That's crazy. One of the things I love about this city is that it's very old-school when it comes to ToTing. No one even starts to go out until it's actually dark out, none of this starting at 4 pm stuff like in other places. Nope, it's like 7 pm before we even get our first knock on the door usually.

That's somewhat like our selling situation except we didn't buy another house. Our house is in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city. There were tons of other similar houses up for sale in our neighborhood at the same time and they all sold within 2 months at or very close to list price. Ours took 6 months and 1 day to finally get an offer. Why? Because our realtor was awful. Terrible. Seriously bad. Of course she seemed awesome before we signed a contract with her and then it all went south & she wouldn't let us out of our contract with her. As soon as our contract was up we switched to a new realtor who sold it within the first 15 minutes she had it listed. I kid you not. Still it was extremely stressful since we had expected the house would sell in the average time frame which around here is 30-80 days, not 181 days.

My 3rd grader does 2 MUS worksheets a day. Takes him about 7-8 minutes. Sometimes he chooses to do Beast Academy instead but even that only takes him maybe 20 minutes to 2-4 pages. He's super mathy and always just gets it right away.

I have no idea but I sure find it intriguing since I went from a size 12 to a size 2 (and lost 40 lbs) only through exercise. I still eat the exact same way and the same amount of food. Actually I think I eat more food.

Unless you have enough in savings to cover the mortgage on your current home for at least 12 months and you're ok with losing all that money I'm with Person A

Generally the VA loans always seem to take longer. Our house went under contract about 3 weeks ago and our buyers have a VA loan and our closing is not until the end of November. The VA can be sticklers but they're more interested in the actual structure. The home inspector, not the VA inspector, actually found hail damage on half of our roof, which now needs to be replaced, but the VA inspector said that it was not damaged enough to affect his inspection and it wasn't going to be an issue.

Where do you all find the cheap condos? Something like VRBO.com? We're moving to NW Florida next week. Dh likes to go to Disney since he worked there for several years and his best friend lives in Orlando so I know we'll be taking trips out that way sometimes for vacation and sometimes to visit friends.

Yep, I agree I'd start with Alpha. The nice thing about MUS is you can speed them through things they know and slow way down for things they struggle with. We've completed a lesson in just 1 day and we've also taken 14 days to complete a lesson.

I wasn't born yet but my brother was 6 mos old and my parents talk about it often. We were in Indiana. Apparently the neighborhood had a bunch of babies under a year old and after a bit everyone was running out of formula. So all the dads of the neighborhood got together and shoveled 2 miles to the nearest store. I can't remember the year but we had a blizzard when I was in high school that happened right after xmas break so we ended up with just shy of 4 weeks off from school. Of course that was awesome until June rolled around and they extended our school calendar 2 weeks to make up for it. It sure was fun sledding off the roof though!

See, now I thought the food was pretty awful. I've always heard people get all crazy for the food at Disney so I thought I was really in for something special and instead I was just disappointed. We did a few fast service and a few sit down restaurants and it was all just "meh" especially when you factor in how much it cost. Now to be honest we do eat all whole foods at home and I make most things from scratch except things like condiments (although I have made my own mayo and ketchup on occasion). So perhaps I'm just spoiled but I really expected the food to be more quality than it was & I'm glad that mostly we just brought in our own food.

Actually, unless they've changed it recently, they do not say no to food in the parks. You're allowed to bring in food and we most definitely did when we went last year without an issue. We brought sandwiches, granola bars, etc. We also brought our own water bottles. Also, the fast service restaurants are good with food issues. Dh, dd, and myself are gluten free and we had no issues at all. It just takes a bit longer because the manager will come out and take your order and then they follow it all along (or prepare it themselves).

