Oh I also used to always use a double high air mattress, but I have had the WORST luck having to continually replace them. So I sprang for the Thermarest MondoKing, and it is very good!

We love to tent camp, but are definitely car campers! We camp approx. 6 times a year - nowadays 2-3 of those are with the girl scouts. We tend to camp in Texas state parks. This August/September we are taking a giant road trip through the national parks, and camping for two weeks through Glacier, Yellowstone, and Grand Tetons. We camp because those are the times I feel like I am doing parenting right. As we drive home and the kids are exhausted, filthy, and covered in bug bites, begging to stay at the state park and live there, I feel like this is one aspect of parenting that I am winning. I'm on a hunt for a new tent. Mine is enormous. I tried an instant tent which was absolutely brilliant, but with cheap and shoddy execution. I'd love to see a camping name brand make one. There are quick set tents from the major brands, but they're all larger than I want this go-round. I need to pick quick - next trip is in 2 weeks! We also got a couple kayaks and that is awesome.

We were fans of the buffet on Royal Caribbean. It is so much easier for me as a mom of younger kids than policing their behavior every second in a "proper" sit down dinner. Our first RC, B was only 2 and we did buffet every night except formal night. The second RC cruise he was 4 and we did main dining a lot more, and tried to make it for lunch if we weren't going to do dinner. The buffet had a whole island of Indian dishes EVERY night. I was in heaven. Indian costs a fortune at restaurants here and we don't get to have it very often. At least twice a cruise they would have a chef making fresh sushi and sashimi on demand and my husband was in heaven. He said it was excellent. A few nights they would have the chef making made-to-order crepes at that station. We are pretty big fans of the buffet, especially with kids.

Balcony vs. not is really about your vacation preferences. If you book a cruise that is mostly port days, OR you know you are a gogogo-type person who will be in the limbo line and at the piano bar all day, book the inside. If you plan to do a whole lot of nothing or want to drink coffee and watch the waves go by, get a balcony. I have done both. For us, cruise entertainment offerings are not that appealing, so the balcony kind of makes the whole thing worthwhile. I'll stick to cheaper cruises where we can afford the balcony rather than an more expensive cruise where we can not. The one exception would be if we did Disney again, which we probably won't ever because they've more than quadrupled their prices for insides since the one time we sailed them in 2012. For that price I'd go to the Galapagos or Alaska instead and I'd do an inside if it got me to an extraordinary destination like that!

So 4 of my 5 purchases from Amazon's game sale have come in and we have played them all. Outfoxed! Is the clear winner. I was on a serious hunt for games my 5 year old could play, that didn't suck. Not only can he do every aspect of this game by himself, it's fairly quick, and miraculously my 9 year old really enjoys it too. I can't explain exactly why we love it so much (though the fact that it's a pleasant experience with my 5 year old, AND a is cooperative game play a large part.) We are VERY silly though. We feign distress when it appears the fox will beat us. My 5 year old plays bad cop with whoever our lead suspect is. When the previous round's villain is cleared this time, we commend him for turning his life around. Whatever it is, the kids beg to play over and over.

I agree with the poster who said, this isn't "still going on." To your brothers this is long dead and buried. I also know, both from experience, and from many years on forums on the internet, that it is really, really really common for spouses to think that their husband/wife should reconcile with their estranged parent or else they'll regret it. Like near 100%. They're not right, and usually do a lot of damage trying to push the spouse to reconcile before they either give up or realize how wrong they are. My husband knew me better than anyone on earth and he thought I should let my dad back in our lives. He was wrong. 🤷‍♂️

We love Trekking the National Parks. Normally I'm too cheap to pay retail for pricey games, but we're road tripping the national parks this summer and I'm trying to hype it. The adults really like it, the kids really like it. The 5 and 6 year olds play with adult partners and it's a little slow for them, but they hang in there. In my opinion this is not a learn as you go game. Read the whole instruction book ahead. I did, and my 9-year-old did, and we were able to guide everyone seamlessly though the first few games. If you ever get a chance to buy or play Destruct 3, it's quite unique and a lot of fun. You build the little tower in the middle any way you want and then you roll to determine which mode of destruction you will use. You want the pieces to land in a certain area, not to close and not too far, so you always have to worry about speed and angle of launch. https://www.amazon.com/Uncle-Skunkle-PND3-Skunkles-Destruct/dp/B003P8QEYK/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=destruct+3+game&qid=1556156364&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Ellen. I can not stand Ellen.

Johanna England Chavez. We love her novel studies!

Singapore Earlybird B Explode the Code 1 - 4 I think I'll start him off with an ancient history unit on Egypt like I did for E. We do some subjects combined with friends: Bravewriter Mystery Science

Yes, that is the plan. We're taking full advantage

Those look awesome! They have 4 of our parks. My friend's 6 year old will really like looking at these because he's a huge wild animal lover. Those look so cool; we can play them with our friends that are coming with us. The first one will help with geography too.

I did a quick "look inside" and she would probably love those, thanks!

Yes! For every park we're seeing except Yellowstone and Grand Canyon I believe.

