a little], but getting him there on time twice a week for that 30 minute session is annoying, and I'm looking forward to him mastering these sounds and being "released". So I'm curious if there's anything we can do to make sure the toddler doesn't have these problems. I mean, what causes artic. problems? DS1 had a huge vocab very early [started before he turned 1, and added words very regularly]. DS2 is 16 months and barely says anything consistently. I'm not worried, but I'm curious whether this is in his favor, or whether it matters at all. I guess I'm clueless about this whole subject area!!!

My sons get a bath every night. Not because they are necessarily dirty every night, but mostly just because it's part of their routine. They are 6 and 16 months. I know a lot of kids who only get baths every other night, or every 2 nights, but I would guess it depends on how active they are.

My son was in public school last year, and received an IEP for speech-artic [s, l, w, r, a few others]. When I decided I wanted to homeschool this year, I checked with the county. They said the state didn't require them to provide special ed. services [so it varies from state to state], but they did as a .... oh shoot, I'm forgetting the word she used, but anyway, he's getting 2 1/2 hour sessions a week at the public school he attended last year. I have to transport him and all, but I want him to get this fixed. When he was younger it wasn't a big deal that it was hard to understand him, I usually could. But as he gets older, and talks faster, it's hard for even me to understand him, and his peers and other family members have no hope. My BIL had a stutter [has--he will tell you you never really outgrow some speech problems]. And he's very self-conscious about it, and would tell you to definitely pursue it, and do it now while she's young and might be easier to overcome. Good luck!

I've had one LLB turtleneck for at least 14 years, and it is barely stretched out, and still almost the same exact color it was when I got it. ASSuming their quality is still as good, I'd swear by them.

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