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Loowit

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Everything posted by Loowit

  1. I have never heard the term Super Senioring before, but my youngest is doing 5 years to finish high school. He started K at 4 (October bday), so if he had been public schooled he would have started a year later. Whole long story I am not typing out, but he is now in his senior year, after dividing his junior year into two years. He is taking mostly DE classes at the local community college and flourishing. He is also doing a few classes at home with me. When he graduates homeschool this spring he will have enough credits for half his AA degree. He will go next year to complete his degree, but we will have to pay for that year. Extending his time has been a great choice for him, though it also has some downsides. He turned 18 shortly after the start of his senior year, and he lets me know that he is an adult and can make his own choices. He is respectful, but it makes it a tough balancing act to supervise his schooling. He is still legally a homeschooler and I am responsible for his graduation requirements. On the plus side, socially, he has made a lot of friends, and has joined the speech & debate team where he is doing very well. For him, this was the a really good decision. It would not have worked well for my other kids, I don't think. My oldest graduated at 17 and went straight to community college then transferred to a 4 year college, graduating with a BA two years later. She did great, didn't need extra time in high school. My middle, was an average student, though could have done better if he wanted to, decided to join the military out of high school. An extra year of school would not have benefited him at all. He was ready to graduate and move on to what he wanted to do, in fact, he talked to his recruiter about the possibility of graduating early, though we didn't go that route. It isn't an easy decision, and I think you have to think through the social, emotional, and educational benefits and drawbacks of your choices. But I would also be up front about why you are doing it. I don't think I would do it if my child was getting decent grades already, and didn't have any other challenges. It took a lot for me to decide to decide to make my son's high school years longer, and I involved him in the decision, because ultimately it is about his life and future. My son has told me that he is glad he has this extra year, but only because he is doing college classes along with homeschooling. If we were doing purely homeschooling classes, it would not work.
  2. The only class I have outsourced to online for high school is science. I signed him up for it before he was registered for his college classes. I just told him that he would have to plan his other classes around it. So far it hasn't been too hard. Most of the classes he is taking at the college have had several options for times/days to choose from. It does help that his online course only meets once a week for an hour and a half.
  3. All of my kids have done the Berean Builders Chemistry. Algebra I is a prerequisite for the course. I don't think you need to wait to complete Algebra II for it. They are challenging courses, If you do all the work and labs, they are considered honors level. They prepared my daughter well for her science classes in college. If you can afford it, you might consider signing up for the online course with Dr. Wile or using the online recorded sessions. I did the online classes for my youngest for Chemistry two years ago and this year he is doing Physics, and I am finding he is getting a lot more out of it that just doing it with me at home. I am not sure how much colleges care about the order the science courses are taken in, but my daughter went to community college first to get her AA and then transferred and earned her BA. She had no trouble with them accepting her science classes. My youngest will be doing the same as far as doing community college first. His science courses will be in the order of Biology, Marine Biology, Chemistry, Astronomy, and Physics. So he will never have taken Earth Science, none of my kids did.
  4. We have at least 40. We don't play them as much as we used to. The last time we played any was when our middle was home on leave in Sept. His favorite is playing Trivial Pursuit mixing sets. We roll a die to decide each turn which set to use (Dr. Who, Harry Potter, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, "normal", young player, Star Wars, etc.)
  5. I think that sounds like a very nice idea.
  6. My pumpkins are doing well on their arch. We have got a few, but not as many as I had hoped. We just don't have enough bees this year to pollinate. My tomatoes plants are huge and producing tons of flowers, but not much tomatoes. The plant with the smaller cherry type tomatoes has a few, but the other one only has one tomato so far. I am pretty disappointed. My roses on the other hand did really well, even the ones we transplanted this year, but my sunflowers aren't looking great. They are growing really slowly and I have lost several. I think that it is the heat.
  7. Tonight my daughter made pasta carbonara and roasted broccoli. It was really good. Tomorrow I will be making baked beans in the slow cooker and some fresh baked bread of some kind. The next night is chicken cordon bleu with a fruit salad and if I get around to it oreo cheesecake bites for dessert. It is DH and I's date night. So we will eat dinner while watching a movie.
  8. I went to see it yesterday with DH. I had heard the criticism about it leaning to a certain side politically and being conspiracy theory(ish), from some news articles/opinion pieces that popped up in my feeds. I wanted to see how true this was for myself. I did not see this as a theme at all in the movie. I think it is worth watching and deciding for yourself. I thought the movie was very well done and brought to light a huge issue that has been largely ignored in our society. He has, with the help of others, rescued thousands of children from horrific conditions. My personal opinion is that if the governments won't/can't/aren't able to do anything about it, at least there are people that are out there trying to do it. Also, watching the movie, he worked with the local police and other law enforcement, not all on his own. So it wasn't just some vigilante force going it alone. I have no idea how true it is to real life and his experience, just going based on the movie itself.