We always bring our own food on trips/vacations. For lunch we like salad in jars. I put the dressing at the bottom, then layer stuff on top like tomatoes, chickpeas, cucumber, lettuce/spinach of course, cheese, cashews (we can't do croutons and I like the crunch of cashews), and whatever else we want on our salads. When it comes time to eat we just shake, open, and eat. Even the kids love them. I also make a bunch of hard boiled eggs. Sometimes for lunch we'll have hard boiled eggs, some sliced cheese, rolled up meat, and some sort of fruit or veggie. I know someone who actually figured out a way to plug in their crockpot in the car and will actually have their dinner cooking while they're driving all day. Not sure I could do that - the smell would make me feel starving the entire time I think lol. We do use the crockpot in the hotel though. I also do things like pre-make burgers to heat up later, taco meat, enchiladas travel well I've found, soup of course is another good one. Oh and chili which I like to make vegetarian so that I don't have to quite worry so much about keeping it super cold all the time and it can last a week or more and still be safe to eat.

Wow, I voted summer expecting to see most of the replies to also be for summer. I have to say I'm honestly surprised. I love summer. I wish it could be summer all year round. I grew up in northern Indiana and I hope I never have to be in cold weather again. We lived in Tucson for 6 yrs and I swear those were the best years ever and part of it was definitely the warmth :)

Based on her reaction to the MUS blocks I think she'd be just as unenthused about the cuisenairre rods. I printed out the first few lessons of MEP (level 1a, I think she's got reception stuff down) and we'll see how it goes this week. I told her I had something different for math today and she got excited which I take as another sign that MUS is definitely not working for her.

The Dreamers book is changing my life. I've never had a book impact me so strongly. I actually burst out into tears yesterday afternoon while reading it because of the emotions it's bringing up for me. It's me. Not only is it me, but all the anecdotes are exact things that happened to me. Being barked at in the hallways, kids writing "Rachel is a dog" on our house & on display cases at school, doing the in & out girl thing in 4th grade where the "popular" group would pick a girl to be "out" and be ignored all week. The only difference is my parents didn't make the right choices in handling the situations. Yes I ended up standing up for the "out" girl but instead of the group seeing the error of their ways they belittled me and I didn't have a single friend again until a few years later when I switched schools. I dealt with the barking thing as much as I could. My mom's solution was to ignore it so that's what I did for the 4 yrs of high school and was left without a shred of self-esteem. And there are a load of other examples in the book that are exactly things that have happened to me and exactly how I reacted. It's really disconcerting. I have yet to read anything in the book that does not describe me perfectly and I'm almost finished with the book. It's definitely bringing up some old demons. I think overall it's going to be good for me and eventually for dd. I've always known that she thinks & feels like me but I never knew how to deal with myself either so I couldn't help her, kwim? Now I feel like I'm being empowered to understand my own self and will in turn be able to help her.

My brother has, in the last 5 weeks, flown out for 4 interviews, one of which was in Germany and he didn't get any of them. He's currently on his way home from another one. He just graduated last year with a PhD in chemistry and has been working for the past year on a post-doc. He's written a lot in the chem community, he's gone to conferences both in the states and internationally, and yet he's still having a hard time getting a position. It's just plain tough out there right now.

Also are there some good threads on here for MEP? I did a search and got ZERO results...I'm thinking the search function must be screwed up right now especially since, at the very least, this thread should have showed up.

What is the asian way of math? I have never really researched math at all since MUS works so well for ds. I think it was our first curriculum pick when we first started HSing and the only one we still do today. MEP definitely looks like something that might work for dd. Maybe since it's free I'll start there - esp since I'm particularly low on funds at the moment (moving in 1 week to a new state, sold our house at a loss, etc).

I need a new math curriculum for dd, 5. My 8 yr old has been using, and loving, MUS since kindy but I can see that it's not the right fit for dd. She also did not like Life of Fred - she had no interest in it at all. She's more of a top-down thinker. She needs to see the big picture and then work backward from there. What kind of math curriculum is like that? I also think she's likely to get bored with a mastery type program so I'm thinking a spiral program would be better for her. I know she's young right now but I don't like switching around math curriculum so I'd like to nail down what works for her now so that we can use that over the long haul. Generally we try to stay secular but I'm ok with religious content in math. Also she doesn't seem to love nor hate the MUS blocks. I think she could be totally without manipulatives and that would be fine with her.

