I think back to my younger self, when my mom was feeding me, and I can't fathom it either. I use to wake up famished, had to eat breakfast first thing. And I used to keep food in my purse because I'd get hungry when out and need to eat. And now I can forget to eat breakfast because I just don't even feel hungry, and I haven't touched my purse snacks in months - it's weird. But even then, sometimes I'd miss a meal and not notice till I was getting draggy and weepy. Anyway, I've noticed that for me starting the day out right with a timely breakfast goes much better than delaying or missing breakfast and spending the rest of the day trying to catch up. My day tends to be a delayed breakfast and an even more delayed lunch, and while that's enough to stay functional, it's not enough to feel hungry, and so probably isn't that healthy. Which kind of sucks because of how much effort it takes just to make myself actually *have* something for lunch, but all that effort kind of let me lose sight of just how delayed my meals tend to be these days.

I'm like this - in college I'd not eat until past lunchtime, and then it was a pop-tart in class. Part of it is that I don't tend to feel hungry - I just get run down and tired. And the more I need food, the more tired I am and the less anything sounds good. Junk food is easy to default to both because it's easy, and because mentally and emotionally it always sounds good, even when physically nothing sounds good. I try not to keep junk food around anymore because of that, but then there's nothing I want to eat, and the more I don't eat, the more I don't feel like eating - it's a vicious cycle, one that's hard to break. It fluctuates with my overall health - when I'm exercising regularly and eating regular, good meals and otherwise feel really good, I will feel hungry like I'm supposed to. But once exercise drops off, or I start letting meals slide or skipping meals or eating junk for meals, or just quit feeling top of my game for some reason, I quit feeling hungry again. And that makes it hard to eat regularly enough, which keeps the whole not feeling hungry thing going. I try to keep easy protein heavy snacks around, ones that are tasty enough that I'm interested in eating them even when I don't feel like eating anything but are also full of nutrients. And I've learned to identify the listless, tired feeling as a sign I might need to eat if it's been a while since I last ate. Really I need to get a regular eating schedule going, because even though I've been making a real effort to eat regular-ish, it's still been months since I properly felt hungry :(.

This is how I manage our books, too. I check out everything for everyone on my card (idk what the checkout limit is, but it's more than 200) and use the website to keep track and renew books - I'd be lost without the website and email reminders. I also have a shelf for library books, to keep them corralled; when my kids were younger I was *very* strict about putting library books right back on the library shelf, but now I'm a bit looser, because they don't disappear the way they used to. Growing up, we always went to the library on the same day every week, and we checked out exactly six books apiece, no more and no less, so we always knew how many books we needed to find. If I didn't have the email reminders and the ability to see my list of books out on the website, I'd do the same thing. I get fines on occasion - with the amount of books I get at a time, being just one day late can be $10 - but generally my system works (I usually only have problems if I don't check my email for several days, so I make sure I check every two-three days). I'm spending a lot less on fines than I would buying all the books, even if I got them all used from Amazon. (I do buy all our school books, though, even when I could/should have gotten them from the library (with renewals, we can keep books for 9 weeks). We manage to have 50-100 books out at a time just with non-school stuff, most of which I wouldn't have wanted to own anyway. I only buy books I mean to re-read - which is still a lot of books, though. I think we've around 2,000 books in the house now, which isn't *that* much compared to some people here, but still makes books the dominant decorating theme in our house ;).)