  9. We are having my side of the family over for a backyard bbq in the afternoon. I am providing hamburgers and hot dogs (my dad is doing the grilling). I am making baked beans. DD is making her famous mac & cheese. I will also be making a trifle for dessert with homemade lemon pound cake, fresh berries, and a cream cheese type filling. I might also make a rhubarb peach pie. My sister is bringing chips and cookies. My mom is bringing potato salad. My brother hasn't said yet, but he always brings his homemade ice cream which is great. My niece is bringing coleslaw I think; she wasn't sure.
  10. My mom always called them beans and weenies. I haven't had them since I was a kid. None of my kids will eat beans, so I never served them to them.
  11. My DH's cancer was diagnosed from just a CT scan, although they did do a PET scan before his surgery. I think they used some contrast dyes, and some radioactive dyes or something that react different if it is cancer cells. It has been a few years so some of the details on that part are fuzzy. They didn't know the exact type of tumor until they biopsied it after the removal. We knew that it could have been a very slow growing form or a very rare faster growing form. It turned out to be the latter. They didn't do a biopsy because it would have had to be removed either way and there was no sense in doing extra procedures, especially based on where it was located and how invasive the biopsy would have been. It was better to just get it all done in one surgery.
  12. I am sorry you and your husband are going through this. I remember when my husband got his cancer diagnosis several years ago. It was so hard. One thing I would gently suggest is to not push too much with diet changes right now. As much as you want to be helpful, I found that I needed to let my husband lead on a lot of things like that. Everyone and their dog when they heard about is diagnosis started to giving advice. It all came from a place of caring, but it was not helpful. It became overwhelming, and started to feel a bit like people were blaming him and his food choices for his cancer. Sometimes people just get cancer through no fault of their own. His was just a super rare form of cancer that there was no amount of food, exercise, or other lifestyle choices that could have prevented it.
  13. I let them know that we will be out of town, but have out phones on us. If we could be out of cell coverage part of the time I will let them know, that they can contact a set relative if they have an emergency. I have never worried about it enough to stay home, but I have always made sure that there is an emergency contact available just in case. I don't do that with my middle as much because I have no idea what he is up to most of the time. I figure if something happens to him the Red Cross or Marine Corps will find a way to get in contact with us. He set me and his dad as the emergency contacts.
  14. I did not ride along, and I am not sure it would have been allowed. There were three instructors at the school and only one was a male. We never knew which of them they would get the day of their drive. There were never any problems. I could track them via google maps if I wanted to. The instructors are also the ones who do the driving tests and they definitely would not allow parents to ride along for those. If my kid was nervous enough that they weren't comfortable being alone in a car with a male instructor because they gave off "creepy" vibes, then I would likely just find another school, because I wouldn't want them there anyway.
  15. We pretty much always drive anywhere we have gone, the only exception was a trip with DH's company years ago where we only had to pay for the plane tickets to Disneyland and they paid for the room and everything else. It is the only time I have every flown anywhere. We discussed whether to fly or drive last year to San Diego, about 1,200 miles from us, for DS's graduation from boot camp. But because of covid and cost, we decided to drive. We might have anyway though. However, if we were to go visit him at his permanent duty station on the east coast, we would fly, that is too far for me to want to drive, unless we were doing it as a vacation on purpose for the drive to see other things as well. Most of our trips are planned to be within what we consider driving distance, which is a day or two drive, although most are within about 5 hours. But we just don't do much traveling in general.
  16. For a girl, I wanted to use Ophelia Rose, but DH was opposed. We talked about naming DD Gwen. I also like Siobhan and Andromeda. For boy names, I used the two I liked most, but we also discussed Luke and Melchizedek. We were going to use Phineas for youngest until right before he was born (like in the operating room) when I told DH I had changed my mind and wanted to go with our other choice instead.
  17. My tomatoes aren't doing as well as I would like. They are growing, but one while one has put on some flowers, it has yet to have any fruit. The other hasn't flowered at all yet. My pumpkins are growing about as expected. Volunteer #1 is really growing fast now, and a second one popped up a couple weeks ago and is growing. I will need to transplant it to a different spot though because it is too close to another plant. I am looking forward to seeing what types of pumpkins they are. My roses are doing well. I gave them all a good prune in early May and they are now putting on some buds. A few have started to bloom nicely. The ones I transplanted are taking to their new homes and seem a lot happier and all of them have at least a few buds that should open in the next few weeks. The blueberries put on a lot of berries this year, which I was happy to see. I had to prune them back a lot and was afraid we wouldn't see much out of them this year. We still have a lot of yard work to get done. We cut down the tree that was causing the most problems with large limbs breaking off, but now we have large piles of tree we need to deal with.
