Oh thanks for the reminder about OpenLibrary.org! I'm a little rusty, I used to remember all of the resources. 🙂

I have the Internet Linked Usborne Guide to History, is that what you mean? I just ordered Who Built The Pyramids and when it came it looked like it was just a section out of the Usborne History book. I forgot a lot of those books are just smaller versions of the whole thing!

Yeah I was just trying to save time. I remember the days of our library system having multiple copies of Cat Mummies and Croco'nile available. What's funny is I donated a lot of our SOTW books to our local library and now I'm wishing I kept them. I just had to return our copy of Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors and it was difficult because I bought the dang thing in the first place lol.

Oh thanks for mentioning Powells! I forgot about them.

Thanks for the replies! I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing a new version 🙂. I actually work at a library, and even through our 18 library system, many books are not available. Normally we can go outside the system (nation-wide) but that isn't running right now due to Covid. I'm on Abe books, Ebay, and Amazon right now!

I'm out of the loop. I was on here years ago when my older kids did SOTW, and now I'm back homeschooling my youngest. I have our revised copy of SOTW 1 (I bought it about six years ago) and I'm putting holds on books from the booklist, but a lot of our old favorites are now gone from our library system and a few our not available on Amazon (or are very expensive because they're out of print.) Is there a newer revised version with an updated booklist? Thanks! **Aww...I just noticed I need to update my signature! My kids are now 23, 20, 15, and 8!

I'm having trouble staying signed in on the classified section. It keeps giving me an error and telling me to sign in when I try to post something. I'm using Chrome, and tried clearing the cookies for this site, but that didn't work. Any suggestions? Thanks!! :001_smile:

I'm looking for a basic health book for my teens, that focuses on good foods and exercise. Not necessarily a textbook, just something that that might be somewhat interesting for them to read. Any suggestions?

Thanks everyone, that helps a lot! I was leaning toward 3. I really liked doing WWS 1 with my oldest son and I'm hoping to do that with DD next year after finishing WWE3.

My 5th grader has little narration experience. We homeschooled her 1st through 3rd grade (though 3rd grade was very scattered due to the loss of her dad). She was in public school 4th grade and did well in writing there, after a couple of months of catching up, but the skills she learned there are different than the ones taught in WWE. After doing the evaluation on the Peace Hill Press website I think she's somewhere in between WWE 2 and 3. I don't want her to get too intimidated by writing, as she really loves it (she has notebooks full of chapter books she's written) but I also don't want her to get bored. I'd love to hear from anyone who has used either level with a child around 4th or 5th grade. I know skills vary a lot, but any personal experience would be helpful. :)

I think I did this a couple of years ago, but now I'm trying homeschooling again after a year or so of my teens going to public high school part time (that was a bust) and my 10 year old going to 4th grade, which went relatively okay, aside from the mediocre curriculum, a bully in her class, and a few new bad behaviors. This year we're trying homeschooling again, now that I have a handle on my part-time job (and the help of my parents and my very supportive S/O :001_smile:). I'm re-orienting myself with curriculum and trying to figure out what levels everyone is at. My brain has been out of this for awhile, so I've been lurking on the boards, trying to remember how I used to do this. Anyway, I'm always glad to see familiar names/avatars. Mrs. Mungo's hard lemonade avatar is a welcome sight. :lol:

Thanks for the info, that really helps a lot! I'll try the month by month first and see how I like it. :)

I've been using HST+ for several years now, and I like it a lot, but it would be nice to be able to access it from different computers. Is it a big hassle to import HST+ files to the online version? And is there a big learning curve to the online version? Also, is there a free trial? I can't seem to find it on their website.

