This is funny to me. My mom started out making quilts for the grandchildren. She meant well, she really did. But #7 (my youngest) and #8 (my brother's youngest) never got their quilts. I think Mom was just tired of making those quilts! When I had my first baby in 1985, she just did not realize how many quilts would be needed! She is a great grandma, though. And a great mom and a great mother in law. She put her life on hold to take care of my brother and his wife after a horrific motorcycle accident. We call her the Patron of Arts because she makes it possible for the kids to study dance and music. No cookies, no sewing, not much babysitting as she works in her career full time; but an awesome grandmother none the less.

Laura, I worry more about people who DON'T feel that weight of responsibility. I also found that the burden gets bigger, not smaller, as you gain experience in homeschooling. The more you know, the more you know it matters greatly. I sort of just embrace those moments of self doubt and go with it. It is an honest emotion like any other. It IS huge, it IS scary to think how much is riding on you and your commitment to see the job through. I think it is fine to say out loud that this is a big, heavy, scary responsibility.

I thought about that too! In my family I am the proverbial woman who sings to signify that something is over. And yet, I am probably one of the more careful eaters. My 17 year old eats the best in the family. But I certainly eat much more carefully than my husband. But he would be allowed to eat his high carb, high fat menu option and I would not be allowed my baked fish and salad because I would be sitting in the car waiting for him? And that is another thing, this would be whole families that the restaurants would lose because who is going to take Mom out for Mother's Day lunch and then leave her in the car because she is too fat?

So true, so true!! Like I am going to let some teenager covered in hamburger grease touch me with the calipers. I don't think so!

You will just see a box that says This message is hidden because ________ is on your ignore list. I cannot describe how wonderful it is. :) You can also have a buddy list, that is people who you want to read. I started to play with that, but the list would have been huge! My ignore list is very, very small.

*snort* You are gonna do fine here, Volty, you are gonna do just fine!!! You are very funny! We like funny, don't we, girls?:D

We are having to be more creative. And believe it or not, we are no longer doing menus like we used to. Instead I keep stocked up on staples and I check the manager's markdown area for meat, I buy the produce that is on sale or generally affordable anyway, and we "make do". I remember seeing an interview with an older couple who were perplexed with the shopping habits of young people. They said folks (back in the day) did not make menus and have elaborate shopping lists. They ate what was in the house. They did not cook what they wanted to cook, they cooked what they had. I guess this is a principle we are learning to live by more and more. Our meal plan is greatly simplified and we are "playing" with our food less than we used to, but everyone is eating. And I am still managing to get some of the important things in organic. (Not meat, though,:( we still eat that Kroger meat, I just can't stretch the budget to get the good stuff) We have cut breakfast cereal and lunchmeat out for the most part and that has helped. It does mean that we have to cook breakfast every morning and I hate that. I am not a morning person and I miss the days of putting 6-7 boxes of cereal on the counter and shouting, "Kids, get your breakfast!" and then taking my coffee and finding someplace to hide from them.

Echoing the others here, we do our color copies on on my HP 4 in 1 but black and white printing is done on my bottom of the line Samsung laser. When I decided to to use MEP math with three kids, I knew I had to find a more cost effective way to print all those pages! That is when we bought the laser printer.

I agree with Quincy, the cinematography was gorgeous. I don't remember inappropriate scenes, but it has been quite awhile since I saw it.

That might be a good debate! Should we send the link to Judith Ann? As one who would be refused service in a Mississippi restaurant in the unlikely event that this were to pass, I would prefer to be somewhere else when the debate is going on. I think I would just crawl under the table in shame when someone had to take the pro-bill side. I am just dumbfounded. I don't think it could ever pass, but I am dumbfounded none the less.

Yeah, I think so too. I googled a number of phrases trying to get something more detailed, but came up empty. All I really found were some blog entries about it and junk like that. It just kind of blew my mind.

I think it is for real. I think it is unconstitutional and I think it cannot be passed. But wow. Someone actually submitted that.

