Our 15th year is underway!!!! :D

My hubby works from home, so he's always there if I need him! (Several days a month, he is away from home -- and often out-of-state -- on business, but for the most part, he's there). So he's able to take the kids to doctor's appointments, go grocery shopping, or help with the cooking, etc. He helps with choosing curriculum, if I can't make up my mind...which happens quite often! LOL! He's very good at weighing the pros and cons of each. He's great at helping when the kids are stuck on a math or science problem (since those are my two weakest subject areas).

English: Sonlight Core 5 Readers Handwriting Without Tears Can Do Cursive Fix It Grammar Phonetic Zoo Spelling Level B IEW Student Writing Intensive Level B English from the Roots Up Volume 1 Math: Teaching Textbooks Math 6 Life of Fred Fractions Science (w/ his older brother): Prentice Hall Biology (high school textbook) History: Sonlight Core 5 Van Loon's The Story of Mankind Electives: Red Herrings Mysteries Artistic Pursuits 4-6 Book 1 Piano Lessons Tae Kwon Do (he's a Red belt)

Same here!!! :hurray:

Yes...we do sleepovers. In each case, we know the child (and the family) fairly well. We're the sleep-over hosts more often than our children sleep over somewhere else. It just has worked out that way. :)

We have 1 cat -- a longhair Siberian named Chloe. She's almost 5 years old and she rules the roost! She's definitely The Queen of the house! We have 2 dogs -- 2 Labrador Retrievers -- a Yellow male, Buddy, and a Black female, Spunky. They're 3 1/2 and we love 'em!! Buddy is not too bright, but he has a wonderful disposition. He's big -- over 100 pounds -- and my 7yo climbs all over him and he loves it. Spunky is very affectionate and has a definite mothering instinct! She's the one most likely to bark at newcomers. She loves the members of our family, but she's wary with strangers. She loves the kids. No plan or desire to add to our family -- pets or otherwise! We're quite happy with what we have!

My oldest son is using Core Alt 7 this year, which is world history in-depth (as opposed to Core 6 & Core 7, spread over 2 years). He'll be using Core 100 next year for US history in-depth. I've used Core 100 before (my oldest dd used it in 8th grade and loved it. She especially enjoyed Joy Hakim's History of US series), but this is our first time using Core Alt 7. The books look great, though! I think both cores would be fine for students in 6th through 9th or 10th grade. My son has autism and language arts is his weak area (due to dyslexia). It's perfect for his reading level....which is around jr. high to early high school.

Probably "0"! My youngest is in public school. We take her to school in the mornings and she rides the bus home in the afternoons. That's 5 days a week. On the weekends, we have sports and social activities and errands to run....so there are very few days during a typical month when we're home all day long.

CONGRATS!!! :party:

I haven't read much about this case in particular, but have personal experience with minors being charged as adults. My SIL's best friend from college was shot to death by her oldest son (he also shot and killed his dad and his two younger brothers, ages 12 and 8). He was 15 and the crime happened a week before he turned 16. His Dad was a lawyer and the prosecution alleged that he knew that if he killed his family after he turned 16, he'd face the death penalty but, because he was still 15, the maximum he could face would be life in prison. Needless to say, he has serious mental health issues ... that the parents never shared with anyone. Never sought counseling for him, etc. He was charged as an adult with 4 counts of 1st degree murder and he was convicted, but sentenced to life in a mental health institution / psychiatric facility. There are no winners on either side. Jail certainly wouldn't have "reformed him"....nor would it have brought his family back. From reading the other posts, I'm not sure where I stand on this case. It definitely appears premeditated. An even bigger tragedy is the way the family is treating the victim!!! I can't even fathom that! :crying:

Sending "COME ON, BABY!" vibes your way!!! :D :party:

I was so excited, I couldn't wait any longer! We were going to start August 3rd, but ended up starting this past Monday! We're wrapping up our first week today and it's been a great week!!!

My youngest daughter has had two exceptional teachers! One was her special needs preschool teacher. My daughter was with her for two years. My daughter had a terrible experience with her Kindergarten teacher at another school in the area. We ended up pulling her out before the year even ended. Then we were given the opportunity to transfer to the school she's in now and it's wonderful!!! Her current teacher, "Ms. Robin", teaches the autism class and she is just terrific! She's very calm and very soft-spoken. She has incredible patience! Most of her students are completely non-verbal and many have quite a few behavior issues. My daughter just LOVES her!! We love her, too! When our daughter started in her class, she asked me what materials we had been using at home and one of them is Singapore Math. She said, "Oh, I love Singapore math! If you bring the books in, we'll use that for her, instead of the public school math program." :D

