What I find funny on this list...or maybe it isn't funny at all. I don't know. There are several items that are listed several times by different people. These items are so popular that I went out and bought them for my kids only for them to totally ignore them. Things like dress up, Barbies and Barbie clothes, Legos, wooden blocks, wooden train sets, and hot wheels sit totally unused in our house. My kids so not normal.

We've been seeing our chiropractor for over 11 years now. I started going when I had severe lower back problems and found out that my severe tummy aches (which other doctors told me was heartburn) were caused by my back. He fixed both my back pain and stomach pain. :D Now we only go when we need to like when I'm dumb enough to sleep/lie on the couch. That ALWAYS makes my neck go out. He also fixes my jaw for me occasionally when I pop it out of joint. . He charges $30 a visit and checks the kids for free. I don't remember how much initial exam and xrays are anymore.

My kids own tons of stuff but most of it gets forgotten pretty quick and only used occasionally. Their favorite gift, though, was the gamecube we managed to get for them last year and the games to go with it. (We are getting the Wii this year.) They like their magazine subscriptions. My daughter, age 8, gets Highlights. My son, age 6, gets a Spiderman comic made for younger kids. They like movies a lot. Everything else seems to be in the barely used category.

I'd pick up my unused knitting needles and crochet hooks, pick up my scrapbooking where I left off eight years ago, teach myself to sew, and teach myself to play the piano. I'd also read more and reteach myself to draw since I gave that up eleven years ago. I'd invite friends over for a special lunch and movie occasionally. Of course, this is all after I get and keep my house clean.

With my oldest, I did nothing but phonics workbooks like the ones Spectrum puts out. My son learned to read using Teach Your Child to Read in Just 10 Minutes a Day. His special ed teacher began using it in her classes after I gave her the book. Since then, he's used Spectrum phonics workbooks. I also spend at least an hour a day reading to the kids...anything from books that go with our history and science learning to classics.

Everyone in my car must be properly restrained. My 8 year old is still using a booster because the seat belt doesn't properly fit her without it. As far as guests...I'll provide a seat if I have one, simply because installing it beforehand is easier for me. If I don't have a seat available, I'd expect them to provide theirs. If a child is not properly restrained, I'd be liable...for the ticket or worse if an accident happened. My son's taekwondo class has a family that doesn't restrain any of their kids in car seats. Their small-for-his-age four year old even sits in the front seat. It drives me nuts! I've managed to keep my mouth shut so far. I just looked up our state's law. I was aware of the 8 years old or 4'9" requirements but I didn't know they went so far as to state where the 8-12 year olds were suppose to sit.

You've already told her your expectations and should stick to what has already been agreed upon. Meanwhile, you can explain to her how to go about fulfilling her end of the bargain so she doesn't have to come home mid-term. If she makes it, set clear guidelines for being able to continue the arrangement.

I first read that book in 8th grade Honors English. Then I moved and got to read it again in 9th grade Honors English. Then I switched schools and got to read it again in 10th grade Advanced English.

That's what I am going to do. I'm going to take this month and the next month off of formal language arts. Instead, I'm going to have my daughter work on the workbook for the rest October and then have her spend November doing the actual writing.

This looks pretty cool! I'm glad I clicked into the post to find out what that strange acronym stood for. My daughter loves to write. She wrote a story with over 8,600 words last year and another one with more than 4,500 words this year, totally on her own. I think I'd set her word count between 10,000 and 15,000 for the challange just because I know she can. Then I'd let her off the hook for other language arts work for the month. There's a list of average word count goals by grade.

That's what we are doing this year. My husband racked up enough points through a computer training thing to get one for free. He also has a Visa and Mastercard he got the same way that we are going to use to get some games. I plan on using Fit and other Sports Games for winter PE since we can't go outside with the nine months of rain we get here.

The windups that I had said they had to be wound every month. We always forgot. When we went to use them they were dead and wouldn't hold a charge no matter how much we wound them. They only worked for literally one or two seconds. I went out and invested in a mag light and two mini mags...set from Costco.

My husband, who owns his own IT business (well, building one from the ground up), says whether you can retrieve your information depends on what's wrong with it. If it is retrievable, he'd be able to do it. He'd be able to give it a try for you but you'd have to ship it here as we are in Washington. If he can't do it, he won't charge you for his time. If he can do it, the cost depends on what kind of hard drive you need/want to replace it. He can't give a quote without knowing that. PM me if you want him to give you a quote.

