In a word: YES. LOL! His grip is fine, he starts most of his letters at the bottom instead of the top, he mixes upper & lower case, he makes all of his letters the same size. Some are sitting on the lines, some are floating in the air. His p's and j's (I'm so sorry kittens, I didn't know how else to do it!) don't hang below the lines, they sit on lines as if they were upper case, but they aren't. To be honest, his hand writing looks like a 4 year olds and it doesn't bother him. I think that's what upsets me the most. He has no desire to make it better. He thinks it's fine and when I make him rewrite things or point out that his letters are wrong, he takes it as a personal attack and gets insulted or offended.

I blame Facebook. The word 'friend' is a NOUN, people! It is not a verb. The verb is 'befriend'. Everytime I hear someone say "I friended xxx" or "I'll friend you" I want to vomit. It's like nails on a chalk board! Ok, rant over. I feel better. :D

I just posted a question almost identical to this! My 8.5 yo has horrible handwriting. I wasn't even considering cursive until I could get his printing under control, but maybe I'll give it a shot... I have a K'er this year too and I've been giving serious consideration to bringing my older son backwards and reteaching him handwriting with his little brother...

My son spent his Kinder year in PS. It's a decision I regret every. day. :glare: He was not taught proper handwriting. They were shown a letter on the board and then told "Ok, see if you can make this shape on your paper." They weren't taught to start at the top, they weren't taught to keep the letters between the lines. They weren't taught anything. It drives. me. bonkers. I've tried everything I can think of to break these habits and reteach him handwriting, but he's resistant and he's being stubborn. He knows this is a button he can push. I'm almost to the point of handing him back every single piece of work that's not **** near perfect just to show him I'm not messing around. He often complains "But Mrs. XXX didn't care if I made my letters this way!" Well, that was three years ago and Mrs. XXX isn't your teacher anymore!!" I'm seriously considering going backwards with him and starting over with Handwriting without Tears or something like that, but I don't want to insult his intelligence. I don't know what else to do!

My husband called around to some of the private highschools in our area (we aren't sure if we'll HS all of the way through or not) just to get an idea of standards, admission practices, etc... One thing he heard over and over and it really stuck with us was that HS kids often come in behind in Math. He was told the reason for this is that most HS families base where their students are off of the PS standards, and the private school standards are so much higher. So, my 3rd grade son may look like a 4th-5th grader based on PS standards, but by the private school standards, he's barely meeting the grade in 3rd. (Hypothetically). We found that very interesting.

Also, my husband once read a book and it explained family money like this: My husband is on offense (bringing the money in) and I'm on defense (trying to let the smallest amount out as possible).

My husband is the only one that brings in income to our family. It's absolutely "our" money. We have one joint checking account, and I have an account (at the same bank, attached to the larger account) that only has my name on it (simply because DH has been too lazy to go to the bank and attach his name!) and we transfer xxx twice a month. This money is for groceries, gas in my van, any clothing or other items the boys or I may need, anytime the boys and I eat out while DH is out of town, etc.... It just works this way for us. It helps me budget my discretionary funds more easily and it helps him keep tabs on the main budget when he knows two big chunks are coming out on set dates, rather than seeing small purchases pop up here and there and every where. So, having said all of this, we do make the joke of "my" money and "his" money. Even though it all comes from the same pot.

With my husband's odd schedule, he's available to teach quite often, but we've found switching teachers too often can get confusing for us as well as the kids. This year he's taking over social studies ~ we have a maps program and my husband really loves maps and navigation (it sort of goes with his job!) so he's going to teach the boys all about maps. Then they are going to do a whole project about various knots. After that I'm not sure what he's got planned. In other words, my husband is taking over some of the electives type of stuff that I don't have time to think about :D

DH and I are considering iPads. We already have iPhones and I have several educational apps that my kids play around with, but I don't use it much as part of our homeschool, specifically. I'm trying to figure out if I would use my iPad more as a homeschool tool if I had one. Do you have one? Do you use it in your homeschool? How so?

We're in Kitsap Co, but my inlaws live on the eastside. I wasn't aware of this store. Thanks for the tip! We're in the area about once a month or so.

We were at the local grocery store once and the produce clerk (she *loves* my boys) commented that they weren't in school. I told her we homeschooled and she knelt down on the floor, looked both of my boys in the eyes and said "You have no idea how much your mother loves you. HSing is a lot of hard work and she must love you guys very very much to do what she does to make sure you have such a great education." It's one of the *few* positive public comments I've recieved and I keep it tucked in the back of my brain for those days when it seems like I have to defend my choices over and over and over again.

