Thank you!

https://www.paypal.com/paypalplug-in

...that I will ALWAYS live in GA, but NEVER in Atlanta. Just traveling through Atlanta gives me a panic attack. (Yes, really.)

"Sunday dinner", "birthday dinner", "Thanksgiving dinner", "rehearsal dinner", "dinner-on-the ground", etc. We don't have "dinner" every day. For "everyday" purposes, we eat "lunch" around noon and we eat "supper" in the evening. Older people around here (mid-60s+), however, often have "dinner" each day about noon and "supper" in the evening. They never eat "lunch", although they might attend a "luncheon", which is not as elaborate as a "dinner" and usually features a speaker or some type of program.

I wanted to try it because you can use it to shop at online stores that don't accept PayPal. I went to the PayPal website & clicked "Download", but my Windows security popped up a message saying that the site's security certificate had expired. Anyone else have the PayPal Plug-In already? Any problems with it?

We do have Ruby Tuesday's & Chili's around here, but we don't eat there more than once or twice a year. I haven't even heard of most of the others.

EK has been doing Vocabulary Vine this year and I want her to do Science Roots also. She will do Physical Science next year and Biology the year after that. Should she do Science Roots over the next two years, or for one year (concurrently with Biology)?

This looks great! I'm saving the link. Thanks!

The Jungle was made into a movie (silent) in 1914, but from what I've read, the film has been lost.

It details the meat-packing industry around the turn of the century. According to Wikipedia, "Upton Sinclair [who was a socialist] titles his book The Jungle to make a specific criticism of the capitalist system. The mechanization of American society was supposed to bring progress and increased order. Sinclair, however, notes that this increased industrialism has had the reverse effect."

Just wanted to offer some encouragement: With my first pregnancy, I spotted daily for 3 weeks; then it just stopped, and the rest of my pregnancy was uneventful. (Well, I delivered 5-6 weeks early -- a small but healthy baby.) This was almost 18 years ago & you can see from my avatar picture that ER is just fine. :)

Not cooked, just peel-and-eat. I was at a wilderness-survival event many years ago. I remember the cactus tasted like cucumber, but was slimy like okra.

I honestly cannot think of even one household task that I actually enjoy. Watering plants is okay. I tolerate washing dishes, as long as there aren't too many! Folding clothes isn't so bad if the dc are there to help & we can chat while we work. I really dislike cleaning the bathrooms, and I detest dusting.

Same here, Beth. ER & EK leave their empty baskets on the kitchen counter or table the night before Easter (the same little baskets they've had all their lives) and the Easter Bunny fills them. Each gets a chocolate bunny as well as the same kinds of goodies that Santa leaves in their stockings at Christmas: a DVD or CD, markers/pens, paperback books, assorted kinds of candy, playing cards or card games, toothpaste & toothbrush, etc. HERE is a picture of their baskets from 3 years ago. (That year, they shared the Incredibles DVD.)

I feel that the combination of training as an educator and my subsequent experience as a classroom teacher allowed me to develop the confidence that I can do a good job -- to know that I AM a GOOD teacher. I have a lot less self-doubt in this area than do most of my homeschooling-mom friends who do not have educator training/experience. Many of them feel the need to compare what they're doing with their own kids to what the ps kids are doing, and they seem to have a nagging concern about whether their kids measure up to their ps peers.

Praying for you all! Please post updates as often as you can!

I have a bachelor's in middle grades & master's in early childhood, and my training has been invaluable to me. I agree with your comment that not everyone needs teacher training in order to homeschool, but it does help. Just knowing how to make a yearly plan has probably been one of the biggest pluses for me. Also, I learned various techniques for approaching a lesson to accomodate learning styles, attitudes, and kids who just didn't grasp a concept one way and needed a different perspective.

Great info!

We are looking for a car for ER & today, my brother told us about a Jeep Cherokee (he's not sure if it's a Sport or a Classic) that he has seen. It's about a 2-hour drive from here to where the car is. Is it worth the drive to go and look at it? Or is this one of those avoid-at-all-costs vehicles? If you own one of these, what kinds of problems have you had with it? How is the fuel efficiency? Thanks!

Moira, does the student read whole books or excerpts?

And if these aren't available, get books from the 80s, but not 90s, right? Is this for the Dolciani books only, or for the Foerster books as well? Or have I misunderstood completely??? Are TEs & solutions manuals available for the older books?

Anyone care to offer opinions on his World Literature, American Literature, & British Literature courses?

Unfortunately, I couldn't find ANYTHING that did what I wanted it to do for this period, so we are using a combination of Beautiful Feet U.S & World History, TruthQuest guides, and self-produced TRISMS-style studies. It has required a phenomenal amount of work on my part to put it all together. (Maybe I should check into the legalities of publishing what I've come up with! :p) Online I found a list of World & American History topics meshed together chronologically, and that, along with the BF & TQ guides, has been what I used to select topics for study. For literature, I chose books from the lists in BF & TQ guides, and also used several older chronologically-arranged American & British lit texts from various publishers for studying poetry & short stories. Some of these have wonderful writing assignments. For history, we have used various American & World History books, including BJU, ABeka, Spielvogel, & Asimov. We also borrow videos from the library and watch pertinent History Channel programs. For art, architecture and music, ER does limited research on the various movements as well as artists/works, buildings/builders, & musicians/composers of each period or style.

class sizes are quite small. Individualized attention is one of the school's "selling points". While we don't have ER's final financial aid package yet, so far he has been awarded institutional merit-based scholarships, including a $7000-per-year institutional scholarship based solely on his ACT score (30). He is likely to get music scholarship(s) as well (he will be a music major). He also qualifies for need-based aid: federal Pell Grant & Academic Competitiveness Grant (a merit award for those who qualify for the need-based Pell grant) as well as institutional need-based grants. He will also receive the Georgia Tuition Equalization Grant (state aid for those who attend private colleges, regardless of need or academic merit) and state of Georgia HOPE (Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally) Scholarship -- to be awarded retroactively, after he completes 30 hours with at least a 3.0 average, since he is coming from an unaccredited homeschool. With all of these, plus "outside" scholarships from our denomination and from music organizations and other sources, it looks like almost EVERYTHING (about $22,000 per year) will be taken care of.

Our church uses the Quest materials. Right now, the youth are doing God's Perfect Plan (study of Bible prophecy). When I researched the prices for the materials at CBD, the God's Perfect Plan adult level materials were WAY expensive ($49.99 per set of student books), and not really much advanced over the God's Perfect Plan Quest (youth level) materials ($15.99 per student book).