Get a carpet professional who will clean the carpet, pull it up, and cut out the pad underneath. Replace the underneath pad, and reclean the carpet above. If the subfloor is wood, or porous, or even smells, paint it with KILZ before the new pad goes in. Make sure the carpet cleaning person uses enzymes to get the odor out of the carpet. The other option is to use any extra carpet scraps you have (or the carpet from a closet) to patch in a new piece of carpet in that area, and replace the pad at the same time. Ugh.. been there, still have the cat. Next time you get carpet, get a moisture barrier pad, it's terrific! And, nothing soaks in. Nothing.

No. It's embarrassing, because my 13 year old son has. He started it when he was 8, right in Genesis, and finished it on his 12th birthday. He loves a challenge. :)

A neighbor of mine is a speech therapist for the local school. My 10yo was struggling with "th" when she was 6. 6 is about the age they want it worked on, as it's late by then. She suggested this exercise: Have your child do the "thumbs up" sign, and bring the thumb close to their lips. They say the word "thumb" except their tongue has to touch their thumbnail. That gets the tongue between the teeth rather than on the space behind the front teeth. I would have my daughter do "thumb" about 5 times, and then give her another "th" word like "thank you". After they master the "th" at the beginning of the word, then work on "th" at the end, like "tenth". When they miss it while speaking, just give them the "thumbs up" sign and demonstrate "thumb" with your tongue on your thumbnail. It's a good reminder. It only took my daughter a couple weeks to be consistent. And, in truth, I missed the little girl talk when it was over. She sounded more grown up. ;)

I was rebellious in spirit, but rarely got in trouble; as I was excellent at not being caught. Now, I consider myself to have well informed opinions, and not usually swayed by other people without a strong argument. Maybe I'm just argumentative... LOL I have 5 of 6 children just like me. It's fun times around here.

Love that!!

No way... they're way too expensive to replace, and they sell for about 75% of retail if they're in good shape. My son writes in a spiral bound notebook. He uses only the front of each page to make it neater to read (he presses too hard sometimes). They're 15 cents each... bargain. He also delights in filling them up. :lol: It takes 3 to do a year of TT.

Fizzy Candy - Pop rocks, or mentos?

Tall glass bottles with thin necks. Do you think a Frappuccino is in order maybe? LOL... I have to do the same thing next week. And, my degree was in Science... :D Still not looking forward to the organization part.

I used to, when I was a teacher. Now that I'm the homeschool teacher, I don't. I can tell their writing apart. It feels too "schooly" to me. Is that a word? I guess it's because I've pretty much divorced myself from all my public school teaching habits. I'm not a teacher anymore; I'm a private tutor.

OH, I have used megawords. It's been helpful. I'm still finding my son makes dumb mistakes though... so we're doing PZ.

Hey Boom!!! <waves> I PM'd you. We're trying Phonetic Zoo... but can't review it yet.

For years we went to one that was $25, with a T-shirt, worship CD, themed snacks, huge VBS (600 kids). This year, due to budget constraints in the family we went to one that was free. They liked it better overall. Know why? They memorized Bible verses, and had water gun fights for fun. Go figure. Good old fashioned VBS.

See, this was my growing up and I feel the total opposite. I think if my Dad had worked an outside job, maybe he would have done better at balancing his ministry life. I never cared about the lack of money (course now all these mega churches pay mega salaries). I grew up very frustrated at the fact that my Dad was constantly gone doing church work. Perhaps he would have been the same way with another job but I can't help but think if everyone was volunteering at the church, more people would see the need for participating. You have captured the heart of many preacher's kids. My mother is one. She was grateful I married a man of faith, but not a pastor. I don't think it's God's heart for the church to come before the family. My DH is the director of a ministry. It's his policy that the staff's families come first; to the extent that they are welcomed to leave work to take care of them if need be. No questions....

Do you have a police report?

We love Tintin as well!

