Awww, so cute!

I just wanted to say I am sorry for your loss. Hugs!

I think I would just walk to the spot I wanted unless she is physically in it, and move the extra stuff aside. Give her a big smile and say this is your favorite spot and you came early so you could have it. Either that or beat her in the pool and set your stuff up before you walk....tell her you are saving a spot for yourself. Saving for four people is just rude when obviously someone else wants the spot. eta...I know I sound grouchy but I am just sick and tired of being taken advantage of by people like that!

I didn’t manage to finish Record of a Spaceborn Few last night but woke up early this morning and made myself finish it. For the most part the characters are straight in my mind and I understand how this book connects with the others in the trilogy which is a huge accomplishment. ?. I think the book does have an important message at the end but it took it a really long time to get to it! I can’t say I loved it but I do wonder if I would have enjoyed it far more if I had read in closely after reading the other two in the series. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2310151023

I am so very sorry for your loss. I think you plans for next year sound good. Just because I found it adding a free program from Stanford called Reading Like a Historian occasionally for history that I enjoyed to the growing list. https://sheg.stanford.edu/list-reading-historian-lessons several of your topics appear here also.

We live in a quiet area with 7 townhouses and we all know each other because most have lived here since the 70’s. We are the newbies. We live in the middle of an extended family, daughter and her young family on one side with her parents living on our other side. It’s nice for us because we always have people to watch the house etc. Dh does the lawn for all. People bring in our rubbish bins for us. It works.....

I have never watched the whole movie or read the book. My daughter has both watched, more than once, and read. I watched a few “really good parts” ? but never felt the desire to watch it all or read it. I am currently struggling to get through the latest Becky Chambers Sci Fi book, Record of a Spaceborn Few. I keep rereading bits hoping to feel something beyond meh....it’s downloaded onto numerous devices so I simply haven’t felt the need to sync, I just read a bit from whatever device...oddly roughly 30% on all three. My plan for tonight is to just finish it. I hope the last two thirds is wonderful. I loved A Long Way to a Small Planet, enjoyed the second, but just can’t seem to make myself connect with these characters. I can’t even keep them straight!

I remember really liking The Trial when I watched it so can totally imagine the problem of following it with the book. Book first, is my rule too! I just finished a memoir that is also a movie but if I understood the afterword the book was written at the same time the movie was in production. Adrift was floating around on my wish list ? for several months. I contemplated it for both the book to movie and the memoir squares. Glad I went with memoir as I will never bother to watch the movie. The book was a relatively quick interesting read. I am so grateful I didn’t read the Goodreads comments first because they were a bit scathing in terms of survival when you have plenty of food and she eventually figured out her water supply. A couple gets caught in a hurricane in the middle of the Pacific when ferrying a sailboat from Tahiti to San Diego and the man falls overboard and the woman is knocked unconscious. Only one small sail left and no watch for navigation. Eventually she was able to navigate properly and did sail in to Hawaii. The fear she had it wrong was very real and supplies would not have lasted to the America’s. The boat was pretty badly damaged and I was amazed that one of the comments was from a current owner of that boat. I really thought it ended up as scrap!https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/957533.Red_Sky_in_Mourning. Eta....Apparently Adrift has another title, Red Sky in Mourning. I guess the movie is called Adrift.

