I used to keep about 7-10 days' worth of food on hand for us just in general, because with a large family, sometimes things are just out, especially if I'm doing a grocery pickup and can't adjust brands or whatever as easily on the fly. Aldi is sometimes hit or miss, depending on when their trucks arrive. With covid, I've been keeping more like 14 days' worth of food on hand, and I'll still keep doing that for a while. Not always for meat, because freezer storage becomes an issue, or for produce, but basics, canned goods, cheeses, eggs, etc. It gets weird though, because sometimes they'll only allow me to choose one or two of something, so I'll also add one or two of a different brand/flavor/scent in case the first one is out, and then all of it will be available. So in order to make sure I don't end up with no toilet paper or conditioner or spaghetti sauce, sometimes that means I end up with a lot. I do feel like the stores have strange outages sometimes. My husband was grabbing some food the other day, and a kiddo had asked for pepper poppers. He sent me a picture of the completely empty frozen snack section.

I don't, but I've been pretty pleased CAP's Art of Poetry! We have used it with two kids, just orally, but I like it a lot. Good variety of poems, good questions; I'd say fairly comparable (albeit clean, without being overly sanitized) to the survey of poetry course I took in college. I would vote for getting both the student and teacher editions and reading them out loud as you go. I have a lot of like for other Memoria Press books and have used some of their Poetry, Prose, and Drama book (using it with my 10th grader now). I like it okay, but it has a LOT of stuff, and three books to juggle.

Not sure if Google Sketchup might work?

Get an upper arm cuff, and make sure it is the right length. Sometimes you need to order a cuff separately from the machine. Amazon has longer cuffs. (Wrist cuffs are harder to use accurately.) Omron is the most recommended brand by doctors. They come in multiple price points, but the extra money just buys more features. I have the basic $30 one from WalMart/Amazon, and it has been very reliable for me. I checked it every day twice a day for two years, and it was very reliable and compared well with my doctors' office machines. It saved my life twice when I had preeclampsia, no exaggeration. Make sure you sit quietly for a while before taking it, and sit like in the graphic here: https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/high-blood-pressure/high-blood-pressure-toolkit-resources I volunteer for a nonprofit support group for survivors of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, so proper BP taking is a big focus of ours.

I'm sorry you're dealing with all of this -- what a hassle! My husband is that person who is in people's houses and such during covid because of his job. He wears a mask, and I think he'd have no problem being extra cautious with a particularly high risk family. Because his job carries a certain amount of unavoidable risk, we are pretty careful about adding additional risk, so we haven't seen grandparents or friends in months, really don't go places that aren't necessities, etc. I'd probably just state up front that you need to be extra cautious and to ask if they have people they can send who have smaller bubbles. Maybe provide hand sanitizer at the door and disposable masks too just in case.

Congrats! I've done various things over the last 19 years, but for my youngest, now 2, I went with prefolds and made PUL velcro covers, mostly with flannel linings. I have made many diapers over the years, so making covers was easy. My wipes are flannel squares too. I'm very pleased, and leaking has not been a big issue; I do use hemp boosters at night. (Or at least I did; he's only 25 months but basically potty-taught himself a couple of months ago, hasn't used diapers during the day except the time I took him to the dentist because covid means we don't go anywhere, and almost always has a dry diaper at night so no booster needed. I have no idea how I got this!)

Yes, that's the one! Mole rats in space! MIL needed an idea, so I suggested that one because they love the naked mole rat book by Mo Willems. If you can find it, I'd recommend it. It was interesting enough to me when I played with them but easy enough for them to play on their own. Even the 12yo really liked it.

We got these games for Christmas and have played and liked them so far: Ticket to Ride Amsterdam, Hues and Cues, Space Escape (my 7 and 9 yo have played it like a million times already), Suspend, and Carmen Sandiego (basically Clue), and Harry Potter Codenames. We also have Onitami, Skyjo, a kiddie card game called Tug of War, Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, Sherlock Express, and a couple of others that we haven't played yet. I got a bunch of games for the family, my ILs got a couple for us, and my parents also got several for us, which was really fantastic! I intended to save Chemistry Fluxx and Azul for Christmas when I got them on sale, but we took them along to our socially distant vacation in the fall, and they were big hits. My husband loves Azul.

We do carrying and borrowing in terms of cookies because kids like cookies. The ones column is cookies on a plate (sometimes it's chocolates). But only nine can fit on a plate, so when there are more cookies, they get boxed into boxes of 10. Then those boxes get packed into large cartons of 10. Cartons get shrink-wrapped together onto forklifts of 10 cartons. Forklift loads get put into trucks of 10 forklift loads. Trucks get lined up in the parking lot of 10 trucks. Then it's 10 sections of 10 trucks. In reverse, it's, "Someone wants eight cookies, but there are only six on the plate. Where can we get more? Well, we have three boxes. Let's open one. Now we have two boxes and we take those ten cookies and add them to the six, so now we have sixteen on the plate, and we will have eight left after the person gets their eight.". The visual has really helped my kids grasp the concept.

I really, really like AoP and have used it with a couple of kids. We do it a few days a week, reading one to three poems aloud and discussing them together. I think it is an excellent introduction to poetry.

My older kids prefer to work in their rooms as well. There is only so much quiet that is developmentally appropriate for littles, and my last two toddlers have been especially big movers. We do have a schoolroom, central to our main living space so that I can easily do laundry and meal prep while supervising, but while we do aim for reasonably quiet in there (like, no wild running or yelling during school hours, headphones required for computer work, etc.), my littles do play in there, and so if the older ones prefer more quiet (also, 15yo has the dog, and dog plus toddler gets a little crazy), they're welcome to work in their rooms where they can also spread out. Every child has different needs and temperaments. My older kids do have desks in their rooms, but if those wouldn't fit at all, maybe some sort of fold down desk like Garga shared, or maybe a lap desk or a folding dinner table tray or two. There's a real life homeschool space group on FB with a lot of great ideas.

