Awww...I am so sorry! My mom really misses my grandma this time of year too...even 16 years later. As I get older, and my mom gets older, I really am realizing how important it is that we put away any differences and I visit her more often. I know that one day, she will not be here for me to visit. :grouphug:

This just blows me away anytime I think of it! I hardly ever remember how different other parts of the world are. Half the time, when it is raining here, I just think of everywhere else being rainy as well! :tongue_smilie: Much less a whole 12 hour time difference! Today has been a super long and exhausting day for us. Dh took his mom out to lunch for Mother's Day, so the kids and I went to a Kids "thing" (LOL, I have no other way to describe it!) for several hours with a friend and her dd. While we were there, I had to stand in line to get something. My older ds and friend's dd took off to do an activity that was right next to the line I was standing in. ds5 asked to go with them, and since I could see him and he was with his big brother, I told him, "yes." I watched him as he did the activity and then someone at the desk asked me a question. I answered her, turned back to find that ds5 was GONE. Just gone! I looked frantically around, then called to older ds, who, of course, had NO IDEA where his brother went :glare:. I dropped my stuff and ran screaming ds5's name through the crowd. Just about the time I was about to have a freaking HEART ATTACK, I glanced over and saw him trip and fall on the ground. The relief was something...but OMG, I am still trying to get over the shock of the incident. How could I be so stupid to think that older ds would keep up with his brother when there were "games" and such nearby. I am used to letting ds5 go off with ds9 and his friend (who is a girl his age), but this older girl is homeschooled and very mature and nuturing. I honestly think she gets more worried about him then I do! LOL And then, still, they never go far from my sight. Well, ds9 was NOT with his older friend...he was with a younger girl friend...and...well...I was just totally STUPID. :banghead: Needless to say, I think I am still shaking and this happened about 7 hours ago! :001_huh::crying:

I have used both. I like LLATL Blue. Beyond there, LLATL is just not enough, IMO. My older son really learned nill from LLATL orange and we are now having to backtrack with CLE LA 3 to learn grammar. English is not his best subject and CLE is really helping him figure it out. That said, the programs are night and day different. CLE is not "all in one" - it as great grammar lessons and decent spelling and handwriting practice. It does not incorporate reading and composition. For those, I use DITHOR (reading) and WWE (composition). The three marry beautifully and are working great for my ds9. For ds 5, we started in LLATL blue not realizing that once you start, you are kind of stuck because the second half of phonics is taught in LLATL Red. (It takes 2 years to finish Phonics!). This was unacceptable to me, so we finished Blue and did not move on to red. Instead, we are doing Phonics Pathways to finish up phonics, ETC to keep practicing with phonics, CLE LA 1 because it is just darn GOOD, read alouds and Emerging readers for Heart of Dakota "Beyond" for reading, and copywork/dictation/journaling for composition. Again, the marriage is beautiful and seamless.

Check out the CLE art books http://www.clp.org/store/by_course/86. My kids take art class from a professional artist via co-op classes and I purchased these books to keep them interested over the summer. What I like about these is that they start slow and build on skill. For my older ds, I got Artpac 4 which includes coloring; shading; simple grid drawing; and elementary perspective drawing. For younger ds, I started with Artpac 2, which includes simple coloring skills; cutting; pasting; and elementary perspective drawing.

Hands down, it is CLE Math for us. :) I would use it even if I had a million $ to spend on curriculum each year.

:iagree: 100% And NO kids. Most spas don't even allow them because it is all about relaxing. :)

I like to listen to him. He sure does make everything "feel good." Not sure how realistic it is...buy boy, is he popular. His church is HUGE! My mom is a big Joel Osteen fan...she has been to see him preach twice in person.

LOL...yep. Fun part of homeschooling for me is trying to figure out what all the darn abbreviations mean! LOL

Oh thank God! And here I thought I would have to *shudder* be some girl's (of which I do not approve) mother in law one day. ~whew~ Thank God!

Great! Congrats to your son...and to you. I graduated when I was 17, but not 15. What are his plans going forward?

I have not received the music I ordered just yet. When I do, I will be glad to give a review. :) I like that it starts basic and grows...not by grade really, but by skills. We are starting at basic and I am going to do one book with both kids. If ds9 "gets it" faster, then we will move faster than ds5 and I. That art is what I really love the looks of. It is so complete! And starts from very basic and goes into much more difficult concepts...one book at a time. :) Linda...LOL! I am hoping HOD will help me get myself together with the "living book" appraoch. If not, then CLE will definitely be where I turn for those subjects as well. :)

I have a math weakness and we are ALL learning a lot with CLE Math. :)

Two years is a good amount of time, IMO to wait to remarry. He has given himself time to deal with her passing, meet someone else, and fall in love. It wasn't a rush decision. It is not like he got married 3 months later. I agree that it is not the pastor's business to decide when they are married and it is not the congregations's business either. A widower in our church lost his wife last spring and married another church elder (who sat in the same row that he did each Sunday) and no one batted an eye. The man is in his 80's. It is not like he has all the time in the world to hunt around. He just wants someone to spend his days with...

Done. :) I filled it out as my dh because he actually works and is most likely to use the product.

Sepeedy Spanish I with the CDs. I will let you know how it goes, but from looking at the samples, I think it is EXACTLY the approach I want to take to Spanish with ds. I sure will. I am looking forward to starting the music with the kids over the summer. :)

I went with my gut and we started with the -Y suffix today. It went GREAT! :) Thanks everyone for the advice. Ds is quite a good reader already - I just needed to get the rules of phonics nailed down for him and let him go at his pace. We are using ETC, but it is just going so painfully SLOW. Now, he can get to reading more stuff and use ETC for review and practice. :)

Yep. :) Slow and steady. ds9 is in LU 303 in CLE LA and he is doing very short sentence diagraming, mostly just breaking the subject and predicate and putting the describing words below the line. They aren't overwhelming him with titles right now...just very slow and steady progress.

