What are you willing to do? There are long term rentals that do by the month but they're harder to find for lower than what's available weekly. But if you're willing to work, you can check out the WWOOF program. They also have links on their site to other similar volunteer organizations.

What's the purpose of the test outcome? Is anyone going to care (other than you) about his math scores? Will it still show him gaining competence from the year before? We used MUS all the way through pre-algebra. There were things my son did not cover the same time as public school kids, and the pre-recs for the one year he did spend in public school were not met. Yet he scored in then 98th percentile on math - even areas he hadn't covered he thought through and reasoned. I would stick with a program that works for your son. "Behind" now can be ahead later.

Why are you catering the class to the girls? That's my biggest concern. You want the two boys to tag along, but are you willing to change up the next class and put their learning styles first? Alternate class styles? My next concern would be what you expect the work to accomplish. If the work is simply to learn about something, there are many ways to do it, and it's not excusing them so that they won't try something new but it's working with them at their developmental level. A great deal of my son's work was done through hands on and sensory projects in elementary. At his age now, 14, he's able to sit and write, research, do computer programming....I would not have changed those years for the world. Develop the class so that there are alternating hands on/writing activities or a variety of activities to choose from. Give each kid what they need to grow.

Yep. Skype or Vonage. Though with the time change you're probably better off using email. Most hotels will have wi-fi and it'll give both of you a chance to sit down and talk about your day without the jetlag taking over.

We're a one-car family. :) I have a bike, a train station behind my house, and a bus stop around the corner. We pay over budget for our rental home, but it's negligible compared to the amount we're saving - $120/mo in gas and wear and tear on the car. I can't say we'll always be a one-car family, but it works for us right now.

DS 13 has friends. 1-2 close ones, a few he hangs out with, and some acquaintances. For a kid here that's pretty darn good. The public schooled kids all live anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour from the school so there aren't many social opportunities that aren't orchestrated by parents. We live close enough that he can go off on his own to different events or bike the 5 miles to his best friend's.

YES - Youth Education Program: http://www.disneyyouth.com/our-programs/education/sp/youth-education-series/ And from Couponing to Disney - http://www.couponingtodisney.com/disney-training-yes-program-at-disney-world-and-disneyland-educational-classes-and-discount-tickets/ A PIN is a personal discount code. Mousesavers explains it better: http://www.mousesavers.com/walt-disney-world-vacation-discounts-and-deals/disney-world-resort-hotel-discounts-codes/ Postcard and Email Codes Disney sometimes sends out postcards and emails that offer deeply discounted Walt Disney World resort rates to the recipients. I can’t publish those discounts, because Disney uses a PIN (Personal Identification Number) system so that only the recipient can use the code. (When you call in with your PIN, they match your name and address to it. You can’t share the PIN with anyone else.) How do you get on the lists for these special PIN-coded postcards and emails? No one knows exactly, and believe me, I’ve done a lot of research on it over the last 10+ years. It appears that Disney’s marketing department uses a variety of lists at different times. Often a specific geographical area is targeted. If you want to have the best possible chance of getting a PIN-coded offer by mail or email, it’s definitely a good idea to request information from Disney, in order to get on its mailing lists. You might also want to request a vacation planning video. They may get names from DisneyStore.com, subscribers to Disney publications and Disney’s Visa cardholders. In short, sign up for anything Disney (especially Disney World related) you can, and keep your fingers crossed!

I can see DC being slightly difficult with your children's ages. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but it is a LOT of walking and many of the museums have specific bag/food/drink requirements so you always feel like you're buying that $5 bottle of water. It was great for my older child at age 9 but miserable with my 3yo nephew. And if you're adding in extra trips on the side you should budget those out as well. You may find the difference between the two trips isn't much. WDW, otoh, is geared for your kids, but it is expensive. There are ways to cut costs through personal and not so personal discounts, but it's expensive. I would recommend checking into the YES program, though, and signing up to price a vacation package through the WDW site to see if you get sent a PIN, Personally, I don't feel 7 days is too long there, but I do feel it's too long in a value resort there. Does that make sense? The value rooms are extremely tiny. If you stayed on site I'd recommend Ft. Wilderness.

