Dh flies about every other week for business and our whole family travels by plane very frequently, almost exclusively United as that is the only airline that services our nearest airport. We used to be die-hard carry-on people, not so much due to cost as we can check bags for free because dh is a club member and I have a United Visa, but more due to saving time at our destination airport and preventing lost luggage woes. With the most recent changes, we have gone to checking luggage....even dh who was the most resistant to changing. It is just too stressful dealing with the at-the-gate luggage drama. Now we can relax a little and board last without worrying that the overhead bins will be full. Even if we had to pay, that would be worth it. On the bigger flights, this can mean 45 minutes less time crammed into a hot can with a bunch of miserable people on the verge of breakdown. It is getting to the point where air travel is so stressful that we are passing on some travel opportunities. Too many times I have said, "it can't get worse, right?" But then they find a way to make it even more miserable. I'm not sure what they could possibly do next but I am confident they will find something.

Update! After being on hold for over 30 minutes, I had to hang up as I had taxi service. So I called again when I returned. Eventually I got to a real live person. It turns out there was an error in my billing/due cycle and indeed it was shorter than their company policy and ALSO outside of the legal amount of time. The late fee and interest were credited to my account. I call that a win overall but after two phone calls that netted more than an hour of my time it will be quite some time before that savings amount quoted at the register will tempt me to sign up for a card. What a PITA!

Had the nearest store not been 4 hours away.....

To be honest, I panicked when I saw that it was almost late. It seemed quickest to just write a check and toss it in the mail rather than set up an online line account and look up my bank info. In hindsight, that was dumb.

Still on hold..... I cannot be sure how much time there was between when the statement in question was mailed and the due date since I wasn't here when it arrived. But my current statement arrived yesterday and is due on June 8, less than two weeks. I cannot tell when it was actually mailed from the company. In both cases, the bill arrived in bad condition, as thought partially "eaten" by machinery. The only reference to late payments is that I "may have to pay a late fee up to $38."

I pay everything online and have for years so I may be out of touch here. I thought I'd get some opinions before I call to complain. I took out one of those store credit cards at the register while making a large purchase several weeks ago. I always decline them but in this case, the hassle would save me over $50 so I figured it was worth the few minutes to apply and then to simply cancel the card after making the payment. So the bill comes while I am on vacation and I pay it as soon as I got home. I was pretty surprised that the window for payment was so small that being gone for a single week was enough to almost be late paying. The check is dated before the due date and it was mailed at the post office proper the day before it was due (in the morning) so the envelope would have been postmarked before the bill was due. Even if the post office did not empty the bin several times a day (as it states on the bin) and it sat until the next morning, it would have been post marked on the due date. Now I have a bill with interest and a late fee, the combo of which is more than the $50 I saved by applying. I think I have a case to call and ask that at least the late fee be waived. In my pre-pay-online days, I had a few cases where a bill got to its destination after the due date either because I mailed it the day before it was due (because I was being lazy) or the payment took the USPS scenic route. I one case, I remember calling and they took the late fee off and in several other cases the late fee was credited later without me calling because once the payment arrived, the post date proved that I had indeed mailed it before it was due. One time I even accidentally swapped two checks and sent my cc check with a hospital payment and the hospital payment to the cc. Both allowed extra time to correct the mistake without charging a late fee even though it took weeks to figure out the problem and correct it. Is there any hope in calling to ask the fee be dropped? Or have companies gotten greedy enough that waiting to be taken off hold (I have been on hold the entire time I have been typing) is worth it. If it is, any magic words I should try?

I like my yogurt plain, with no sweetener. But I prefer savory foods over sweet naturally so that is no surprise. It might help to change your expectations that yogurt is not a "sweet" food? Growing up, my mom always mixed applesauce and plain (homemade) yogurt for snacks. We never had store-bought flavored yogurt, mostly because it was too expensive. That might be a good in-between step?

I use a salt rock (sometimes called crystal) with very good luck. And it is cheap. The $5 rock I bought 10+ years ago is going strong. It doesn't stain and is not slimy. It also works on feet. I still sweat but it does not stink, even after a hard workout. The natural more-traditional types do not work for me at all. I actually tried the rock after regular deodorant stopped working for me (and was ruining my clothing).