  18. My insurance will not cover anything related to weight loss, including medication. My doctor talked about prescribing Ozempic for me, but I wasn't very interested after hearing about the side effect and that it was going to be a life long commitment. I think it is great that it works so well for other people, but it wasn't for me even if I could afford to pay out of pocket. I have fortunately been able to lose weight, about 40 pounds, using other medications which I am taking for other conditions plus lifestyle changes. Sadly, I still have a lot to go.
  19. DD had hers out when she was 19 or 20. She was down for 4-5 days. My middle kid had his done when he was 19 in boot camp. He was only given one day of rest on bunk, then he was right back to normal training.
  20. DD22 just graduated college and is looking for a job. Meanwhile she has a few things she is doing to help with her resume. She will also be helping with some speech and debate things with her former teams this summer (paid), if she hasn't gotten a job by then. DS20 is on deployment right now. He left earlier this year, and should be coming back stateside at the end of the summer sometime. DS17 will be working at a BSA summer camp all summer at the coast. It will be his second year and he is very excited about it. He will take one week off to go to a different camp with his troop. At the end of the summer he is talking about doing a road trip with some of his friends from the camp who will be going off the college in the fall.
  21. My oldest graduated with a Bachelors in Rhetoric and Media Studies and earned departmental honors. I am very proud of her. She wants to eventually get a masters degree. She has now moved back home and is job hunting. She isn't quite sure what she wants to do, but something in game design, story boarding, perhaps working in a library (she did that in college).
  22. All three of my kids have used TT. I can't remember when I switched them to it, but it was a number of years ago when it was on CDs. DD did fine with math in college. Middle didn't go to college, but needed math skills for his MOS in the Marines and has been doing great. Youngest will be taking college algebra next year (his choice, he could have done calculus) so we'll see how he does. I would not say it is the most rigorous math out there, but it has taught my kids enough that they weren't behind after graduation and were able to keep up in math and science. I do think that I like the online version better than the CD version. Also, their customer service has been very good the few times I have had to call them.
  23. Saturday DH and I went to a local annual plant sale and got a couple tomato plants and three pumpkin plants. We got them transplanted and they seem pretty happy in their new home. I also have a volunteer pumpkin plant this year, which is funny after all the trouble I had last year trying to get any of the seeds I planted to grow. It will be fun to see what type of pumpkins it produces. Later in the day we went to the farmer's market and got some local honey (what we went for) and I also picked up some flowers to plant in my barrel out back and a hanging arrangement for out front. We finally got all of the roses transplanted. It was a huge project and I am glad it is over. They are all doing really well in their new homes so far, but it will take them a while to get big enough to have blooms. We have been having a lot of discussions about redesigning our landscaping to get rid of a lot of the lawn we have. I have a general plan in place for putting in native trees, bushes, and ground cover, but it is going to take a couple years to achieve it. I am also trying to think through the impact the neighborhood and making sure our dog has enough room to run around. I would also like to put in some more raised bed garden areas, but that will likely be next spring or the one after.
  24. There are so many places I would still like to go, but my favorites places I have been are the Olympic Peninsula. around Mt. St. Helens, and along the coast. Most of our outings we do in the off season (spring/fall) because of the crowds. Last July we drove up to Spirit Lake near Mt. St. Helens, which is a long drive, along not so great roads, but it was worth it for the view. There are quiet a few hikes along the way, including one down to the lake. There weren't a lot of people when we were there. There are other hikes around the mountain also, some are much busier, and some you even have to get a permit because they are so popular and they want to limit foot traffic. Mt. Rainier is beautiful, but we only go in the off seasons, because it is so crowded. It has a lot of wonderful trails. We did some of DS's senior photos there. Weather will depend on where you are and time of year and is unpredictable. It also depends on where in the PNW you are. West of the mountains (Cascades) is green and wetter, eastside is dryer and less green. Be prepared for all kinds of weather and dress in layers. Usually in the summer if it rains, it is warm rain. We also don't get a lot of hot days, but can get a few weeks of very hot days, more so the last few years, but they aren't as bad on the coast or if you are hiking in the forest. My youngest works on the coast in the summer and the temps there are much nicer even on the hot days. Bugs on the west side are not typically venomous, but can be annoying like mosquitos so insect repellent is a good choice. We also don't have venomous snakes on the west side. We do have bears and cougars, so if you are camping/hiking you have to be prepared for that.
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