We own our car outright. We bought it right before we moved here with a loan, but we went shopping for the loan first to make sure we could pay it off in 2 years rather than 4 or 6. Our second car was a gift from a leaving friend, and we used it until it bit the dust permanently. Our next car will be paid for in cash. We continue to set aside car payments in savings and dh is getting a raise next month. All that overage will go toward his dream truck in about 3 years.

Nope. They were a failure here. However, I have found a use for them at co-op. We do a hands on activity, and then I pass out one part of the history pocket to each kid - and when I say one part I mean one picture or what-not. They all collaborate to eventually make a giant History Pocket poster. I've also found it's better to use a variety of paper with them so that you're not trying to show off how many pages a box of Crayola can cover. We're treating it as more of an -Ology type of deal, where the headers are all printed on light parchment, the outlines of the tent page are copied onto tan scrapbooking paper and so forth. They can be made good, but the effort that has to go into them is often too much to make it worthwhile .

Different seasons in life bring different challenges and needs to be met. I'm mostly an introvert but I've started to thrive in leadership positions. They give me a chance to be me, a person, and not just mom/teacher/wife. But I have time and energy for them *right now*. A few years ago, not so much.

Oh, heavens. I live in Italy. I have about 6 bottles of olive oil in my kitchen right now, each with a specific cooking purpose. I'd rather cook with that, knowing it's an oil that has been used for centuries in one of the healthiest parts of the world, and know exactly where my oil comes from (right down to the tree for the one bottle), than anything else. Oy. Every food decision is a controversy, isn't it?

We don't have 'Easter' baskets. :blushing: The night before Easter I take two of the Groundhog's toy baskets, dump 'em out, and fill with grass and Eastery things. Though this year I might use the Halloween buckets. They're cute and would do the job just as well.

DS does bowling and golf. We have a kid's league for the first and independent time for the second. On the upside, they're activities he can do through adulthood.

Our new rule for next year (after learning from experience) is going to be study time after school. 1.5 hours, following a half hour break. I don't care if there's homework or not, my child will be under my watch studying. No homework = making flash cards, SAT prep, working ahead...I don't care. He will study. Every day.

Dollywood? I never thought I would consider it myself but it has a very nice middle ground for dh and I - renting a cabin with a beautiful view, a laid back, not as busy theme park, and most amenities that I enjoy. Other possibilities would be a quiet seaside resort, a cruise, or a lodge in the middle of a national park. You can often rent a cabin near the main lodge and go there for meals, entertainment, and whatnot. Your kids are still too young for WDW to be a great experience for them, but what you can do is schedule mini-vacations for yourself.Take off on a weekend trip with a friend or family member and recharge.

I have one, it's in my siggy. Disclaimer: I almost never talk about homeschooling, sweet experiences with my children, or the beauty of the world around me. I do talk about random things, write open letters to those who tick me off, occasionally butcher poetry, and put up many pictures of the world around me. Oh, and the asinine things my children do.

I don't know. I know they were considering it. The Elsie Dinsmore books were rewritten if you want a good piece to compare. The originals are appalling, between how she was treated and how the slaves accept and like slavery under her. The re-released series was whitewashed to erase derogatory language (including dialect spoken by the slaves) and certain events. It is quite like reading from two different authors.

Your Iphone should be fine, but just in case ask at the Apple store. All our Ipads/Ipods are made to be dual voltage. I have an adapter that I plug into the wall and it's fine. Your curling iron will have the voltage written on it in raised numbers probably. Most are dual voltage, excluding super fancy ones.