We've done DR for 2 years. We're debt free. I understand your quandry. I'm wondering if it comes from the flexibility he gives for the fully funded emergency fund. He says 3-6 months. So, you have 6. You're conservative. You'd still be following the rules if you had only 3. That's not your nature, though. So, you wrestle with the extra 3 months worth of money, knowing it could pay for other things you wanted. I would start by deciding exactly how much in your FFEF gives you peace. If it's 6 months, start saving. It's not worth losing your peace for a patio. Remember that DR says if you see storm clouds coming, to beef up your EF.

I'm a pretty diligent carseat user. I'd probably bring it on and use it; with one exception. If she's a kicker, she'll be higher up and kick the seat in front of her. That is tough on the person in front. Since she's a girl, she probably won't. I have 5 boys... they do this stuff!

We just got one put in last summer. We're in CO, so it gets cool in the evenings, and there's little humidity. We love it. My DH is the "ventilation man" as I call him. He's forever opening and closing windows to get breezes and fresh air. He uses it as soon as the outside temp drops below the inside temp. That's usually right when the sun goes down. It creates a nice breeze in the house, and the air here is fresh and clean smelling, so it's great!

Yes. We just bought Liberty's Kids. We watch it in the car as we are about town. The free options didn't work for us to do that.

Running out the door, but I just saw this and had to comment. In 24 hours, this is the 3rd separate source which has quoted this particular verse. Yesterday, it was the kids' verse for VBS which they needed to memorize. Thus, I got to memorize it as we worked together. Then, I was listening to Dave Ramsey, and it he used it in his show. Next, came your post. I wonder if God is trying to tell me something... ? LOL. Going out to be a doer of the word, and not just a hearer.

Well, I'm going to stand corrected (by myself) on two points. First, the benchmark is the 13th %ile. :tongue_smilie: Second, upon reporting a score lower than the 13th %ile, the child would be placed in another school (could be private or parochial) until another test could be taken where the score improved. Here's the text of the CO law: (5) (a) (I) If test results submitted to the appropriate school district pursuant to the provisions of paragraph (f) of subsection (3) of this section show that a child participating in a nonpublic home-based educational program received a composite score on said test which was above the thirteenth percentile, such child shall continue to be exempt from the compulsory school attendance requirement of this article. If the child's composite score on said test is at or below the thirteenth percentile, the school district shall require the parents to place said child in a public or independent or parochial school until the next testing period; except that no action shall be taken until the child is given the opportunity to be retested using an alternate version of the same test or a different nationally standardized achievement test selected by the parent from a list of approved tests supplied by the state board What I wonder is this; Is it even possible to score 13%ile or lower without purposely trying to fail? Statistically, it doesn't seem reasonable given that there are 4 answers to multiple choice questions, and you'd get a 25% by answering randomly. I do realize that the actual score and the percentile equivalent are different; I just don't know the correlation between the two.

It really varies by state. Not all states require standardized testing. In CO, to be failing, a student has to fall below the 16th %ile. That's pretty tough to do. If a student has special needs or the parents doesn't like standardized tests, they can be evaluated by anyone who is credentialed in the state. That evaluation only needs to show that the student is making "progress" and that is very broadly defined. As an aside, the reason CO chose 16%ile is because HSLDA atty. Chris Klicka argued that homeschoolers should be held to the same standard as PS students. That's their benchmark. :tongue_smilie: If your student were to "fail", you would have to have them re-evaluated the next year and that evaluation would need to show no progress. It's really impossible if you're doing anything.

Make salsa. Yum!

yes, no, and no. By children, yes, because it shows respect. By service people no; we are peers. I agree about the telemarketers... they're annoying even if they feign respect.

My kids save them for the day, to show Dad, and then they toss them. I remind them that not everything is a masterpiece. Some things are just practice, and completing them means that the material is now stored in their "hard drive" so they don't need the book. We keep Draw Write Now completed notebooks, and anything that is their original work; writing, or drawings mostly. The rest goes. The kids love to be free of an old book which challenged them. It's like saying "good riddance!" I also give them a week off of that subject after competing the book and tossing it. They love that incentive. Occasionally we save one or two for my 3yo. He likes to pretend doing school. If a child is particularly attached to a book for whatever reason, they often are willing to let their little brother "do school" in it. After a couple months, I toss it when the shelf won't hold any more.