We have lots of Fords and have been pretty happy with them, so I'd lean toward the Taurus. I know we've looked into the cost of motor mounts before; the parts were about $200, I think (that was for our small Ford, a Focus), plus labor (which is $60 an hour for our mechanic). If you have a local mechanic that you trust, call him and ask what the approximate cost would be to do the motor mounts.

Oh my, I'm sorry you found out that way, but I'm glad nobody was hurt. I knew someone once whose brother found out she was pregnant because she'd posted it on a public message board (that he also read) before she told her family.

Thank you for posting this. I'm reasonably happy with my cheap little Brother machine from WalMart, that I bought when my other machine quit, and I was in a time crunch. However, I've always intended to look for a good used machine, preferably ahead of when I'll need it. This one looks like a really good machine and gets plenty of good reviews, and that's a reasonable price. Guess I will put that on my wishlist. :) Two quick questions -- one, how does it sew through elastic? And two, how about its buttonholes -- is the buttonhole feature easy to use, and how automatic (set the button in the foot and let it figure out how big to make the hole) is it?

In that case, I'd lean toward taking the 2yo. It will change the focus of your trip, but it will still be relaxing because you'll only be taking care of two children instead of six. If you get the 2yo and 1yo to nap at the same time, then that's even better. But also, the 2yo will probably be fine even if you do leave him home. He'll have most of his older siblings there to cuddle him up and be familiar to him, even if he's unsure about your sister. So I think either way, it'll be okay.

My stove was purchased in December of 2006 and is still working just fine. We did replace one of the burners a few months ago, but that burner gets used heavily (2-3 times a day). Everything else seems fine. I would easily expect it to last four more years or maybe more. The appliances I bought in 2000 lasted 6 years without any service calls (and maybe longer, but we left most of them with the house we sold in 2006). The chest freezer I bought in 2000 is still working very well. However, while my 2006 stove is fine, I had to have the elements replaced in my 2006 fridge and some parts in my 2006 dryer already -- within the first three years of owning them. The repairmen said they really don't make things last very long anymore, because people want to upgrade frequently to the newest products.

Maybe. It would depend on a lot of things. For a really good amount of money, yeah, I'd probably make the sacrifice and do it. To be just so-so and not really, really financially comfortable, I don't know that I would unless I was desperate. Right now, we live 20 minutes from anything and have major shopping within 30 minutes, but even the 20 minutes to a grocery store does tend to grate a bit. Sometimes I just don't want to drive 30 minutes to something, so I know I turn down even free events simply because of the drive. Is that something that's going to bother you later, if you always are driving a long distance to get to activities and such?

I'd be most concerned about your 3yo feeling left out if you took the 2yo also, but I think that depends on the relationship between them. Is the 3yo usually one of the "big kids" or one of the "little kids," attached to his younger brother(s), etc.? If the latter, I'd assume that the 2yo and 3yo could keep each other company and be okay, so I'd leave the 2yo, but if the former, I'd probably take the 2yo with me too, and I'd enjoy having a chance to give some extra attention to those two little guys without the older children's needs crowding them out. :)

Cottage cheese with berries. Yogurt. Smoothies. When I can afford it, I want to try the "nutola" (similar texture to granola but with nuts and no grains) and baked goods based on almond flour. My kids like a casserole made with cooked mashed cauliflower, some eggs, and some shredded cheese, mixed together and baked at 350* for about 30 minutes or until golden. Lots of protein but not so much egg taste. Zucchini -- sliced and sauteed, with mushrooms, and/or goat cheese on top. Or shredded and made into cakes like hash browns. I've mixed cottage cheese and red pepper and some other things that I can't remember right now into cakes and cooked them like pancakes. They were good, but they fell apart, so I think they'd be better as a casserole. I eat a lot of omelets. I like the sweet omelet as a change. Toast some nuts and add cinnamon if you like. Beat some eggs and add a splash of vanilla; cook like an omelet, but for filling, add a few dollops of cream cheese and the nuts.

I have to admit that I am particularly curious how you do it, because your location says you're only a bit west of me. I know it's probably a bit cheaper to live out there, but I'd be surprised if it's *that* much cheaper, y'know? I *could* get our bill down a lot if we ate more grains (and legumes), and then we might be able to afford more organic/grassfed meat, but without a lot of grains, I'm just finding it impossible to be any cheaper, though I'd love to cut it down. If we don't have grains at dinner, we either need a good two pounds of meat, or we need a lot of cheese/butter/other fat, which is also expensive, or we're not full, no matter how many veggies we add. And two pounds of grassfed meat for one meal is very often prohibitively expensive, since it still isn't the only thing we'd eat at the meal. I really hate having to choose between a LCHF diet that I feel is better for us in general but means much less organic/grassfed stuff or a more organic/grassfed diet but much higher in carbs.

