I agree with all the previous posters. Sign Language was key for a very content and confident child; just think how you would feel if you could actually communicate beyond crying. We started at birth but it's never too late. We also read a lot, everyday. Start researching now and develop your philosophy. Research your curriculum choices. Prioritize your values and goals. But most of all have fun and enjoy; that in and of itself can be the most important life lesson.

All girls Catholic boarding school for me and wouldn't you know the all boys Catholic school was a just down the way. :001_tt1: I wasn't even Catholic.

I've done x's for "quick" meat but for an all round homestead chicken I swear by an Australorp. I've always had them for layers but they are dual meat. They are huge, hearty and are great foragers. We once (well, more than once but...) had our hen house raided by a raccoon and he had gotten the crops of 2 and I knew there was one more injured. It was 3am and knew that I'd have to put one down in the morning if it was still alive. I couldn't find her in the flock but instead found her in a nest box with a freshly laid egg. The raccoon had split her breast open, she had plucked it clean and went right on laying. :001_huh: I dressed the wound and she went on to lay for 3 more years at top production until a bobcat got her. :( I have a hard time butchering my Australorp ladies because they are very hard working hens. (world record egg layers) I do know they are good meat birds too.

Yesterday on our way home from dd's horse camp show, a car jumped out in front of us causing Dh to slam on his brakes. Dh muttered "dumb a$$ driver" in response to the rudeness. Quick as a whip dd asks dh "How do you know they're from Syria?" It took me a second to realize she thought he'd said Damascus driver. I lost it. :lol: Homeschooled Kids! :tongue_smilie:

One way to make raising chickens for meat cost effective is doing your own butchering. If you can't/won't do this then do not bother you will not save any money at all. You can raise a batch of x's in chicken tractors in 8 to 12 weeks. You can butcher the hens at 8 weeks for fryers and let the rooster go till 12 for roasters. I wouldn't do any longer with a x but you could and may need to go longer for another large breed. If you have the materials to make large tractors on hand then of course your cost is minimal but you still have feeders and waters to consider. I house 25 birds in a 4 x 12 tractor, remember that only 1/2 will be in there full grown (the last 4 weeks) so that is around 4 sq feet per bird (2 is required). Also the fact that it is a tractor they are not sitting on the same ground and have new things to scratch at every other day. With all that in mind and if you do not care about organic feed you will still be paying for feed. How much feed can vary depending on the weather and how much other stuff you give them. I have done two batches of 50 in a year, spring and summer. My summer chickens benefited more from all the weeds that were more available. I still estimate about 20lb of feed per bird to butcher (give or take 5lbs either way). I feed chick starter for the first 3 weeks then switch to something like Meat Bird Complete by Nutrena or generic is even cheaper. Around here a 50 lb bag costs $11 - $15. So at $12 that still ends up being around $4.80 per bird. If your roasters dress out at 6lbs (which x's can) thats 80 cents a pound not including your start up costs and ALL your labor (which I happen to enjoy). Now, you can make a considerable savings if you live near a farming community and can mix your own feed. Be very careful and research this completely; there are many sources. If you do not give the proper nutrition you loose time and time is money so they say. But if you buy in bulk and mix in a huge metal garbage can you can get that feed bill down to $2 per bird. I haven't raised our own meat birds in a few years due to a move and traveling but I can not wait to do it again. There is something to be said when you sit down to a meal that you have totally provided for you family. P.S. I would recommend renting a feather plucker and scalder come butchering time; HUGE time saver.

What about a nice B&B. Do you write? My cousin is on a wonderful writers retreat right now. Or something completely off the wall, like a dude ranch. Live a little. :grouphug:

It depends on my mood and the missionaries. If I feel argumentative and they are pushy, I can usually run them out in about a 1/2 hour. If they are young I tend to give them a break and refuse. The last time two men came to the door, my dh ran to the door, gently pushed me aside and said our dd needed me so he could turn them away; a game was about to come on. :glare:hmmph!

I just wanted to repost this for those just joining in

Welcome, Sharleen! Jump on in the water is lukewarm at the moment but sometimes it can be a hot tub party. :D It's fun!

:lol: I'll give you a big high five and a WOOT! :party:

:cheers2: WOW 81, good job. I read manuals too. It started with "having" to read the box while eating cereal. It's rather OCD; I must have something to read. I'm almost embarrassed at the library in my bathroom :)

ummmm :svengo:

:lol: I like this. I admit most of the classics I've read have been under punishable conditions in school. :sleep: Now the tides are turned and I will force them down my dd's throat!!!!! :sneaky2: Just kidding! (sort of) I do believe there is intrinsic value to reading them. Maybe it's just so you can check them off a list latter in life. :D

We didn't use manipulatives all that much, but for 1a we did use Legos and m&m's for bonds, but not for long they ended up being made into a barn and eaten, respectively. :D

It does look different but fairly similar. I just copied my list from the one going around FB. Maybe they wanted to include some more recent poplar titles??? I still think we are a fairly well read group. :D

Darn I tried adding a poll, but it was too late. Anybody's dc need a math project today?:D

I'm not even sure of the validity of this whole thing. But I did find the FB results interesting among some of my distant accquantances and my homeschool buddies.

Nope, color is non issue. Content is by far my priority.

There's this new note thing going around Facebook asking how many of these books (list following) have you read. BBC states the average person has only read 6 out this 100. When I saw this the first thing that came to mind was I bet the hive's average is WAY higher I'd venture to say at least 20. I've read 54 out of the 100. Come on WTMer's lets smash that average! Here's the list: 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - 6 The Bible - 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks - 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - 19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot- 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens - 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - 26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - 34 Emma-Jane Austen - 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein - 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres - 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - 52 Dune - Frank Herbert - 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafo - 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley- 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon - 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt - 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses - James Joyce - 76 The Inferno – Dante - 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - 78 Germinal - Emile Zola - 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - 80 Possession - AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo – /SIZE]

:lol::lol::lol::lol: me too!

I don't think there is anything wrong with your expectations. They just may not be met. :001_smile: My dd just turned 8 and although she is doing 6th grade math, the concept of time seems to have completely missed her. ???? Again, bar graphs and fractions no problem, chore chart is a mystery. :001_huh:??? Multileveled story problems a breeze, two step instructions for picking clothes up off the bathroom floor and putting them in the laundry, HUH? :glare: (sigh) I just continue to love her to pieces even though the conundrum has me baffled. Good luck!

It would depend on what your family eats. Don't go crazy buying tons of stuff that looked good or was a good deal at the store when it will just end up sitting in your pantry forever. I'd start by menu planning for your tried and true favorites that your family loves and make of list of those ingredients first. Do you home cook most everything? I agree with the other poster about the 1/4 or side of beef (if you eat beef) and/or bulk meats from Costco or Sam's Club. You can make that money go even farther if you buy in bulk so maybe set some money aside for containers or a vacuum sealer. Have fun shopping!

I turned 40 last year and honestly I thought I already was and was turning 41, until my dh gently reminded me. No big deal to me at all. IMHO we get better; like a fine wine.

Hmmm, this can be fairly misleading. A $120,000 a year income family may have $8,000 monthly mortgage, car and insurance payments. Leaving their COL and disposable income far less than the $50,000 income family that owns everything outright with no debt. We're the latter.

The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense. - Karl Marx