Pippi Longstocking The Secret Garden A Little Princess Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Winnie the Pooh Paddington Peter Pan - Jim Dale narrated a version (He's the Harry Potter narrator, and excellent) I also love the Little House books and the unabridged Chronicles of Narnia!

:grouphug: Quill, I'm so sorry. I have no words, but you (and all the rest of you who've lost a child) are in my prayers.

I have been printing, laminating and cutting like a fool trying to get this stuff ready to use with Schmooey. It looks like a lot of fun. He's a little over 3.5, and I'm planning to use it with him once he is done with preschool for the year, which will be later this month. I don't think it requires laminating, necessarily; I have a laminator so I'm using it, but I'm also hoping to be able to pass my stuff along to someone else when we're done. The laminator she has is only $20, and she laminates everything single-sided (2 pages inside each laminating sheet) to save money. With my girls, I don't know that I would have felt laminating was necessary. With Schmooey, my sweet little destructo-boy, I do. :D Not everything requires laminating; there are some cutting sheets, coloring sheets, do-a-dot paint sheets, poke letter sheets etc that I don't laminate.

Thanks for posting that! I need to get one and that is a great price!

I have yet to master any other planning software, but I'd love to have the ability to print daily and weekly plans for each student. If that is basic and unhelpful, I do apologize. :)

How different is the original Vol. 2 from the new one?

It all sounds wonderful, Faith! :party: on your vacation! It sounds awesome! Have a great time.

Aubrey, your thinking is usually way ahead of me, but let me share what I've been thinking about lately and you can take it for what it's worth, or tell me that it has no place in your discussion here. :D Your questions resonate with me, though, and I'm wondering if we're pondering similar things. Religion and faith are not the same thing. Religions are man-made systems attempting to honor and understand God in a specific way. I have a hard time believing that any person could find one Christian denomination with which they agree 100% on every single point. I certainly have not. I have struggled with it for a long time, because I believe we are commanded to be in fellowship with other believers, but I cannot and will not say I agree with everything just so I can attend a certain church. God does not fit in a Methodist-shaped box (the tradition in which I was raised) or a Lutheran-shaped box (dh's tradition) or a Catholic box or an Episcopalian box, etc. I get frustrated when people get stuck on doctrine/dogma that really makes no difference to my salvation. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Getting to know him and becoming more like him are THE POINTS. I believe God wants us to ask questions about what we believe and what we are taught. I need to know the Bible for myself, not just what a pastor or priest teaches. I should be checking the Scriptures to make sure what they teach is truth. I have a living faith. I am continually changed and refined as God makes me over into who He made me to be. This process would be hindered if I let other people tell me how to believe, KWIM? I identify myself as a follower of Christ. I can't see that I will ever identify myself as a particular denomination again. We found a really neat church in our new town that seems to be the closest thing to "it" for me. The pastor works really hard to make sure people are not clinging to rituals etc. I had a great talk with him the other night that showed me that he is a worthy pastor. Not perfect, but truly seeking Christ and encouraging others to do the same. Our church pulled itself out of their old denomination when it (the denom.) took a liberal turn, so now they are non-denom. I have not seen much legalism there, which I like. I'm sure it's there somewhere, but so far, I've been really impressed with what I see going on. I don't think your faith needs to be split from the rest of your life. You live it all the time. Are you thinking you're becoming less dependent on being defined by a particular church? As in, you don't necessarily have to say "I am a ___________ and loving it?" I'm trying to understand that part. I think that makes sense, probably because that's what I do - I go to church but I don't identify myself as being a Member Of A Denomination Agreeing With All Its Teachings. (Disclaimer: I'm not a great thinker of lofty thoughts. I hope this makes sense.)

This looks good! Thanks for sharing!

Have you seen A Living History of Our World by Angela O'Dell? I don't have it yet, but it's what I am hoping to use next year. It looks wonderful.