You know I had to laugh. I clicked on that link above and on the main page it explains it's called sizzle bop because her son was spitting on a bulb to hear the sizzle and eventually it exploded. I did that as a kid! Except I used a tiny cup of water and my mother most definitely did not burst out laughing when she noticed that the shards of glass were covered in water. I can't really tell yet if dd is distractable or just 5 yrs old but I'll definitely take a look at that book. I'll probably end up understanding myself much better!

Yes, FSA's are a pain in the butt. Not only do you have to decide upfront how much to put in, you don't get a refund if you don't spend it all. So if I put $1500 in there and we only spend $1000 that year then we lose the extra $500. They don't roll over like an HSA. This move puts a kink in the works but at the same time we wouldn't even be able to think about getting this done without the move. If we wanted it done around here it'd be at least a 4 hr drive to a neuropsych. It's just too bad that the FSA open season falls right in the middle of our move - we'll have only been in FL for about 2 weeks. I think we might push it off a year.

Thank you! Dd hides behind the couch while launching legos at me. When she wants to learn she goes in huge strides. Yesterday she was angry and "couldn't" read words like "with" or "no" however just now she came up to me and had written "4 das til hallowen" on her picture. And yes, you're so right, both dh and I have commented about how neither consequences nor rewards seem to have any real affect on her. Have you read that book that pp posted? I read all that was available in the free sample and that book describes myself and dd perfectly. It was almost spooky. Perhaps it would apply to your ds as well.

Interesting. I'm so torn! I feel like I need to decide now whether we're going to do it this year or hold off a year or two because we need to re-enroll in our FSA next month and figure out how much will go into it for the year. Without the eval we'll only do maybe $500 whereas with the eval I'll put more like $2500-3000 in there. So, in theory anyways, if he's dyslexic it should show up in testing no matter when we do it? If that's the case then I think I'd like to wait a year since school is going well & that would give me some time to get settled in our new state & network a bit on who to go to and who to avoid. There's a way to get it done through the school system too right? We're moving to FL and I think I read somewhere that they can be difficult in trying to get testing done.

My 3rd grader is the exact same way with the way he writes. I've suspected dysgraphia ever since I read about it several months ago. I taught him cursive this year and that has made a huge difference. For him if it were just the dysgraphia, I think at this point I would let it go and see how he develops with composition in the next few years (he does the same thing with the periods, commas, and fragments). However I suspect he's dyslexic as well so we're thinking of getting him tested sooner rather than later. Honestly OP, I do think it's worth the fight with the school system at that age. Yes, of course you can accommodate him at home but what about when he goes to college? He'll need a diagnosis to have accommodations. ETA: it was in learning about dysgraphia that I stumbled upon realizing he may also be dyslexic. It never occurred to me previously because he reads above grade level, has a huge vocabulary (just like with yours, my ds will insert some big words into his writing), and he spells well - although for him it's the opposite: all the letters will be jumbled up if he says them outloud but if he writes them he does so correctly. Anyways as I looked closer at dyslexia it really started to come together for me and explain many issues with ds. It might be something to look a bit closer at.

Omg I just looked at that book on amazon, much of which is available in the "see inside" section and I'm reading a book about MYSELF! It's me. Like it's the story of my life. There was a little quiz for if your child is a dreamer. I had dh fill it out about me. It says anything above a 24 is a definite dreamer. I got 30 out of 30. Dh actually told me to buy it because he wants to read it in it's entirety so he can better understand me. We can't believe how well it fits me. I know this will sound totally crazy but I swear my heart is racing because suddenly I'm thinking, "there's not actually anything wrong with me and the way I act and think!" And as stated previously I said dd is a mini-me. I bet this is her too. Thanks so much for the link. I am totally blown away.