Library nerd here. I loosely Dewey-decimaled our printed resources so that they could be found quickly and easily. I have 2 double bookcases from Ikea and the sections are set up like this: History - ancients down to modern, with hands on materials at the top and general resources at the bottom Science - grouped by branch and followed by hands on materials Language - English, foreign, computer and arts, along with parent aids Math - organized by year. Other hands on stuff (like games, documents, etc) are kept in a second cabinet. The entire collection is put online so that I can remember exactly what we have at a glance. Catalogues are kept in a magazine file. The books and papers we use every day are put in the bookcase next to The Kid's desk. All usual books, all supplies, everything, so that he is set up and ready to go for the coming week. Now for online resources....... I use my Favorites file. I have one for each grade and each subject. Any time I find something that works for us I add it to the appropriate file. For example, mrdonn.org is a great resource with links from ancients to modern day. I won't put it in the grade level file even though we'll use it this year. It goes to History. Periodically I go through and clean up my files and look to see if there's anything that we can use in the coming month. That'll go in The Kid's file.

1 bottle of red wine 3 cups of vegetable broth 3lbs chopped beef 2 onions 1 bunch of celery 1 bunch of carrots 3lbs potatoes 1 container of button mushrooms (or any small mushroom) salt, pepper, oil, flour. Do the meat up like normal - coat in flour and pepper, put in hot pan with oil until browned. Add the bottle of wine and let simmer for about half an hour. Add the coarsely chopped veggies and vegetable broth. Put in 200 degree oven for about 3 hours. Check on it and season. Serve with sourdough bread.

You set him up for failure. No punishment needed. In our house, it would have gone like this: -dinner is put in the fridge, to be reheated later if wanted, ASSUMING that it's something he likes and eats on a regular basis. If not, had he tried each component, the equivalent of a sandwich would be given. I ask that a child attempts to eat - it takes up to 20 times to know if we like it or not, and I know that when I start getting sick food tastes off to me. Meals are tasted to honor the cook. -in the morning, breakfast would be served at the normal time, followed by snack. You set your child up. You made him fail at your expectations. You rigged the morning so that he was hungrier than usual and then again denied food because he ate. So not cool. The "logical" punishment was an imposed one, not a true sense of logic. Return to normal and get back to routine. I try to keep in mind a few things when a consequence is meted out, especially what is gained from this? If there is no benefit, the consequence will not work.

Are any of you military?

Same. I'd rather see a Bountiful Baskets food stamp program before creating more bans on what people can buy with their own money.

Most super protecty thing? The seat you can install tightly and easily, and fits your kid. I'll be honest. Car seat safety can suck. They can say Side Impact Tested or what-not, but here's the real deal: -Car seats are independently tested at their parent company and results are reported to the gov. -Car seats are only required to pass a sled test going 30mph. Side impact results don't have to be reported, and how a seat does can be obscured by the wording on the seat. Some say "Side Impact Protection" while others say "Side Impact Tested". I can test my kid on quantum physics and say "College Science Tested." So what? Oh, want to know his grades? Sorry, I'm not reporting that part. -WHEN there is a recall, it is often because the NHTSA tests, done after the seat is on the shelf, doesn't measure up. Or because the company covered up internal documents. Or because of various other reasons that range from a sticker being wrong to a seat cover that's too toxic. The seats on the market all pass the same tests. The best one you can buy is the one that will work FOR YOU. I'm a tech, my car seats are made for dummies. Why? Because my husband is not a tech. The best seat for our family was one where he felt confident moving it around, changing the harness height, and could visually see that our kid was in there correctly. It was better for me to not have to wrestle with the seat every time I needed to adjust it. The only seat I curse on the market is the Graco Snugride, Classic version. There is no harness pull strap in the front, so to adjust the harness tightness the straps have to be individually tightened in the back. It is a pain, and one of the most misused seats I've ever seen because it is so parent unfriendly. Your best bet would be to type in the name of a seat you're looking at with "review" at the end. One of the first results should be a review from car-seat.org's blog. They are very thorough with the highs and lows of each seat so you can determine if it will work for you or not.