I have AAH I and I must confess that we didn't get very far with it. Who knew there were SO MANY EXPLORERS? :lol: My girls are 4th & 5th grade this year. One absolutely dissolved into tears if I tried to have her read on her own (we are working on this, she just doesn't like to read) and one would happily read but retain NOTHING. I know these are student issues, rather than text issues, but I found myself off to the library for every person we covered, looking for a "living book." We have always done living books so reading this textbook was not a happy thing for us. I may get it out again - I've been thinking about this - and just agree with my girls that there were LOTS of explorers, we know why they explored and what they hoped to find, and now we can move on. I wanted to love AAH; I was hoping for a really good spine that would allow us to explore and love our US history. We didn't love it. But, I probably gave up too easily. It might have been OK if I just continued to read it to them. I was hoping for more independence on their part and they've shown me that they're not there yet. Sigh.

:lol::lol::lol:

How cold is it going to be there tonight? If it's only a week old it won't survive long without its mother. I hope she comes back for it. :grouphug: You definitely did the right thing, rescuing it from your dogs. I have no idea what to do for it, though, other than bringing it inside & caring for it if the mother cat doesn't claim it.

I like to play with colors! I do it by season, I guess, because every time I get a new MK catalog, I like to try the new looks. Actually, I like to try the looks that the women wear who have skin the closest to my skin tone. I would look really silly in the ones for women with that beautiful bronze skin. Otherwise, I have colors that I love, I have neutrals that I wear if I don't know what I'm going to wear yet when I'm putting on my makeup, and the "dash out the door" face that involves cream-to-powder eye shadow. :D I rarely remember to put lipstick on but I always have eyeliner and mascara.

Seriously, check if it's frozen. It could be, even though it's so hot. If it is, turn it off, and let it thaw. You might still need a repair person, but maybe not.

I'd eat it and I'm squeamish about meat. Go for it!

Um. Wow. I don't think it's exactly anti-American not to like Andy Griffith. It's OK, but not something I'd go nuts over. My kids would probably like it, but right now they are watching Voltron. :lol: You can hang out with me anytime. No Andy Griffith loyalty required. :D

Scrambled States of America and the game :D (These are so fun!) Star Spangled States from Knowledge Quest - we used the book & the workbook We also used the MFW state sheets to make a notebook, and had a lot of fun with that. We made a poster to go along with it. It looks like they don't sell just the state pages & cards anymore; they are part of the students pages for $20.

:iagree: Did you ever see the "First Rock" episode when the boy thought his girlfriend (Autumn, I think) was pregnant, and Dick and the girl's father were trying to decide what the child would call them? That was my first exposure to grandparent names outside Grandma/Grandpa, perhaps Nana. I thought they were kidding about some of those names. They were not. :lol: On the Noggin show "Little Bill," they call the great-grandma "Alice the Great." I LOVE that! I want a name like that when I'm a great grandma. I don't think "Beth the Great" sounds that well though so perhaps "SuperBeth." :lol:

I like lavender - *real* lavender, though, not the pretend lavender that some places have. I also like cedar & patchouli. I like musky scents.

Thanks, Kristie!

:grouphug::grouphug::grouphug: Wow. I'm so sorry! I will be praying for you!

I use my iPad all the time! I have an iPod Touch, too, and use them both quite a lot. I love that the iPad does more than just read books. We have lots of preschool apps on there for Schmooey, which helps keep him busy (momentarily) during school and sometimes in the car on long trips. There are great educational apps on there too. Knowledge Quest has put together a site with some great apps on it (including their own) here. There are free reader apps for any eReader, including the Kindle and the Nook. You can have pictures and music on your iPad too, if you like. I'm planning on getting as many of our school books as I can on there, so I can take the iPad and not haul around a huge crate of books every time I want to take school somewhere else. We are Apple geeks here, and dh works for Apple, but I truly do love my iPad.

:grouphug: I am glad he wrote the note. I will be praying.

I like salted butter. I really like salt. :D I don't do a lot of baking, but we eat a lot of toast, and unsalted butter on toast is pointless. Some recipes call for unsalted butter, and sometimes it does make a difference, but most of the time I just use salted and it works fine.