We love the bookmarks and they are also a great spelling list based on patterns. Thanks!

Sorry I've been absent this week, having a stressful pre-trip week of laundry, cleaning, packing... We're going to CA on Monday! Hooray! 12 hours in the airplane... less hooray... I had a lame week, only ran once, but I hope to go out tomorrow. I saw my doctor for my iron levels and lo and behold, they are low again. I'm happy about that, it means maybe the race didn't suck so hard because I'm out of shape, but just because I'm oxygen starved. LOL. Unfortunately I scheduled the appointments last minute so I won't get my ferritin IV until I get back in mid-October. I figure it'll be like a magic bullet and I'll suddenly be cranking out 7 minute miles... iron works like that, right? 😄 Eating is so-so. I got into the bad mindset of "I'm about to spend a month in the US eating all the delicious crap I miss from home so I can totally have another helping now" mentality. Sigh. I will try to curb my eating a bit while in the US, but I do have a list of meals that must be eaten while there. LOL I doubt I'll be very present on the boards for the next 3.5 weeks, so I wish you all a healthy start to fall and I'll try to check in when I can!!!

No, I'm sorry! To estimate, I'd do a ratio like the following: Per chicken breast: 1 chicken breast, sprinkled with Spike seasoning or just basic poultry seasoning or marinade of your choice, grilled or pan-grilled with a bit of butter until cooked, cooled, cut into small cubes. 1 green onion, finely sliced 1/2 granny smith, diced, dipped in lemon juice and drained to prevent browning maybe 10 craisins or so 2Tbsp mayo, grind of salt, grind of pepper, 1 tsp lemon juice, 1/4tsp finely chopped fresh parsley. Mix separately, then add to salad and mix together. You can add more mayo to get the consistency that you like. My mom prefers it nearly dry, I prefer a bit more mayo. You can substitute halved red seedless grapes for the apples or cranberries for a nice change. You can add roast pecans if you like a bit more crunch. It's important that everything in the salad be similar in size in your mouth- I'm a huge texture snob when it comes to recipes. You need to dice the chicken pretty small, so that each bite of salad will hopefully contain most of the ingredients of the salad. There is nothing sadder than a chicken salad with enormous chunks of chicken in it, so that you get a bite of chicken, lonely in its solitude, then a bite of the other ingredients, then a bite of chicken again... LOL. Serve on sourdough bread, croissants, baguette, or on a salad leaf with a fork.

Personally, I would go with bilateral, because otherwise the sensation of "ticking time bomb" would cause me a lot of anxiety. And I would do reconstruction because I think it would be important to me to look as much as possible like I did before. But there is no right or wrong answer!

Sure! A warning, these still contain all the graphic violence of the originals, and in the case of Les Mis the (non graphic) prostituation scene with Fontaine. For my 10yo, it went right over her head, but i think my 12yo understood what was going on in that scene. For Shakespeare, we like the Classical Comics series. These are available in 3 formats per play: original text, plain text (modern translation), and quick text (modern, simplified translation for struggling readers). We use the original text version. example: Midsummer Night's Dream Beowulf graphic novel. We enjoyed this one so much we went on to listen to a full-length translation/performance Black Ships Before Troy (The Iliad) and The Wanderings of Odysseus (The Odyssey) by the same author. We did these as audiobooks, which was great for hard-to-pronounce names. My kids read through all of the Manga Classics our library had, including Les Miserables as mentioned above. I can't attest to their quality as I didn't pre-read them. The drawings are typical manga, lots of cleavage and big eyes. For Jules Verne, we read a series of B.D. (French comic books) in French from our library. Similar series for Oliver Twist and a few others, so I don't have a link to an English version. But there are plenty of similar things in English. If you search for "classic graphic novel" on amazon, you'll find lots of choices. For audiobook unabridged classics, we've done and enjoyed: All of Narnia (we're halfway through our second listen for these, and my dd is also reading the physical books) Mutiny on the Bounty The Willoughbys (a modern classic, IMHO! So much funnier once your child has read some of the classic children's books) Hound of the Baskervilles Norse Mythology by Gaiman (not a classic per se, but an excellent retelling of some Norse myths. I consider myths and fairy tales to be part of that obligate knowledge for literacy) The Light Princess The Princess and the Goblins A Christmas Carol (to be followed up with the Muppets movie version!) Little Lord Faunterloy Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Peter Pan Wizard of Oz James Herriott's Chlidren's Treasury Trumpet of the Swan A Little Princess Black Beauty Heidi All Winnie the Pooh books 20,00 Leagues, Voyage to the Center of the Earth (both of these in the original French for my kids) The Hobbit (we've listened to this, read and re-read it, and my oldest has also read the LOTR books) Beatrix Potter Wind in the Willows Pippi Longstocking By the Great Horn Spoon (a modern classic IMO, love this book!) Howar Pyle's King Arthur, Men of Iron, and Robin Hood. Say what you want about Pyle, if you can read/listen to his books, you'll be ready for anything. Treasure Island Just So Stories D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths Gulliver's Travels Three Muskateers (French version) Hope that helps some!

Oh, another thing that was a HUGE hit was a cold meal I made so that we could go home and feed people after a funeral without people standing around hungry. I did: chicken salad, with diced grilled chicken, green onion, granny smith apple, dried cranberries, mayo/salt/pepper/parsley/lemon juice dressing veggie sticks and dip various breads lentil salad quinoa salad chips

Oh, thought of another good middle grades one that does not get nearly enough recognition: Gregor the Overlander series by Suzanne Collins (author of Hunger Games). These are fantastic, comparable to Harry Potter.

