I generally think it is ok as along as the bride and groom understand and are ok with some people sending their regrets if they can't get a sitter. We were recently invited to the wedding of a college budy of DH whom I barely know. It's in a small town 4+ hours from our house where we know no one (the bride's hometown, I assume). Given that it's an evening wedding we would almost certainly have to stay overnight. DH and I haven't had an overnight alone in 3 years since it is so hard to convince any family members to watch our kids overnight and none of our paid high school age sitters are old enough for an overnight. So, I am pretty unlikely to call in favors to find an overnight sitter for this wedding, DH doesn't want to go alone, so I think we'll have to decline. On the other hand if one of our young adult nieces or nephews decided to have an adults only wedding I think I would still be really sad they didn't want to include their cousins, our kids. Still "their choice"...but given the close family relationships we all have it would be hard not to feel a bit hurt by it. I doubt that will happen given our family/regional culture....but I can relate to some PPs who felt that it is a bummer for kids not to be included.

Probably a scam but I would do more research to confirm. In a season where we had multiple bills from multiple places, I once accidentally paid the wrong amount on one bill (not enough) and we were not sent any further bills for some reason. Then we were sent to collections over the small amount we didn't pay (It was like $30). Luckily it was an easy mistake to get sorted out.

Hey! This is my old thread from last year! :-) I ended up ordering Stories of King Arthur and his Knights by Barbara Leonie Picard as well as King Arthur and his Knights by Elizabeth Lodor Merchant. After reading through parts of those and liking them both (and deciding that I wasn't as keen on Once and Future King for DD), I had DD read the Picard one and I read the Merchant one to the boys...mostly so that we didn't have book contention. No one was super into it at the time, but we got it done. Fast forward months later...through reading the Prydain Chronicles, DD decided she actually did like fantasy after all, and this summer we decided to read the Dark is Rising sequence. Totally forgot it was recommended in this thread! We really like it a lot (we're reading the last book in that series right now), and I think it was helpful to have already read a traditional Arthur. My boys ran across The Invisible Tower (Otherworld Chronicles) and listened to the audiobook recently. It is a modern/Arthurian mashup and they really enjoyed it.

I've never attended a single church that had kids Sunday school at a separate time from the adult service. They always run concurrently. So if a church is small enough to have only one service and the parent served every week, they would literally never go to service. We encourage volunteers to serve once per month, so they aren't missing the service too often (it was different when we were at a church that had two service because you could serve at one and attend the other). Serving in children's ministry is only one way to be involved in the church and only one way to be involved with spiritual formation of your children. Plenty of people who do music, ushering, sound, etc in my church can't do children's ministry because it is all happening at the same time. But I am sure most of those people are (if they are parents) still deeply committed to their kids' spiritual growth.

We do Sunday school for kids during the service, so typically only teachers are in the room. What your church is doing just doesn't seem very well thought out. Even for two parent families, it seems like it shouldn't be that uncommon to have kids in multiple age groups. I just did a quick calculation and figured out that we will have seven years of our child rearing where we would have kids in three different age groups by your breakdown above...and we only have only have 4 kids! I hope those who can't manage this logistically for whatever reason in your church speak up and don't just leave over it.

The law says we have to register and test the year that our students are 7 on or before October 1st - so some students may be first graders if they have an early fall birthday. You just need to list your test of choice and who administers the test ("self" if you are doing it!) on your notice of intent form (the MACHE form can be downloaded free on their website). As PP said, any nationally normed test is fine. We did the ITBS with a group from our co-op for several years, and have had a PIAT administrator come to our house to do the Peabody the last two years. Several of my good friends do the CAT and administer it themselves.

I did a class like this last year for my co-op and used mostly fractured fairy tales. I would read/tell a simplified version of the "classic" story and then we would read a fractured fairy tale version and talk about what literary element(s) were changed/different in the "fractured" version.

On behalf of my DS7, I am really looking forward to a new informal co-op/group we are trying out in the fall that will be much better suited to him than our previous co-op. But sad at the same time on behalf of the other two DS's who are going to terribly miss certain aspects of the old co-op that aren't present in the new one and are tough to duplicate at home (We were already planning on switching DD to a weekly drop off tutorial instead of co-op for 7th grade). Also looking forward to starting Beast Academy with DS7, who should be ready for it either right when the school year starts or soon after.

I used to look over my shoulder, but now I use the screen on my backup camera! :-)

We don't start until the last week in August (most schools here don't start until after Labor Day, so this is actually early here). But here summer is the only nice time for outdoor activities like swimming and my kids do many outdoor camps and sports classes all summer. We go to the pool many times per week since it is only open for 10-12 weeks out of the year! I guess you could say that summer is "PE" season of school for us (though not all the camps my kids do in the summer are sports related though, I guess). ;-). We do try and get a little bit of schoolwork done when we can thru the summer.