My girls and I all have long hair. When detangling hair becomes an issue for us, it's usually because the end of the hair have gotten dry. I deal with it by putting a bit of oil on the palms of my hands and gently running my palms over the ends of the hair a few times. After doing that once or twice, combing goes *much* smoother. (I use jojoba oil, which is light but pretty pricey; olive oil is a heavier oil but it can work so long as you use a very light touch.) In addition to regularly oiling the ends of the hair before detangling, I do several other things to try to prevent dry ends and other sources of damage (I do the same things for both me and the girls). I use a very gentle shampoo and don't shampoo every day; plus I put oil on the ends of the hair both before and after shampooing, to help protect the ends and keep them from drying out (I use oil instead of conditioner, but either works - just need to do *something* to counteract the drying effects of shampoo). I also detangle with a seamless wide-tooth comb, instead of a brush - ime brushing works best once you've *already* got the majority of the tangles out. Also, you want to avoid brushing wet hair, as that's a big cause of damage, and damage to the hair is a big cause of tangles. IME regular use of detangler spray can sometimes actually *increase* tangles. Detangler spray usually has silcones in it, and on some people (including me), silicone products used regularly end up causing more problems than they solve. After a few days of use, my hair starts sticking together more and tangling more and generally is a complete pain to deal with. It can take several washes before I get all the residue out.

At our denomination's seminaries (we're LCMS), the third year students spend a year on vicarage (basically an internship for pastors). Dh's vicarage church was in the center of a large TX city (downtown, but outside the skyscraper part of downtown), and we were able to get a decent apt in a fairly safe area 10 min away for $520/mo (although it's now been torn down and is being replaced by luxury condos for $300K, so idk how it would be now). One of his friends, the next year, was assigned to a church near Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, and his apt was $2400/mo! The church paid for it, which was good (and necessary!), as that was more than a vicar's entire monthly salary ;). That church's parsonage was worth over a million dollars.

My childhood church used the local school district's pay scales as a guide in setting pastoral salaries. They tried to pay associate pastors what a teacher with the same level of education and years of experience would be paid, and the senior pastor what a principal with comparable education/experience would be paid.

I'm doing 1a with my older K'er. (I though about RS, but I had SM, so I figured I'd try.) I wasn't sure how it would go, since unlike my logical oldest, my middle dd is much more artistic and musical, but it's went really well. I'm comfortable with math and we have a ton of manipulatives, so I added a lot of hands-on stuff as needed for teaching, but dd6 does great doing the workbook. Both my girls like the sorts of fun activities in the SM workbooks.

Score for Waldorf Education: 8 Score for Traditional Education: -9 Score for Unit Studies Education: 3 Score for Montessori Education: 5 Score for Thomas Jefferson Education: 6 Score for Unschooling: -2 Score for Classical Education: 17 Score for Charlotte Mason Education: 6

That happens to me every year, because the federal return has the standard deduction (or itemized deductions), which my state taxes do not have, plus bigger personal exemptions than my state taxes do. So more is subtracted from the AGI for federal taxes - enough to wipe it all out, leave me with no taxable income - while for state taxes not nearly as much as subtracted from the AGI, so I end up with taxable income and so taxes. Does that make any sense?

I donate to my church because I think they are doing something worthwhile, that I'd like them to be able to keep doing. They aren't perfect, I'm not happy with everything, but on balance I think they are doing enough good that it's better for them to be doing what they are doing than not. For me, a church whose mission and impact was such that I could not in good conscience help them keep it going (financially or by volunteering) - I thought that on balance it would be better if they shut their doors than remained open - well, why would I want to subject *me* and *my* family to such a church? Otoh, if they do enough good that I'm comfortable attending and being shaped by them, well, why do I want to deny them the resources to keep doing that?

There are quite a few C.S. Lewis books available on Kindle unlimited: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_n_feature_nineteen_0?fst=as%3Aoff&rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3AC.s.+Lewis%2Cp_n_feature_nineteen_browse-bin%3A9045887011&keywords=C.s.+Lewis&ie=UTF8&qid=1428788734&rnid=9045886011 Also, Chesterton's Orthodoxy is a great read, although it's in the public domain and so free on Kindle for everyone ;).

