At our prison (pretrial centre to be exact), the neighbours would get people released going door to door asking for money.

Thank you Lecka. That helps me so much as I begin this journey with my son.

Butter chicken!!!

The Bamix is the best I have ever used. Very expensive though.

I remember being in a very similar place with my son. You are going to have to do some serious thinking outside the box if you are a meat and potatoes kind of family. Fortunately it is summer so it is a little easier with so many fresh, different products. Consider yams/sweet potatoes or Jerusalem artichokes as a mashed potato or French fry substitute. Rotating items, like your doctor suggested can actually be a help not only as a way to prevent more severe reactions but as it starts framing your options kwim? I tried all sorts of crazy items and some were actually winners. I found that if I steamed the milk substitute using my old espresso maker, I could get a pretty creamy substance for making sauces. Please remember to be kind to yourself and remember this is not necessarily a forever thing. My very allergic son, got past his allergies with an elimination diet. I wish you the same success.

I have successfully trained one of my cats to use the toilet. She loved to pee on garbage bags. I wrapped one around the toilet seat. Each day I would make a slightly bigger hole in the bag until it was no longer necessary. It was actually ridiculously easy. However it was very creepy to wake up in the middle of the night to hear someone going to the bathroom when the rest of the family was away.

I had to deal with them regularly in a group home I worked at. You can rub a sharpie marker over a patch of skin you are concerned about and then remove it with an alcohol pad and you may be able to see the little tunnels the beasties leave behind just under the first layer of skin. It is contagious via articles like fabric. In our case everything went through a hot water wash and drier or went into storage for several months. Freezers could also be used but I cannot remember how long belongings need to stay in the freezer. Be prepared to feel itchy, really crazy itchy, not because you have scabies but just because you are thinking about them.

Menu Math books are a huge hit here.

I just want to back up Impish on her brother's experience regarding the police. That is the way hiring is done for the RCMP in Canada. http://www.rcmp-grc..../eq-div-eng.htm

:crying: That is seriously evil.

I so share your frustration BlueTaelon. :grouphug: It is frustration for us to have to research everything that goes into our Celiac kids mouths. It is downright dangerous when friends and family see something marked gluten free and trust "truth in advertising". Discussing the issues time after time with offending stores, manufacturers, restaurants, and even a pharmacy, I repeatedly come up against a wall of apathy. There must be a better way.

I have pretty good luck with candle making. One trick with beeswax candles is that they seem to need time to cure. I've read a year but we've never waited anywhere near that long. What you describe sounds like the candles didn't have enough cure time. I bet they smelled wonderful still :hurray: .

Hi Kathy, We have tried several programs and what works the best for us is Mammoth Math. It uses American money but kids are loony savvy so no worries for us there. It covers both the imperial and metric systems. We live near the boarder so we want the kids to be proficient in both systems.

I considered the word "stupid" a bad word until we all saw the movie The Stupids. Because of that movie it is now a goofy word for our family.

I guess I'm not the only one with food/IL issues:grouphug: My FIL knows more about Celiac disease than my daughters gastro-enterologist and the hospitals pediatric dietitian because (drumroll) he bought a copy of Celiac Disease for Dummies. Even more infuriating for me is medical professionals that just don't get it. The dentist who says that the kids can spit the gluten out afterwards (...right), the hygienist who is put off by having to check ingredients or the late night pharmacist who kept asking if it really mattered if the medicine had gluten - no matter how I explained Celiac disease to her. Come on people: 1 in a 140 people have this condition. Welcome to planet Earth.

I thought homeschooling meant we would never get lice:leaving:

A few years back, I found a website that tracked the distances from adventure to adventure in Middle Earth. With that information, you can walk/jog/treadmill Bilbo and Frodo's journeys. My whole family got into it, asking if I had made it to Rivendale yet and such.:D

Wow thank you for this timely list! OT The Narnia Cookbook (when I last went looking for it) was out of print and extremely expensive to buy used. I found a copy at my library and was hugely disappointed. Seriously any recipes you want , you could do a 5 minute search on the net.

For anyone on the fence about FUFI, I have it and ROAR. ROAR is a wonderful way to go through Narnia with the kids without getting that bogged down feeling of having so much of the school time tied to the series. I think that I am going to use ROAR as my main spine for Narnia Literature and use FUFI as a supplement for ideas only.

That is our plan come September. I am hoping to combine it with SOTW. I went on Ebay and bought my son a "Peter" suit of armor for a song. Still looking for my girls. Can't wait to go to IKEA on a field trip -you know...jumping out of a wardrobe yelling "FOR NARNIA!" Last year we did the Prairie Primer. That was great but reading the Long Winter during January made for a really looonnng winter.

We have made several wands although officially they came from Olivanders. We used a broken chair spindle for one, a tapered doweling for another and my youngest child's wand is a stripped knobby willow. If you have any gentian violet kicking around, it makes for the coolest purple wood dye.

I had no idea subs would not be privy to that information. How can you teach under those conditions? I am going back into my little homeschooling bubble and locking the door.

Thank you for talking me down hive. I can be such a rabid dog when someone I care about is having a hard time. All your responses are appreciated.:)

I think the lighting would be pretty low. Even if the window coverings were open, the weather has been really overcast.

Hi everyone, I've homeschooled my kids since day one so I have had no dealings personally with the school system since I was a student. I would love some insight. Here is the background. I apologize for for the lack of details but I wasn't a witness and I want to respect privacy but here goes. A wonderful kid I know very well (upper elementary school) was being disruptive in class. It was not his fault . He has a medical condition which manifests itself into appearing like a behavioral issue. His regular teacher had failed to mention it to the substitute teacher. He was punishment was by putting him in an empty classroom with the lights out. Sounds like it was about 20 minutes. This horrifies me. Not just that he was punished once again for something that was not his fault, but the type of punishment itself. Is this allowed? Am I out of touch? This happened in Canada if that makes any difference.