Thanks for the ideas. I've looked at a bunch on Amazon too, I was just curious if anyone had tried them and had experience to share.

Not from New York, but the insurance thing sounds like such a "convenient excuse". Plenty of other states allow partial enrollment or participation in individual classes or extracurriculars and have found ways to work that into whatever insurance coverage they need. Probably the same large insurance companies are insuring districts around the country and they just get policies written for whatever the situation is in each state. Good luck, OP. Sounds like a tough but worthwhile battle to fight.

Yes, he has already done quite a bit with Scratch, and is a bit bored with it. I'm sure he hasn't taken that to the full extent possible, but he is SUPER interested in Minecraft modding, so I am looking for options in that direction. ETA: He just finished a typing program, which I said was a pre-req for him to learn modding (Since I am assuming actual typing will be required for real modding), so now that he has finished the learn-to-type program I feel like I need to come through on my end with at least some kind of option to work on modding.

I'm looking into options for helping DS9 learn Minecraft modding. I've heard great things about the Youth Digital course, but even at a discounted price, I'm leery to start out spending that much money on something that he may not really want to stick with. That price tag would be more "Christmas gift" territory for us. Has anyone's kids had success with any of the less expensive options out there?

We had an older Gran Gaggia for close to a decade that we loved. We got it on eBay for less than a hundred (no idea if an older one would still be a similar price). The downside was my husband had to really give it TLC to keep it running correctly. We paired it with a burr grinder that was around $100 and it made pretty great espresso drinks. When the Gaggia finally bit the dust and was actually beyond repair, we were fortunate to have received a large Christmas gift that a family member insisted we use for a "splurge" and we bought a Silvano that was more in the $1000 range. I don't know that it is ten times better based on price paid for each machine, but it is much faster and requires much less repair. When the grinder broke down a year or so ago, we replaced it with a much more expensive Vario grinder DH chose after reading many reviews. I've actually been disappointed in some ways. I thought we would be able to switch effortlessly between different grind settings, but the reality is that if we change it to make a pour over, it takes several shots to get back in just the right setting for espresso. It's easier just to keep it on our espresso setting and use a simpler grinder for pour overs.

This is my experience as well. Family practice doctors seem a lot more laid back in my experience. I'm sure some of this is just limited sample size. Our first ped was a royal jerk on many levels, and then after a move the first ped clinic that we took our kids to seemed to serve a demographic that maybe needed more "hand holding"? Not sure. We certainly got way more unsolicited parenting advice there than our current clinic. Family practice docs we've met at our current clinic are all great for the most part. However, the family practice doc we've mostly seen for the past several years I decided was too laid back or maybe not well educated on mental health issues. When I brought up some behavior/emotional concerns with my daughter a couple years ago and asked about the value of seeing a counselor/therapist, she totally wrote it off and told us not to waste our time because my DD seemed really normal for her age. My daughter took that to heart and even as some issues worsened, she refused to even consider a therapist because "the doctor said this is normal". Finally she agreed to go this summer and it has been so helpful for both of us (we're going together to a family therapist to work on conflict resolution). I still can't believe the doc thought it would be a waste of time! This same doc seemed really clueless when I asked for suggestions about recommended places to get ADHD testing done for DS7 I got better advice from Google and Facebook. After testing when we wanted to pursue meds for ADHD for DS7, I switched to a different doc whom the staff said was more knowledgable about ADHD and mental health in general.

Is there value to Touch Type Read Spell for a student who finished a "fun" typing program (Typing Instructor Platinum) and knows all the keys but could use more directed practice to continue improving accuracy/speed? This is my DS9. Spelling is not a strength for him, so my thought was that this might be a good choice to both improve his typing and get in a bit of spelling practice at the same time (I just finished Apples and Pears B with him, if that gives you an idea of his spelling level).

I waited until I was 17 to get my first job (I was pretty busy with school and extra curriculars, so my parents didn't push me toward a job. I also didn't have my drivers license until I was 17, so that would have limited my options). I had a summer job between junior and senior year of high school working in the office of a small engineering firm that had never had any "office help" per se. They wanted someone they could pay minimum wage to organize their files, blueprints, drawings, etc and answer the phone. It was a pretty fun and laid back first job (when I finished filing for the day, I could read a book between phone calls!). Then in the fall of my senior year in high school I started working at a telemarketing firm that specialized in fundraising and "membership renewals" (think, AAA auto club calling to ask if lapsed members want to renew roadside assistance). They lost a big client and I got laid off...and since I was saving money to attend a conference across the country, I just went for the first job I could find, which was McDonald's. It actually paid better than the other two jobs!

We raised monarch caterpillars several summers in a row. We don't have a good milkweed supply at the moment (and I have no luck growing any of my own in my yard). It was a great experience. We had a nice plastic shoe box with a hole cut in the middle and covered by a screen that we used as a "house" for them a couple of the years. When we just had the milkweed in a vase, we did have one "wander off" and we had to find where it went! When they are ready to make their chrysalis they get a bit of wanderlust sometimes looking for the right spot I guess. I heard from a friend though that if you put a dry stick I'm with the milkweed they will usually make their chrysalis on the stick.