Thanks so much for the support everyone! I don't really have anyone IRL that would understand how I felt. It helps a lot to have a place to vent. :grouphug:

Okay, this happened to me a few days ago, but it's *still* bugging me, so here I go... I took my 4 kids to the science museum on Monday, one of our first big excursions without DH, and the first one out of our small town. I brought along my baby wrap style carrier so I wouldn't have to push a stroller around all day (and 1.5yo won't stay in a stroller for long anyway). I should mention, that it's taken me months of watching youtube videos to figure out how to use this wrap, and I was pretty proud of myself for finally figuring out how to get her in a back carry. But until that day I'd never attempted to do it away from home (where I have my mirrors, I'm doing it in front of a bed, etc). Anyway, I had planned to wrap her in the parking lot by our car before going into the museum, but DD8 had to use the bathroom, so I decided to do it in there. I stood in front of the mirror at the end of the counter, where there wasn't a sink, and was going ok until this lady came in with a stroller and stood behind me. She asked if I needed help, and I said no thanks. (If any of you have ever tried wrapping a baby, or seen it done, you can understand why she'd ask. Baby is wiggling everywhere, I'm sweaty and struggling, one side of the wrap is in my teeth, but things are under control and it's harder sometimes if somebody helps you.) Finally, she steps in and hands me one side of my wrap, to which I say graciously say "thanks," even though I didn't want help. Then she says, "Well, I need to change my baby's diaper, so..." I realized I was standing right in front of the changing area. It didn't look like a changing table to me, just a short counter, no straps, or anything so I didn't notice it (I was thinking there was one of those fold down ones in the stall). I apologized and moved over in front of the sinks, because the baby is still only half-wrapped. Then another lady came in and asked if I needed help, and I said no thanks, getting more and more flustered, as I hate any sort of attention like this, let alone when my uncoordinated self is wrapping a baby. This new lady starts asking me questions about the comfort of the wrap, and by now I'm just doing a crappy job of wrapping, so I'm sure it looked really uncomfortable. Then the new lady turns to the diaper-changing one and says "It hardly seems worth it just to look nice." And then she says something about there being a reason new devices (like strollers I guess) were invented. First of all, I bought this carrier purely for it's functionality, and I'd actually tried a backpack style carrier but it hurt my shoulders. And second of all, I do have a stroller, but my kid won't sit in it for long! I don't know, I just felt picked on, and DD8 was watching the whole thing. I know (now) that a restroom wasn't the best place to get my toddler in a carrier. Of course I ended up having to unwrap her 5 minutes later because it was too loose, and I was too self-conscious to try it again for another hour. When I finally did, I got her in a front carry, which is a lot easier, but less comfortable with my 27lb todder. I'm probably over-reacting to the whole thing, as I'm still getting used to this single-mom business. Had DH been there, I would have told him what happened, and he would have made a snarky joke, and I would have laughed it off. As it was, that day I bought us a family membership and I got flustered when they asked me the name of the second adult. I just decided to leave it blank, in case my mom wants to come with us some time. We did end up having a good time though. :)

We are this year. I'm not even close to being ready yet.

Wow, so many of us have gone through major life changes recently. :grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug: to everyone. I'm bumping this again so others will see the social group link.

So good to hear from you! Come join the social group :001_smile: No advice, just :grouphug: . Hopefully somebody who has been at this longer will have advice. I can definitely relate to starting down an unknown path though. It's scary when your life changes suddenly.

Thanks for the responses everyone! It's so great to see others doing this successfully. :001_smile: I've started a social group here http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/groups/198-wtm-single-parents/ . Come on over and introduce yourself!

I haven't been on here regularly in awhile, but I'm starting to get back into homeschooling mode so I'm trying to check the boards more often. My kids are roughly half a year behind on their studies now, due to our circumstances. I remember seeing a few single moms around here before, and a couple of people messaged me to say they'd gone through similar things. I've searched the social groups but I don't see one for single parents. I just wanted to make sure I'm not missing it before I start one.

