I voted first week in December, but some years it is a bit earlier. We often travel for most of the week after Christmas, so I never have time to take it down until Jan. 1st or a bit later. I have taken down the tree on New Years Day many times. And I never skip. Even the year we were moving in the first week in December and the year my husband had broken multiple bones in his leg/ankle (so I had to figure out how to haul the heavy tree up from the basement alone and get it set up), we still decorated. It wouldn't be Christmas to me without a tree.

I agree it is a bummer the hostess is being so strict about it. I, on the other hand, wish I would get invited to one or be able to find enough friends who like cookies/baking to have one. Most of my friends are too busy to bake, don't like to bake, are doing no gluten or no sugar, on a diet, or... etc...so I am not sure I could even find a reasonable number of people to actually exchange cookies!

I installed a third party app on my laptop (Windows) that worked out pretty well for that purpose. I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head (not in front of my laptop right now), but I just googled "transfer files from iPad to Windows computer" and I found a little app to install on the laptop that easily lets you transfer files when the iPad is plugged into the computer. I would think there might be a similar application to do that on a Mac?

I didn't vote, because I think it depends on the situation just a bit. In a "potluck" situation where the host does not provide most of the food, I think it is a bit much to ask guests to reliably know how to make food that fit in with food allergies. In that case maybe the person with the allergy needs to bring one or more items to the potluck that works for them. In the case of a host preparing the food, I know I would try my best to provide a reasonable number of dishes the person with allergies could eat (for example, I have made both a gluten free and a regular dessert when I have had gluten free guests), perhaps consulting with the guest about what might work for them. Of course, if the person offers to bring their own food I wouldn't turn it down either.

Love it...looks so cool!

My boys all have cards, and I have encouraged them to learn how to play the game and not just have the cards for the sake of collecting. If all they do is collect them, they are just paper collecting dust and an excuse to try and "one up" friends and talk them into trades. ;-). The actual game is pretty interesting and enjoyable, however. A good way to start out playing the game is with a theme deck, like this: http://amzn.com/B00LHRR32S If you search "pokemon theme deck" on amazon, you'll get a lot of options and any of them are decent. A lot of the ones on amazon are packs of two decks, which is good if you want to play games at home with a parent or sibling. You should be looking at spending about $13 per deck on a theme deck. There are a lot of options in store at places like Target. Individual booster packs are a good way to get more cards, or my boys also like to get tins, like this: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=pokemon+tin They have one really powerful card, plus four booster packs. Anywhere from $15-$20 is how much you'll expect to pay (usually $20 in store at Target unless there is a special sale or coupon). If you see ones over $20 on amazon, they are more collector items and not as good of a deal. If you want to actually play the game, you don't want to get all tins/booster packs, because you won't have the cards called "energies", which are required for a regulation game. Starting with a theme deck also gives you a playing mat that explains the rules really well. ETA: Once you get going and you need more energies, buying just a "lot" of energy cards on amazon or ebay can be helpful as well to get the energy cards needed to add in new cards that were found in booster packs, etc.

We live in the city of Minneapolis itself (south part of the city, about half way between downtown and the airport). We love homeschooling in Minnesota and the twin cities in particular. The regulations aren't hard to follow, and there is so much to do -- both in terms of homeschool co-ops/groups/activities and just things to do in general. In terms of access to the airport, we find that living in proximity to the light rail line is super nice -- I can drop of my husband 5 minutes away from our house at the light rail station (or he can hop on a bus for a 10minute bus ride to the station), then you are at the airport 15 minutes later. Super nice, because you don't have to park at the airport. A lot of the neighborhoods in the general vicinity of Lake Nokomis are both proximate to the airport and pretty nice (without being over the top nice, if you know what I mean). We live a bit north of that area, and while it is slightly less safe, I love the diversity and community in my neighborhood. Other suburbs in decently close proximity to the airport are Richfield, Bloomington and Eagan. I have a lot of friends who live in Richfield and like the reasonable housing prices there. Several of the major museums (Children's museum, history museum, science museum) are in St. Paul, and we can get there in 20 minutes or so from our house in south Minneapolis. A great resource for finding out about homeschool co-ops and other activities is http://hsadventures.org/ They have a yahoo group as well (I think it is linked to from the site. Minnesota is pretty open to students using the public schools for services/activities/sports. We personally haven't done this, but we have friends that have done speech therapy, evaluations for special needs, sports teams, music, etc.

How to Teach Spelling by Rudginsky might work (sorry, ugly link since I am on my iPad): http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Spelling-Laura-Toby-Rudginsky/dp/0838818471/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1447771447&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+teach+spelling Some of it would be too basic, but you could go through and select the sections that made sense for her to practice and probably pare it down to a year's worth of study pretty easily. There are lists of words and dictation sentences.

As far as I have been able to tell it is alphabetical, except whatever you put as your defaul list is always on top. What about making their names like an ordered list, kind of like this: A. Movies B. Music C. Books D. Curriculum That's not too off putting - you would still be able to see the name of the list in the little drop down menu I think.

Ever since we've had three/four kids we've had three kids in one room. We've done: loft, with toddler bed underneath and a crib nearby at a 90 degree angle Loft with one toddler bed underneath and another toddler bed to the side Bunk beds with crib to the side Bunk beds with toddler bed to the side... Now that DS4 is getting bigger, we'll probably do a triple bunk next!