Thanks all. We do plan to finish the other chapters. Dd has completed all of the sections in chapter 17 but I don't feel she has grasped them as well as I would normally require before moving on. I don't think she will be able to do the review problems on her own unless we went back through each section using some other resources to help her grasp it better. My choices are to either do that, finish the chapter review problems with me working each problem with her, or just move on to chapter 18. I fear my normal approach to go back and solid the concepts will take a couple of weeks and I'm not sure it is worth it in this particular case. And I'm not convinced that dd has grasped the concepts well enough that doing the review problems together will have much value. Plus, I am pretty burned out myself!

Anyone else? I don't want to move on if there is any chance this will bite us down the road. I cannot remember every covering this topic in high school myself....but that could just be the old age talking.

I'm looking for some advice from those who are familiar with the AoPS series. Dd is finishing up Geometry this year. We are a bit behind and one big reason is that dd has been wallowing in Chapter 17 (Analytic Geometry) for weeks now. She is really struggling to grasp the concepts here. Add a healthy dose of end-of-the-year distraction and I'm afraid it could be the end of us both. Would it be a big mistake to cut our losses and move on? Dd is on the final section with a great deal of hand-holding from me. This is not a first time a chapter has required hand-holding but normally we would use other resources to solidify the difficult concepts, go back and rework the sections to solidify understanding, then once dd is comfortable, she does the chapter review questions. Given that this often takes weeks and dd is about ready to burn this book, I am willing to consider moving on. Is this a mistake?

We are behind in math too. In our case it is AoPS Geometry. We are doing two sessions a day, morning and afternoon, to try to finish before the public schools are out. I think I could probably just let dd skip the last two chapters but that is not my plan at this point. In your case, I would do whatever was necessary to finish without a long break. I think trying to pick up in the middle after months off is going to be more trouble than dealing with it now.

We had to travel out of state for dd's Latin exam so did not get home until late last night. But she said it went well. This was her first (and probably last) AP exam. It caused too much stress to find a test site.

We are attempting the 4-year cycle as outlined in TWTM. For 9th (this year) we used SWB's History of the Ancient World and will be using SWB's History of the Medieval World and History of the Renaissance World next year for 10th (which is perhaps too ambitious, but we shall see....). 11th and 12th grade will be early modern history and modern history with a 50% emphasis on US History. I am not sure what texts we will use for those. I am secretly, and likely fruitlessly, holding out hope that SWB will come out with the next book soon. Dd will also have a half year each of government and economics at some point in 11th and/or 12th grade (maybe DE) which means she will end up with 5+ credits of social science all together. We integrate geography into daily history study. Our local schools only require 3 credits, including US History, government, and econ. Most students take 4 credits with at least one year of "world history" but that is not specifically required. So you probably have some latitude based on your local requirements and colleges your dc may be interested in.

I emailed about the registration year and got a reply right away. We can register now and just click the 2017-18 and they will adjust when they update their system. Or we can just wait a few weeks. There is no enrollment cap so no worries about classes filling up. It is $125 for the intro course. I'm not sure about the AP course.

I see what you are saying and I do not disagree with your points. The OP asked if we (people here) consider registration when deciding if someone is a "true homeschooler" and I'm just saying that *I* do not and why. Registering as a homeschooler is not "educating" and one can be not "educating" and still register. So, I do not consider, and likely would never even know, if someone is registered if I lived in a state where registering was even a thing.....which I do not. That's all.

I guess that is my point. My state requires nothing. No registering, no reporting, no testing, no tracking of hours, no portfolios, no curriculum, nada. If the definition of a "true homeschooler" is following the homeschooling laws of your state, then a "true homeschooler" could vary widely, to the point of being comical, based on what state the family lives in. To me, that makes the question of whether a family is registered as homeschooling irrelevant when I am trying to determine who is considered a homeschooler. A family could be doing nothing other than vaguely "providing education" (whatever the parent interprets that to mean) in my state and be following the law whereas someone providing an excellent home education in the next state that happened to choose not to register would not be. That is not to say that I advocate for breaking the law or feel there is no risk in doing so, I just do not think it is relevant when determining who is actually "homeschooling" or not.

