a.m. bump :-)

Our extended family is meeting up at a vacation rental in Andersonville, TN for Thanksgiving. We'll be driving on Wednesday, arriving probably late Wed night. So we've collectively decided that ordering one of those "Thanksgiving meals" from a grocery store, complete with everything, is probably our best bet. Then, we can selectively pick which family favorites we want to be homemade and make those, and not make ourselves crazy all day Thursday trying to cook and finding out that we're missing X or the kitchen isn't stocked with Y. Kroger is a known entity to all of us, so we were thinking of ordering from them. (Although I'm open to other suggestions!) But I'm totally unfamiliar with the area. Google will tell me which one is closest to our cabin, but I know that often grocery stores, even chain stores, vary greatly in their "feel". (When my husband was in school, we lived in a town with HEBs. Each one had a nickname, including the high-end one which was HEB-Majal, and the one near student housing which was affectionately known as Ghetto-HEB.) So if you're from the Knoxville area and have an opinion about the Krogers there, could you let me know which you'd order from, if you were ordering your Thanksgiving dinner from them? Google tells me there are stores at: 5201 N Broadway St Knoxville, TN 37918 6702 Clinton Hwy Knoxville, TN 37912 2217 N Broadway St Knoxville, TN 37917 4440 Western Ave Knoxville, TN 37921 4414 Asheville Hwy Knoxville, TN 37914 Thanks! (Feel free to message me if you'd be more comfortable. Thanks again!)

Do they each have a basic e-reader? Are you Android/Amazon people? You could get them both a simple Kindle (I think about $50 these days). If you don't have Prime, you could get it as a family gift and share it with them.

Somehow every time I glance at your thread title, I read "8-year old DOG". :-) You'd have to be MUCH more of a dog person than me to start a thread looking for books for your dog!

Life works around here -- keeps the peeps decently full til lunch, and it *seems* like a treat cereal. We all really like Great Grains -- the crunchy pecans has no raisins, and I just pick the raisins out of the one that does have them (Dates and Raisins, or some such). We like the knockoff brand Raisin Bran Crunch, and again, I pick out the raisins.

Definitely a lesson learned here! I know there are kids who would/could thrive on it, but two has definitely been one too many this semester.

Honestly, I think he would really, really benefit from some additional time in Athenaze II, since his trouble with the translations is primarily guessing via context when he doesn't know the cases. So I think that might be the best solution, but I think he might respond better to a "slow it down" approach, and then just focus on adding in review in the course of the translating. Thank you for laying out those two approaches like that -- it was very helpful to have a glimmer of paths where now there's just dark, murky Greek forest!

Thank you! Isn't it amazing -- I really try to stay in the loop about stuff and yet I've never heard of them!

I'll let you know what I find. My dh has suggested finishing up with a semester of Koine; he thinks it would be easier for ds, and easier to find/arrange a class. This is a good idea, and if it were mostly independent study, it might not be horribly expensive. Thanks!

I'll be frank -- ds needs an easier class than Lukeion to finish out Greek III. He'll muddle through this semester, but we need to do something else in the spring. He wants to finish out that 3rd year of language and be done, and failing Regan's class won't achieve that goal. He'd gladly never pick up a Greek text again after he gets that credit. Any ideas?

That's a good idea -- I'll try that. I know there's one near us that would allow him to practice, but he wouldn't be able to compete. But that might not be true for all private schools.

No, he is homeschooled. We are new to Maryland, though. We are currently registered with the county; however, I recently saw an umbrella school's website and they had a football team. There was a schedule which showed games -- I'm not sure, but it seemed like they were against private schools. He is not an elite athlete by any means and he doesn't want it badly enough to completely changed up our plans and enroll in a ps or private school -- he just wants to try running track. And when I saw an umbrella school offering team sports, I was hopeful that someone might know of one that offered that. Compared to the other 5 states we've homeschooled in, MD is quite a disappointment in many respects and certainly this is one of them. Generally wherever we've been, there has been some sort of organized way for homeschoolers to compete in team sports, whether in a homeschool league, or a homeschool team competing as a private school, or individual students have been allowed to join athletic teams at the local ps. Unfortunately, it wasn't until we got here that I had a student want to do anything like that...

I am looking for a way for my high-school son to run track in the spring. Although we're currently registered with the county, we're willing to consider an umbrella school if he could compete on a team. Does anyone know of any umbrella schools (that you'd recommend *smile*) near Fort Meade that have track and/or cross-country programs? (It would have to be near enough to us to make team practices workable. We're just south of Fort Meade.) Thanks!

I don't know if you ever read The Pioneer Woman's blog, but a couple of times she has given away sets of her favorite kitchen tools. Maybe you could pick something from that list? I think the set of scoops would be particularly nice as a gift -- one of those things you're unlikely to buy for yourself.

I tell my kids that memorizing catechism questions is like prepping in advance for a business phone call: you have some sense in advance of what you're going to say! It's one thing to *know* what you believe; it's another thing to be able to *explain* what you believe to someone else who asks, perhaps under pressure, or off-the-cuff, or facing hostility. Memorizing answers means you have them to draw on -- words to say. Now, if they're just words, and no understanding, it still won't be very helpful. But if you *believe* what you're saying, having words at the ready can keep you from stumbling and getting tripped up. We are really liking the format of the New City Catechism. I love the OP's premise that good catechesis lays a framework to help you evaluate a church's beliefs.

In our latest move, we've downsized quite a lot. Not nearly as much as this family, but I found her blog inspiring.

Several replies and your response came in while I was typing the tome above. So I'd adjust my info a bit to add: books by Scott Kelby, and I'd think you probably want a walk-around/univeral/all-around lens that's quick enough for some action shots. But I also think you might want to spend more time with the lens already on the camera body, using the Kelsh or Kelby books or a class or something, and just pushing what the camera as-is can do.

I know I'm not answering the question you asked (at least not first), but for practical, basic, immediate-improvement difference in your photos, I really recommend anything by Nick Kelsh (How to Photograph Your Baby, How to Photograph Your Life). (They basically all have the same info -- valuable info, but you really only need one book to get it!) As to lenses -- well, to my way of thinking, there are two routes you can take. Route 1: what I did. Get a low-end telephoto (like 70 -300) and a low-end zoom (say, 28-70) and work them. Play with them. See what *could* be. Enjoy what you get, and have enough glass to get just about anything you want. Eventually, after lots of practice, if you ever wake up one day and say, "I'm glad I can get that picture, but that's not good enough anymore. If I'm going to GET that picture, I want it to be GOOD," (good not in composition, or in lighting, but good as in better than what the lens you're using can deliver), then decide to a) get rid of them and get the ONE good lens you can afford, and limit your *serious* picture-taking to things that that lens can handle, or b) if money's not an object, replace them all with good lenses. Of course, the problem with good lenses is that there are always better ones! :-) Route 2: Start with one, good, solid mid-range workhorse. Honestly there are some good ones that fit that description that won't break the bank. A mom photographing her kids just doesn't need the kind of glass that a pro on the NFL sidelines does, you know? And yet you can still definitely get photos worth blowing up LARGE, printing on canvas and hanging on your wall. Just know going in that if you get a really good portrait-range lens, you aren't going to get enlargement-quality photos of that bald eagle 200 yards away, KWIM? Also, people can really be lens-snobs, but there are some really good "off-brand" lenses (i.e. not Canon for a Canon camera). Tamron makes some really good lenses. Before you can really pick a *good* lens, though, you have to decide what a *good* lens is to you. What kind of pictures do you want to take? Or, more importantly, what do you envision the important-to-you picture being? Some keywords to think about (and use for internet searches!) might be: walkaround, portrait, all around, universal. Or maybe otoh landscape, nature. Search reviews for how a lens does in low light, and bright light. Do you plan to just do natural light photography? (That's what I'd recommend.) Have fun shooting!

I think I'll paint this on his wall. Seriously! :-) (He'd find it amusing, and his dad is all about reinforcing his (Monty Python) education.)

My son struggles with decision-making a lot, too. As a corollary, he HATES questions like "what's your favorite color?" He can't seem to recognize that it is not a *weighted* or *weighty* question. His answer doesn't have to be the perfectly honest, absolute right for all times and all places answer. Just polite small talk, or what appeals at the moment... Some helpful stuff here -- thanks!

As a type 1 mom myself, your post caught my eye and got me thinking. We've moved 4 times since my son's diagnosis 6 years ago. Our first ped endo was awesome. The next two? Enh. Overworked, overwhelmed. They were nice, but we had good control, ds was in good physical shape, decent A1Cs so it was kind of a pat on the head visit. The third location? Only one ped endo, not taking new patients. Ds didn't get to see anyone for over 9 months. At that point I gladly would've paid $100 just to get him seen! We're now in a new location and we have a "diabetes management center". On-site there's a psychologist, nutritionist, CDE and docs! I don't love, love, love the doc -- but what an increase in quality of care! I'm hoping for some actual education to happen again -- how to prepare to live on your own, psychological adjustment to young adulthood w/ type 1, that kind of thing. May be wishful thinking, but.. I think the point of my ramblings is this: the $100 may not be fair or even right, but it sounds like your dd has good quality of care. And that's a lot harder to come by than most folks outside our type 1 world probably realize, and might be worth the price. OTOH, if you can't afford it and he will make an exception, I'd say use it --that's why he has it! Let him know you can't afford it, and take him a plate of chocolate chip cookies instead. :-)

And here I was imagining a little girl's swimsuit with strawberry ponies and strawberry lambs, and some razzamatazzberries to boot!

For front carries I don't think you can beat a Baby K'Tan. But for back, it's hard to beat an Ergo!

Thanks - that's very helpful. I think I'll take a chance on it as the price is right. I'm wanting a bit of a spine for a one-year OT survey, that won't take up all the time and will allow us to add other material. So it sounds like this might work.

Has anyone used it? I'm intrigued but can't find a "look inside" feature anywhere on the Internet. We're needing a solid but not exhausting (in terms of time) and inexpensive OT overview. If you've used it - or even looked at it- could you give me a sense of how much time it took daily? Did you use it over a year? semester? Thanks!