Color me jealous! I absolutely love Powell's and would probably spend my husband's entire paycheck there every month if it weren't four hours away! :D

When my oldest started Kinder he became nearly unbearable, I attributed it his trying to find his boundries, testing them, etc... We had a freak snow storm that extended our Christmas break that year by 8 days. He was home for over three weeks and suddenly my sweet, loving child was back. He was more tolerant of his younger brother, he remembering his manners again without being prompted and suddenly I realized it was the influence of school that had changed him. He noticed it, too. After Christmas break he never wanted to go to school. Dropping him off every day became a struggle and a fight. DH had already put the HS bug in my ear and this experience really opened my eyes and my heart and I knew it was what was best for our family.

Oh, Oh, Oh.....I love this! I can see having my husband cut down some plywood to about an 8x11 size (or slightly larger), covering one side with some quilt batting or stuffing and fun fabric and the other side with this contact paper. Now....how to edge it to make it all tie together??? Oh, the ideas are swirling!!!

Goodness! I didn't expect my little rant to go on this long! :D I feel that I should point out that even though I've given up on B&N, I still believe in supporting locally owned brick & mortar stores. However, in my mind even though B&N has stores and Amazon doesn't they really aren't all that different. They are both huge national corporations. Yes, Amazon is damaging B&N, but B&N damaged all the little Mom and Pop stores when they first moved into town as well. We live in a small little town in the Puget Sound area. We have two small, locally owned book stores and my children and I frequent them often. When my kids earn a new book for chores, reading charts or whatever we always head to these places. Anyway, I just wanted to mention that. Carry on. ;)

I used to be a grammar and punctuation nazi. Facebook, texting and email have ruined me. :001_tt2: I KILL KITTENS :001_tt2:

My older son really really wants to enjoy fiction novels, but he just can't seem to find any that interest him. He loves history and reads quite a bit of non fiction. I would love to find him some fiction books based on historical events. He's read most of the Magic Treehouse books, but seems to have outgrown them and is getting bored with them. Same thing with A to Z mysteries. Suggestions? Thanks!

:seeya: Hey there! I'm just running into you all over the internet! LOL!! Some day we'll actually meet in person!:D

And to the OP ~ I'm not at all offended by your questions. I've not had a positive adoption experience, but I know many many people that have ~ both domestically and internationally. I am passionate about helping people learn the ins and outs of adoption, if they truly want to learn. The world of adoption is a beautiful place, but it does have it's ugly side and I feel anyone considering adoption (or even curious about it) needs to see it all. :grouphug:

We've had our paperwork over in China since April 2007. Yes, we've been waiting 4 years and we're not even close. If we get the call in the next 24 months, I'd be shocked. We've all but given up. We're considering withdrawing our paperwork. We considered adopting domestically and while we were in the process of making that decision, my husband's dear friend was called to the hospital because a mother was giving birth to his (and his wife's) new baby. They witnessed the birth (after paying all of her medical bills), they held the baby (even before the bio mom) and they went home that night full of joy over finally having a baby in the home. The next day they went back to the hospital to take the baby home and the bio said "No." That's it. Nothing else, just "No." Two weeks later my husband was in an airport and making small talk while waiting in line at Starbucks and a perfect strager mentioned that he was having a bad day, he and his wife had a child for a year ~ 12 MONTHS ~ and bio mom showed up one day and said "I listed the wrong dad on the birth certificate". It nullified the adoption. ONE FULL YEAR and then their baby was gone. We took these two occurances as signs that we should not adopt domestically. My husband looked me straight in the eye and said he would not hesitate to break the law if we found ourselves in either of those circumstances. We couldn't do it. We have two very beautiful, very healthy bio kids and while I did not believe our family was complete, fate obviously had other ideas.

:iagree: This is me. I eat a lot of eggs, a lot of animal fat and a lot of coconut oil. I also drink at least a pint of green smoothies every day (fruit, spinach (or other green) and water/ice all blended up). I'm slowly taking off the weight, but I'm "metabolically" healthy. I can't remember my cholesterol numbers off the top of my head, but they are well below normal and at my last dr appt, my BP was 92/70.

My card states on the front of it: "Accepted at Banes & Noble stores and www.bn.com" (but what is left out is that if bn.com prices are cheaper than store prices, the discount is still taken off the store price) :cursing:

My local store will let me use it on almost anything ~ I can't complain there. But Amazon is still almost always cheaper than the list price at B&N. So, I see no reason (unless I need the book NOW) to ever use them again.

I think it's time for a hard core freezer cooking session!

I was at B&N this evening and like everything else in the store, the two books I wanted were ridiculously cheaper online, she wouldn't honor the online price in the store (not that I expected her to), but she told me to use my Educator's Card online and get an additional 20% off (I've never used it online before). I had my cart all set and ready to check out, but no discounts showed up. I called the store and A.) the discount is taken off the list price, so since online was so much cheaper, I didn't get an additional discount like she had originally advised me and B.) the Educator Card isn't valid on textbooks ?????????? What the *&^??? So, Amazon will almost exclusively be cheaper now and on the off chance that it's not I think I'll still avoid B&N just on principle. They annoyed me! :lol: