I think you have really gotten a lot of really great answers here. I just wanted to add that for me, it was all daunting, and even though I read and re-read every section, I was not so confident (in my abilities to do this curriculum justice) but by the end of the first month, drilling everyday exactly like the book said, I realized that it was all clicking, for me AND my son. We would drill everyday, and I would introduce 4 new phonograms a day. My son's handwriting now is almost effortless. My husband is always commenting on how much better the kid's writing is than his! And let me tell you, there has not been a Monday that has gone by (when I'm giving him his new list of 30 words) that I don't feel like I AM FINALLY LEARNING HOW TO SPELL!! You are going to love this program. Use the scripts and just start learning together. Have fun!

Every Monday!

Hands down for me would be The Writing Road To Reading. It is by far my favorite resource and I can honestly say that I wouldn't change it for anything.

Seriously, you guys: thank you so much for this. I've been looking at UW and Climbing to Good English, and I think I can definitely make them work for my kid. This is great.

This is so great. Man, I miss living in DC. We'll be there for a couple of months next summer, though, so this is going to come in handy this spring as we prepare for our trip! Many thanks!

Sold! :) thanks you two.

I am IN LOVE with WRTR. I have been using it with great success with my 5 year old. I have also been using First Language Lessons and Writing With Ease (both Level 1) to complement it. Are there any suggestions for different curriculum? Something more Spalding-ish, or just something better. My son is so bored with WWE in particular, and while I don't MIND the FLL, I keep thinking there has to be something better out there. I am thinking about just having him write letters to people to work on copywork/ grammer/ punctuation, etc etc.

I'm finishing up our last spelling test as I type this :) So far, so good. I am pleasantly surprised at how it is working out this year with a "full load" for my k'er. I'm tweaking history and science so that it works better for us, and I now know which subjects I will have to prepare better for. I am trying a new place to sit, as well, and I didn't know if it would work out, but it is great. Yay!!

My son has kind of hit a rough patch with vowel sounds in our daily spelling tests. The words are definitely getting more challenging for him, which is great, and it is taking us an average of 2 weeks to get 100% on the 30 words. This is also fine with me. However, it is getting really hard for him to determine different vowel sounds: a and o seem to be the most challenging, but e and u are also issues sometimes. Is there anything I should be doing with him to really understand which sound goes with which vowel? He has all the phonograms memorized beautifully, and he also memorizes the rules as they are introduced in the Ayres list. He is just having trouble hearing the vowels. Any advice would be much appreciated.

I have to say that both my 5 yo and my 3 yo LOVE the magic School bus series. The illustrations in the shorter books are the reason they love this series, and the chapter Magic School Bus books don't have as many, so they don't like them as much.

I am planning on sending an email out to all friends and family in the area detailing our schedule and leaving clear instructions on how we would like to be reached during the day. The drop-ins have become so disruptive that I think setting clear boundaries in a polite but firm way is the only chance we have of actually getting school done everyday with minimal interruption.

I worked for the State Department before I was married or had children, so I can't really say something specific about having a family there, but I will say that there are pros and cons. Your housing is paid for, and you don't have to spend too much money, (at least I didn't, but like I said it was only me). I would bank most of my paycheck, but remember, this is the federal government, so salaries are not huge. Some of the cons to it (for me were: Not really getting to experience much of the REAL local culture. Mostly, you are with the people you are working with. You are not really encouraged to hang out with the locals, kwim? Also, it was stated before, but it doesn't really work out that you get Tokyo, Paris, or London your first few placements. I know that when I worked there, families would get slight preferential placement, but I'm sure that's a thing of the past. I was there pre- 9-11-01, so there is no way I can speak to any of that accurately. I can only imagine that they have locked down even more. All in all, working for ANY federal agency is an adventure. We moved from DC last year, and I can't say I miss any of that, just the city itself. I would say that for our family, there is no way we would do it. I think life would be much richer (and easier) to have your husband get a job with an American company that has foreign branches. You can go anywhere you want, you can talk to whoever you want, and you can actually (potentially) make good money.

Every pregnancy is different! With my #2 I felt them very early (prob around 16 weeks), but with #1 I never had them and with #3 I had them starting at 34 wks. ETA: #2 was 2 weeks late, so it didn't really mean anything.

Ok- thanks for te heads up on how long they live. I think maybe finding a tadpole locally will be more appropriate for us. The kids would love it, but in 20 years, I plan to be 'having a life," so cleaning cages doesn't appeal to me long-term!

Anyone have any experience with these? Or recommendations? Are they worth it? There's one on amazon I'm thinking about getting, but don't know if that's the best place to get them.

Intellectual Property Attorney. Stat.

We haven't done SSL over here, but we do do the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker from SSG, and my son's eyes light up every time we do it. It is an awesome program :)

Very sweet!

I would pick a room. Maybe the room were most of your very precious stuff is, and start there. Because on our cross-country move, after the first day of packing up, I got real sick of having to do it and I took the overwhelming task to freecycle.org. I freecycled everything that I wasn't 100% on. I say just start boxing up for a day, and you will see how easy it is to start tossing everything out. Good luck! It is hard work, but it does feel good.

We cashed out an old one. After taxes, 40-50k will not be a lot. And if you do do it, make sure to find out what your state's cut will be and reserve that amount to pay at tax time!

My husband would have done the same thing, and I would have tried. I think all logic and reason would have just gone out the window.

I moved them into their own beds (always in the same room with us) at about 9 months old. Then to their rooms around their first birthday.

My son will be 6 in October, and I was planning on kind of ramping up the schooling after the holidays. So, before 2013, we'll be continuing WRTR, MEP, SOTW1, BFSU, plus our outside the home activities. After the holidays, I'm adding WWE & FLL, plus Challenging Word Problems from Singapore Math.

I spend been spending about 5 hours a week planning for next year, on average. I was planning as I went all year, too, and I'm really hoping this method will really make it easy to get a good start next year. I'm sure by the holidays I'll be wanting to incorporate a bunch of other stuff, but I'm trying to think positive :)

Lower cost of living. For sure. Being able to pay off your loans is VERY powerful, especially if you are not incurring lots of other debt because you are trying to get established in a high-cost area. Good luck, I know its a tough choice. We had to make it last year. I miss the one I didn't I didn't choose, of course. It's never an easy decision.