Thanks everyone! My children seem to be coping quite well. My oldest was with us when he passed away, and she was just devastated at the time. My kids all cried at the burial, but none of them have cried since then. I was worried that they were suppressing their feelings, but many of the grief books I've read said that this is completely normal, that kids tend to try to focus on making things happy and normal. I just try to stay open to talking to them, and they do see me cry quite a bit. It does make grieving lonely for me, but I'm glad to see them be able to laugh. And we do laugh together quite a bit. Even about DH, who was the funniest guy I've ever met. The kids have tons of funny stories about him. Yes, I've heard about waiting a year also. I might do that, if I can get through the holidays. Maybe I'll be in a better frame of mind then. It's so hard to tell right now how I'm going to feel then. We've lived in this house for 13 years, so it's the only one my kids have known. I know we will have to move eventually, as it's only a 2 bedroom. Right now, the baby and I share a room (and it's not very big), DS has the other bedroom, and my other two DDs sleep downstairs in the basement, which is unfinished. They each have their own "room" but there are no walls and doors, and no window in my 7 yr old's room. We can afford to stay here however long we need to. I actually don't even know if we'd be able to buy another house with my income. I have a freelance business on the side, but it doesn't make very much money right now. I have been getting more work though. I also might be getting a part time job later this summer. My plan is to continue homeschooling. This past school year has been pretty much a loss, with DH's illness, and the new baby. We just started back up a few weeks ago, only doing the major stuff I want them to get through. I'm going to try to catch us up through the summer, but I don't think we're going to make it. Having us all together has been so nice though.

Hi everyone. I've been gone from the boards for awhile, but I wanted to thank all of you so much for your concern. The support we've received has been just amazing. For those of you that don't know, my DH passed away in February after a short illness. Well, it seems short to me now. He was diagnosed with liver disease in the fall of 2011, but he was coping with his symptoms okay until November, when he starting going downhill, and then in January he really started to decline, when he was in and out of the hospital three times. But we were hopeful he would get on the transplant list until the day before he died. He declined that fast. Since then, it's been a whirlwind of memorial and burial planning, financial planning, etc. But, we've had SO much support here in our small town. DH and I both grew up here, and the outpouring has been unbelievable. His friends planned and paid for the memorial service. We had a month's worth of food brought to us. And tons of people donated money. I received checks from people I'd never heard of before...some were old customers of his, some worked with him only a few months. The last job he had was a work from home job. He'd been there for less than a year. All of the people in his division got together (it's a huge company) and donated money...they sent me a check for $2700! I have just been constantly floored by the generosity of everyone. I wish DH could have seen all of this. Anyway, I wanted to let you all know that we are doing fine financially. We're receiving survivor's social security, and DH had a life insurance policy through his new job (this same job got him a great health insurance policy too, so most of his hospital stay was taken care of). We're still figuring out his other doctor and hospital bills, and we were in quite a bit of debt before he passed away, so some of the money will probably have to go to that, but I have a lawyer helping me with the estate stuff. It's funny, I wrote a thank you note to ICU staff of one of the hospitals, and they actually sent me a letter saying that our bill had been written off as charity, and enclosed a *check* for $90! DH was really well-liked over there, and I think they remembered me going out into the waiting room to nurse the baby. Grief is a weird thing. It comes in waves. It's like your body knows it can't handle too much at once. Now, with all of the activity ending, I'm starting to really get hit hard with the grieving process. I can see now that I was probably numb and just going through the motions those first several weeks. Now, I have at least one major crying session a day, usually in the shower, or in the car. DH loved music, so pretty much any song on the radio reminds me of him. Anything can set me off...seeing a food that he liked (grocery shopping is so hard, because his restricted diet was a major part of our lives the last few months). Any time the baby does anything new, I just think of how DH is missing it. Now, I'm trying to decide if we should move (to a different house, not a different town or anything). The thought of spending Christmas here this year makes me so sad. DH and I were planning to move before his decline in health. With the new baby, we just don't have a lot of room in this house. But leaving would also make me sad too, as we have a lot of great memories here, including the homebirths of our last two kids. My dad has been doing a lot of work on the house. He has some friends that are going to help him paint it, and I've been doing a lot of yard work outside. Once it's all fixed up we'll see whether or not we should move. Sorry I'm rambling now...I just wanted to say thank you for your thoughts and prayers. I appreciate them so much. It sounds trite to say that, but I really mean it. I've never gone through anything like this before, and I never knew how comforting it can be to have other people thinking about me in a time like this. :grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug:

