We have two Nigerian Dwarves, but we bought them as bottle babies last year and they just now are old enough to breed, so I don't know how they'll be as producers. You asked about minerals - they need loose minerals, "Sweetlix Meatmaker" is a good one available at most feed stores. They eat it free choice. We feed ours orchard hay and alfalfa pellets and scrappy things, and also offer free choice kelp. We have tons of blackberry bushes growing as invasive weeds in my part of the country, so we cut it and bring it home daily for them during the season from spray-free vacant lots. They eat scads of that. We adore our goat girls. Can hardly wait until they're in milk!

Dawn, you might want to look at "Well Fed Paleo" while at the library. Paleo is essentially the same as Primal, and WFP has a unique approach to keeping you at low time in the kitchen most days of the week (with a couple of prep hours one weekend day)

Repeatedly :D. And yeah, I DO mean exclusively, on demand, etc. My favorite is when I was tandem nursing a wee little one, a toddler who nursed just about as frequently as his sister, and still got pg.

I actually went on the Gary Taubes diet before I read Gary Taubes :D. It was fun to read all the science backing up what I was doing anyway, though! I do no grains, no sugar. But in my head when I get to maintaining, I'll add the strategic use of high-antioxidant fruit. Still, I am thinking like one to two cups of berries or such a week is all I can personally handle. I am a sugar addict, and this most definitely includes starches, which send me right to sugar. I've lost 20 pounds in 2 months without exercise. Now, I do also have cancer . . . but they are holding off on any treatment; my oncologist says I shouldn't be experiencing weight loss from the disease. So guess you have to take my experience with a grain of salt? I've always lost weight in the past when I've gone no-grain no-sugar, when not sick. For example, in 2005 I lost 25 pounds and hit goal weight by using Mercola's "The No-Grain Diet" and the only exercise I used was "Walk Away The Pounds" level one, really basic walking. So when I did get sick and went no-sugar no-grain in order to not feed the cancer any sugar/sugar converters, I wasn't surprised at all to lose weight. The cookbooks and blog recipes I'm using are "Paleo" or "Primal". They fit Gary Taubes' approach really well if you ignore the dessert recipes :). Our two favorite books are Make It Paleo and The Well-Fed Paleo. Everything we've made from these books so far is delicious. Paleo Comfort Foods we've gotten a couple of recipes from but we don't like it quite so well around here. After I did the first 5 2-week menu plans using these books or Paleo website recipes, I was able to just use my "regular" cookbooks and do menu plans, although different recipes than we used to do. We have several entirely different diets around here due to health issues, so the way we deal with it is by scheduling a whole-family Paleo dinner, then the grain-eaters can do something like oats for breakfast or sandwich at lunch if they want. This might be a helpful chart to you - it shows the difference between Atkins, Paleo, and Primal (although honestly IRL lots of bloggers use Paleo/Primal interchangeably). Favorite website for frequently updated Paleo/Primal info: Mark's Daily Apple. Three recipe websites we've used/liked: Chowstalker's Gallery for rotating inspiration, Purely Primal, and Mastering the Art of Paleo Cooking. Oops, almost missed Nom Nom Paleo, so four. Another nice thing about being Paleo/Primal are that the websites and blogs don't "feel" like people dieting, more like a community that lives differently permanently. So there's not much sense of fixing a problem then leaving, which I think helps with being in it for the long run. More like homeschooling boards, where yeah you live differently and sure maybe you're missing out on some stuff, but that's how you've decided to live. And you find it worth it. Uhm . . . didn't mean to write a book or anything there :blushing:. I do have one 2-week menu rotation that is entirely off websites/blogs if you'd like to try before buying anything. You can pm me again if you'd like that.

Boy this is so true. Because we all stick on the same cycle in our family through the years, I have individual children hitting 9th grade in differing cycles, and the only one I really hate to see happen is the 4th cycle. I do assign different books when that happens. But ancients? I do think it's initially difficult for some of my children just due to the language sitting jarringly on the ear. We've had success so far here with encouraging 9th grade Ancient dc's to shut themselves in a room and read out loud, with emotion. That really helped them to get the hang of the language. Even though we've read together over the years, it seems to take a layer of self-consciousness out of the equation if they read to themselves in privacy at that age. But everyone is different - it would be cozy to be reading aloud together, too! And Vandiver . . . what a jewel. Not only Homer, but love the Greek drama material as well.

If I understand Multnomah correctly, this isn't a seminary that leads to an MDiv, correct? So he wouldn't need an undergrad degree. There is a young man I know who is heading toward being a pastor, but his heart is to be flexible to work in church plants, struggling small churches, or wherever, so he is first getting a 2-year RN so that he has a higher likelihood of being employable pretty much anywhere. My dh is an RN who works 12 hour shifts and we've talked about how well that would work for the young man in question - he could work 3 7am-7pm day shifts, have a full time salary, and still have large chunks of time for a ministry (or 2 12's). Not that being an RN is for everyone :) but a flexible, in-demand job seems like a great add-on to a pastorate if one isn't headed to a denomination that has the typical seminary route.

bwa ha ha ha . . . loved the first one, "I'm surprised you thought you had to ask!" :lol:

I am stronger than: the nausea from my cancer that's been keeping me in bed Because I am strong: I will shut off the netbook, get up, and have a day chipping at the chaos, trusting that He'll be the strength. I will respond in a cheerful voice to the little guys whatever my body happens to be doing.

