We used many of the books towards the bottom of the list starting with Mathematical Reasoning.....they were excellent. This was many years ago but thought I would add my ideas. https://www.criticalthinking.com/preschool-academics. The grade ranges are higher btw.

Dh and I have always included earnest money with any real estate transaction if we really want to purchase the property ( 3 states but not NC). We used to own several rental houses/condos and we didn’t always put more than a token amount with those offers. The more money down the more we wanted the property to be honest. We once had to buy a house quickly because our hard to sell home sold contingent on a month close. I had animals that needed a house to live in so I needed to buy quickly........I didn’t have many choices in the price range we wanted.....we gave a pretty hefty amount down to insure a really quick close. The owners were thrilled, they had a new build they already owned and were debating putting on the market because the house we bought was a tough sell. A few years later in a different market we sold that house in days.

🤣If you can have a goat on your property I suspect an offer is coming!🤣 Seriously, they certainly sound interested. Good luck!

I thought you were being funny but decided to make a bit of a point because so many thinks being an American living in the UK is so easy. Yes, I speak the language but I don’t always understand it. They don’t always understand me either!

I had jostaberries too. They were hard to get started (perhaps my soil was wrong because I only had about a dozen berries per bush in 10 years)but are thriving for bf. She does not harvest many apparently because one of her dogs loves them!😂

Bisto is just so convenient and it’s good. It took me about a year to figure out that British women were not universally great at making huge amounts of smooth gravy out of the drippings a comparatively small roast, chicken etc. 😂. Thanks to Bisto I can serve a Sunday Roast with loads of gravy for all really easy. I no longer remember how to make real gravy....... I fell in love with black currents years before we ever seriously thought about moving to the UK. I couldn’t have black currents because have state agricultural restrictions but had some thriving red currents and gooseberries. My bf took my bushes when we moved and they are still producing 20 years after I bought them. Marmite is such the acquired taste. I am not a fan except for some crisps that are marmite flavored which I enjoy in small quantities.

Ummmm.......honestly I am not always sure when I am being lectured (as in you should know by now) and when people are just talking about the tea because they need something to say to me. People are definitely pleased when I manage to turn out a decent cuppa. The British have a way of expressing disapproval where it is such a nuisance that I suspect I still miss it frequently. A couple times people have apologized weeks later for being rude to me, I had no clue I had been mistreated.😂 btw, if someone stops by my house the teabag in the mug method is just fine. I have one friend who used loose leaf in a teapot (her mum does too) but most people are teabag in a mug for everyday. FYI, I recently bought a kettle I quite like a Walmart.....https://www.walmart.com/ip/KRUPS-Cool-Touch-Kettle/449077142?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=923&adid=22222222227152076714&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=t&wl3=263883330220&wl4=pla-436388713361&wl5=9011760&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=117084246&wl11=online&wl12=449077142&wl13=&veh=sem&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6oj9tL-m4gIV27bACh3LDQc9EAQYAyABEgJUhPD_BwE. I think it’s cheaper on Amazon. It’s stainless inside and the water boils quite hard. I have been told some teas like Yorkshire brand are actually designed for hard water. The kettle is a huge improvement from boiling in the microwave! I think it has to be separate. The water needs to be poured onto the teabags. Some serving teapots are stainless https://www.englishteastore.com/stainless-teapot-savoy-47oz.html. This is the type my group situations normally have.

I have worked at so many events where I end up serving and making the tea. I have been lectured by so many......so here is my Yorkshire tea summary. When using a teapot you are supposed to prewarm it. You put about half cup of water in first, swish it around then pour it out. Add the tea bags or tea, then add boiling water. Ideally the ladies expect to be serving two minutes or so after this procedure. Most of these teapots hold 10 to 20 cups and we use between 4 and 6 teabags. If the water is boiling properly the tea is ready at the 2 minutes. You can add water and a couple more teabags once and people don’t complain. After that start fresh. Serving between 100 to 125 cups is not unusual. Milk, everyone uses regular old milk, many even use semi (2%comparable). The secret is you put the milk in the cup first.....we actually pre set up cups with milk in for big crowds where we want to go quickly. Not many people use sugar, almost everyone wants milk. At home, I generally pour the water onto my teabag in my cup. I check the color darkness in maybe 30 seconds and discard the teabag and add my semi milk. I honestly don’t think there is a huge difference but it is a bit nicer with the prewarmed teapot etc. For fun I will add a link to the classic cheese scone recipe that everyone uses......They are awesome! Serve with butter......https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1666638/classic-cheese-scones

Glad you made progress with the great garage clean out! Sounds like my kind of a book festival. 😉I finished Zero Day and definitely plan to read more of his Puller books.