I'd expect somewhere between 10-11, but I'd figure the last hour or so would be movies or other winding-down activities. For 9yo, I could see midnight. Of course, I stayed up past midnight at a New Years sleepover when I was 7, so there's that, too. I would be surprised if they were supposed to go to sleep before 9 or much after midnight, I guess. Eta: to me there's also a big difference between 5yo and 9yo when it comes to "staying up late", too - I'd be far more strict with getting 5yos to bed at a not-too-unreasonable time than I would be with 9yos.

Concordia Publishing House is having a sale on confirmation gifts: http://www.cph.org/c-1736-gifts.aspx?REName=Sales%20%26%20Seasonal&plk=1517

Here's some benchmarks for reading progress (K-3): http://www.bullitt.k12.ky.us/userfiles/9/my%20files/accomplishments-in-reading-k-3.pdf?id=542813

Thanks :). And have a Happy Easter and Happy Birthday :).

If you don't mind a question from an interested non-Mormon :), I was wondering why the conference is being held on Easter? Google tells me that the conference is Easter-themed, but as an outsider it just seems a bit odd to have something like this on a major religious holiday - unless Easter is not so major for LDS? Or having two important religious events at the same time is seen as a plus - extra special awesomeness instead of taking focus away from each other? Or something else?

My grandparents live in a farming community, and I've been surprised at how many people fleeing the suburbs have moved into the area in the past 15 years. There are these big McMansion-type houses next door to working farms - it's really jarring. And it's an hour and a half commute into the city, too. Haven't heard of people complaining, though. (Although on the other side of the coin, my mom wants to cry when she sees good farmland being parcelled and sold to housing developers :(.)

I actually misread the title - thought the post was about banning models-of-determining-healthy-weight that were based on BMI. I was several posts in before I figured out what the title was *supposed* to mean :lol:.

I'm 34, and I wear earrings 24/7 (the *same* pair 24/7). The whole "able to sleep in" thing combined with being very sensitive to any metal but gold really limited my earring choice. For years I used to wear small studs just to keep my holes open, but a few years ago I fell in love with a pair of 2" spirals (made from implant-grade surgical steel) and now they are what I wear everyday. They are fairly distinctive and I get compliments on them, plus comments wondering how I can wear dangly earrings with small children (answer - because they are thicker than typical earrings, so the kids can tug all they want and it doesn't hurt, let alone tear the hole). I'm not much of a girly-girl or jewelry wearer, but I do love my spirals.

Here's a link to the AP edition of the poetry book (Perrine's Sound and Sense), and as far as I can tell (with a very quick comparison of the contents), the main/only difference is the inclusion of AP writing prompts: http://swcta.net/orapello/files/2013/03/Poetry-Text-1.pdf. I would expect that holds true to the literature book as well (it's not all that easy to find the toc for the ap edition online - the publisher's site has the toc online for the regular editions, but not the ap editions).

From the New Math of the 60s, Dolciani's "Modern Introductory Analysis" and Allendoerfer and Oakley's "Principles of Mathematics" were both rec'd on the board in past years. (I have them both on my shelf, but haven't used them; my grandpa actually taught from the Dolciani book (I have his teacher's edition) - turns out he was instrumental in getting his school to switch to New Math.)

  :lol: My kids are PKs, too, but fortunately they haven't suffered from being in the fishbowl (yet anyway). It may be because I'm fairly oblivious to unspoken expectations plus I apparently intimidate people, so no one ever tells me all the ways I'm screwing up to my face and I go on in blissful ignorance ;). It may be differing traditions, but I don't agree that all anyone needs is "the Holy Spirit working through me and my Bible". In a sermon of dh's, he talked about how the Bible is meant to be interpreted within the Church - it's "the Holy Spirit working through me and my Bible and the cloud of witnesses". Just as God works through parents to raise and teach kids (kids raising themselves doesn't tend to work well ;)), He works through faithful pastors and teachers (including parents) to teach His Church. The Bible wasn't written in a vacuum, and the Bible isn't interpreted in a vacuum - God's work is no less God's work for being done through means instead of directly. ETA: I don't think the only (or best) way to experience living ideas is unmediated contact between a learner and the text. A teacher can both convey living ideas and can guide the understanding of a text's living ideas, without draining ideas of their vitality or diminishing the impact of direct contact with those ideas. I subscribe more to the classical idea that a novice benefits greatly from a knowledgeable guide, who can not only facilitate contact with living ideas but also guides the novice in how those ideas fit into the world. Learning directly from the source doesn't have to mean *unmediated* learning.