We are planning to have them do these during the long, long hours on the road!

We're heading off on a road trip next September! We'll hit Devil's Tower, Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Grand Canyon, Painted Desert, and Petrified Forest. After the normal school year is over, we're going to hit US Geography with some puzzles and games. Does anyone have any resources they like for these parks or areas? The kids love books, they are 5 and 9. I'm also trying to pull together resources on the unique geography and history of the areas, the animals in them... I'm not asking for anything specific, just trying to pull together resources so they have some context for what they're seeing when they see it. I do design units like this for them frequently, but I wanted to see if anyone had any cool resources on the national parks or their features before I got started.

This has been a rough year. With all the time spent in hospitals, we lost a lot of momentum. Over the summer we're going to spend a lot of time on US geography and nature science, in preparation for a big national parks road trip in September. Math: Singapore 6. I went back and forth on this because most Singapore users don't do 6, but she's a year ahead anyway AND Singapore has been a perfect curriculum for her since preschool, so we're going to go for it. I suspect A and B will only take a semester, so we may launch into Pre-Algebra in the second semester. AOPs? I have no idea. Language: Evan Moor Daily Language Review 6. We like this. She's been doing it since second grade. Literature: Outschool for 2 books if the teacher is teaching, 2 books tied into our history, and 2 books on their own, maybe done with The Arrow from bravewriter. Writing: Bravewriter - Partnership Writing, Journaling Science: Mystery Science Spelling: If we do anything it might be Nessy Spelling. I might have given up though. 😫 History: Mom-designed American History II. We've done Native Americans and the frontier, so maybe the colonies. I won't know how far we'll get until I plan it out.

Yeah, I noticed that too.

Even when I worked retail there was free (bad) coffee, a fridge, and a microwave.

I agree that asking for exceptions is fine as long as it's requested nicely and the answer is accepted gracefully.

Oh man, I posted up thread about ADHD, and I'm NOT saying your kid has it because it could be a million things, but for mine, it was. And she made mistakes all the time, could always find them when she had to re check, and so, so obviously understood the concepts. She's extremely mathy. If I had made her do the same concepts over and over until she had a high level of accuracy quickly, we would still be doing second grade math, at best. We used graph paper to keep things straight as well as a number of other strategies (many of the strategies people suggest for this are super hard for an ADHD brain to implement, so not that useful.) It also was not because she was allowed to be sloppy or that I was a poor teacher. Once we figured out what was wrong, her answers started coming quickly and with accuracy. She obviously fully understood everything and had not been harmed by being allowed to progress normally despite mistakes. 🙄 It's like suggesting that the teacher or child is at fault when a child with dyslexia struggles with writing. It's not. Some things are just not a simple fix.

Yep.. DD has ADHD and she will understand the concept but make a million dumb mistakes in the execution when she is not medicated - exact same as me when I was younger. Meds are life changing. My kid is super smart. Not Gifted, but really bright and curious. We'd use Brainpop at our small co-op. She loves BrainPop! She is engaged and listening! She's interested in the topic! We get to the quiz at the end and she would get EVERY QUESTION wrong. Every one. The first co op after she got on meds, she answered every question correctly, and was the first kid to come to each answer. She was able to take that information and file it in the correct places, and then recall it when needed. I could bang out examples of how it changed her life all day long and I have similar stories for myself. Her writing came up several grade levels up the week she went on meds. The ability to think about what you need to write, plan it in your head, and get it to the paper in a coherent fashion without getting overwhelmed in the process. The most insidious part of ADHD is that it makes smart kids feel that they are stupid; good kids feel like bad kids.

Thanks guys. We did get started that Monday. I was impressed how much my kids had actually retained. I'm hitting phonics and math 3 days a week with B and the day he has speech I just count that as school for him. Yesterday I didn't feel like doing real school with him so we just snuggled in and used Starfall to review what we'd been doing. I just did a count of exercises and if we stay on our normal pace, E will finish math at the end of May, which is good. Usually a month from the end, when she realizes how close to the finish line she is, she starts doing extra work, so it could be earlier. Our Outschool lit class got postponed until March, so that's a bummer. I brought Language back in (just Evan Moor's daily language) and she usually does two a day. We did history one day. She's been reading a ton on her own and she's very analytical and introspective, so when she reads (or even listens to song lyrics) she is a fountain of questions and discussion. We're a lit-loving family and her ability to grasp even the deeper, more mature threads and themes in books far outstrips her years, so I'm trying not to be concerned that we don't have any reading or literature going on. It's easy enough to get this done. Math and phonics, which morphed into math and language eventually, have always been the MUST dos, no matter what else is going on. It's automatic for everyone. But I feel like we're adrift with no rhythm to our days. I need to get writing in especially. I can tell adding in the extra subjects is going to be hard because I am so unmotivated. I can't even bring myself to care that we're not doing science or spelling and I really should care...

I think you're overthinking it. It sounds like Grandpa is a capable caregiver and you'd let him spend the night if he were in a house, so I would have zero problems letting my kid hang out or stay the night.

Wall-E Brave. I love Brave so much.