My DS7 received an ADHD diagnosis and started Strattera about three months ago, and so far so good for him. It's a non-stimulant. He was doing pretty well academically (I had already figured out how to help him stay focused with me, one on one), but socially/behaviorally he was a mess before we started with meds and therapy. We did about two months of weekly CBT sessions with a therapist that were helpful for him in learning better responses to things that anger/frustrate him, and a six week long class that covered topics from the SuperFlex curriculum and other self-regulation strategies. My DH "shadowed" DS7 to all his church and co-op classes for about three months so we could catch behavior problems quickly. (It was a long stretch of weeks, but it was needed if he wanted to stay in those classes, which he did). He is really doing a lot better and finished Science Museum Camp today with no bad behavior reports all week. That was a big win for us! On the other hand, he wanted to try a fun tennis class at the neighborhood park that he could do along with DS9. They teach tennis skills through fun/silly games. That was a total "fail" because it brought out all the things that he still struggles with (losing in competitive games, not being able to "go first" in the games, not being chosen as "it", not being on the team he wanted to be on, etc). He was out after one day -- partly because he didn't like it, and mostly because the 16 year old coaches of the program told me they didn't know how to handle DS7s behavior when he didn't get his way (and it wasn't a time/place/situation where DH or I could be fully devoted to trying to work with DS7's behavior right there during class). Fair enough. So the things we've done so far have improved day to day life and allowed DS7 to be in some classroom situations with no behavior problems, even though it is still a work in progress in other areas. We're on a summer break from therapy and the Super Flex class, and we aren't quite sure where we're going with it in the fall. I do know we are not going to do a co-op with a gym class this year for him. :-)

I agree, it is surprising they don't offer after care! I think pretty much every camp I have ever signed my kids up for that was more than just a two hour class at the rec center offered this. Even though we don't need it, I'm thinking this must be "standard procedure" for camps to offer it and I think at some point it would be good to point it out to them (probably after this week of camp is over though).

Not to side track the OP's post too much, but your daughter's thought about the lockdown reminds me of a time in high school when a deer actually jumped through a floor to ceiling window and was on the loose in the hallways of the school! These days if that happened a lockdown probably would be called for liability reasons. As it was, as many of us a possible tried to gawk at it while an animal control officer tried to wrangle it out of the building. Very memorable! OP, remember that even if you do public school it doesn't have to be forever. It could be a year or even part of a year if YOU get to a point where you are doing better. Whatever educational problems they may face, outside influences you are concerned about (hearing things that don't line up with your faith, kids that say things you would rather your kids not hear, etc), one year in public school will not put them hopelessly behind or turn them away from the faith teachings they hear at home. And if you are healthier and in a better place emotionally at the end, that will probably do wonders to improve things for the future, whether at home or otherwise.

My experience is with First Edition, so I don't know how comparable it is with 2nd. With my oldest, we didn't find Right Start until half way through Kindy, and she completed A in half a year. Given that she had done other K level math in the first half of the year, I think in retrospect I could have started her in B even though math isn't her greatest strength. In first edition there is a lot of repeat from A to B. With DS9, we did RS A activities informally in PreK and he started B in Kindy. DS7 hated the abacus with a passion when he was 4 and 5, so I did Singapore and Miquon for him in Kindy, and then flew through B in the first little-over-half of first grade, and we made it through a great deal of C as well. My boys are defintiely strong in math though. With DS4.5 we will start RS A in the fall, but if he doesn't gel with it, I won't hesitate to pull out Miquon. We are already "playing" math quite a bit. Yesterday we were making various piles of ten Pokemon cards and then counting the tens with their "math names" and their traditional names. :-)

Before kids and while the older two kids were really young, we were really strapped financially so the only travel we did beyond our honeymoon was to visit family or occasionally attend a church conference out of town. Now our game plan is to take a "big vacation" every two years (10-14 day road trip with some camping and some hotels. The kids and I did use DH's frequent flyer miles to fly for part of our trip last year.). We've done two "big vacations" so far. In the past five or six years we've gotten to take two long weekend trips without our kids, but it is hard to find anyone willing to take on our crazy bunch, so we don't do that as much as we would like. We're way more limited in terms of child care than finances for that sort of thing now. We also take shorter trips that I don't necessarily think of as a "vacation" but some people might - weekend or long weekend camping trips in our state or nearby states (3 weekends per summer or so), travel to adjacent states to visit family for a few days around holidays (2-3 times per year), an out-of-state church conference once every year or two, sometimes a weekend trip to a family lake cabin we can borrow or a hotel weekend away bought with a groupon or something (maybe once a year or less).