Possibly The Greatest Showman. The hint of a possible affair and a kiss is discreet and handled well IMO. There are some hard topics discussed, so you may want to look it up on common sense and all. Honestly, my little guys didn't mention the hard stuff and were just all about the songs and costumes and stunts and the ELEPHANT! And my oldest teen simply loved it.

I'm in touch with one friend from high school, but y'know that's kind of helpful when you have seven kids and a mortgage together. Otherwise, nope, not at all. I was only sort of close with a handful of high school friends, but my high school social experience overall wasn't great, and when I moved on to college, I never really looked back. I did go to the same university as one of my handful of high school friends, and we hung out a few times at the beginning, but we had very different academic and social circles so it didn't last. I'm FB friends with one college friend, plus my husband counts as a college friend too. He is still good friends with one college friend.

Not only am I still using my ProClick and made a ton of notebooks for my four boys and myself for this year (all of our science/nature and history and half of our LA, plus music study, plus my teacher guides), but I took mine completely apart and gave it a thorough cleaning and tune up, so it works better than ever! I did switch to spirals instead of the easy open spines though.

This!

Oh that's lousy about the ped endo! Ours is at the children's hospital where my own kidney and endo specialists (separate ones, long story) are, and he does know about thyroid, but agreed, the doctor does need to know what they're doing.

My endos don't like my TSH at a 4 either, but it took me a good couple of years to get to see an actual endo. It sure can be a beast to get someone to pay attention to it. My endos keep it down around 2.5. I would push for a referral to a pediatric endocrinologist even for a 17 yo because they should also be good at explaining to a teen what is going on.

My almost 7yo loves to take pictures and videos with my phone and to put goofy stickers and effects on them, so I'm getting him a digital camera. Is there a photo editing program (for Win 10) that would be friendly for kids that also has the effects and stickers? It doesn't necessarily have to be free.

I'd be okay with not crowded beach and public restrooms occasionally if you mask and wash hands. You'd have to touch exactly the wrong spot at the wrong time and then get it into your body before washing hands, and that seems like a fairly low transmission risk. I'm not comfortable with playgrounds yet partly because people in my area don't seem to be taking this seriously. I won't shop at stores in my county if I can avoid it either but will shop the same chain stores in other counties because their rates are different for the number of people they have. When we do WM pickup, we see more people going into WM without masks (and more families in general, rather than one or two people) in certain counties than in others. It seems to break down on political lines here, as certain counties hate the governor.

We have done History Odyssey with the Human Odyssey books, Notgrass US history, and OUP's series that Lori linked above. My rising 10th grader is doing medieval using McKay's western civilization books and some other stuff I mashed up. He used all eight of OUP's ancients last year -- fairly easy reading but lots of detail, plus questions to answer. My rising 6th grader will be doing medieval using Kingfisher and OUP's medieval series, also somewhat mashed up with History Odyssey.

That's what I was going to suggest as well. We have certain things that are always in morning basket (Bible, poetry, a lit read aloud, and almost always some sort of history or geography reading/activity, and some sort of science or nature reading/activity), but the rest will rotate and vary. I have a running list on Trello of ideas by general topic (nature, art appreciation, composer study, math enrichment), etc., so I can kind of keep an eye on what hasn't been touched on recently. We can spend 30-60 minutes on that, easily, depending on the day, and that covers a LOT. Then anywhere from 30-60 minutes per child for me to work with elementary kids on individual phonics/reading practice/independent novel discussion, math, and writing.

The Unit kept popping up for me, so I watched it. Liked it okay. I agree that I would have liked more of it. That last season was such a strange premise, though. My pick is always Crossing Jordan. Get them off that mountain, and give them a satisfying ending! I'd love more Rizzoli & Isles too, but they at least got a conclusion, and it wasn't the same after the one actor died. Oh, my other favorite that really, really needs more episodes, even though they did conclude it well is White Collar. So rare to have a show that was witty but not generally silly, and also interesting for adults but fairly clean -- not often gory, and even the few adult scenes and language were pretty tame. Also, somewhat diverse cast and characters.

FB is driving me nuts too. I can't leave it, though, because I need it for my volunteer job, but I also stick around to support my friends who are very worried about themselves or their loved ones. I've made good use of the snooze or unfollow buttons, though, and that has decreased my stress levels a ton.

Oh, yes, school buses. No public transportation.

I live on a large corner lot in the country. We don't really have issues with people whipping around the corner. First, we don't get a lot of traffic, and second, the side road comes up to a hill on both sides of the main road, with stop signs. We have a ditch that runs along the side road. We do have several trees along the side road, which gives some privacy to the house. The house has a very tiny side yard on that side and not much front yard, as it sits assymetrically on the lot. We have a huge back/other side yard though. No HOA, and nobody cares what we do. The township mows along the ditch side, but DH has to trim the trees near the stop sign every so often, which is NBD. We have no doors on the side yard, but we also live in a very low crime area, and also, tbh, I have an old farmhouse, and there are much newer and nicer houses to break into on the street. Probably the only real thing I wish were different is that there is a little lack of privacy. We have a small area right around part of the house fenced in, but it is too big (nearly 3 acres) fence in the entire thing, and the side road trees stop just a bit beyond the house, so the back yard area is visible to anyone coming up that road. (But so are our neighbors' yards, and the side road is very visible from the kitchen too.) It really hasn't been that big of a deal. The buses do stop at our corner, but they come from the opposite direction and so stop more across the main street than on our side. Haven't had an issue with anyone leaving stuff on our property -- that would be annoying.