We have 5-6 people eating (baby doesn't eat a lot yet, but I try to get organic for him as much as possible, and theoretically nursing means I eat more), and $150 a week doesn't quite cover it, since we tend to eat more on the paleo/primal side of things. A few years ago, I could get away with $100-$130 a week for lots of organic, pastured meats, raw dairy, etc. I miss those days. Now, I really need more like $175 a week. I've had to cut out organic and grass-fed quite a bit, unfortunately, but we still eat pretty much real food. It's hard if you don't eat a lot of grains or legumes. I try to leave room in the budget to stock up on stuff that's on big sale. I cook from scratch as much as possible, but that only saves so much if we're just not eating a lot of baked goods, y'know? We eat salad a lot of nights a week, but it gets expensive. We eat a lot of peanut butter -- even good peanut butter is still fairly inexpensive for the protein it packs; we eat some sandwiches but will also eat PB on apple or banana slices. We eat a lot of apples and bananas and other fruit generally only if it's on a big sale (or if it's very local; local peaches are a big yummy treat). I stock up on frozen veggies when they're on sale (and I generally buy fresh veggies to eat raw for lunches when they're buy one get one free), and I can add another pound of them to a meal for way less than another pound of meat. We eat a lot of eggs and oatmeal for breakfast.

With that kind of time and price range, I'd scout out old machines that are all-metal. Some older Singers are good, from what I hear.

I voted for Benjamin, but I'm a little biased, as that's my middle son's name, and I can't imagine life without our little Ben! It's a great name that works well for a little guy, a big boy, or an adult. (And Benjamin from the Bible is the much-beloved younger brother, which was perfect for our second son.)

You deserve to be happy and proud -- thanks for sharing your good news with us, and congratulations!!! :party::party::party:

My kids talk occasionally via cell phone to their grandparents, but DD emails with them sometimes too. It would be nicer if the grandparents lived closer! But my kids do not have their own computers, e-readers, i-anythings, cell phones, mp3 players, or TVs. They are allowed, within reason, to borrow DH's/mine, but I do not feel a need for them to have their own of any of that stuff. DD doesn't really *need* an email address, but she wanted one, and I felt that maybe that was a reasonable step as a 10yo, given that I control who has the address (so far, it's only her aunts, uncles, and grandparents in addition to DH and me; DH sends me links that he thinks the kids would enjoy, and now he sends them directly to DD instead).

DD 10 got a gmail account a few months ago. I set it up and know the password (she does as well, but she's only allowed to use it with my permission, when schoolwork and chores are done). Her address is never to be entered anywhere; if we need an address for something, I have a couple of junk ones that we use. Gmail let me set things up so that everything she receives also copies to one of my email addresses, which means I know before she does if she has anything and can monitor it. (She's received no spam thus far, but I've always been very pleased with gmail's spam filters; they're very good, and I don't receive much spam in my regular inboxes at all, so I feel that gmail is a very good choice for a young person, though not a substitute for parental supervision, of course.) No Facebook for her. And the deal is that if I ever find that she's used her address to sign up for anything (or that she's signed my address up without permission), I will change her email password, and she'll no longer have access to it.

We're only kind-of-sort-of a large family (three older children plus an almost-toddler), but I definitely find that having a pretty strict routine works best. I'm just still figuring out what that routine is. :) Everyone has his/her own Klean Kanteen that looks different from everyone else's and is therefore instantly recognizable. They drink milk at most meals, but at least the water bottles cut down on cups for water between meals, in the car, at bedtime, etc. Each child has a bin for shoes too (well, not the baby yet), and a three-hook set of hooks (the kind with one on top and two smaller ones below) for his/her jacket, hat, and backpack. Each child has his/her own jobs to do in the morning, and these do not rotate, so there is no remembering who needs to do what. I've experimented with having them do those things after breakfast, and the reality is that it works better for them to be done before breakfast -- hunger motivates them to move faster! Then after breakfast, we can clear the table, brush teeth, and move right into schoolwork.

People are often just so busy, or traveling, during the holiday season that it's just impossible for children to attend each other's birthday parties. Plus, half birthday celebrations for December birthdays fall during the summer, so that can often provide a chance for children to get together with friends at the pool (especially if they're between school years/co-op sessions and haven't seen their friends much). Given the choice between having a party around the actual birthday with only a couple of friends able to attend vs. a larger party with more friends (especially somewhere fun and outdoors like a pool) but at the half birthday, I can see why a child might opt for the half birthday. (I remember my parents really getting silly too, sometimes, for my sister, making "half" of a cake and all. It was just a fun little something they did.)