There are states in which there is no registration. I live in one. I have never registered to homeschool but have been very much homeschooling for 10 years.

I am looking at the syllabus now and it does appear that there are exams and quizzes.

That is actually why I contacted them....I couldn't seem to figure out how to register. It did take them nearly a week to reply. I suspect they are scrambling with year-end stuff. But now that I go to the link they sent, I too see no option for 2018-19. It sounds like there is no cap to the class size so I will probably just wait a few weeks until their school year ends and try again. Hopefully this is not a sign of future trouble. Dd is finishing up a disorganized disaster of an online class so I am not in the mood to repeat another one any time soon!

I'm sure you will get more helpful input but I have been in contact with Edhesive as my dd will be taking Intro to Computer Science next fall. It appears that there is some sort of schedule, or at the very least a standard start time. I see that there are graded assignments but no mention of tests or quizzes, for the intro class anyway. You do register as a homeschooler. They sent me a special link for this. I am all ears to hear what others might have to say.

This can spiral too. I live 4 blocks from the public elementary school. The bus picks up the kids on my block one FULL hour before school so they are basically sitting in a bus going all over town to get to a place that would take 8 minutes to walk to. The ones not on the bus get driven four blocks to avoid the hour long bus ride. When this first came to my attention, I was outraged. I asked the neighbors why they chose to do that. Why not have their kids walk. The school does not allow walkers. So then I was outraged at the school. So I ask about that. They don't allow it (unless a parent walks them) because the students arrive in the morning while it is still dark and there are no street lights, crosswalks, or sidewalks on the roads surrounding the school. So then I am outraged at the city. So I ask about that. Well....as school of choice got more popular traffic increased around the school (and was increasing for other reasons too) resulting in more parents getting nervous about their kids walking.....so more kids getting driven....so more traffic....so even less walkers.....until there were so few that the school and city decided that maintaining sidewalks and streetlights was no longer worth it as it encouraged walking on a now-dangerous road. The school was not designed to handle so many parents driving their kids so now they have to add a road to accommodate them. And that road has to be cheap (budget issues AND "kids these days" don't walk anyways.....) so will not have sidewalks or streetlights. It is maddening.

We bought our house when dd was a baby specifically with this in mind. We can walk/bike to almost anything. There is no public transit, not just in our town but in our entire very large, but sparsely populated region so that is just not a thing for the kids that we know. My dd walks/bikes to many activities and to visit friends/shop/library/etc.... much of the time. But unfortunately, due to weather, any ongoing commitment she signs up for does need to fit into our schedule so that one of us can drive her. For 6 months of the year, biking is 100% out of the question and walking is limited to a handful of places. Sidewalks are not cleared here in the winter and walking in the road with darkness, heavy snow, and ice is not safe. Dd is very active in many different things and being available to drive her takes more of my time than anything else I do even though it is rare that an activity is not within a 2 mile radius of our home. She also knows that signing up for an activity where she has to be driven, means committing the time and effort to chisel out the car.....which often takes way more time than walking would have and far more exertion. In our case, I don't see a direct link to slower maturity. If we had public transit, dd would use it. We travel to major US cities and abroad where we make extensive use of the buses, trains, and subways. She has navigated public transit on her own in foreign countries. She asks us and checks schedules before committing to anything that requires our help for transport and she often seeks ride sharing opportunities. I do agree that community planning has caused all sorts of problems. I do think newly developed areas should be required to plan for other modes of transportation other than individual car ownership. I think we will see a big shift with car-sharing and driver-less cars in the near future. Even Uber and Lift have changed transport significantly already. But I know my own small city has no viable options at this time. Keeping the sidewalks clear in winter is literally impossible and we simply do not have the population base to make busses work unless they were heavily publicly subsidized.

Yes it does! Thanks! It appears to be exactly as the book is printed which is good for me to know.

Has anyone used the PDF version of the study guides? I am wondering if the PDF layout is exactly the same as the printed books or if there is any chance the individual sections for each chapter resides on its own page. I only use the map exercises and critical thinking sections so would like to just print those.