:iagree:

My vacuum cleaner has seen better days and I need to replace it. I prefer an upright. (Do they even make canister vacs these days??) I'd love to have a bagless model, but I hear that the ones with a dust cup (or whatever you call it) tend to be messy when you have to dump the dust cup and also that they don't have good filtration. Good filtration is a must because ER has allergies. My current vacuum cleaner has a HEPA filter, but I don't think it works as well as it should. I'd like a HEPA filtration system, but I want it to work the way it's supposed to. But that might add to the expense. I would love to spend under $200 if possible, but DEFINITELY under $300. What do you recommend? ETA: We have a combination of carpet, tile, and wood laminate floors in our home.

Some people have too much nerve! Several years ago, we stocked our pond--private property--with small catfish, with the plan that they would grow into large® catfish so we could enjoy fishing. The pond, while off the beaten path, and not easily visible from our house because it is surrounded by trees, is apparently a huge temptation to the neighbors. We regularly find their buckets and drink cans, etc. down there, and dh even found fish traps down there a few times! Now there are NO catfish in our pond.

Heather, I just wanted to say that I just LOVE your signature line!

Ack! Sorry for the double post!

I like to eat Nutella with pretzels, Ritz crackers, graham crackers, and--mostly--with a spoon! :D

Me too! ;) It looks very inviting. I love organization!

Yep, that's the one we have. Jekyll & Hyde also. :)

When we bought our stainless steel cookware, we were told that if something was ever burned onto the pan, we should fill the pan with water, heat it to boiling, then turn off the heat and let it cool a bit, and then scrub with a non-scratch scrubbing pad.

:grouphug: Praying for you and your family as you go through this transition.

Thank you all for the great options! I'm still deciding, but now I have something to go on. EK (my dd) could handle anything I throw at her, but my other high schooler is not a reader, so I have to accomodate. I know the girls would love something that involves romance, so I'm considering all the Austen choices. I've never read anything by Jane Austen <gasp>. EK tried Pride and Prejudice, but just couldn't get into it. She doesn't like the style of writing; she kept getting confused about who was speaking to whom because of they way dialogue is written. We are definitely going to read Frankenstein, along with The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde plus The Deadliest Monster by Jeff Baldwin as part of our Worldview studies, but I wanted something else for Literature. I considered Wuthering Heights because when I read it for a college English class, I just LOVED it, but I'm not sure the girls would feel the same way.

I completely understand how you feel. I don't know if you were here 4 years ago when my firstborn went away to college, but I came to the boards a LOT just looking for a place to cry! I really struggled with depression that first year, but the wonderful ladies here showed me such compassion, and they prayed me through that very difficult transition.

AND the girl was a reluctant reader, what would you choose? I already have a list of poetry and shorter works; I need suggestions for a novel.

:iagree:

See, this is what gets me every time. I want to cover everything in intricate detail, and only now--when I have a SENIOR--am I realizing that it really is okay to hit the highlights, and if a kid is really interested in learning more, he'll research it on his own and maybe even major in it in college. Before, I felt so guilty for not trying to get ALL of it in there. But really, how much does one NEED to know about the French Revolution, or the Metaphysical & Cavalier Poets, or solving systems of equations in 3 variables? This is exactly what I've been working on. I feel so much less guilty for getting rid of extra stuff that I spent a lot of money on or that came highly recommended but just didn't work for us. I currently have 3 large crates of stuff that either: worked for one kid but not another, covers most but not all of what I wanted to include, or just stuff that I meant to get to but never did. :iagree:

Same here.

I would definitely do this!

I love my Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7--12.1 megapixels & 12x optical zoom. I got it for Christmas a couple of years ago, and they've come out with new models since then. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS20 has 14.1 megapixels & 20x optical zoom.

:iagree:

:iagree:

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/showthread.php?p=4237379#poststop

I don't particularly disagree with anything on the list, but there are a few things I'm not sure should have made the top ten ways to ruin your child, and a few I would have put on the list instead. For one thing, I would've included something in there about failing to teach responsibility by assigning household duties.

:iagree: Kind of what I was thinking too.

No. It started out that way, but my dc were 5 grade levels apart and when EK was young, she was one of those who hummed or sang or talked to herself without even realizing it, and it drove ER up the wall. No amount of reminding or correcting helped because she wasn't even aware that she was doing it. So for ER's sanity (and mine), I let him work in another room. Our school room was right across the foyer from dh's home office, so EK worked in the school room and ER worked in the office. Now, I teach 4 girls: two 8th graders, one 10th/11th grader, and one 12th grader, so they are separated into different rooms for math on their grade level. The older two work together in one room for history and literature while the other two do literature and composition in another room. They all work together for everything else.