Ok, I have been there done that with your posts. You are me 5 years ago right down to boarding school being the best option and an annual migration interrupted which I had to go on because of a 90 yo mother. Our one huge difference is my son knew he didn’t want the local schools and was pretty appalled at the boarding school idea. He did want clear borders of when a class was done which he didn’t really trust me to provide. My older daughter thrived on huge amounts of work in one year and I was used to planning with her needs in mind. At 13 my ds needed a whole lot of sleep, easily 12 plus hours to start the day. I used to joke that if sleep was a competitive sport Ds would take gold. We solved that with outside exams. Mainly Clep exams because they were the easiest for us to obtain. Not just a pass, we required a certain score to be done with the topic. We also let him start on online degree path which satisfied the kid. He didn’t have a problem with working it turned out but wanted to work toward something he considered solid and real. An Associates elsewhere made him work. We did make sure he was competitive for UCAS. He had no problems with that process other than a deferment for young age, accepted unconditionally to all Russell Group programs. For Oxbridge your son is going to need a minimum of 3 AP’s (the harder ones actually) with a 5. A good smattering of SAT subjects over 700 wouldn’t hurt. If that is his goal he needs to be prepared to get those scores. Will the classes at his local high school be able to provide him with those scores? There are only a small handful of high scorers at our local school.....ds never would have worked to be one. If they aren’t the common outcome from the AP classes there he needs to know his odds of Oxbridge admittance will go down with this choice. All any US high school diploma will give him is 5 passing GCSE’s which is almost nothing in the Oxbridge or UCAS world. I would lay it all out for him, along with the travel opportunities you have planned. Since you are talking about 8th grade I wonder if enrolling him for one semester might not give him his taste of school. During his one year in Europe or time in the Bahamas would he be HE or attend local schools?

Math books like the beginning Life of Freds (A through M? )The Number Devil, Murderous Maths............

A couple other ideas might be Chinese Science Fiction. I love the Three Body Problem which I read/ listened to earlier this year. One other idea might be The Rivers of London or whatever the first in the series is called in the US https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9317452-rivers-of-london. There used to be an article on the web declaring it to be the first book in a new genre and the reasons why......I can’t remember the name unfortunately. This series isn’t a typical Urban Fantasy which most people like to class it as, it isn’t Steampunk, I think the name played off the detective/ police element but I can’t seem to locate it. I honestly do think the series is a new genre......this is one of my favorite series. Yeah, to the finished quilt! ? No Scottish Brit Tripping this time. Pretty sure I have never read anything by Denise Mina and I will have a look through my library’s in the morning.

She is beautiful! Those legs are really long.......I love how she has them curled up, so cute!

@Negin I really need to read the Ben Carson book and will search my libraries for it tomorrow. From your quotes I suspect I can easily join his fan club. ? It’s been a surprising couple of weeks around here with the kid’s friends (slightly exam results fueled) and the quote regarding the facing of obstacles really resonated. For the Brit Trippers, we are finally in Oxford! Looking over my lists there are some great books set there. Colin Dexter, Barbara Pym, and Connie Willis, all have popular series set in Oxford. One of my favorite historical mysteries from years past is set in Oxford, Heresy by SJ Paris https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6611809-heresy. My favorite Dorothy Sayers book Gaudy Night is set at Oxford. Unfortunately I have three books to read in my Sayers in order reread before Gaudy Night so I won’t be reading it this week. But the second book in the Ariana Franklin historical series Is set a Nunnery near Oxford Uni and I read it earlier this year. I plan to use The Serpant’s Tale for the Oxford Bus Stop because it was perfect, I love that series. ? I am currently listening to Sophie’s World for my philosophy square. I’m not far enough in to know if I like it bu Simon Vance is the narrator which is the best thing about it so far! I just finished two Patricia Briggs audiobooks for my Mercyverse reread and have to say I am hugely impressed at how well they fit together. I originally read the two series separately and my current path merges them. Thank you Kareni.....btw, have fun camping! I have several books started.....Adrift by Tami Oldham Ashcroft for my memoir square and Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers are the two I suspect I will actually finish.

