I just watched the one the other day where he didn't realize he was wearing a woman's suit, lol. Love THE OFFICE!!!

oooh, I am soooo stealing that!

Oooh, that makes me drool. :) Great room!!!

*ahem* there are five branches;) Coast Guard - new enlistees are also called seamen or firemen, and I've heard the term "puddle pirates" too. :D Aviation fields in the Coast Guard are also slow to advance. My DH will hit the 10 year mark in a couple weeks, and he's an E6. Other coasties with the same amt of time in, but a different rate, are one or two ranks above him - sometimes due to the sheer amount of vacancies in the rate as people get out or retire. Aviation tends to move slower b/c people tend to stay in longer, as a whole...from what I've been told. Time in rate in one of the things considered when advancing, as is sea time, test scores, "page 7s" etc etc.

Or- easier way... Click search, then 'advanced search' - on the right side, you can search by user name, type sta and it will pull up a list of names, then pick yours. directly under that, you can pick which forums to search. pick sale/swap board. :) I just learned that myself, lol.

I think if you click on your username in 'this' post, you can search for your other posts, then just find the specific one.

You can get them on ebay. :)

ooh, I just found the answers to BOTH questions!

...and on that same note... How many 'other' people do you have to rep before you can rep the same person again?

I would like to get a really nice GLOBE on its own stand/table. However, since we move so much AND the kids are so young, I'll settle for flat maps and maybe an inflatable or cheapy globe for a little while longer. :)

Wife of a career Coast Guard guy here. :D Each person will have to evaluate the pros/cons of the branch they feel most suited for, but I thought I'd chime in with my 2 cents, since sometimes, we're the forgotten branch. (Heck, sometimes we're even told we're NOT military! *sigh*) This way of life has been very good to us. When he joined he wasn't sure if he wanted to get in, do his time and then get out and use the GI Bill, or stay in for retirement. We weren't exactly sure what we were in for - would we be able to handle it, would we be apart more than together, etc. Sure, there are ups and downs, and plenty of sacrifices per se, but my DH is in the aviation field. There's no doubt that the job security he has now, as compared to the civilian aviation world, is a million times better. He's doing what he loves to do, and we don't worry so much about if he'll still have a job next week, kwim? So we decided to stay in for the full 20 (or 30?). He'll pass the 10 year mark in a couple weeks. There are things we don't 'love' of course - like deployments and having to rearrange most of the holidays, hehe, and not being close to family (well, sometimes that isn't as bad as you'd think, lol. j/k) ... but overall we're VERY happy with our lives. I'm able to stay home with the kids, he racks up lots of travel, homeschool is great for our way of life, tons of education benefits for him and us, excellent family support, life-long friendships can be found at each new station (the CG is very small, barely larger than the NYPD!), leadership opportunities, advancement, ceremonies, tradition, etc - not to mention how proud we are of him. :) I think it's a very honorable path to choose, but that one should be as educated as possible about the lifestyle/realities before signing on the dotted line. It can be hard, but like anything else, it just takes some getting used to. Semper Gumby. :) I've only met a couple people who got in and then hated it...and it was mostly due to misconceptions they had prior to joining.

Ours is latin, and I hope it means what I think it does... semper doctrina (always learning)

Ooh, thanks! We went to Home Depot to look for a few things, and it turns out the ceiling tile was the cheapest. We got 3 - 2'x4' tiles for about 11 dollars!! Then I went to Walmart and got some felt to cover it, so add another 9 dollars. Now I'm just having a problem trying to attach the felt to the tiles, lol. Thanks for that video - (it's the one on the bottom for anybody who wants to watch it...I watched almost the whole 10 minutes of the one on the top before I realized there was another one, lol.) I've tried a regular stapler and some sort of 3m adhesive spray, but I haven't tried her suggestion of the STAPLE GUN. I know we have one somewhere in the abyss that is my DH's tool space in the garage...but of course, he's got overnight duty now that I need to find something. Thanks for all the suggestions/ideas! Hopefully before Christmas, haha, I'll have some pictures to share.

I'm at the beginning of this now. :) We are just finishing our first week, and it's been going well but I can tell it'll be a good long while before I really get to the point where I'm able to 'relax' about it. I can't even FATHOM only spending a week on planning, lol. I've been gearing up for this year since August or September of last year...but have been seriously up to my eyeballs in it since about March. Joining this board has been one of the best things I've done, though. I have so many "a-ha" (or maybe "duh" lol) moments reading here.:D

We rent. :( and the walls that we could do that to, if we were allowed, are textured. ETA: Oooh, maybe we could paint the chalkboard! lol, I wasn't even thinking of that!