I think learning about the lives of the saints (which would of course include the saints in the Bible), including discussing applicable character traits, and emulating their example as part of learning to live a life of faith can be beneficial. But I'm hesitant to give those character traits the force of God's Law. I realize your example was spur of the moment, but using the Creation story, which shows how even creation itself is a gracious gift of God to us, as a springboard for teaching orderliness or creativity does seem out of context. And I'm hesitant to say that either orderliness or creativity, good traits though they may be, are part of God's Law. And if they are, the creation story isn't what establishes it. And this is one reason why I'm not a fan of teaching Biblical morality through character traits - most Biblical narratives were not written to tell us the traits of a righteous person, and the Biblical texts that *do* tell us what a righteous person looks like tend to not be narratives, nor do they mesh well with the sorts of character trait lists that tend to be used. Generally it seems people take a list of character traits that are *consistent* with the Bible, instead of *drawn* from the Bible, and start matching them up with a list of Bible stories that seem to somehow mention the trait. This may show that the traits are indeed consistent with the Bible, that living by these traits is consistent with living out a life of faith, but it doesn't show that living by these traits *is* living a life of faith. And I think that's what some of the other posters were getting at - that when you use the Bible to teach character traits it is so very easy for it to come across as "living out character traits" = "living out the faith". Only that's *not true*. Teaching character traits is *not* teaching what it means to live the faith. Heck, even teaching God's Law, drawn straight from the Bible, is still only teaching a small part of what it means to live the faith. My tradition (Lutheran) teaches the 10 Commandments as the summary of the Law, of how God's people are to live - like you are using traits, we use the commandments as our framework for discussing right behavior - but that is only one of the six chief parts of the Small Catechism, and taught alone it leads to legalism. The teaching of right behavior needs to be *explicitly* grounded in an overall Biblical view of how the Law and Gospel work in the life of a Christian.

I grew up south of Houston, and I now live in northern IL. When I first moved here, I couldn't tell the difference between 45 degrees and 20 degrees - it was all just "cold". I got mocked my first winter for overbundling for 45 degrees - it wasn't because I'm a delicate southern magnolia ;), but because I had no idea it had "warmed up" overnight - it still felt "cold" to me. But just as in the south you can tell the difference between how 85 and 100 and 110 degrees feel (northerners here can't do that; "hot" is anything over 80, and no one has any idea how to be active outdoors safely in higher temps, because it rarely is an issue here), I now can differentiate between 45 (and genuinely see it as not-winter weather - coming out of winter it's a heat wave, baby!) and 25 and 15 (and thanks to last year, I now know what 0 and -20 feel like ;)). Second the rec's for good winter gear - not all gear is rated for all temps. Stuff for 20 degrees worn when it's 0 degrees will not provide the same protection ;) - have to plan for that. I had to learn how to be safe in freezing temps, because the southern approach of huddling in our houses until it goes away isn't exactly viable ;). (And I don't want to be like our softball team that held a practice when it was in the high 90s, and didn't think to hydrate more than they would when it's 80 - these temperature differences, they do matter ;).) It surprises me the number of families, life-long northerners, who keep their kids inside whenever it's below 20 degrees; it's like southerners who don't let their kids out whenever it's above 90 - it traps you indoors for a significant period of time. I personally prefer to learn the safe ways of being out in the more extreme temps that are usual for a place. Getting used to the time it takes to bundle everyone up before getting into the car was an adjustment, and we all cheer and ditch the coats for jackets as soon as it's above freezing ;). But the hardest thing for me has been the lack of light in the winter - living in the south all my life, I had no idea that would be an issue. Getting enough light is a major part of dealing with winter for me.