I would keep a consistent routine and have everyone do a quiet time at the same time. I'd lay down with him every day. Stay with it so he can get used to the new schedule. You could also try giving him some Tranquil Child in his drink. It's an herbal tincture made with organic peppermint, chamomile, and catnip that promotes tranquility. It might help him fall asleep until he's used to the new schedule.

They been in business for a year and a half and supposedly have never turned a profit. The instructor (a somewhat immature 21 year old) says they have to get regular jobs to be able to keep the dojang open or they'll have to shut down. They do a good job teaching the kids. The kids like them and they place very well at tournaments. However, they don't know how to run a business very well. Unfortunately, that immature 21 year old does the business end of things and thinks he knows everything and doesn't listen to suggestions. For example, I convinced him to become a community instructor for our virtual academy. Once the paperwork and background checks are completed, the school will pay for lessons their students take with them. They've gotten eight new students from this alone; three or four of them are as a result of my direct referral. Every so often he emails the school's parent discussion group telling them about their classes. However, the email he sends (copies and pastes it each time) has a ton of grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors in it even though it is only a short paragraph long. I've explained that the errors reflect poorly on the business but he won't take the time for correct them. Their website is also full of these kinds of errors. In addition, he hasn't fixed the website to make it come up on google so no one searching for taekwondo in our city will ever find it. What's the point of a website no one can find? He also angered one of the moms I know recently. She showed up for a regularly scheduled class but was turned away. They had decided to do a special belt testing day and had about 12 students testing. They never informed the parents of the kids not testing. She pays for these classes and, because of her work schedule, can't bring her son just anytime. She was pretty angry to be turned away despite being a paying customer. He also cuts people breaks in the fees...at least he does me. I'm suppose to be paying $99 but he charges us $89. Last month, he sent our school a $79 bill rather than the normal $89 bill. I pointed it out on him on the paperwork I had to sign before he could send it to the school and he knew he had charged the wrong amount. It wasn't a mistake nor did I ask for the reduction.

We solved the toy storage problem in our kid's room. I blogged about it on my old blog and recently moved my stuff animal storage post to my current blog. I just moved the regular toy storage post to my current blog. In the posts, I described how I did it and included a photo. Here's a link to both posts. http://blog.homeschooldistractions.com/search/label/Works%20for%20Me (I did the link because I don't know how to do photos here.)

Now that we have found the perfect schedule for our family, we have to change it back to what we hated before. Ugh! My son is serious about taekwondo. He wants to get his black belt and become an instructor. His dojang has been offering day time classes from 10am to 12pm. Each class is an hour but he stays for both classes, Monday through Friday. Yes, my son does 10 hours of taekwondo a week. He actually asked for more than that. This schedule has been working perfectly for us. While he's in class, the other kids and I run errands (groceries, bank, library). After errands and on days I have no errands, I clean while my daughter does her writing curriculum, creative writing, or independent reading. Today, they told me that they'll probably be quitting the day classes. This means we'll have to go in the evenings. Classes are at 4pm, 5pm, 6pm, and 7pm. All those times interfers with something in our schedule (history, science, cooking, and dinner) so we'd have to rearrange the entire day to move to evening classes. The hardest part is trying to cook and eat dinner while shuttling him back and forth to classes. How do you do it? As I see it, our options are: 1) Have him eat dinner as fast as he can in his uniform and then rush off to class. If we did this option, he'd have to drop down to an hour a day unless they let him leave from the second class early. 2) Drop him off at class for two hours while I cook dinner. The whole family eats dinner late (about 6:30pm...we currently eat at 5:30pm) when he gets home. This will only work if my husband can pick him up which he may not always be able to do. It will be hard on my toddler who can't wait that long to eat; he gets miserable and impossible when dinner is late. 3) Drop him off for class for three hours while I cook dinner and the family eats at normal time without him. Then feed him dinner alone when he gets home at 7:30pm. This is the easiest option for the rest of the family. He says he won't mind eating dinner alone but I don't care for the idea of him missing family dinner. I also wonder what this is going to do for him physically. I think the morning exercise and focused practice helps him focus better for school. He'll lose that when he moves to doing class at night. What would you do?