We didn't expect it to happen so soon. Looking back, I can see he was rapidly declining. I want to thank those that worried about me being able to take care of him at home. Had we tried to move him yesterday like we planned, he could have gone on the ambulance ride home. As it was, his family came to see him. My youngest three got to say goodbye, even though they thought they'd see him again tomorrow. They don't know yet. My parents took them home yesterday, and when I called my mom last night I told her to wait until I could tell them when we come home today. MIL, DD15 and are in a hotel because we didn't want to drive last night. Dd15 wanted to stay, and so she saw him until the very end, which was hard for her but I think she's glad she stayed. At one point he hugged her and said they'd do something fun when he got better, which broke our hearts. He was very delusional at the end, but wasn't in pain. Right now I'm feeling a tremendous amount of guilt. I was staying all day and night at the hospital until the last several days when I started coming home to be with the kids. If I'd known it was going to happen this fast I would have stayed with him. Also a few days ago he texted me really early in the morning and told me to call him because he was feeling panicky. I got it 1/2 hr after he texted and texted back if it was ok to still call (I didn't want to wake him up if he'd fallen asleep because at that point he had terrible insomnia). He didn't answer and I could see on my phone that he hasn't read the text or the following one so I went back to sleep thinking he'd fallen asleep. I guess he called his mom though, and the nurse gave him an antidepressant. Why didn't I just call? I was too tired and feeding the baby back to sleep. I should've talked to him. He was all alone, an hour away from his family. And a lady called me last night about organ donation. Even though his liver and kidneys were bad, they could still use his corneas and heart valves, and a few other things. Several years ago before he got diagnosed we were talking about organ donation because I had that marked on the back of my lisence and he didn't. He said he didn't want to donate. I told the lady to call me back and I talked to MIL and DD because I think his mind might have changed about that because of his need for a liver. They thought it was a good thing to do, and so do I but I don't know for sure if it was what he would've wanted. I let them have his heart valves and part of his heart because she said a lot of times heart valves go to little kids with heart problems and I think he would've like that. And corneas aren't too invasive and could make a blind person see. And so I said no to some other things to compromise and yes to those. But now I don't know if it was the right thing to do or not. I just felt like something good should come out of this. I so appreciate the support and the PMs especially from those who have lost their husbands. I have my family but I also feel very alone.

He is still in the hospital, and we just found out today that there is no way he'll get on the transplant list. He is overweight, his platelet count is way too low and he's too weak to survive the surgery. When he was admitted, he was walking with the help of a walker. Now he can't even stand up. Even though I could see this coming, I'm still stunned. DH talked to the doctor and decided that he did not want to be recessitated if it comes down to that. We're going to try to bring him home and get in contact with hospice. Right now his care at the hospital is limited to what makes him comfortable. I'm staying here tonight (I've been driving home at night (an hour away) to stay with the kids and then coming back during the days. My parents and DH's mom are going to be here with me tomorrow. My parents are bringing the kids...I don't know how I'm going to tell them. I sat down with them a couple of weeks ago to explain that we were hoping he'd get a transplant but he might not, and he could die. Of course they were upset, and they cried. I just don't know what to say to them. DH.....his name is Luke. We all love him so much. He's not in a lot of pain right now which I'm very thankful for. His kidneys are failing, which the doctor says will make him very sleepy. He's been sleeping a lot the past few days. He hasn't been that confused yet, just very groggy when he's awake. We don't know how much time he has but the GI thinks it's weeks, not months. I just don't know how I'm going to live without him. We've been together 17 years, but it doesn't seem long enough (he's only 39, I'm 38). Everything will remind me of him. I don't see how I can go on. I will keep going for the kids of course, but I just can't imagine my life without him.