That is a series that I have been planning to try because Susan Wittig Albert's China Bayles (set in Texas) is a long running personal favourite of mine. They are available in my overdrive but the first one in the series is never available when I am in the mood. My stacks of research are still pretty substantial. ;) I will get to it before year end, I think. :lol:

1. One of my friends daughter's recently paid to reverse her names legally. Obviously for her it was an issue. ;) I never thought it mattered before. 2. Dh really wanted a junior. I wasn't excited about it but after years of infertility treatment was willing to let him name our sex unknown baby whatever he wanted. I just wanted a heathy baby. I did make him sit down with me and pick names that weren't his for each sex and told him he got to decide after the baby arrived. His choice, whatever he named the baby after birth was fine. I did lay out a list of negatives for naming a boy after himself. My biggest reason was I wanted my child to have his own name. Dd was first. After his first look at our baby he said he agreed with me. One look at her changed his mind! Never a question what ds would be called because we had picked it out when dd was expected. A couple years later a mom friend was married to a junior whose father had constant legal and financial problems. Those issues constantly shadowed my friend's life. Turned down for mortgages etc. I was really glad we hadn't done the junior. 3. Partly because my kids were named at the same time they sound like twins. I love their names but kind of regret the cuteness of it. They like their names so all is good. My kids have names that are Scottish in origin. Our names for our third child were also Scottish but didn't start with the same initial. I think they would have blended fine.

Dd did Henle through the middle of book two. To summarize her situation her grammar was great but her vocabulary a bit weak. She switched over to Wheelocks and used this free website http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/latin/wheelock/index.htm to go through the book at her own pace. Things she knew well were simply done online and unfamiliar exercises were done with both paper and computer. Dd started French partway through Henle 1. She learned really quickly thanks to Latin I think. Her French is excellent and she is convinced it is because of Latin. Eta, Dd was a tenth grader when she switched.

Since you live in the UK I would start by watching some of the many cooking shows. Masterchef has a Junior show on cbbc which normally does a basic recipe each episode. Celebrity Masterchef just started this week but we haven't watched it yet. My kids have always loved Mary Berry and the Bakeoff and its spin offs. The recipes are frequently on websites after both of these shows. For us the shows were family viewing when the kids were younger. We experimented with many of the recipes after. Kids like The Hairy Bikers also. There are many cooking shows to choose from.

Wishing safe journeys to both Robin and Kareni. I hope you both have great visits. I will give things a bump in the morning if it needs it. I spent my entire afternoon serving tea and cakes at a Garden Party that had been moved to our church this year. The positive was no one got wet and the crowd seemed longer than normal. All of dds cakes sold so she is pleased. Standing on stone for hours is not good for my back. I am already feeling it. I did manage to finish a fun fluff book I started last night. Nannyland https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27408127-nannyland by Jaje Elizabeth Hughes was a book that was hard to put down. It was a romance about an American margin trader who flees Wall Street for the Cotswolds and finds herself renting a cottage owned by the descendants of Lady Jane Gray of nine days a Queen fame. It took some fun turns and rewrote a bit of history in a speculative way (haven't had a chance to research those bits yet). It was an easy read and I needed one.

For us I am certain it's geographical due to mail time if nothing else. I obsessed last year and read everything I could find regarding release dates etc and don't remember it being planned. After the first couple of days it goes to Wednesday and Friday I believe. The scores show in the accounts before you get an email.

Just :grouping:

This is the Core we started with Dd but she never finished for many somewhat unrelated reasons. Mainly she wasn't loving it and slowly stopped doing it as she started finding other coursework that she enjoyed. The SL just sort of dwindled to nothing. She liked the lit portion and read many of those. Because this Core had a huge amount of paper I made a separate far skinnier notebook for her with the schedule(s) for the weeks the lit book was being read over and all the back up student papers for all the reading. I did the same with an answer file for me. This made it far easier to handle. The problem was the lit was read quickly but the other books were never as compelling for her to finish. She was much happier doing her other courses and tended to focus on those. She was using the EIW for her writing assignments. Not our best course. This is a course that you may very well need to modify as you go.

My dc's aren't posted yet. Last time it was 9 days after the initial release.

Happy Belated Birthday to Stacia!!!!!!!

Robin, sending good vibes your way. I hope your property offer gets accepted! Butter, one of my friends hosts many couch surfers. You need to keep us updated! :) Shawne, the photos are lovely! I finished the latest in a cozy series that I have been enjoying overall. A killer Ball at Honeychurch Hall by Hannah Dennison was great in the sense that a priest's hole complete with a murder mystery was discovered. There are odd bits about these books that are just plain odd character wise but I keep reading them so I can't complain too much. I am currently reading another in Jenn's Amish series by Linda Castillo. I read for about a half hour last night before falling asleep an had really scary dreams involving Amish women being kidnapped. My mom keeps telling me she can't watch crime shows in the evening or she dreams them. I really really hope this isn't happening to me. I don't want to dream my books or my TV.

I have no idea about what is available in Israel but I think a Kindle Fire that she can download books on might be a good resourse for her. That way she can carry one small thing as opposed to boxes of books. Eta....youtube has many children's shows.

:lol: I put it on hold. I really enjoy YA romances (per overdrive) so might as well indulge to find my answer. Now I am wondering too. From MMV's last quote from The Girls I assumed it wouldn't upset me long term. ;) I hadn't heard of it until the BaW talk. Given the long wait lists I was surprised not to find it available at any of my local libraries, not on order either. Overdrive to my rescue!

You are a bad influence! I aleady had the Governess Affair from some prior offer apparently so downloaded it again. I hsd the Duchess War also. Hopefully I will read these this time!

Congratulations to The Boy!!!!!

I saw the Feathering book but have several left to read before I get to it. The Chinese Shawl is a Miss Silver that I don't think I have read. I need to start those again in order because my overdrive has most if not all of them. I have picked them and Christies up and read them as I found them. Maybe a goal for next year would be for me to read these series in order.

Shawne, the rebel. Simply not how I imagine you irl. ;) Hopefully I'll get to meet you someday because you live near a good friend that I hope to go visit eventually. Regarding the holds list, I just went back in to show ds a book I thought he might like that I had reserved and I'm now at 10. Obviously more copies have been purchased. So you might be in far better shape than you imagine. I reserved it in Overdrive btw.

Mothersweets....I agree with Kareni. Are we right? I also added myself onto a waitlist for The Girls. I think it might be this summer's Girl on the Train. I am number 126. I just finished the third in a cozy series that I have been loving but this one had some glaring inaccuracies. Evanly Choir https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1332944.Evanly_Choirs by Rhys Bowen started driving me nuts because all the suspicious characters said they were someplace else in the EU, mainly Italy. Then the book would state you don't need a passport to enter the UK from Italy etc. which meant they could have done it. Well, you certainly do! I can go to Ireland without carrying a passport but that is it! Our upcoming vote (Brexit) has made me have to listen to so much misleading information that I really took my feelings out on this poor book. Although it had a few other oddities that by themselves I would have ignored :lol: I looked up the author who is British but lives in California. I suspect she hasn't visited here in years. The book itself centered around the famous Welsh music festivals. Those parts seemed accurate, good friends go annually.

I really enjoyed Mary Jo Putney's slightly supernatural historical A kiss of Fate. It is the first in her Guardian series. My imagination library ved the thought of a handsome Scottish Laird standing on headlands controlling storms while Bonnie Prince Charlie wages war. Total fluff. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/614712.A_Kiss_of_Fate I also read Margaret Mayhew's latest Colonel cozy, Bitter Poison. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26515227-bitter-poison

A mutual friend suggested I talk to another mom here way back when we were both starting home ed about another interest we had in common. Ironically we ended up talking home ed and Story of the World but I don't think either of us were here yet. I spotted her pretty quickly when I started using the board because she uses her first name. I think she knows who I am but have never really acknowledged each other. I also have some real life good friends thanks to this board.

If you decide to do Wheelocks dd used this http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/latin/wheelock/index.htm with the book.

Thank you for posting!

Unfortunately I can't find this one in audiobook form at my libraries but it is available in Kindle form.....or at least I can go on the wait list for it. I don't think it was the last time I looked. I did find some cozy type mysteries that I haven't read so will give one of those a try if my holds don't show up before my next quilting session. I am totally amazed at the number of books I am managing to listen to while crafting. :grouphug: My like was supportive too! ;( Chimneys have always scared me, now I know why.

Stacia, I know you have recommended a book with a title close to Bad Monkey. In my search for a new audiobook I found this one available https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16071701-bad-monkey?ac=1&from_search=true. Is that the one?

We had planned to do the AP exams but micro never seems to be available for us. We ended up doing the CLEPs with these courses and the REA review books as the main study material. I had prepared everything for the AP before I realized they simply offered Macro every single year. The coursera classes are done very well so would add those in with your textbooks. Btw, I did most of the macro class beside ds as a how to take proper notes exercise and that class was incredibly well organized for note taking. The books (I had several) I bought cracked me up because the examples were geared very much to college life and students. I remember my econ books as being filled with more life after college examples.