My sister's birthday is actually on Christmas, and when she was younger (and even when she was a young adult; she's the youngest of the four of us, so I was grown and married with children before she was permanently out of my parents' house), my parents always, always, always celebrated Christmas in the morning and my sister's birthday in the afternoon. They forewent a traditional Christmas dinner so that my sister could choose her birthday dinner meal, just like the rest of us did on our birthdays. They never shorted her gifts and always wrapped Christmas gifts in Christmas gifts and birthday gifts in birthday paper. I think that helped people like the grandparents see the difference too. (Now, when she got older, she realized that combining the gifts meant she could get some bigger ticket items, so that worked okay.) I think they did half birthday parties for her a few times too. Every year, in the fall, we start having discussions about which siblings will be where for which holidays, and we start putting together a schedule for the holidays. So in your case, I might say something like, "Okay, Wednesday is Christmas, and we're coming to your house, MIL; what can I bring for dinner? Then the following Monday, we'd like you to come to our house; Jack has requested spaghetti and meatballs and chocolate cake for his birthday dinner, and he wants you to join us." It might just be that with a lot of people to schedule in there, it's a little hard to work it all in, so if nothing else, maybe you can make a point to "switch gears" during the Christmas celebration and move on to celebrating your son's birthday. Bring out the birthday balloons and a distinctly non-Christmassy cake!

Everything else being equal, sure. Whenever we've looked at jobs, we've considered states where we like the laws for other things, like raw milk or vehicles or homeschooling. Other people choose states or areas because they like the school options. Why shouldn't you choose because of the good insurance coverage for your child?

That's what I do -- I require a certain amount of reading every day, and she has to stick with a book until it's finished. Aside from that, she can listen to as many audio books as she wants, or read parts of books (starting and not finishing them is a big issue with her), or reread old favorites, or none of the above, as she chooses. (I require a certain number of pages, rather than a certain amount of minutes; this child is easily distracted and tends to dawdle, so she responds better to quantity rather than time.) I haven't noticed any patterns as of yet, but I've really only started taking notice recently and am looking for patterns. We just started WWE (level 4; I figured a little easy but a solid foundation would be good for her) this week, and that's what prompted my original post, because of the dictation. It was taking her a while to write her dictation, and I got distracted by one of the other children and took my eyes off of her briefly; during that time, she misspelled a word. So I know I need to be vigilant there, but having her check her own work and then using the dictionary sounds like a really great idea. Hopefully that will start to give her a feel for whether or not something looks right. Thanks!

Well, that is really odd! I have three different versions of Saxon 76 here (our lending library has them), so I looked at them: what is probably the first edition, the third edition that you mentioned, and the Homeschool version. None of them mention facts tests R-X. I have absolutely no idea! Very strange.

I got my 3yo a new MagnaDoodle last year, since our other one had been through two big kids and was worn out. He loved it! Matchbox-size cars, Transformers, Legos (Duplos too, actually), costumes, small figures (cowboys, knights, etc.) are all hits for my 3yo boy. Also, he adores having his own backpack to pack his small treasures in.

I think what you are talking about are the facts/skills practice tests. They're timed tests that you do along with each lesson, every day, to cement facts and basic skills like simplifying fractions, increasing speed and fluency over time. They're labeled by letters; mine has A-X -- things like "64 addition facts," "30 fractions to reduce," etc. Does that sound like what you mean? Then there are also numbered tests that you give after every five lessons, to see if the student has mastered the lessons' content.

Depends on the kid and the day. My current almost-4yo will sit through some readalouds, but it depends on the day. He's actually better at sitting through them at night when he's getting tired than he is during the day when he has plenty of energy. My deal is that he is welcome to listen if he wants, and he (and the older children) may play quietly or draw or color or the like, but he's never required to listen, and if he makes too much noise, I will make him leave the room. I think it helps him to know that he doesn't have to stay if he doesn't want to, but it's a privilege to be allowed to stay. He also sometimes sits next to me and looks at a picture book while I read out loud to the older children. We do a lot of audio books in the car, and he is generally very quiet for those, often with a small toy in his hand, so maybe that's a good way to train your 3yo to listen. I also find that it helps if I read him a book or two beforehand, or otherwise give him some good attention first, or I promise (and then follow up) some time for him afterward if he's polite.

DD really likes the various American Girl books, and some of them would count for health, though they are fairly tween-girl-oriented. Things I count for health (I throw it under one topic of "Health, Safety, and Physical Education" in my portfolio): any discussion of adolescent changes, food safety, nutrition discussion, bike safety, physical education, infant development and care (last year's portfolio included several pictures of DD caring for her infant brother), discussion of disease, discussion of alcohol/drugs/drugs, firearms safety, fire safety (required every year in my state), dental health. I google for a couple of easy worksheets on one of those topics to throw in the portfolio, and we call it good. This year, we got the Safe Passage water safety DVD from the Army Corps of Engineers, and that, plus its accompanying worksheets, should be good for health. (Sorry, not feelings-related, but maybe that will give you some ideas to cover health.)