Yes...I use Sonlight this way. I used the entire Core when they were younger (Cores K, 1 & 2), but once they got the hang of reading chapter books, which starts in Core 3, I used it as a reading list. It happened sort of by accident, because I couldn't stand the history book used in Cores 3 & 4! (It's Landmark History of the American People, if I remember correctly.) So I started to use a history text of my own (we've used a variety, too! We did the SOTW books...Genevieve Foster's books -- George Washington's World, etc. ... this year, we're using The Story of Mankind by Van Loon). I use many of SL's historical fiction titles and use them as read alouds (my kids LOVE Jean Fritz, for example! Even my teens want to hear them over again!) I don't use all the readers -- but I try to choose 15-20 books for each of them to read during the school year for required reading (it works out to a book every two weeks. Some take a little longer, some just last a week). I'm a secular homeschooler and this method makes it fairly easy to use Sonlight.

I have similar experience with my Dodge Durango! It seats 8, but there's virtually no room in the back if you have a carload of people! We have four children, so two in the middle row, and two in the back row. You can fit some grocery bags in the very back, but that's about it! We can't all go to Costco, in other words! We have to leave at least two children home for that trip. When we go on vacation, we have to take a rooftop carrier for the suitcases! I miss having a minivan!!! There just seemed to be more room! You could fit things on the floor, which you just can't do in the SUV. My oldest son has always ridden in the rear section, but he's now moved up to the middle section because he's almost 6 feet tall and there's no leg room in the 3rd row seat.

For my youngest, it's the EB White books! We're reading those now and it definitely brings back memories! Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan. For my 9yo, it's Tolkien. I was in 7th grade and we ate our lunches in the classroom while our teacher read The Lord of the Rings series to us throughout the school year.

My 7yo has autism and she's in public school -- and thriving!

I believe it's "deuce" ... don't ask me why that makes sense either, but...LOL .. I heard it the way you did, too!! :lol: This thread is definitely bringing back memories!!

My favorite one is Credence Clearwater Revival. "There's a bad moon on the rise" ... my kids are convinced they're singing, "There's a bathroom on the right." :lol:

Your Mileage May Vary is my guess...sort of "this is my experience, yours may be different". :)

That's what I've heard, too. We have posters on this board who live in Canada and Britain and Australia (I *think* they have government-run health care, too) and I can't recall too many negative posts about their healthcare system either. As for us, my husband runs his own company (it's just him...no employees). We were paying $1500 a month for health insurance and just couldn't afford it anymore. That was 5 years ago. We dropped it. Since then, my oldest had her appendix removed ($15,000) and my youngest son suffered a skull fracture and spent a week in the hospital ($20,000). We're still paying those bills...and likely will for several more years. Now, we can't get insurance because, during those 5 years, my husband developed diabetes. Now they won't cover him because it's a pre-existing condition. We'd GLADLY pay for health insurance every month...but something affordable! $500-$700 a month. But we can't even do that. What I'd like to see is insurance reform..which is what I thought this started out to be. Charge a reasonable fee and do away with the pre-existing condition clause. Take car insurance for example. We're all required to have insurance on our vehicles, or pay an uninsured motorist fee if we don't. But auto insurance companies don't refuse to cover you because you have an older car or because you already owned a certain vehicle before you applied for coverage...and auto insurance doesn't cost $15,000 a year either.

Our new school year starts on Monday! :D We like to take a few weeks off during the school year (vacations, holidays, etc.), so we start school early in order to have that flexibility, and wrap up the end of the year by mid-June with standardized testing (required for our state).

My 7yo LOVES public school. She has autism but she's very social (although her conversational skills are delayed, she loves to talk to other children). It's been an adjustment for me, as we've been a homeschooling family for 15 years (my oldest was homeschooled PreK through 12th and graduated in May), so every year, I toy with the idea of homeschooling her, but....she loves school. She loves everything about it. The school bus, the lunchbox, the worksheets, her picture schedule, etc. She's in a special autism class for part of her day (she's the only verbal child in a class of 6 students) where she does math (using Singapore math, btw!) and they work on her speech and language skills and do occupational therapy. Then she's in a regular class for language arts, science, and social studies. This year, they hope to add in specials (PE, library, art, etc.) Her teachers and therapists are fantastic and she has a one-on-one aide during the day to help with transition and to assist her when she needs help.

We also school for 36 weeks (mainly because that's the way Sonlight is set up). We're starting the 3rd of August and hope to finish by the 2nd week in June. I like having a few extra weeks available during the school year in case someone gets the flu...or we decide to take a mini-vacation...or it snows and the kids want to play outside, etc.

Hail Victory! Braves on the Warpath! Fight for old D.C.! :party: I love watching football! (I also love to watch baseball, basketball, hockey, and golf!) I think I'm one of the few women who watches ESPN SportsCenter every morning while making breakfast! :lol: