I'm guess I am old fashioned about this too. I tend to stick to muted, dark colors if not all black and definitely no jeans or shorts. The one exception was the funeral of a very, very colorful person (by way of illustrating this point, he once showed up for a fundraising breakfast in a purple suit and matching top hat) and my navy dress I had in mind to wear needed to be washed and ironed and my hot pink swing style dress was ready to wear. I paired it with a black cardigan and black shoes but everyone thought the hot pink was a fitting tribute to the deceased man. His own sister was wearing a bright blouse with her impeccable darker suit. At my grandmother's funeral we all were asked to wear some green. I wore a silk blouse that had green and black design on a cream background with a black skirt suit. Most of the men wore green ties or green shirts and the women were in the same vein as I was for the most part. I guess I don't really care what other people wear to funerals but that doesn't mean my kids would wear shorts or tees or jeans. My older son has a pair of very nice black dress slacks and a few button down shirts and 2 ties. My younget son has a pair of very nice grey dress slacks and a couple of button downs and 1 tie. They both have some nicer sweaters. That's the go to for any dressing up. All of that was acquired, like 90% of their clothing, used. Thrift stores, consignment sales, garage sales, etc. I am pretty casual but I don't really get the trend in pretty well off middle class families of not having at least something to dress up in. I totally understand it if it is an economic or severe sensory thing but for a lot of people it is not, it's an issue of their comfort.

Lemon curd. Lemon bars. Lemon pie (perhaps with a whipped cream rather than meringue top). We love the lemon around here.

I had a woman on a local homeschooling FB group who asked about schoolrooms bite my head off when I said we had found that we didn't need one. She insisted that if one was really going to homeschool they needed one. I refrained from pointing out that I've been homeschooling for a couple years longer than she's been a mother. We are in our 6th year of homeschooling and I'm not entirely certain her oldest child is yet 4. Have a nice day, lady. Have a nice day. :P

We used to have a school room but we realized it was just getting used for storage. We are kitchen table (and patio and living room and park and library) homeschoolers by choice. It just makes most sense to have schoolwork done where we are already. Spending our day stuffed into the smallest room in the house, removed from the laundry and kitchen was just not really working for us. The room that was the schoolroom is a hybrid reading area/office/guest room now. It has 2 bookshelves, a small file cabinet and can sleep two easily (loft bed and a fold out chair and half/twin bed). I use the closet to store stuff like the steam cleaner and the vacuum and sewing supplies. Sometimes my boys hang out and read there or its a good downtime space. It's set up for my niece and nephew to sleep in but usually when they are here, my nephew ends up in there and my niece likes the pullout sectional in the living room instead.

We live at the north end of Lake WA. Honestly I sometimes wish they would toll here just to even out the traffic flow between 520 and 522. Once that toll kicked in, it made getting out of my area very time consuming certain times of day. It's especially bad now with summer construction season but yikes. It was plus or minus an hour some mornings to take what is usually a 15 minute trip. I've had days where just driving 2 miles down 522 has taken the better part of 45 minutes. There's no alternate route unless you go pretty far west. And that doesn't help too much if your destination is in the eastern part of Seattle. I wish they'd open the bus lane to 3+ carpools or something. We take the bus when we can but there are some places we have to go that just don't work with the bus.

My younger son was born smack in the middle of those December 08 snowstorms. I was on bed rest at home for one day and then the next day I was supposed to meet my midwife to get checked out. Her driveway was steep and iced over. We met her in the parking lot across the street. She got a stricken look on her face and asked how soon we could get to the hospital on Capitol Hill. It was mighty fortunate I'm married to someone who grew up and learned to drive in the snow. There were so many abbandoned cars going up the hill. I had preeclampsia and we scheduled the c-section for the next day.

I clean the bedroom weekly and I don't let it be a repository for junk or a place to stash messes out of view of guests. I used to have severe insomnia and part of fixing that was making my room the nicest room in the house, not the dumping ground for any extra clutter.

I think the AI/semen tank was mentioned before by fairfarmhand. I think it was something she had because of the farm. Presumably where they keep the semen for artificially inseminating the cows?

You have made my day.

You can't go wrong with the libraries in King County. I regularly use both the Seattle and King County libraries. Both rank as top library system nationwide. I also pay alumni dues to the university for access to their library. Certainly, most any books in the SOTW AG are in the King County or Seattle systems. In addition to outdoors, the area is a reader's paradise. Libraries, bookstores and a ton of author events.

We used to go to the one by IKEA but a new one opened up in Federal Way, right by Wild Waves.

That's on 167. You pay the toll with an electronic fast pass. If you have such a pass but don't need to pay you need to turn it off online or set it to not work on 167 or place a moveable pass in a pouch that hides it from the fast pass scanner. If you have the sticker pass, you get charged. http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Tolling/SR167HotLanes/ Enforcement is just like the other carpool lanes- if you make a habit of using the lane illegally, you will be ticketed. Maybe not the first time, but it's only a matter of time. They monitor/patrol those lanes closely. I see traffic stops there all the time. When they expand it to 405, it will work the same way.

We are no stranger to therapists. We have had, between the boys many types of therapy and our own therapists, only one who was reflexively opposed to homeschooling. A good counselor wouldn't let it be a factor for them.

My mother's mother is also a Baptist of the TV variety. It's on the tv, ergo it is true, yanno?! She was incensed that my mother converted to Catholicism. She's a piece of work on so many levels and I am ashamed to say that she was what I thought all Baptists and most Protestants were like until I was a teenager.

Not unless we needed them for crafts. We have every issue of National Geographic from 1888 until recently digitally. Thank you Grandma! (It was a gift from my MiL to our older son.) we subscribe so we have access to the newer stuff online and my son keeps them as long as he wants. http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-National-Geographic-Magazine/dp/1426340117

I was raised Catholic. We were very active and involved in the church, which was a source of stability in a challenging childhood. I truly believed and was enthused to be confirmed and was even considering religious life, possibly as a nun. Until one day I didn't believe anymore. It just didn't add up. Partially it was reading the bible 6 times and a lot about religious history. Partially it was a about the (to me) clearly mythological and allogorical aspects of the faith. The more I learned, the less I knew. A small part of deconversion was seeing my brother struggle with coming out as trans and gay but I was 80% or more there already. What he experienced from the church wasn't consistent with my values. I believe nature is awesome enough that I don't need to explain it using religious stories. ETA- obviously my values and morals are seeped in a mix of both being raised Catholic and being from a Catholic family. When I married my husband (he's an Athiest from a vaguely Protestant but not religiously active family) I realized just how much that legacy affects the lense through which I see the world and how I communicate with others and expect others to act. That's been an interesting process. We've flirted with cultural Catholicism (my older son was baptized and we attended a Catholic Church for a couple of years) and with attending other churches, including a Unitarian church and a couple of very liberal American Baptist churches but ultimately we haven't done more than visit with friends or attend weddings and funerals in the last several years. I do miss aspects of church, but no aspects of faith.

I promise you the people you are comparing yourself to are comparing themselves to you. Their internal monologue is like this: Four kids and I can barely handle 2! I wish we could do all those cool crafts and activities! Homeschooling! That's so cool, I wish we could swing that! Pets! I wish my kids were growing up with such nice pets.

If they can't house all of their minor students, it's really time for them make some of their doubles triples as such. Perhaps they have already done that but with the late notice, I am guessing not.

Winco is great. When I visit my brother, I try to go there.

That's what I use them for at most of the non-profits I've set up on QBs or kept the books for. Glad that was helpful.

South King County gives you decent access to Tacoma, super easy access to the airport and options for heading north as wanted/needed. The nicer neighborhoods there tend to hug the water- parts of Burien and Des Moines near the sound and parts of Renton (like Kennydale) near Lake WA. I have friends where he works in downtown Seattle and she works almost in Tacoma and they just bought in Burien and have been pleased. They were looking in the 300k range and did ok. There are more options in the 400-500K range with a bit nicer homes. My brother and his husband live in a So. King Couuty subdivision and they can be at a nice park on the water on a long walk or a short drive. The thing there is to make sure you are well off of Pacific Hwy/99. The places just off of 99 are quite rundown and crime and drugs are a problem. My brother is a ways off of 99 and his subdivision starts on a smaller street and it's fine. It's older homes but they have built a lot of equity fixing it up and you can find some that have already been fixed up. They don't have acreage but they do have a yard big enough for a garden, swing set and huge new outdoor living space with hammocks and a fire pit. My nieces are enjoying a fairly idyllic classic American childhood there - decent school, a neighborhood with sidewalks they are safe to bike in, soccer league all fall and spring, track, Girl Scouts, tent camper in the drive way for frequent summer camping trips all over WA state and into Idaho and Oregon. There's nice community centers and a Y and a great library system. South King Co. gets a bad rap with some but there are more livable areas than not. The other nice thing is that the light rail is already operating from So. King to downtown Seattle. When my brother wants to take his girls to something fun in town (baseball games, soccer games, symphony, Seattle Center, lunch with his husband during the summer) he can drive a short distance and then hop on a fairly quick train. We won't have light rail north of the city for another 8 years. If we are lucky.

And is conveniently located for access to the I-5 corridor and I-405.

Do they know they will lose a student over this? Who is being assigned all the on campus housing? Is there any sort of ombudsman you can go to over the heads of the housing people? It seems incredibly wrong that they would do this. Returning students should get housing priority. I'm sorry you are having to deal with this.

There are a lot of secular homeschool resources in Seattle and the adjacent areas. Classes, groups, enrichment, support, co-ops. One could easily be triple booked everyday of the week with non-religious homeschool activities. There are also lots of religious resources for homeschoolers. The further you go from the city, the fewer secular options there are.

The peninsula is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. Definitely a lot more conservative, unless you are in some of the more artsy towns out by the coast. We lived there for a time when I was a child and found it very untenable for a mixed race family at the time. I assume it is a lot better than that now, but I know others who have had trouble. Not that that is a function of how liberal or conservative a place is (certainly liberal Seattle has issues with racism) but it was why after that, when in WA, my family stuck to the Seattle area. As far as homeschooling and religion, we are just north of the city and I find that if I go south, it's very secular and if I go north the homeschoolers, with the exception of some who live in some progressive intentional communities, trend more religious. If I stay where I am or go just east, it's a mixed bag. Mostly all are welcomed. I have homeschooling friends who are very religious but I am not and that's ok.