My 17yo and 8yo take Tae Kwon Do -- my 17yo for almost 3 years and my 8yo for 2 years. The first uniform (and the first week of lessons) was free. Classes meet 3 nights a week, for an hour, and that's $60.00 per month, per child. Promotions (which happen every 2-3 months) are $25.00 each. Sparring equipment, which I've only had to buy once for each of them, ran about $100.00, but our instructor told us not to buy them until they each had earned their yellow belt and they were going to stick with TKD. My kids participate in one tournament each year, which is another $50.00 for each of them (but attendance is totally optional -- my kids really enjoy it though, so they never want to miss the annual tournament!) Oh! And once my oldest is a black belt, which should happen this Spring, we will no longer pay for her lessons because she'll be an instructor at the school and it's considered a 'fringe benefit'.

ROTFLOL!!!!! Thanks for the great mental picture!! :lol:

Oh my!!! How frightening!!!! :grouphug: All this on top of the other stuff!!!! I'm sorry you've had such a hard week!!!!

Well...judging from my avatar, if someone wanted to strike up a conversation with me in support of Obama, I think we'd get along great!!! :lol: However...I'm not about to get in anyone's face to try to convince them to vote the way I'm going to vote. I wouldn't want the reverse to happen to me (i.e., a McCain supporter getting in my face and trying to convince me to change my mind) We each must walk our own path. (However, I do enjoy a civil debate!! And I've tried to be civil in my discussions here -- at least I hope I've come across that way!!) :)

I said peas! So I'm warped :D

Here are some that pop up in our family quite often!! "Poor Ceckles" -- from Finding Nemo -- whenever we lose one of our aquarium fish "Eddie says that, after the baby's born, I can quit one of my night jobs." -- from National Lampoon's Vacation -- said whenever I'm feeling overworked at home. "Help! Help! I'm being repressed!" -- from Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- said by my children whenever I ask them to do a chore they don't like ;) "I suffer from short term memory loss. It runs in my family. At least...I think it does. Hmmm... Where ARE they?" -- from Finding Nemo -- said by my children whenever they can't remember something they're asked about during school. :)

Impressive!!!!! You totally rock, Spy Car Dude!!! :D :party:

LOL!!! :lol: Eddie Vedder always sings like he's got marbles in his mouth! But I love Pearl Jam with a passion!! :) One of my favorite Weird Al songs is Smells Like Nirvana, which pokes fun at this very topic! Here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixyTNd-Ln38

ARGGHHHHH!!! Swabbie Kelly Wormy-sword, the scurviest scalawag that ever pirated within 20,000 leagues of the Indian Ocean. I have first dibs on Captain Jack Sparrow!!! :D

Excellent post!!! :iagree:

Here's my favorite 70's song: Don McLean's "American Pie" (This video is cool because it explains the song very well)

Credence Clearwater Revival! "There's a bad moon on the rise" I thought it was "There's a bathroom on the right" :blushing: :lol:

Well...we went to war with them, when they didn't do anything to us (despite what the country was told at the time), so that does make it intentional. If we weren't bombing their country, they'd still be alive.

I can respect that, but ... then all lives are sacred -- not just the lives of the unborn. Anywhere from 100,000 to 600,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the start of the Iraq war (no one knows the true number). If innocent lives are what we're looking to save -- be they unborn or born -- I see a definite contradiction.

Roe v Wade was passed in 1973, during a Republican administration (Richard Nixon...yeah, I know how that turned out, but he was a Republican!). Then came Ford, another Republican. Then we had Carter, a Democrat, for 4 years. Then we had Reagan, a Republican, for 8 years. Then we had George H Bush, a Republican, for 4 years. Then we had Clinton, a Democrat, for 8 years. Then we had George W Bush, a Republican for 8 years. So....1973 to 2008 is 35 years. During those 35 years, only during 12 of them did we have a Democrat in office, and abortion is still legal. Do you really believe that a truly pro-life justice could be nominated with a two-thirds majority? George W. Bush has appointed 2 justices to the Supreme Court and nothing has changed. I guess I don't understand why this one issue is the dividing line for so many voters. I can't see Roe V. Wade ever being reversed, and I don't believe it matters whether you have a Republican or a Democrat in office -- as I believe is evidenced by the Presidents in office that I listed above. It seems that this issue is dragged out of the closet every election, simply to divide the country.

Summer -- I sent you a PM about this! I'd love to hear more (I'm schooling a 6yo with autism)

I try to finish the school year by the 2nd week in June. That's when our state's annual homeschool convention is scheduled for, and purchase all of my curriculum for the coming year. I also have to submit standardized test scores to our county by August 1st, and that gives me time to give the CAT tests in mid-June, receive the scores by the 1st half of July, and get them mailed to the county. We don't do school from mid-June through mid-August. My hubby's family is big on summer vacations (both my SIL and my MIL have beach houses and they want my children to join them). I also then have time to look through the purchases I made at the homeschool convention and to write lesson plans and pick up all of my school supplies (not only paper and pencils, but any items I need for science experiments, any books I need to purchase for supplementary reading, etc.) By the middle to the end of August, though, even my kids are getting antsy! They want to start school. The new books are sitting on the shelf and they've been playing video games all day for 2 months and they're bored!! :) During the school year, we take a week off in October for our own family vacation -- we're going to Myrtle Beach in 2 1/2 weeks!!! :w00t: We take a week off at Thanksgiving, two weeks off at Christmas, and a week off at Easter.

Here are winners!!! Sonlight (14yo, 8yo, 6yo) Trail Guide to US Geography (14yo, 8yo) Sonlight Science (14yo, 8yo) Teaching Textbooks (8yo) CLE Math (14yo) Abeka Math (6yo) Pathway Readers (6yo) Handwriting Without Tears (8yo, 6yo) LLATL (14yo, 8yo) Lial's College Algebra (17yo) Visual Manna's Master Drawing (17yo)

Praying for Cameron here!! Keep us updated!! :grouphug:

Thank you for the update!! Continuing to pray here! :grouphug:

Thank you for sharing and God bless you and your family today. :grouphug:

I go once a week....simply because it's a half hour drive to the grocery store! (We live in the boonies) My hubby goes with me, usually on either a Tuesday or Thursday evening, and we leave the children home, with the 17yo in charge. We fill up two shopping carts and bring dinner home (sometimes it's lunchmeat, or a pre-prepared pizza, etc.)

Praying here!!! :grouphug:

I've never heard of this before!!! Is it a common practice for a mortgage company to just do this out of the blue? Or were they trying to refinance at the time the bank told them this? (Or something like refinancing?) We owe more than our house is worth, simply because houses here have dropped in value since we bought ours in 2005. We don't have an adjustable mortgage or anything like that. We'd love to move, but we can't until the market improves.

I type up weekly lesson plans, that are then broken down into daily plans for that week (there are 36 weeks altogether, simply because we use Sonlight and that's the way they break it down). For each day, I'll have something like: Math - Lesson 12; Sonlight - Week 3 Day 2; etc., etc. I don't have it broken down into "times" because our schedule each day differs (my husband runs a business from home and there are days when he needs us all - children included - to help out and then when school is completed is based on that....my oldest takes classes at the community college two days a week, so that has to be worked around also, etc.) We do have a pattern of doing school. My kids like to do math first, then language arts, then art, then history, and then science. But I don't have a 8:00 - 8:30 is math, etc., type of schedule.