You know what is funny? I am trying to get rid of my desks and replace them with a big table!!! Now that my kids are getting older, esp my 7th grader, they sometimes have to spread out multiple books per subject and things end up falling off the desktop. But we loved our desks for many, many years.

have you noticed that you can set your personal preferences to ignore people?:D I love that feature!:cool: It keeps me out of trouble. I just have some posters on ignore and then I never know what they say and I never have to worry about it and end up responding when I should not. Much better!:)

http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/documents/2008/html/HB/0200-0299/HB0282IN.htm How 'bout that?:eek:

Oh, you don't want to live in Memphis. There is nothing good about Memphis. Get on I40 and travel west for a bit. If you get to Nashville you have gone too far. You want to stop almost halfway between Memphis and Nashville. That is where the cool people live.:cool: Okay, if not, then what Rachel said. Memphis is a good city. It's not Chicago, but it is not bad. The zoo is okay, the museums are pretty nice, I understand the library system is good. The homeschool community is supposed to be pretty good. Rachel is right, race is pretty important in Memphis. Oh, and you might want to check Homelife Academy for your umbrella. I think they are the absolute best.

I am going to be the perfect grandmother. I will be the cookie grandma, the sewing grandma, the soft lap grandma. I will never tell my kids and their spouses how to parent unless they ask my opinion. I will babysit as long as their kids are obedient to me. I. Cannot. Wait. to be a grandmother. I absolutely cannot wait!!!:D I am already a fabulous mother-in-law, I am sure I can do this grandma thing much, much better than I did the mom thing. I didn't do the mom thing so well.:(

We are not trying to get speech therapy through the schools, but we are trying to get some of that money that is supposedly available to pay for a bit of the private therapy. We have a therapist that we really like and we are not about to change to one of the school's therapists. There is supposed to be funding available to help offset the costs, but I have only jumped through a couple of the hoops so far and have many, many more hopes to jump through before I even get my name in the hat. And then there is apparently no guarantee that the funding will even be there. I heard one wild story from a homeschool mom about how they pursued the school's counseling and somehow ended up with a very stressed out therapist who missed a few sessions and then one day just looked at the mom and said "I just don't have time for this." and left! And then I heard another mom, same school district but zoned for a different school, who had a great public school therapist and everything from evaluation to completion of therapy was smooth and happy. Go figure. We have insurance and only pay a copay. I would not even be pursuing it except that we now have two children in speech therapy and that $20 copay per visit for two kids is wiping out our medical savings very, very fast!

We have an i-fish and an i-dog here. The kids don't have ipods, just inexpensive mp3 players. The i-pets work great and are a lot of fun!

It is not a wonderful system. It was a dreadful system, but it has improved a little bit. About a year or so ago the library board voted to outsource management to a private corporation, I think it might be the same company that manages the library gardenschooler uses, and things are getting somewhat better. The bad news is that when they went with the private mgt. company, several of the librarians who actually knew books and actually knew how to treat patrons resigned.:( We finally got a branch and it is very close to me. It is tiny, but very nicely laid out. They ordered all new books for it and there is plenty of shelf space for more. I can order books from the main library and pick them up at the branch. They keep a wishlist box for new books on the counter. And the most important thing to me, they hired new staff for this library and they are all nice. I don't know how knowledgeable they are, but right now I am just pleased to have nice, friendly staff to deal with! You can only put 6 books on hold at a time! :eek: That is just crazy. But at least things are improving, slowly.

These are great cookbooks, very clear instructions and the food is wonderful! Sometimes when my resident chef is not looking I use his Emeril books!:)

Oh, my oldest was the same way. And at the time I still had toddlers and babies. So, while I would push and nag and beg and plead, he usually did not accomplish anywhere close to what I needed him to accomplish to call it a day. That boy made me about crazy sometimes. But he turned out okay in the end!:)

Yes! Please come back and tell us how the argument ends!!:D Who knows, we might need your help in an argument next time!:p

that was such a sweet, happy post. I slung some good rep at you for this one! I guess those of us who have been here awhile get pretty wrapped up in each other's stuff, I am just happy every time you come on here to share the direction of your life these days. Just desserts for how upbeat your attitude was when things were so very hard!!:)

I wish all this rain would turn into something and force me to cancel 4H. I don't want to be the 4H leader, I don't want to be the 4H leader, I don't want .........you get the point.