I spoke with my Dh about the military options on this particular case. He pointed out that the Ds in this thread would have the “right of return” to Israel which would mean he would most likely be drafted into the Israeli Defense Force automatically. The qualification questions apparently are not a part of that particular scenario. He is also pro military for this young man.

I have always carried my supply in the past but think I will now need 9 months worth. We travel carry on ....... I need to become self sufficient or cut my intake.😉 I don’t plan on enough company. I now have 480 teabags coming tomorrow for a price pretty similar to what I would pay in the UK thanks to Peter Pan. I might buy a small box of Red Rose to try, just so I have something off the shelf at my grocery store. I have seen Ahmed in England but I don’t think I have tried it. It isn’t a brand that is in every grocery store like Tetley and P&G. I love Twinnings flavored teas......they have a black current and a cranberry that are awesome. If I carry tea this summer it will probably be flavored types. Their basic tea in the yellow package simply isn’t quite strong enough for my tastes long term. We lived in this area years ago and our old British shop is gone. I am sure there are must be one in the area because lots of expats so good idea. My Publix doesn’t have my tea but it does have Bisto (gravy granules) which was a very happy discovery. I know that some Publix do carry P&G just not my close ones and i think it was pricey in terms of long term..... I have done the Tetley before when visiting the US It was just fine but not right. I didn’t think the Yorkshire tea tasted right here......I brought the plain box over a couple of years ago. I figured it was water related. It is good tea.

I find these threads a bit jarring myself! I was hoping that bags was a clue about the type...... I wasn’t sure that I even wanted to start this thread. So thank you for responding. Amazon wasn’t giving me the 480 for 20 dollars. I was finding 40 bags for around $10 there a couple of days ago which would not last long! I suspect they knew I was desperate! I am ordering off your link so I don’t run out. It really would be a crisis.😉 Never tried tea from McDonalds in the US. I will now. I am still open to ideas....I actually grew up with Red Rose but haven’t had it in a really long time. Not sure if I would like it now. I have never liked Lipton. Heading out with my family for the afternoon so will check in later with how to make Yorkshire style tea.......it varies. 😉

I have been spoiled by living in the UK and being able to buy P &G Tea bags inexpensively. I am in the US and down to my last 10 tea bags......even in hot weather I drink a couple cups of tea a day. I have started looking and can buy P&G on Amazon but it is so expensive considering my consumption levels. I like my tea strong. I will be primarily in the US for the next 3 years at least so I need a US tea brand! What do you like?

I wouldn’t pay if they are the only ones who want the tree down. If you want more control of who does it pay a portion........tree removal is really expensive. We have been hugely bothered by neighbor’s trees a couple of times and would have been thrilled to pay for tree removal. We offered......we did have all the branches over our property line cut (legal) as the tree(s) were ruining our roof......yes has happened twice.

Sending hugs and prayers............lots of great advice here. I also think it is most likely a mental health issue but I will admit to wondering if this is an academically bored kid. Perhaps for him the GED and being done with high school would suit him perfectly. As opposed to a new high school perhaps some online classes and a job to support himself. I am not sure I would want him living in the same house as your younger children.

I have to say we did a quick trip to Alaska and I have no regrets. That said we tend to schedule pretty tightly and research well. Most of our travel is in quick chunks. Back in the early 90’s my favorite frequent flyer airline started service to Anchorage and had super cheap fares and was giving a huge number of air miles to fly the route. Dh, Fil, and I booked for a 4 day trip in the summer.....all that was available. We rented a suite at a modest Anchorage hotel and rented a car. We made a list of goals and accomplished most........first full day we drove up to Mt. McKinley and saw lots of things along the way......fil’s giant cabbage which was the thing he demanded we find, musk ox, dog sleds........The next day we drove to Seward, did a Glacier boat trip along the way, saw beluga whales and mountain sheep during that drive. Ate well and had a great time. We all said that we would cruise the next time but honestly I am satisfied with my trip. Lots of other places on my list.......