:iagree: The school bullies will have a lot more scope for imagination than lunch money . . .

IMO "The Borrowers" moves too slowly for most 6/7 year olds.

People usually pick up and drop off my teens, but if it works out here, I'll drop them off, since I figure the parents are getting ready to go out to whatever event dd's are being hired for.

Wow, thanks! Free is good :D

Great photo!

Yep, piling on here . . . 2 of mine breech at 36+ weeks and turned.

Dd used Brit Medieval this year for first semester and is now doing Shakespeare: Comedies and Sonnets. Not a problem in the least. But different students are different - just for reference, she's pretty self-disciplined. OTOH, she spends most of her school day focused on physics and pre-calc, so she didn't have wafts of time to work through LL. If I have another child do the same, I won't hesitate to assign Brit Medieval to one semester.

I am with Pegasus. We have used (or are currently using) LL 7, World Lit 1, British Medieval, and Shakespeare: Comedies and Sonnets. As she said, it makes a great program to build off of for lit analysis. I also appreciate how it works well with the WTM historical cycles, and appreciate the construction that makes a nice one-semester course. Lit is the class that out of all of their homeschooling years, I most love to teach, so for years I made up my own courses. But when life gets busy, I love to have Hewitt to hand to them, and supplement off that.

I was just gifted my late grandmother's Kitchenaid (which needs repair before I can use it). Besides all of the fun things listed above, I'm really excited to start making our skin care - lotions or cremes based on shea butter. Youtube has some excellent videos on doing this, and they're all using Kitchenaid mixers :001_smile:. Really natural healthy lotions are expensive! I think this is one of those gifts that will give back for years to come and your dh is a super sweetie to buy for you :001_smile:. Paint will need re-painting. This one's special.

Wow, interesting timing on your question - just this week 5 y/o ds is being sent to the peds GI with the suspicion of this being the diagnosis. But his vomiting and lethargy is lasting 4 days every time - I'm not sure it fits. Still, glad for the links. Gives me a start to the researching.

Thanks, that's been sitting on my wishlist for awhile!

:iagree: Our children don't have lavish birthday celebrations because we don't have the money to throw them. What is hard about this? Why on earth would I want to teach my children that they're entitled to stuff they can't afford, and that they can attain that stuff by having others pay for it :confused:

And keep in mind that you don't have to have a huge arsenal of recipes and ingredients just now - the first part of the elimination is just clearing your bodies and only lasts a couple of weeks, right? So you can just stick with the very few basics like rice, turkey/chicken, avocado, veg (probably not corn, though), maybe potatoes or maybe not if you're worried about nightshades. When my three with the immune disorder are old enough to come off of formula-only (at 5 years old), they first trial rice, then organic no-additive turkey, then a veg like broccoli, then olive oil, then salt, then apple, then we start trialing other fruits and veg. And that reminds me to say, which you probably already know - read labels on everything. Like you might think to cook a turkey, but most of them (at least in the grocery store) contain soy.

Eight children, although eldest isn't here anymore, in 1799 sq ft here. The oldest 4 at home are teens. Sometimes I wish there was a little more space for hobby stuff. But mostly I see how it has developed character, as so many have noted in this thread. It just hasn't ever been a problem. Although I do think if we entertained more there could be issues.

I know that I'm just one more in a chorus of "Billys", but I've gotta say it: Our Billy bookshelves (and our count is now 7) have been stuffed with books since 1992, have moved all over with the military, and not one of them is bowed. (Waving at Regentrude - our Billys have parallel lives). Other lines of bookshelves from IKEA that we've tried have bowed, though. And I like expedits, but we have more problems with breakage where the pegs go in with those.

:iagree: I'm down 20 pounds and counting - it's actually uncounted calories (and I suspect they're high) and lots of fats, decreased time (but smarter) exercise. But yeah, no grains. No sugar or sugar subs. I blame it all on Gary Taubes :D. But I just went clothes shopping last weekend and for the first time in years, actually bought stuff and felt cute! Two sizes lost! So I'm not too mad at him ;)

Oooo, I will soooo play along. I am all cranky, too. My poor children are at the point of avoiding me. In my case, it's doing the taxes. Been on my "do this week" list for 3 weeks now. And all because I'm off sugar and doing taxes has always been a lovely chocolate event for me! Why oh why can't I just be a grown up?!!?If I fly to where you are and clean your house, will you do my taxes? That would work, right? If they take long enough, I'll even make dinner for ya . . .