This rule (or "rule") seems to be the go-to example for so-called phonics rules that aren't. "It's only true 43% of the time!" People use it to show why "phonics doesn't work", and phonics advocates are quick to throw it under the bus as an example of crappy phonics teaching. Which is why I was shocked to see that LiPS, an intensive, research-based remedial program, actually teaches it. What in the world?!? But I thought about how LiPS does it - they first teach the primary spelling(s) for the additional vowel sounds beyond the short/long vowels (au/aw, oo, oi/oy, and ou/ow), and only use the "two vowels go walking" rule on other two-vowel phonograms, as a guide to their most *common* sound (not their *only* sound). And when you do that, the accuracy rate goes way up. There are very few big exceptions: namely, eu/ew, which is only used for /OO/ and /U/ (and so is outside the scope of the rule), and "ie", which is the only true exception, because "the second letter does (most of) the talking". There are a few more phonograms where another bit of phonics knowledge is needed to complement the "two vowels" rule (usually wrt foreign spellings). The big one is "ey"/"ei"; the primary sound is the *Latin* sound for "e" (/A/) and it is used most in words of Latin origin; the next most common sound for these phonograms is long-e (and actually, for the suffix -ey, /E/ is the *only* sound). "ui"/"ue" both have second sounds with consistent, easily identified criteria (-ue is silent at the end of words of French origin, and in some words that start with g, the "u" in "ui" is silent, and serves to separate the "g" from the "I", making it clear it's a hard "g"). So I ran the numbers (using The ABCs and All Their Tricks as the source of all my numbers), and I'm starting to think that this much maligned rule doesn't deserve its bad rap. For the following list of phonograms (basically the Spalding two-vowel phonograms, excluding au/aw, oo, oi/oy, ou/ow, and eu/ew as explained), here's how the "two vowels go walking" rule of thumb works out: When you include the known outlier "ie", it identifies the correct sound 90% of the time. When you *exclude* the known outlier "ie", it identifies the correct sound 95% of the time. If you don't include second sounds with consistent, easily identified criteria (ue/ui), to look only at true outliers, it identifies the correct sound 98% of the time. I think that's a pretty darn good rule of thumb :). I think a key thing is to see "two vowels go walking" as a *rule of thumb*, a guide to which sound to try first, to the *most common sound* for phonograms that aren't primarily used for non-short/long vowels, instead of as some absolute, "it's *always* this sound" rule. Within those parameters, it's quite accurate and useful :thumbup:. Here's my numbers, for the phonics geeks ;): ai: long-a, 98%; other, 2% (long-a: 308; other: 5) ay: long-a, 99%; other, 1% (long-a: 143; other: 2) ea: long-e, 67%; short-e, 32%; other, 1% (long-e, 325; short-e, 156; other, 5) ee: long-e, 99%; other, 1% (long-e: 307; other: 2) ei: Latin long e (long a), 73%; long-e, 15%; other: 12% (Latin long-e: 54; long-e: 11; other: 9) ey: in base words, Latin long-e, 85%; other, 15% (Latin long-e: 17; other: 3) as a suffix, long-e, 100% (43, no exceptions) ie (the outlier): within words, long-e, 97%; other, 3% (long-e: 77; other: 2); at the end of words, long-e, 63%; long-i, 37% (long-e: 17; long-i: 10) oa: long-o, 99%; other, 1% (long-o: 132; other: 1) oe: long-o, 83%; other, 17% (long-o 15; other: 3) ue: long-u, 51%; silent at the end of words from French, 49% (long-u: 44; silent: 43) ui: long-u, 62%; silent u, 38% (long-u: 15; silent u: 9)