Thanks for the suggestion. I looked it up on a few sites, and I bet they would look better than the tiles we got from Walmart, but they're quite a bit more expensive, too. :(

I want a cork board. :) A big one, like bulletin board size. But they are so expensive! There must be cheaper alternatives?? We have a 3x5 chalkboard that was given to us, and we tried covering it with the cork tiles, but they fell off after the first night! DH used the stickies that come in the package, but he does have something a little more heavy-duty that we could use. Trouble is, the tiles fell off in pieces and honestly, I wasn't crazy about the look of them anyway. I really don't want to put more money into more tiles if I can find something that doesn't look as thrown together as that. I saw some cork in a roll, but I'd have to buy 2 rolls and piece it together as well - and it was very thin. I wonder if a push-pin would even go in far enough to hold stuff? I was at AC Moore tonight and saw some foam board - like 2 pieces of poster board with a layer of foam sandwiched between them...would something like that work on the chalkboard? Would it hold the push-pins/papers? Would it look awful after I poked holes in it a month or so? Are there any other ideas that would be inexpensive but effective? I got the idea of turning the dining room table into a dry-erase board here, and I'm hoping for something just as "a-ha!" for a cork board.

1.) How many kids do you have and what are their ages? 2 boys - one is 6 and the other turns a year old TODAY. :001_wub: 2.) What is your favorite food? A well-seasoned medium steak. Ooh, or chicken Caesar salad! Mmm, add some homemade bread, and that's a great meal, lol. 3.) What is your favorite movie? Raising Arizona or Best in Show (or anything Christopher Guest) 4.) Coke, Pepsi or neither? I prefer Diet Dr. Pepper when I have one, but I'm not THAT picky. 5.) What is your favorite book? WTM is tops on my list (new homeschooler) b/c it really cleared the fog, so to speak, when I was first researching how/what to do. For fiction, I like anything Carl Hiaasen or Saving Graces was good, too. 6.) What is your least favorite household job? Putting away laundry. I don't mind washing, drying, folding, hanging, etc. but I HATE putting it away. 7.) What is your favorite season? I have lived in southern Florida for the past 5 years and have nearly forgotten what a season is.:tongue_smilie: 8.) What is your favorite sport? I'm going to steal "internet surfing" from a previous poster, lol. I like to watch gymnastics, too. 9.) What is your favorite holiday? Does Black Friday count? I love the thrill of the hunt!:D 10.) What is your least favorite store you have to shop in? Would the post office count?

that last link - the slant board! - that's what I did the tub/stairs exercise on!

I didn't exactly self-treat, but I can tell you what I did at PT... Aside from the cortisone shots I got in both insteps - OUCH! - First, I stretched on a board, kind of like if you put your toes on the edge of the stairs, or the side of a tub, and lowered your heel down below your toes to stretch them. Then I used one of these, and rocked all the way back, bending my toes as high up as I could. Another exercise I did was like this guy, EXCEPT. the toes of the foot in the back were on the achilles heel of the foot in front, stretching in the same position. Hard to explain and I couldn't find a picture, either. Hmm, what else? Oh yeah! They injected water into a tennis ball somehow and FROZE it. Then you have to roll your foot kind of hard over the tennis ball - this is especially helpful after you get out of the bed, or car, or anytime you've been off your feet a while. Some people said a frozen water bottle worked, too...and they had a bottle at PT but made me use the ball for some reason. I have it in both feet, not sure if that matters, and I'm flat-footed, too. ?? I also have a sheet of exercises to do with a big stretchy band, night braces, and I've been forbidden to wear my beloved flip-flops ever again. He suggested I find shoes with a slight heel to keep pressure off my heels. I also wear OTC inserts, that I found myself before going to the doc, that he later approved. They came from Target, and they're not gel, but that's all I know about them. Oh - they also did foot massage, used 'laser treatment'?, taped my feet (this felt the BEST) and what I call shock therapy, lol. They called it 'stimulation' - :glare:. Good luck! I quit going to PT and I'm not having surgery, but these things help when it flares up, which is often. It's not a fun thing to deal with, that's for sure!

We've renamed our school twice, lol. This is our first year, and we're a military family. Our new name is Four Wynns Academy (there are 4 of us) and our new motto is semper doctrina (which I hope means "always learning" but would love confirmation of that!) I was so proud of finally settling on something and now I'm gonna have to get school colors, t-shirts, a mascot... lol. Great thread!

I'm glad to see this thread. We chose A Beka math for our first homeschool year, and I'm fairly new to the board. Haven't seen many positives about it until now, and it makes me feel better, lol. I picked A Beka because of the repetition, and because it is very similar to the stuff he was doing in Kindergarten, worksheet-wise, so I thought it'd be a nice transition. (He also still wants to raise his hand and me 'call on him' for an answer, so....hehe, yeah. Should be a fun year.)

I just made a couple of sheets that might help w/ what you're looking for, too. They're a tad over the attachment size limit, but if you want me to email them to you, I'll be happy to. You can put the passage at the top, with the lines at the bottom, and no headers. I made one in portrait and one in landscape. :) They're Word files. (.doc)

Ooh, I like both of these! I can never make the handwritingforkids.com one work right for me... I'm sure it's user-error, lol.

Here's the other post, with additional suggestions. :)