I've stopped fighting my 10:00 start. I love our slow mornings. I love our leisurely snuggles. Love it. We can usually finish by 4. Sometimes they work on their own to get a bunch done after dinner so they can have a half day the next day. The only thing that terrifies me is when a school mom rings my door at 10:00 and we're still in our jammies. Yes, we're one of THOSE homeschooling families. Doo dee doo... :) At least one DD likes to arise at 7:30, get dressed, sweep the floor, unload the dishwaher, set out breakfast, and make me coffee. DD7 is a dynamo! I let her answer the door with me cowering behind. :) Something else that helps - at night before our readaloud, we have one other storytime subject. It rotates among poetry, history, Jewish study, and the torah portion of the week. Takes some of the pressure off of the day.

Nope. It makes me more certain of it since, against all odds, the Jews are still here. There is no other explanation other than G-d's hand! :).

We adopted two children from Ethiopia 5+ years ago. It's been wonderful. We used to live in a fairly liberal all-white community. While we didn't really get stares, we did get some way overcompensating compliments towards our adopted children (we also have two bio kids). And people always seemed to remark on the makeup of our family. Now we live in a conservative community that is 51% black. No one blinks twice when we walk through the grocery store! :) Also, our family is Jewish. I converted long before meeting DH. Our unified heritage is Judaism. The fact that I share conversion status with our adopted kids really gives us something unique in common. And they're really all adopted anyway... Straight from heaven!

We recently paid $100 for that.

I have too many favorites, but my best new find this year was Sequential Spelling. No frills, highly effective. We're all very happy!

We left our two with good friends for a week while we were in Ethiopia for a week to get the other two. So hard to leave them, but at least it was only a week!!!

Where I live in the south, it's very common for people of all ages to call their father "daddy." I think it's sweet.

Why doesn't the RSS feed work on the new site?? I used to scan the forums with Feedly/Google Reader. My participation has gone down to near zero since not being able to access it this way. HELP!

I have perused a dizzying number of previous posts on MCT materials, and I didn't find an answer to my question yet. :) DD9 is finishing up WWE4 and FLL4 and has done very well with that. Now I am trying to figure out 5th grade. I'm pretty sure I'd like to continue with Writing With Skill. I've been browsing through samples of Michael Clay Thompson materials and I'm considering using Grammar Town. Caesar's English and the poetry books look interesting too, but we have a hefty dual curriculum and I don't want to overdo it. Does anyone know approximately how much time these books take?? And is Grammar Town the right next book after FLL4? Thanks!

I like living small. :) We have 6 in our family, 1800 square feet. We could easily chop off 2 rooms and fit just fine. I've also often thought that especially if we moved somewhere that had an acre or more of outdoors, we'd very easily live in a much smaller space. They'd be outside all the time! :) We were pretty happy in 1300 square feet before we moved into this house. I don't *mind* the extra space, but it just doesn't feel *necessary*. Simple's good. :)

We also go up slides, but only when there is no one at the top waiting to come down.

I cannot say enough good things about the Sequential Spelling series. Elegantly simple and *very* effective!

My DH in another situation advised DD to just say "What?" after the comment was made. And just keep repeating "what" until they gave up. :)

I love my $3.49 Good Will Danskos.... and my $15 ebay Danskos... and those Clarks? Got those for under $10! All three pairs were barely worn and I wear them ALL the time. I love my shoes! :)

:iagree: I wouldn't worry yet either, and I also wouldn't think of it as "starting over." Just meet her wherever she is and keep on going.

Have you ever been tested for parvo virus? My mother had a mysterious ailment w/the same symptoms. For a while we thought it was RA, but it turned out (finally, after months of not knowing) to be parvo (the human version!).

Definitely check it out immediately with a doctor. A uterine infection is nothing to mess around with, and is most likely what caused my secondary infertility (and led us to our two Ethiopian kids!).

Pomegranate jelly is our favorite jelly! Oh, sigh, yum. I also like to make pomegranate molasses. Just boil the juice down until it is a thick syrup. Yum. Sigh.

We discovered Sequential Spelling this year too and LOVE it. We didn't have any spelling issues, but I felt like a lot of the usual spelling workbooks included a lot of busywork, or things we were already covering elsewhere. Love the very simple, very effective approach! :)

So many good things that we use... My #1 new favorite this year is Sequential Spelling. So elegantly simple - just a list of words to write each day (kind of like a spelling test), but what a list! Anything else we used before felt like a whole lot of busy work. We're so much happier with this.

I'm on kids #2 and #3 doing OPGTR, and I've just never done more than 1 lesson/day. No review ever. They're doing fine. At 5 I'd not go into overtime. It's just too much. Do what he can handle, then pick up where you left off the next day. If he doesn't finish OPGTR until 2nd+ grade, it really just doesn't matter at all. It finishes at a 4th-grade reading level anyway.

Leave! You shouldn't have to work this hard. I got way too tired just reading the post. :)

You'll do fine. It's a little overwhelming at first, figuring out how to eat and how much exercise you need to keep your blood sugars in the right place. After the first month, it really is pretty easy (normally!) to manage. I'm sure you'll find it the same. Most people with gestational diabetes don't have wildly fluctuating blood sugar levels, just elevated ones. It really will help you get on a great diet, so it can be a real blessing (as it was for me!). I also found it so much easier to eat well and exercise when a developing baby depended on me. :)

I'm an INFJ/P flip-flopper. :) And I've never had Martha Stewart aspirations, except in the good food department. So that's my forte. And the rest of the house, well, it limps along. 5- and 15-minute timers can work wonders! We do the best we can, and I spend a good amount of time chore training, which has really paid off.

Oregon more than makes up for its no-sales-tax with PLENTY in property and income taxes. Glad to now be in sales-tax-Georgia, where our income tax is 2/3rds what it was and property tax is 1/2 what they were.