No, it's not equivalent at all. The basic premise that deviant sexual behavior is equivalent to race is completely untrue.

The Family Research Council is a "hate group?" I'm sorry, but this is a scary world if it's hate speech to say that there are two genders, male and female, and that marriage should only be between a male and a female. OP -- I'm excited that you got to meet the Duggars. I've never seen the show, but I like anyone who is brave enough to stand up and speak for truth.

Well, this isn't a "program," but once a week, we did what we called "Writer's Workshop." We'd do a fun creative writing activity and everyone (even mom) would participate. Then we'd have hot chocolate and cookies and read our stories. The kids' favorite activity was always "dice stories." Together we'd come up with a list of six characters (a princess, a mad scientist...), six settings (New York City, a desert island...), and six problems (aliens attack, something is stolen...). Each person would roll a die three times and write a story with what they got. You can do all kinds of variations on this. Another favorite is to list eleven (2-12) items someone could have in his or her pocket. Each person rolls two dice twice and writes a story with what they get. We STILL have ten-minute writing contests when all the kids are home (they range from 16-25 and now include a wife, a fiance, boyfriends and girlfriends). Dh gives us a prompt, we all write for ten minutes, someone reads them all, and we vote for first second and third place. Some of these stories have become legendary and the kids said that after doing them, having 25 minutes for the essay on the SAT seems like so much time!

We just used prep books full of tests. She'd do a section (25-minutes) and we'd go over everything we missed. We did this steadily, a few times a week (we weren't always consistent....) starting in seventh grade. She also did MathCounts in middle school, which definitely helps with the math. She drilled on vocabulary.

We're having homemade pizza because that's what the college kids requested. =)

I think I'd take my chances on classes being cancelled and just pick her up tonight.

Thanks everyone! We mainly prepared with lots of steady practice -- several 25-minute sections a week beginning in middle school. It also helped that dh offered a pretty substantial monetary reward for a perfect score. He thought he had made it through all six kids without paying out and the youngest finally won! =)

Dd16 got 2400!!!!!! All of our kids have been close, but she's the first to actually do it. I guess we don't need to worry about the new SAT. =)

I made my duvet cover out of fabric (thin cotton calico/muslin on back) I got on clearance at Walmart many years ago. =)

Have you checked with the hotel about using the breakfast room? This summer we were in a hotel when we traveled for ds23's wedding. This was an expensive hotel and we had a lot of rooms for several days -- some almost a week. On the day after the wedding, people were leaving, and we provided lunch for everyone before they took off. We planned to have a picnic, but it was pouring so we moved into the breakfast room of the hotel. About halfway through the meal, a manager came over and rather rudely told us that the area was closed. I told her that we'd planned to be outside, could we please finish, we'd clean everything up, etc., and she did agree to let us stay. I never would have considered that this would be an issue -- I always thought of the breakfast room as a public space anyone could use.

That's the way my German landlady taught me to do it many years ago. Dh and I use a down comforter with a cover. I wash the cover every week with the sheets. We use a top sheet as well in the summer, because it's often too hot for the comforter. In the winter, we just use the comforter. For guests, I'd definitely use a top sheet so they can feel that everything is fresh and clean.

If you mean Ritter, yes -- it's very common. There is even a museum http://www.museum-ritter.de/n437378/n.html.

We just got a Smash Burger in our town. We love it!

I'd rather wait until mid-December, but we started putting it up Thanksgiving weekend when our kids started college because they wanted to be part of cutting it down, decorating, etc. and that's when they are home. So ours will go up next Friday or Saturday.

Those are good points. I was thinking of mailing a low-value, fun Christmas package this week -- you know, candy canes, etc. I'm just kind of stuck for what to put in....

Thanks! A necklace is a great idea!

Help me decide what to do for my dd, who is in Morocco for the year, for Christmas. I know I could fall back on an Amazon gift card or something, but that's boring. I want to send her a fun Christmas package or two and I need some ideas. Here are the constraints: - It can't be junk that she'll have to tote around with her and bring back. - I'm not sure how quick and/or reliable the mail will be, so it can't be anything perishable or very valuable. - She doesn't have an oven, so baking things are out. (When she was in Paris for Christmas, I sent everything she needed to make pumpkin pie in one package and cookie cutters, sprinkles, etc. in another.) She loves travelling and is going somewhere exciting almost every weekend. Here's a link to her blog if you're interested: http://teachinglearningliving.wordpress.com/ If this matters at all, she is planning to get married as soon as her time there is up in July. She'll be spending Christmas in Kenya with her fiance's family. (He's currently in the states, so I could send something small and expensive with him....) Ok -- any ideas??????

It really depends on the class. My kids just did this for science. At our CC, biology and chemistry are big classes for students going into health-related fields. The teachers rarely get through all of the material on the syllabus and don't go into nearly the dept that the AP goes into. So for these classes, my kids had a lot of work to do to learn the extra material that would be on the exam. Calculus-based Physics is a much better class. It is a smaller class, and Calc 2 is a prereq, so all the students are pretty strong. The prof usually covers everything pretty well, so my kids just needed some test prep to be ready for the AP.

Our church uses New King James, which I can't stand. At first we planned to use that for our kids, but I realized that it was very difficult for early readers. A lot of it is just word order -- the syntax isn't what they're expecting to see so it throws them off. My kids could read the NIV as soon as they were reading. We decided to stick with NIV at home and let them use a pew Bible to read along in church. I love the old NIV and disagree with Spy Car - I think the English is beautiful and poetic. I also think it's a more reliable translation than the KJV, which was based on an incomplete manuscript. (There are whole chapters that Erasmus back-translated from the Vulgate because Greek texts were not available at his time. Now we have those texts. It also includes very dubious passages that aren't in any reliable Greek manuscript.) But unfortunately, I think they have ruined the NIV with the gender-neutral language. Aside from the theological problems, it drives me CRAZY when "their" is used for a singular. So we are transitioning to ESV.

We have never provided cell phones for our kids, so they got them when they could afford to pay for them on their own (usually around ninth grade). They started out with tracfones that they could afford on what they made refereeing soccer. Now they have more income, so they've upgraded.

I agree that it's better to spread them out even though it is more expensive that way. My dc were fine doing two at a time, but they were always too wiped out to do well on a third.

First, it's not true that you need to be a native speaker to do well on SAT subject tests. All six of my kids scored 750-800 on both French and German. They took them the same year they took the AP exams. We also started foreign language (French and German) very young and worried some about "running out" of language classes. Some of my dc took language APs in 8th grade. Since we only put classes taken in grades 9-12 on their transcript, that meant this language wouldn't even be covered. What we did was invent fun post-AP classes, like French Cinema. We also had them start a third foreign language (their choice) in high school.

My kids just played without their glasses until they were old enough to get contacts.

I have had children accepted at Harvard and MIT, and we did both. We used CC classes to show they had classroom experience and for recommendations. My dc took AP exams even for classes they had at the CC to show they had mastered the material. Our CC is not great -- you can easily get an A there and do very poorly on an AP. My kids didn't get any credit for their APs or CC classes at Harvard or Princeton, but they were able to place into more advanced classes. The only way you can get AP credit at these schools is if you apply for advanced standing, but doing so rules out other opportunities, so my kids chose not to.

The curve is brutal for the SAT subject tests, because only students applying to very selective schools are taking them. Whether they are more difficult than APs or not depends on the test. They are shorter and all multiple choice, but they may require more specific information (e.g., grammar on a foreign language exam). You also need to be close to perfect to get a high score. That said, if you are prepared for the AP, you can walk into most tests and do very well without a lot of extra prep.