@Kareni have fun at you book club. This month’s choice looks interesting. I just had an enjoyable time reading The Alchemist the first book inMichael Scott’s Nicholas Flamel series. My kids were read these on their own and I didn’t insert myself into the fight over the library book time limits. If I had known how fun these books were I might have bought them! They were so popular..... So next up in this series The Magician which will give me my Machiavelli Bingo square. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2402971.The_Magician. I plan to read the whole series over the next month or so......depending on Overdrive availability. Thank you @Teaching3bears for the idea! I am also reading Zero Day which @Robin M recently suggested for my Z requirements. So far I like it, rather like a Lee Child book. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11007587-zero-day?ac=1&from_search=true

I used to love to fly. Dh and I did many somewhat crazy trips back in the early 90’s for the air miles. We had a lot of fun......I remember being booked on a cheap flight to Mexico with a tight connection which we missed. Customer Service was waiting for us at the gate to pick where we wanted to go for the weekend........anyplace in the world, because that was the last flight to Mexico that day. We picked a flight leaving in a half hour for San Fran.......... A couple of years ago a similar thing happened and a kiosk spit a ticket for the same flight in 3 days, I would have returned home the next morning. A 12 hour visit to my moms. Getting anyone to help at the airport was impossible because no one cared.....hubby (at home) got someone to at least book a flight home for me that night. I was on that flight in 3 days but I didn’t pay for the 3 nights in a really expensive airport hotel.......and I was rebooked for a later return date. I did miss my mom’s surgery...... Now it’s just so stressful, recently the signage at the airport was wrong due to construction projects and we got spit out onto the expressway into a traffic jam. Getting to the airport is even hard.....we had stayed at an airport hotel for a stress free start to that trip. Seriously less than a mile away.

So many fun memories here.......first color TV, man on the moon, Watergate...........OK, not all fun because I was so upset about Watergate. It was summer and I couldn’t watch Captain Kangaroo. I had a small black and white TV that I loved for years......took it to college, my first apartment, even had it after we were married. Hubby finally convinced me to give it to someone else because he had bought a color tv for that room. I still think it was a bad decision.😉 So for a new one ..........how about the Paul is Dead, Beatles controversy. I spent a whole lot of time with my finger gently pressing down playing that album backwards..........and my new neighbor (now my husband) was the kid who convinced me that the Beatles had switched Paul’s if I didn’t believe the pictures, feet off the ground etc, that it was all there played backwards. We were telling the kids about this the other day........

Are you forgetting Abe Lincoln was a Vampire Hunter? 😜 I actually really enjoyed that book.😂. So......I just went looking for Dread Nation and managed to find it. My virtual stack is growing! I finished one of novellas in The Expanse series called Strange Dogs today and your Zombie post cracked me up.....my book was about Zombies in outer space. They are everywhere!

FYI, not sure if this will help OP but in terms of good general info. 😉 We have had several big moves and couldn’t find our infant vaccination records. We stopped hunting when we discovered that we could get a vaccination record from our original state.

FWIW, I believe the first several lessons of Saxon are review from the prior year. The curriculum was designed to be used in schools with a long summer holiday and also takes into account that kids in school may not complete all the lessons in their math book. I wasn’t a Saxon user but did use a similar curriculum for years and skipped through the review lessons doing multiple lessons daily for a couple of weeks at the start of a new book. We schooled year around.

You sign up to take the ACT without the writing, not sure that you can opt out on test day. Everyone takes the exam together and kids not doing the writing get to leave before the writing portion starts. FYI, There were a couple of WTMers advising not taking the writing portion with either the SAT or the ACT so your dc would have a clean exam in case the unpredictable writing portion went poorly before my kids tested. We did the ACT without writing and the scores were good. Never bothered with the main SAT with writing because we didn’t actually need a writing portion. My kids did test twice because some schools allow super scoring which did benefit my kids.

I haven’t gone back and read all the posts again and this may have been crossed off as an idea already but I believe your Dh has a den downstairs in a technical bedroom. Could you turn the linked bedroom into a den/library and give college boy the former den for the summer?

Glad you enjoyed Leviathon Wakes!😁 Thanks for the Commonwealth Saga idea. I wasn’t sure what SF to read when I finished The Expanse and have randomly marked a few. I just looked at Goodreads and saw there is a prequel called Misspent Youth with rather mixed ratings. Did you read it? My library does have it, just not on audio. So far all my SF reading adventures except for rather short novellas have been audio. Pandora’s Star (book 1) and most if not all the rest appear to be on audio.