I think you is always preferable to a passive construction and usually preferable to one. If you look at sample SAT and AP Comp essays, there are often high-scoring essays that use you. It is much better to avoid awkwardness and wordiness than to slavishly follow a rule like "no use of the second person." I tell students they have to be consistent. There is no one way to write about people in general in English. You can use we, you, one .... You just can't mix them. Ever.

I could never do the LC thing. I need the energy. Also, I have some friends who are doctors who convinced me that it's very unhealthy. Your body thinks it's starving when it is forced to burn fat for energy and that puts it under a lot of stress. Then if you go off the diet, your body wants to build the fat reserve back up. I know people disagree about this, but it sounds good to me. (I want my carbs!!!) I have been running three miles a day and watching what I eat (smaller portions,fewer sweets, mostly water to drink, etc.). At first I didn't lose any weight and I almost gave up. After the first month though, I started losing. My weight-lifter boys told me I didn't lose at first because my body was turning fat to muscle. :) Anyway, since then, I've been losing about a pound a week. I have lost ten pounds, plus I am feeling really good.

How about The Little Prince? It is perfectly clean, an easy read, and a great book for teaching kids to write about theme.

You know, it was so eclectic and just so much a part of normal life ("What movie should we watch? How about Emil und die Detektive?") that it's overwhelming to even think of writing it all down. Someday I should give it a try, though!

Dh and I are both fairly fluent in German. I understand French but really don't speak it; he's fairly fluent. We can handle conversing, grading essays, etc. and we use lots of oral materials so the kids' accent is better than our. :) We love learning languages, so this was one of our favorite parts of homeschooling.

Yes, but how long will you be free to exercise your faith and values? If believing that homosexuality is a sin and gender is binary is equivalent to believing blacks are inferior to whites, isn't the Bible filled with hate speech? In my own state, a wedding venue went out of business because a court ordered them to host a same-sex ceremony. We are being bullied and told to accept this or else. I don't see freedom lasting long if Christians aren't willing to stand up against it.

If other people push society to accept as normal what my religion calls perversion (Paul expresses this pretty clearly in Romans 1) and calls me a hateful bigot if I express my beliefs, it affects my values.

Thanks! We did languages at home. We started them young (birth -LOL!) on French and German. Early on, we did lots of oral stuff -- songs, audiobooks, movies. At middle school, we started grammar and writing. For French, we usually had native speakers we paid to practice conversation with them. Unfortunately, we were never able to find native German speakers to hire. We did take a couple of trips to Europe and Quebec in their high school years so they could practice. We lived Germany years ago (oldest was a toddler, second was born there). We still have friends there and they don't speak English, so it's total immersion for the kids (and us!) when we go back. For the AP, we read newspapers, watched and discussed the news, read literature and wrote essays, etc. We reviewed German grammar with Kaleidoskop.

Two of my dds took AP Psych at PAH and they found the chats to be huge time-wasters. The teacher was often late, there were tech problems, etc. The chats were posted online, so my girls just read through them quickly after the fact. If your dd is more of a textbook-type learner, she might consider doing this.

I'd suggest you give them a practice test from the CB book and see how they do. All six of my dc got 5s on the AP and scored in the mid-700s on the SAT2.

Yeah, but "invite five" is where the problems come. My dc are in a lot of activities and the groups overlap. It's hard to invite a few and not hurt someone's feelings. So I guess our parties are really "group field trips," but everyone is included and has a blast, so what's the problem? I agree that it would be tacky if gifts were expected, but if they're not, it's a fun way to celebrate.

Among my two youngest dc's (15 and 17) group of friends, the invitations almost always say something like, "No gifts, but please bring $15 for laser tag." All of the moms like it better this way -- there is no hassle with buying a gift and lots of kids can be included and they all have a great time together.

This is why my kids don't do English at the CC -- I've heard too many stories like this. I do, however, have great memories of the fictional journals a friend and I kept for a creative writing class in high school. We had a great time with it!

There was a meningitis outbreak at my kids' school, and we got pretty frequent emails about the situation, the plan for immunization (it's the B strain which kids aren't routinely immunized against), and so on. So I guess I've been happy!

I get it -- it's crazy. I just wanted to give my case as an example of the other extreme. If I was in your county, I'd seriously consider joining an umbrella group.

What county are you in? I am in Frederick. We have one review in person a year; the second is by phone. I had my yearly review this morning. I told her I couldn't bring a portfolio because it's Sept 8 and there's nothing to show and she said it was no problem. Of course, I've been dealing with the county for 15 years and my kids have excelled -- they might be harder on parents who are new or struggling.

I don't have time to read all of the responses, but I have to reply to this. I believe the creation account in Genesis is literally true -- that God created the world in six literal days. To believe in an old earth, you'd have to have death before the fall and that raises all sorts of theological issues. That doesn't mean we haven't taught our kids geology, etc. They know the geologic ages,etc. They know how old scientists believe the earth is and they understand the evidence. I can't stand Apologia -- my kids have learned all of their science from secular texts and started taking science at the CC in 9th grade. The way we explain it is that Adam was a grown man when God created him. He wasn't just a sperm and an egg or even a newborn baby. He had the appearance of someone who had lived twenty or thirty years as soon as he was created. The trees in the garden were mature trees, bearing fruit. If you cut one down, it would most likely have had rings. Was God tricking us? I don't think so. He created a mature world for man to live in. Of course the mountains were already formed. Maybe it was like a time-lapse photography thing -- you know, He could have created it the normal way but sped up so billions of years of development happened in a day. We don't know because we weren't there. I don't see this as discarding reason at all. The Christian faith is inherently reasonable. In fact, Jesus is called "The Word" -- logos.

I am YE and my children are scientifically literate. DS23 has a minor in biology from Harvard (he's still YE too!) and is in a PhD program in computational biology. DS19 is studying chemistry at Princeton. I am not a big Ken Hamm fan or anything, but I find the assertion that anyone who is YE is an uneducated nut-job very insulting.

Ours came today too! (We're in Maryland.)

Having a set time to talk really helps. We usually skype or talk on the phone with our older kids every Sunday evening. The middle two are in the same college, so they'll usually get together in one of their rooms. Sometimes it's short -- I love you, I'm doing great, I have to get up early so I'm heading to bed... etc. Sometimes we do a big google hangout with everyone. If they're busy or away, they let us know and then they'll usually call sometime during the week.

We also love HST, but for things they don't have, we have been able to order chemicals and such from Carolina. DH just registered our "school" and they ship to us.

Still waiting here... DS did well (high 220's) so I'm not worried even though we're in a hard state, but I'd like to know for sure!

This is us too. With a big family and a small house, rooms are shuffled around all the time anyway. I did leave bunks in the two younger kids' rooms so there is a bed for everyone when they come home.

We gave two credits for the combined Physics because that's what our local high schools do.

Reading a boring book always gets my mind to turn off so I can fall asleep.