Hugs

We moved to England 11 years ago so we spoke the language, sort of. ? We moved on our own so no corporate moving specialist and no desire to pay for shipping a container. One of my closest friends was moving to an Asian country at the same time with the help of a corporation. She moved way too much stuff because she could and was overwhelmed by it when it all arrived. Her new home was much smaller and some what she brought did not fit. Her already old couch had to sit almost in the middle of the room because it was too long for the walls. She apparently could have negotiated a furniture allowance but chose the larger container instead. We rented a furnished flat and moved with 8 bags initially. We went home for Christmas and picked up 8 more bags of stuff. Eventually we moved to an unfurnished flat and IKEA did our decorating. Neither way was perfect. What I would do right now...... 1. Passports for the whole family. Friends whole family actually visited first I think, so you want to be ready just in case. 2. I would start studying both German and French on Duolingo at a minimum. So you can at least read things, sort of. ? 3. De clutter so moving will be easier. 4. Start thinking about things that your family is totally brand sensitive to. You will need to verify these brands can be purchased in your new country. My friend had to have contact solution mailed to her at great expense. When my BF came to visit she had to bring me tampons and packages of the underwear my son liked because he grew out of his old unexpectedly. Yes, all of those things can be bought on the economy but when your family is already under the stress of an incredibly major move being physically uncomfortable is too much. I have allergies to many hair products and did remember to bring my own from home, after we got settled I worked on finding British brands that I could tolerate. The humorous thing is I now take my new brand with me when I return to the US in large quantity, my son didn’t know that I needed my shampoo rationed one trip and was using mine so I ran out a week before departure.

VC, Happy Birthday! I hope you have or perhaps had a lovely birthday! Loesje, your shawl is absolutely beautiful!

Wow, one square left! Not sure how many I have but way more than one! Any chance of a photo of your crochet a long ? i just finished Home by Nightfall in honor of London for the Brit Trip bus......I actually spent a great deal of time in Sussex. It was the ninth book in the Charles Lenox series by Charles Flinch and was a satisfying read for me. I read most of this series at the start of the year via audiobook. I stopped because I was actually going to have to read this one, gasp!

Considering God’s Creation is one of my all time favorites. Draw Write Now is another one. I bought them all and managed to work lessons from those books into most subjects.

Glad you enjoyed it! ? I haven’t had a chance to read it but my Overdrive already owns the second in the series, The Shadow Killer.https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27418709-ska-h-si

Robin, Happy Anniversary!

Bingo square for crime is checked! I had been planning to use last weeks The Night Ferry but as I had I’ll be gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara in my stack I decided to give it a try.....I actually had a hope that I could use it for the memoir square, nope. I feel the need to give a bit of an explanation here because once upon a time I read a great deal of true crime and fictional murder in part because I had a friend murdered by her ex and her body still has never been found. So it was my primary genre for three or four years. In the case of my friend other definite proof of death did exist. Thanks to the almost storybook detective for whom she was his last case before retirement, the ex was in prison for his crime the last I knew, it took years. The Ex was a huge murder mystery fan and I secretly kept hoping to stumble on to what he did with her body in books that he liked......a trace amount of mud in tires linked him on the night she disappeared to a huge forest/swamp but it was years before I knew that. I still enjoy an occasional forensic novel .......but I probably tend to overthink them. ? This book checked many boxes for me and at times I found it incredibly engrossing. I had never heard of these crimes until this criminal was caught in such an unbelievable way. But I had a really hard time keeping track of what was going on, maybe if I was already familiar it would have made more sense at times. The book jumped between crimes and timelines with utter abandon because clues from old crimes became important on the later timeline. The writing styles obviously jumped because the author was unable to complete the book, she died unexpectedly. The first part of the book which she had completed as the book was by far the best part. The remaining parts were her blog posts, transcripts of interviews, bits by others all edited together.....confusing for me. I couldn’t just read it straight because it was an emotional overload so I kept coming back and having to reconstruct what I had read the day before. Definitely not a bedside book! Last night I finally gave up and just stayed up until I finished it. I didn’t love it and ended up giving it 3 stars on Goodreads, probably was 3.5 but that can’t be done. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35068432-i-ll-be-gone-in-the-dark

That’s an easy explanation for random people and I used it. I would say something like my husband would never see the kids on weekdays if we weren’t homeschooling......Simple.

Glad the lab went well. Hugs....... Eta......I didn’t know I was in a club as I spotted this off the main actity stream and didn’t look like I should have. Sorry.

I love that frosting. The kids and I love it on chocolate cake too.

I found short answers are generally best...... Sometimes I got really lucky and would just get a response about how someone in their family home educates also. ?