I really like having a google voice number. I give that out as our "home phone", and it goes straight to voice mail. I get an email when I have a message. I give this number out to places that need a home phone number, but that I don't really want to be bothered by possible sales calls. Yeah for no more credit card sales calls asking, "Would you like to have xyz new service we offer for the low low price of 2.99 per month" or whatever. My DH has another google voice number he has forwarded to his phone for other purposes, and that works quite well also. You can also get your google voice number forwarded to multiple phone numbers if you ever need that.

DD11 is looking for ideas for her Christmas list for games that can be enjoyed by one person alone. They could be board games or "logic puzzle" type games. She has learned a few varieties of solitaire played with regular playing cards, and is looking for something different (though other types of card games might be interesting). She doesn't really care for jigsaw puzzles. We already put a rubik's cube and the game Rush Hour on her list. Any other ideas for her?

Dipped pretzels, and "Christmas Bark". I can't find the recipe I've used before at the moment, but similar to this: http://www.food.com/recipe/christmas-bark-candy-272207?photo=169228

Getting started with German would be amazing! I have two kids who want to learn German and i love the format of GSWL. But I would also love the Latin book 2 to be done soon for DS8 who will finish GSWL this year. Here's hoping for timely development on the new books!

We have several friends that do professional photography as a small "side business". Since the grandparents and other relatives want picture every year of each kid anyway, we make this our Christmas gift to get prints made of each kid and of all the kids together/the whole family. With 4 kids and the number/size of prints we need, it works out the same or cheaper than getting everyone in to a studio like Target or ordering the "school pictures" our co-op offers. And it has the side benefit of supporting a friend's small business.

I have a minimum of assigned chores for the older three kids (one each), because they are things that I want each kid to do automatically and I won't have to worry about it, Oldest unloads the dishwasher daily, DS8 takes out trash and recycling, and right now DS6's job is to twice a week clean out the place where our shoes accumulate in a huge pile and sort them back into our shoe bins. They are each good at their chores and usually remember without being asked. They also know they need to help out "as requested" with cleaning and picking up/decluttering.

At least around here 15 year olds can take lifeguard training, so defintiely by that age I would think that swimming in most situations (lake, pool, pond) should be acceptable without an adult supervising. If 15 year olds with proper training can supervise others swimming, then a 15 year old who is a capable swimmer could swim with a friend. Of course if the friend is not a good swimmer and the good swimmer is responsible for "supervising" in a sense the poor swimmer, that would be a problem if the 15 year old wasn't actually trained.

We didn't use WWE, but I thought that Treasured Conversations was great preparation in 5th grade for my DD. She is doing well with WWS 1 this year in 6th grade.

LOL...this is a subject of ongoing debate in our house. Partly because for a while every time one kid said he IS or ISN'T the same, I presented a possible argument in favor of the opposite view. ;-). The kids are all hoping there will be a big reveal in the end of the last book to solve this once and for all!

I've had it happen, but not for anything that I was completely opposed to. I do find it annoying, but I am mostly annoyed at FB for making this just about the only option available to get a person into a group. I was recently added to a group that I was really happy to be a part of (and had no idea it existed until a friend added me), and I would love to just "invite" other friends but I don't want to annoy anyone so I just don't do anything. The group's settings are such that it would be hard to find with out that direct "add".

There are a lot of games in Logic of English Foundations, though most kids wouldn't be ready to start that until maybe 4 or 4.5 years old or older.

<hugs>. Defintiely take a break! Facebook should be a fun way to keep up with friends/acquaintances/family. If people consistently post things I don't like for whatever reason, I hide them from my feed. But if it's pretty much everyone on your news feed that bothers you, then you'll be happier if you take a break. Everyone posts what they personally want on FB, and no matter what anyone posts some people won't like it. Political, recipes, food pictures, games, too much positive stuff, too much negative stuff...I've seen various people complain about all of it. I'm mostly a "positive stuff" poster and not because I want everyone to think my life is perfect or my kids are perfect. People who see us IRL know that is true. But I almost always post the "highlights" of my day to Facebook because that is what I want to remember, and what I want to have family and friends to know about. In general, I don't think most people really want to know about my clutter, my fruit fly problems, or how my preschooler threw a tantrum for an hour because I wouldn't take him to Target NOW to spend his birthday gift card...LOL

We started making 4 out of 5 mornings devoted to school in Kindergarten with my DD, but that was partly because of life circumstances - new baby/toddler/next pregnancy taking a lot of time and/or sucking my energy when she was in K-2nd. With distractions, we were "cramming two hours into 4†so to speak. ;-). Then when we got past that, her schoolwork started taking a bit more time anyway, and I had to add in oldest DS who was eager to learn to read and do math as soon as he turned 5. Had it not been for those factors, we probably could have been more flexible at least during K/1st and maybe up into 2nd.

I'm not familiar with these books, but has she read the Land of Stories series? There are only four books so far in that series, but they are fairly thick. My DD11 gives them a great reviews.

We almost always have snow for Christmas in Minnesota. In the Minneapolis/St. Paul area there is the Mall of America (no Lego Discovery center but it does have a lego store, plus the mall has an amusement park in the middle and a large water park nearby). Lots of good museums. Some pretty fun sledding hills in the parks, as well as larger snow tubing hills, cross country ski trails, small downhill ski places, outdoor ice rinks, etc.