We use WWE with CLE LA and it works well. :) I actually really like the spelling and handwriting in CLE LA 3 for my 4th grader. He is not a wonderful speller and CLE is not rigorous in that area...but it works for ds9. Handwriting - he learned cursive in ps, so he doesn't really follow the "style" of CLE persay...he just writes what it tells him to. Mostly, it is a continuation of copywork for him. FLL would definitely be redundant with CLE LA. CLE LA has been a GODSEND for ds9. He came out of ps a struggling speller, writer, and knowing very briefly what a noun was (still has trouble with "idea"). I have a degree in English, so I first attempted to overload him bigtime. We did (at ONE time) Spelling Power, Calvert Spelling CD, Writing Tales 2, Growing with Grammar 4, and LLATL Orange. Ha...just typing all that makes me want to vomit. It was ridiculous. All of those programs are lovely...just please, never combine them all on a kid that can barely write a paragraph. LOL About 3 mos ago, ds was given a sentence to parse in WT2. He totally couldn't do it. None of it. I was completely beside myself with what to do and someone suggested CLE. I decided to give it a try and I backed up a level to make sure I wasn't pushing him. Honestly, it was the best thing I could have done. I dropped formal spelling in lieu of CLE LA spelling. I picked up WWE, dropped handwriting and just let him practice in CLE. Now, he loves English and actually does his best work for me in the subject. Sometimes you just have to drop back and punt. KWIM? My younger uses CLE LA 1 along with Phonics Pathways and Explode the Code. He will do narration and dictation from Heart of Dakota when he starts Beyond in the fall. So far, from what I have looked through, CLE and HOD are going to marry nicely too. :)

:lol: I am not sure why CLE is being talked about so much lately. I remember going to the site and looking at the math before I decided on Singapore and I was totally not sold. It wasn't until I needed a new approach to the English/grammar (which I was royally screwing up with ds9) that I went back to CLE. Once I got that, I was sold. I went back for their Bible for younger ds and it, too, was perfect. :) Now, I will admit that I do not like CLE reading (I use DITHOR instead because I much prefer living books and classics for reading), and I detested Learning to Read. It was not a fit for us at.all. And, because I like living book history and Science, I have not (and likely will not) tried their Social Studies and Science programs. When I got on and saw all of the "elementary electives" though...WOW. I hope they are as great as they look. The music is meant to go through 8 years of school - one book a year. The Art is the same way...starts with coloring, cutting, pasting and moves slowly into more detailed stuff. Perfect for my kids who take art lessons from an artist at co-op and just need to keep up their skills through the year and in the summer. :)

Well, I have recently fallen in love with CLE. We are using math, LA, and Bible for both of my kids and having great success. Well, yesterday, I decided to check out the Spanish they offer. I had NO IDEA they offered so much other elective type stuff. I spent a TON of money there last night - I bought an Art book for each child, a music book to try, and the Spanish set with CDs. I have my eye on the Research Paper set as well as the State Study. I was just really surprised to see so many neat things kinda "hiding" on the site. Has anyone else noticed these "extras" and/or used them? What was your experience?

That makes me feel better about starting in the middle, if this is true. I just found a lot that said, "do not sound these out letter by letter" and so on, so I assumed they were supposed to memorize those initial short vowel consonant blends. I mean, I can see how that could make reading easier, but I hate to go backwards when he does know those words and can sound them out. He gets frustrated repeating things.

I can't even IMAGINE what your nights must be like! :grouphug: My 5 year old will occasionally have a nightmare and call for me or dh (usually daaaaaaaaady), but the almost 10 year old...one time in 3 years when he dreamed that I had died...did he come to get me in the middle of the night. That has to be so tough. I am also a sleeper though. My dh says that once I sleep, I may as well be dead. Nothing wakes me up. There are nights I go to sleep and we will have a terrible thunderstorm and I wake up and have no idea it even happened. dh is the opposite. He is a TERRIBLE sleeper and often goes to bed at 10 only to lay awake from 2am until 6 when he gets up for work. Me, I am lucky to go to bed at midnight and get up before the kids at 9:30. :blush:

From your description of his bedtime quirks, it makes me think of my OCD and the way I was at his age. Even now, I have to literally MAKE the bed before I get in it. I have to have a certain shirt to sleep in and it has to be clean and smell good. If it is not clean and I am forced to wear a different shirt, I am less confortable and have a fit falling asleep. My OCD also causes anxiety at night, and sometimes, I need a dose of anti-anxiety medicine to help my mind cut off and help me sleep (I take .5mg of ativan or less - just the smallest dose I can get away with and it still help). As for how my 10 year old sleeps/what we do...I am not sure you want to know. ds will be 10 in August and since he was 2 mos old, he has been my "super sleeper." Now, he likes to have the light in his bathroom on. Other than that, he puts himself in bed, reads until he is tired, turns out his light and goes to sleep. From the time he goes to bed at 8 or 9 (depending on the night) until I go to bed, I don't hear from him...and usually he has his light out by 10 at the latest. He sleeps really soundly (which was a problem with bedwetting until he was about 8 and little bro potty trained at night...go figure) and will often not drag his butt out of bed until 9:30am or so. I figure, oh well...let him sleep. We HOMESCHOOL! LOL

Those above options are NEAT! We have tile with hardwood that is flush. I guess I really can't help much...other than to say that I wear my New Balances when I cook standing on the hard tile floor. ;)

We have God-forsaken starlings that scream and make nests in my house. My husband shoots them when he sees them (imagine bird poo dripping down all of the windows on the front of your house while they make nests in your dormers). Not a pretty sight...either way.