I have very mixed feelings on this subject. E.D. Hirsch's The Knowledge Deficit is an excellent book that argues for the traditional "Classics"- NOT on their stand-alone virtue, but rather because the ability to know them and understand references to them is part of being literate in the Western world. Their inherent merit is secondary to our need of them as background knowledge to other works, modern references, etc. I highly recommend his book. Because I buy Hirsch's idea that this knowledge is part of being literate, I have changed my opinion on adaptations of classics. For example, as a young mom, I was quite die-hard in my opinion that my kids would not read children's adaptations, abridgments, etc. I never read these as a child, and had no problems reading 20,000 Leagues and etc. But... there are a lot of books in the world. If we want to cram both classic classics and modern classics into our short years with our kids, something's gotta give. And my kids have LOVED graphic novel versions of many classics, some of which they enjoyed so much that they have gone on to read in the original. Our preferred Shakespeare versions are the graphic novels that include the original language. The pictures make the difficult text understandable, and my kids will happily read these for pleasure. Their reading of a Les Mis manga and me showing them one of Jean Val Jean's songs from Hugh Jackman's JVJ led to what was probably the most profound conversation we've had- the difference between being condemned by the law of Man and being damned by the laws of God. From. a. manga. adaptation!!! So this is now what I do. If it's a classic that I myself am willing to put the time into, then we'll read the whole thing. If I think it's an "everyone should be familiar with this work" book, I'll get them a graphic novel of it, and they will go on to read it in full if they'd like. I make no attempt to avoid racism or sexism in books. Encountering this is just another opportunity for history lessons and worldview discussions. The shifting morality of what is acceptable and not acceptable make many books over 6 months old already objectionable. 50 years from now, Harry Potter will probably be condemned for using gendered pronouns. Who knows? What I'm saying is I judge a book based on the merits of the plot and the writing, and consider any objectionable content to be fodder for discussion. (To a certain extent: I have not yet allowed my kids exposure to books I consider psychological horror or overtly sexual content because of their ages) To go back to defending the classic classics, one of the reasons students should read the good books list is to develop an ear for more archaic language structure and vocabulary. Pride and Prejudice is an absolutely hilarious book, but not if you have to re-read each sentence twice and look up six words per paragraph. The Great Books will always feel like a chore and a bore if you've been limited to the relatively simpler sentence style and vocabulary of more modern books. So, while I think my adaptations technique mentioned earlier is a good one, there is still something enormous to be gained from reading the classics in their original form. Again, I have a "workaround," which is to get these books from audible. It is hard to beat A Little Princess for a strong female protagonist, same with Secret Garden. But both can be challenging to read when held next to Harry Potter. We listen to these at lunch time as a family, and it's a lovely half-hour of peace and quiet and storytelling. But in defense of Modern Classics- YES!!! There are some amazing modern books out there, and my kids gobble them up as well. Holes is my current favorite middle grades read, all the Roald Dahl children's books, everything by Scott O'Dell... my shelves are full of modern classics. Anyway, just some thoughts on the defense of the classics.

My kids only eat at specific times and I'm generally involved with that. My DH has his own area where he keeps his snacks. I've never had ingredients go missing unless I'm the culprit. 🙂

These look good!

Oh, asking a bunch of book nerds to narrow things down is just SILLY! For middle school/upper elementary: - Narnia - The Willoughbys - Holes discovered the last two as an adult and they blew me away! For adults: I'm going through this "Asian epic" phase right now, so I feel everyone should read (so I can then talk someone's ear off: what's up with the ending to Shogun???) - The Good Earth - Shogun - Wild Swans But when I'm not in my epic phase, the books I tend to recommend the most often: - Daughter of the Forest series for a light-ish but beautiful fantasy/fairy tale - Ender's Game - Pride and Prejudice When people tell me they don't like this, I just assume they have terrible taste and judgement. It's a good sieve for vetting new friends. Non Fiction I most often recommend: - Atomic Habits - Spark - People Skills

Thank you so much! I have everything you listed except the College Companion, so I'll order that one. I've got the dialogues book as well.

Homesick Texan Carnitas - with all the fixings. For a dinner party, I'd serve my slow cooked black beans and some kind of cole slaw in addition to roast peppers/onions, tortillas, guacamole, salsa. Slow and Low temp roast pork tenderloin. Lots of recipes online, I make mine with a balsamic marinade but I don't have a recipe! There's balsamic vin, soy sauce, mustard, worstechire, brown sugar, rosemary, thyme, garlic. Roast Chicken- don't skip the tarragon-lemon pan sauce, it's what separates this from any other roast chicken recipe. The only modification I do is that I butterfly the chicken before roasting rather than leaving it whole. Salmon Cakes - these are a hassle, but so good. I make them easier by using canned salmon and store-bought breadcrumbs or panko. You can make them most of the way earlier int he day, just don't add the breadcrumbs until you are ready to start cooking them. Also, I use an ice cream scoop and portion them out onto parchment lined pans and oven cook them at 400 for 10 minutes per side. WAY easier than pan frying, and they don't come out greasy. Beef Stew, from the Cook's Illustrated family cookbook. The thing that makes this great is the red wine in the broth, so don't skip that!!! In fact, double it. 🤔

We finally are wrapping up GSWL and ready to start LLPSI. If you used this, do you have any great resources or tips to share?

Ridiculous. From my understanding of this article, an "appropriate" swimsuit bottom just rode up on the athlete. Frankly, I can't even picture what the quote describes as being physically possible: "butt cheek touching butt cheek"- that is a MAJOR malfunction, I don't know of even the most racy swimsuits that don't cover the so-called intergluteal cleft! Bad call. She shouldn't be required to pause in the middle of winning a race in order to tug her swimsuit back into place. I'm sure it was fixed at the end of the race, because no one intentionally walks around with a wedgie.