I just discovered that my husband's signing bonus is exhausted which means we'll see a significant drop in income...as much as $800 per month drop. This month we're down $300 from what we're used to. I need to find time to look at our bills and see if we have enough money to pay them. From there, I'll decide what we need to do. It's going to be tough. There isn't much to cut. Oh and our heating bill is on the rise. It goes from $40 a month during the summer up to over $200 a month in the winter and there's nothing we can do about it without very expensive remodeling. We have 11 eighty-eight year old, single-pane windows on the first floor and no insulation. We can't afford to upgrade. With the heat off, it gets almost as cold as outside. We lost heat for a couple of days at the end of last winter and it dropped down to 50 degrees indoors during the day. I ended up taking the kids somewhere just to get warm.

I have almost no curriculum except for what we are using now and I definitely don't have anything for the coming years. I could probably research what I need to cover and come up with what we need through the library and online resources. I tried doing that for k and 1st grade with my daughter and it burned me out quickly. I'm not worried about homeschool cost in the coming years though because I enrolled the kids in the virtual academy in our state. They provide a student fund (currently up to $1200 per year per child) which you can use for nonreligious curriculum of your choice, supplies, classes, and field trips. The only thing I'm currently using that they won't buy is our science curriculum which only costs $35 a year.

I would find a new doctor unless you have a legitimate health issue that makes it risky to nurse while pregnant. You need to drink extra to account for your needs, your pregnancy needs, and your nursing needs. I know from personal experience that dehydration can cause both miscarriage and preterm labor so guard against that. If I get pregnant again before my toddler weans, I'll still continue to nurse.

My son used to have serious attention/focus issues. He will still waste time sometimes but overall we get our work done every day. I don't think any one thing that we've done has corrected it. Rather, I think several things put together have helped. One thing I did was get him involved in taekwondo. Focus and attention are part of what they work on when they practice their forms and techniques over and over again. I also started doing read alouds. When we first started, I would read a short paragraph and ask him an easy question about the reading. He wouldn't remember anything from the reading. I could even read the sentence with the answer in it three times in a row, reminding him to listen close, and still have him not know the answer. I'm not talking about him saying "I don't know"; he'd guess at the answer and it would be completely wrong. I kept working at it. Read a few sentences, ask a question, read some more, ask some more. Back them, he would usually fall asleep if I read for 10 minutes. Now, he enjoys read alouds, stays awake, and pays attention to the story for our usual 30-45 minute read time before bed. This morning, we finished Where the Red Fern Grows at my kids' request. It took us an hour and a half. We've recently started a following a schedule. We use a school bell program on my laptop to keep us on track. When the bell rings, my kids do what they are suppose to do and do it without complaining or arguing. My son loves it. I think he likes knowing what's happening next. I know he likes that it keeps me on track as I have all the syptoms of ADD. Before the bells, he'd try to remind me what time I was suppose to do things...like make lunch. Our schedule spreads school throughout the entire day (our last subject is completed at 8pm) rather than just during school hours so that we have lots of free time and play time inbetween. I think that helps too. My daughter used to make school work take forever because she cried instead of doing it. Her issues were fixed by finding the right curriculum for her. We changed math programs mid-year last year. We overhauled every thing else this year. There's no more tears. I don't know if any of this will help you. I hope it does as I remember those battles well...with both of my kids.

I consistently save between 45% and 65% off my grocery bill with the list. The list includes things like produce, dairy, meat, staples in addition to the prepackaged stuff you'd expect to see.

I feel for your child and know what he is going through. I hope the MRI goes well. I had vertigo during my last pregnancy. One of the hardest parts is not knowing from day to day if that day was going to be okay or not. There were times when I couldn't do anything for a few days. My children, ages 7 and 5 at the time, had to fend for themselves on vertigo days. Fortunately, it mysteriously went away after I gave birth. I'll pray for your child definitely.

I chose 25+ as well. I started formally teaching my eldest four years ago. I have a toddler that hasn't started yet. We'll probably have more children still and we plan on homeschool all of our children through high school.

I voted other... We tried to not celebrate Halloween. We turn off the porch light, turn off the inside lights, and put up a sign saying we don't have candy. Unfortunately, our main room (with our only seating and our only TV) is in the front of the house, they know we are home so they ignore all of the "go away" hints and knock anyway. When my daughter was younger, we tried going out to dinner and wandering around Costco to kill time until the trick or treaters went home. That didn't work because our waiter was dressed up in a scary costume and my daughter was terrified every time he came to the table. Then we found dressed up people and decorations that scared her at Costco. We couldn't stay home. We couldn't go out. So the best option was to participate in the harvest celebration at church because scary costumes aren't allowed there. I'd much rather stay home though.