We just refinanced through Wells Fargo and were very pleased. We had tried USAA and had nothing but trouble. I got the feeling that USAA didn't really want to make mortgage loans.

Your classmates said FOOD??? I am an economics professor and never get that kind of answer from students.

I have always been terrified of dogs. A couple of years ago I had allergy testing done--guess what I am highly allergic to-DOGS.

My dd(14) played the piano during elementary school. She went to ps in middle school and wanted to be in the band. She played the flute (and the saxophone one year in the jazz band). She enjoyed the flute so much that she gave up piano lessons and opted for additional private flute lessons. The private high school she wanted to attend didn't have band. Since that was a major drawback for her, we told her we would continue private flute lessons. However, she has chosen to back to piano lessons. For a Christmas present she asked to add guitar lessons. She seems to be musically inclined and enjoy learning a lot of different instruments. In many ways learning the flute increased her interest and piano and vice versa. While she has focused on lessons on one instrument at a time, she enjoys spending time to playing and experimenting with the other instrument. I'm not musically inclined at all, and I don't know what a music teacher's opinion would be, but in my dd's case playing multiple instruments has deepened her interest in music and her ability to enjoy music.

Thanks for the suggestions! It doesn't seem to be a problem of not enough sleep--it doesn't matter how much he gets it just takes him a long time to get started. The comments about being in a "fog" in the morning seem to describe the situation. I think we will try the morning shower (which hasn't been the most pleasant sounding solution to an 11-yr old boy) and if that doesn't do the trick we will see about having some bloodwork done. This is the first year of homeschooling--he has never been easy to get up, but I didn't realize how bad it was once he did get up. Now, talking to him, I think he found some ways to doze through the morning in ps and was bright enough to still get by.

DS(11) is very slow to wake up. He wakes up, dresses, eats breakfast, and we try to begin school. Next thing I know he is drifting off to sleep. It doesn't matter how early he goes to bed or how late he sleeps. I have tried doing the things that are most engaging for him first thing to help him wake up, but his favorite activities are logic and critical thinking puzzles--these aren't very active and he starts nodding off. When we try what he consider more mundane tasks such as working math problems, he isn't as mentally engaged and drifts off. I can't seem to get the right balance of engaging enough both mentally and physically. I would be tempted to just do school work later in the day, but he wants to be on the same schedule as DD(14) who is in private school. He also wants to be finished when his other friends are home from school or in time for afternoon activities such as baseball and music. He is frustrated, also. I have asked him for his suggestions of what would help him to get going in the mornings and we have tried his suggestions such as PE first thing, a block of free time before school, and they haven't seemed to help. Any suggestions?

It will vary by university, but the most common requirement is that accounting majors have two college math courses: an algebra based course and a business calculus course. A student who did well in high school algebra 2 and high school calculus will probably find these courses easy. Sometimes there is even the possibility to test out of these courses at the college level. In addition, a statistics course will be required. This is often taught within the business school as a "business statistics" course. As far as the actual practice of accounting, a strong algebra background is the most important math skills.

We have found Austria to be a wonderful place to visit. You can rent a vacation apartment at very reasonable rates, especially in the villages. Our favorite place is the Innsbruck area; renting a car or taking the train/public transportation are both good choices from there. We have spent a month there a few summers ago (rented an apartment for about $1000) and never went more than an hour away, and still did not get to do all of the family activities we would like to do. Within a couple of hours you can visit Munich, northern Italy, Salzburg, and Bavaria. Day trips to Switzerland, Lichtenstein, and even Venice are possible. The scenery is beautiful, it is very clean, there are many family activities, and it tends to be much cheaper than Switzerland. We do our own planning. The local tourist bureaus (run by the cities, villages, or other government entities) have websites which list local apartments, hotels, etc. to rent.

Churches in our area tend to cancel Sunday School and other church activities because of the "holidays". For example, our church did not have Sunday School last week (12/26) or today (1/2) and reduced the number of worship services held. I find this practice very different than when I was growing up. Growing up, I experienced the "holidays" as "Holy Days" which were about experiencing God. My childhood church had the attitude that people were more likely to be seeking during these time periods. I am wondering if this is a local practice or if this is common practice across the country. Does your church reduce its worship services and other activities for religious holidays? (Christmas, Easter, etc.) What about other holidays? (MLK weekend, Columbus Day, Memorial Day, etc.)

Some have posted that if you are focused on who is giving you communion rather than God you probably shouldn't be taking communion. While this is true, it is the church's responsibility to draw attention to God, not to the individual giving communion. I find it difficult to believe that having a communion server dressed in a Santa costume helps the congregation focus on God.

Approaching the other parents is somewhat tricky, because some parent either knowingly allowed their child to bring this present OR is so disengaged from their child that they didn't know what the child was doing. Also, the mother of one of the boys using the foul language is on the staff of the church. We do plan on speaking to the minister after the holidays. From the youth director we are getting "these boys don't know the difference between school and church so they behave the same." Since I don't find this behavior appropriate for a school environment either, I see why my dd asked to go to a different school and why my ds is being homeschooled.

My dd (14) attends an all-girls Catholic high school where she is expected to act like a young lady and be treated like a young lady. My daughter has experienced several things out our church that I find inappropriate. She has heard high school boys screaming the "f" word. This weekend she attended a youth Christmas party with a white elephant gift exchange; the gift she received was a pair of used men's boxers and a bra--I view this as a totally inappropriate gift for a 14-year old girl to receive at a party for boys and girls. I have raised these issues with the youth director and basically got "don't be surprised" and teach your daughter not to be surprised when things like this happen. He went on about how he wouldn't apologize for the students who were attending because they needed grace extended to them. (At no point has he made any statement to the group about the inappropriateness or addressed my daughter's discomfort witht he situations.) My stance is that if I take my 14-year old daughter needs to be nurtured at church. She needs to be supported in standing up and saying this is NOT the way to talk/act anywhere, but it is definitely NOT OK in God's house. I would like any input or suggestions others might have.

I started hs my ds who is 11 (6th grade) this year and started with RS6. He had a weak background in grammar from ps but has done well jumping in to R&S6. There are items that will say "remember from last year...", but the text will go on to say, "If you have forgotten this, look in the index..." and it is explained in R&S6.

We pulled our fifth grader out of ps in May with less than one month to go in ths school year. His older sister finished the school year at the ps and then entered a private hgih school. Our ds left ps with mixed feelings. He wanted to experience his fifth grade "graduation" with his friends, but a number of things would have made that a miserable situation. For no reason of his own, he felt like he was weird or evenbeing kicked out of school. finishing the school year at home raised a number of issues: his ds was still in school so we didn't want jealousy, his friends were basically doing nothing for the rest of the year at school and he knew that--so he didn't see the pont in doing work at home and thought he was being punished, we felt we had to make a point that homeschooling was serious so he would be prepared in the fall, we were concerned about truant officers showing up, etc. The entire situation worked out better than we thought. Luckily, he was ahead and we didn't need to worry about keeping up with particlar academic subjects. We did math problems calculating how long it would take to drive on summer vacation, studying the geography of where we were going, letting him explore some topics that he thought were interesting, etc. A lot of the time was spent with us trying to figure out exactly where he was academically and what was going to work well in the fall. In retrospect, it took a lot longer for him to recover from some of his experiences than we thought. we are glad we had the summer as a buffer. we had not realized just how much his intellectual curiosity had been beaten down until we have seen it return over the fall. Now we keep him on his older sister's privat schhol schedule rather than the local public school schedule. the only time we have run into problems have been times when she has been home sick and he has wasnted to take asick day also.

As a college professor, I was wondering how my students could pass the standardized exams and know so little. I had a college junior who did not know: how many weeks there were in a year (she guessed 125), how many days there were in a year (she guessed 356), or how many months there were in a year (she thought there were 24--yes I asked her if she could name them for me.) Luckily she did know that there were 7 days in a week. Once I told her that there were 365 days in a year I asked her to calculate how many weeks there would be in a year, given the knowledge that there were 7 days in a week. She ADDED 365 and 7. Once I told her that was not correct she MULTIPLIED 365 and 7. I checked the math test given in Texas and discovered that all the way through high school the students are given a formula sheet that contains information they can use on the standardized exam. Even as a junior in high school (the last year a math test must be taken) the students are given the following information: one year = 365 days; one year = 12 months; one week = 7 days; one day = 24 hours; one hour = 60 minutes; one minute = 60 seconds. Texas does not expect a high school graduate to know these basic facts!