Yes, I disliked it. I was so excited to get it when it first came out because I'd read his adult version. This version simply has a few things removed and reworded, and examples that aren't appropriate for the 8-12 set were left in (specifically the vampire chapter). Not to mention the examples were from Hemingway and the like, which is great, but why not use examples the targeted set might have read? I decided by the time my boys were ready for it, they might as well read the adult version.

How horrible. Do you have any sort of lawyer/advocate in this process that can find out why the haystack you're not getting an answer?

:Lol:

This happened to someone in my smaller town when I was growing up. They were having renovations done and one of the workers took up residence in their attic.

The Facebook page is Team Kelsey, and there's a link on there to a GoFundMe, if you want to check out the original Facebook. Interestingly enough, it sounds like the daughter lived with Dad and stepmom and that's where her school is. I assumed she lived with her mom and the haircut happened on a weekend visit. Not saying the living situation makes the haircut more acceptable, it's still horrible parenting, but my assumption was wrong on the living situation.

We'll have to agree to disagree on the last sentence :). It would be nice if one of her parents was capable of acting like a responsible adult, though.

It's the throwing it all over Facebook that says to me there are deep issues on both the parent's parts. It feels to me like she is exploiting her daughter to get back at her ex.

FTR, I don't think this was a totally cool thing to do to a kid. I just have a feeling the kid was caught in the middle and I'm not impressed by the mother's actions after the fact any more than I'm impressed with the father's willingness to have the daughter's hair cut off.

Except the dad and stepmom are on leave from the fire department because of the child abuse allegations, aka, the haircut.

I agree. The Facebook page makes me think the mom isn't innocent in this situation and the daughter got caught in the middle. It could be the Dad warned a haircut would be coming if highlights were gotten. We just don't know. The mom taking the girl wig shopping rubbed me the wrong way, too.

We didn't do the class. I'm not sure it was even around then? I had them write papers on what they read, I'm pretty sure.

We did some books from both primary and secondary. I think most of the sex came from the primary books, but that's going back several years and I can't remember which books we read off the primary list. I can tell you that my boys loved all the CS Lewis and RC Sproul from that year off the secondary list.

:lol: I forgot about this! We did Omni 1 when my older two boys were in 8th/7th or 7th/6th and they deemed it the Year of Sex. "Why is everyone naked?!" :lol: We ended up switching to Old Western Culture. Wes is a much better teacher than I am :D.

I'm glad it was a good day. I wanted to tell you that the character traits that are causing her so much anger and angst will serve her well in the future as she learns how to manage them. Being deeply concerned with right and wrong and standing up are wonderful things. I'd not worry whether or not she's learning academics, but reframe this semester as learning how to manage her strong emotions. She has time to catch up on academics, but this is a limited opportunity to have daily chances to work on honing her character. (That said, if she wants to come home, I'd yank her and do minimal school to keep your stress level down until you heard from the lottery.)

The waiting is horrible. Praying it's nothing big.

Tide, NFL dancing, and the two Ram commercials (the first totally dissed the Vikings and the second with the MLKJr speech). (ETA: The speech didn't bother me, and I hope people listened to the words and more might take them to heart. I'd rather have that trying to sell me something than sex--for example, I disliked the Alexa commercial because of the whole "set the mood" portion--it would've been funny to me without that, and I know it was supposed to be funny, but to me it would've been funnier without it.)

That's a horrible trifecta of stress. All 3 of those things are a pain in the bum alone, but together?!

They do have great customer service. Once I had them upgrade a backordered phone to the next GB level and overnighted it for free (it was for my ds17's 16th birthday) after I inquired about the status and explained the situation, and just recently I inquired the status of another backordered phone (ds18 broke his and the one he wanted was backordered) and they overnighted it for free when it was in stock and without me asking. Both times I contacted them through FB messenger, so it was super easy that way, too (I hate making phone calls).

Unfortunately not. You get whatever the plan is when you buy the phone, which is a bummer. I was on their first plan until my phone died. Now I think we have a combo of 2nd, 3rd, and whatever the current billing scheme is.

Different athletic pursuits focus on developing the muscles needed for their sport/art, so comparing with ballet is kind of pointless in my mind. We had marathoners who competed competitively running a marathon up a 14,000 foot mountain come into my Judo club who were winded and exhausted after 30 minutes of practice and who were sore for days. Ds17 might not be able to do ballet, but I'm pretty sure a ballet student couldn't match him in football practice or they couldn't match his skills in tumbling/trampoline gymnastics, just like ds17 can't match the rock climbing skills of ds18. The difference in all this is that ballet produces art. One could argue a beautiful Judo throw is art, or a perfectly executed football play is art, but the goal is winning, not bringing beauty to the world.

I consider it art. Yes, it requires extreme amounts of athletic ability, but the end product is art.

It doesn't have a cord rewind, but the cord isn't stiff like some vaccums so it's fairly easy to rewind by hand. You want a Shark Navigator Lift Away with a Dust Away attachment. You'll need to look at different models for the best deal/attachments. I got my vacuum (maybe at Walmart?) and it has the crevice tool and dust attachment on board (I think it has a little sweeper type attachment, too, but I never use it), and then I ordered the Dust Away off of ebay. I love the vacuum. Seriously love it. I've had mine for 4 years and I still love it. I used to have one dog and carpet and loved it, now I have one dog and a 10.5 pound shedding rabbit and hard floors and still love it. My Dad bought a Shark recently after owning a Dyson and he loves it. He told me how much he loves it when he came to visit at Thanksgiving--he said it's so intuitively designed and everything is so handy, he finds himself vacuuming places he avoided because he doesn't have to hunt down attachments. (I think he has one of the new Duo models).

Ours has never frozen and our fridge is on an outside wall.

Dh is the marriage quote from Princess Bride ("Mawwiage...Mawwiage is what bwings us togethew today...) Ds17 is the NFL theme song because he loves football. Ds18 is a silly song because it amused us when we heard it and it still cracks me up. The ring tone ends after "apple of my eye" The other boys don't have phones yet. My generic ring is the BBC Sherlock theme song. However, my phone is nearly always on silent :lol:, so it doesn't matter much.

He's just out of data. He could always add more, but they don't just add it for him. ETA: at least this is how it's been with every other RW plan. Ds18 is the only one on the most current billing plan and he has never bought data. (Four of us are on RW and we've been with them for 4 years, so we're on different billing plans since you keep the plan you're on if they change their model)