:grouphug: Praying. It must be so hard to wait. Hope you get good results.

No. I don't drink or smoke and don't have any desire to try pot either. I like to be in control too much to give it up.

My dd is learning Latin and this year decided to learn French as well after a trip to Quebec over the summer. I found a wonderful mentor for her writing who is challenging her in a variety of ways. The woman is very creative in ways my STEM brain is not and my dd loves their time together. We have also done quite a bit of study in how the different humanities (music, art, and literature) relate during different time periods and why.

Congratulations to you both! It was a such a heartfelt speech.

Not a motor vehicle accident.

My boys went to public school in late middle school because they wanted to play high school sports. There have been positives and negatives with the situation but mostly positive in that they have made good friends and done well. I always home schooled with a year by year approach and though I love it, I know it might not always be the best choice.

We had issues when dh parents were alive and went through times when he helped each, separately, because they were divorced. My dh paid both mortgages on his parents home after his father left his mother and helped his father with a lot of bills even though he was only 19 at the time and had moved out on his own. After a few years we stuck to the motto "banks are for cash, family is for love." Until they passed 15 years apart, we did give them food at times and dh's brother bought his father a heater last year but other than that requests for cash were denied.

You've gotten a lot of ideas. I wanted to add asthma or some type of seizure disorder (epilepsy). With either of those she could be living a fairly normal life but have a few "scares" before she passes.

My oldest was never on the growth chart until high school then still low on it...I know he was 29lb at 5yo and at 11yo weighed less than 56lb (recently found his wrestling sweatshirt for that year with his weight class printed on it and I know he used to weigh in for matches with his clothes on and a milkshake in his hand because he was always under weight). He started growing and lifting weights in 8th grade but now at 18yo is still around 5'5." There are small people on both sides of our family though dh is 6ft and I am about average 5'3." Ds has always been perfectly healthy and athletic so doctors have never been concerned. My dd started on the low end of the growth chart 2-3%. She was 17lb at a year, 22lb at 2yo, and 24lb. at 3yo. She is still on the small side but beginning to hit puberty so I expect she'll grow a little more though I don't expect her to get much taller than I am. I was the smallest in my school class until 8th grade when I grew. She has always weighed a little more but been shorter than her older brother at the same age.

Mine were about 13yo before they saw girls as anything different than their male buddies.

Our first year in Ireland, we had a hamburger with fried onions and lots of other toppings at 10pm. We smelled them cooking and had to have them. I don't know whether they tasted so great because we were really hungry or if they were really that good. We still look for "street burgers" every time we go to the festival there (though we haven't found any that tasted that good again, sigh).

I like both Margot and Miriam. I've known people with those names and liked them.

My dd uses Khan Academy videos on the days I work. She likes them and doing the mastery quizzes. I don't think it makes a complete program but it is working nicely as a supplement.

I was reading through these and one reminded me of another vacation nightmare. We were spending 5 weeks traveling across the US from our home in NJ, south to TX then north through CO, UT, and WY then back home through SD. We camped most nights (all but two) with our conversion van where dh, dd, and I slept and a tent for the boys. We had gone white water rafting in CO one day and that night ds2 got a stomach virus so we spent the night in a hotel so he'd be close to a toilet. The next day we drove up through CO just before the most northeast corner of UT. It was getting late and there was nothing out there for miles and miles but one tiny little town with no hotel or restaurant...just a few houses and an "over night" campground. We had no choice but to stop. We pulled in and it was obvious many of the people there were not spending one night but lived there at least semi-permanently. The bathrooms were completely foul...swarms of flying bugs, no stall doors or really even stalls, drug paraphernalia (among other things) in the showers, toilets in pieces, and sinks too dirty to even brush one's teeth. We made a quick dinner and while eating the man who managed the campground came over to say, "Hi." The kids were a little frightened because he had a hook in place of one hand and was otherwise rather scary looking...like an old pirate. He was nice and friendly so they were fine once we talked to him. We went to bed early and had the boys sleep in the van on the floor rather than set up the tent. In the night I got the stomach virus. We had a tiny port-a-potty in the van and it was all I could use every hour when I got up sick since there was no way I was going into the campground bathroom...at times I was sitting on that tiny thing and vomiting out the van door. Not only that but two drunken couples came in with a tent and camped next to us and were cursing, yelling, and playing loud music all night long so even if we could've slept between my stomach issues, it was too loud. We got up with the sun and left.

One year when traveling to Cavan, Ireland we were given the name of a woman to contact for a bed and breakfast during the All Ireland festival. Our qualifying competition was held after all the Ireland qualifiers so there were very limited places left to stay (tens of thousands of people converge on the town during the All Ireland festival). So we went expecting a B&B only to find out it was an elderly couple renting out rooms in their home for the festival. They were lovely people and breakfast was delicious. We even went back to see them our next two years in the same town. But.... We had the hardest time finding the place. Our only directions were for a certain area in town...no street name or house number. I was told, "The mailman knows how to find me." when I asked how to get there. Then when we got to the area of town there were many different streets so I called and the woman said, "Paddy will be at the gate." Uh, there were gates around every home and I had no idea which gate we were looking for on which street and I had no idea who Paddy was. We happened to see someone near a gate on the 2nd street we went down and it was Paddy. LOL The room we stayed in did not have clean sheets...we put bath towels on the pillows and slept in our clothes. They took in more people than they had rooms so one family ended up staying on the living room floor. The bathroom was disgustingly dirty, the shower barely worked, and there was only one small bathroom for all 4 families staying in different rooms...there was one glass in the bathroom that people obviously drank out of (yuck!).

I don't really need another room but about 2 feet added to each side of all the rooms I already have would be just perfect! Maybe I would add on a mudroom/utility room...someplace to come in from outside and store shoes...I never seem to know where to put those in this house and I love those cubby things for putting stuff into like bookbags and shoes and hanging coats.

My 2nd young male driver is taking his written test next week. Mine have done a driver's ed class through their school but it has always been later than their birthday so they study using the materials online and from the motor vehicle agency. In our state 16yo's must have a 6 hour behind the wheel with a licensed instructor (which is not cheap). Adding my oldest to our insurance did not increase it as much as I thought it would but we gave him a really old car that only needed to minimum coverage...if he damages the car it isn't worth much anyway.

I loved that book. Monday, I took dd to hang out with some guys we know in a recording studio and play around with her music with them...everyone being creative and adding this and that. Then we went to an Irish session so she could play Irish music with some of her friends.

Praying for you both. :grouphug:

When dd was younger she made a practice chart every week with what she wanted to accomplish and checked it off each day when she accomplished what was on the list. We used an abacus to keep track of repetitions and only counted repetitions done correctly. She doesn't need the list any more but we still break her practice into chunks throughout the day. She does one chunk first thing in the morning, another before lunch, and the 3rd in the afternoon. Keeping things separated helps her to stay fresh and give her full attention to each.

I like to think of my huge front "lawn" as more of a "meadow." :laugh: I don't think our neighbors have the same attitude. They pay massive amounts of money on weed killers and lawn service. Their lawn looks like a carpet.

I'm with Moxie on all the above. The other thing that bothered me about the episode was the way Glenn got out. We've seen groups of zombies over run fences, over run vehicles, and tear down doors but a group that large couldn't take down sick "Super Glenn" (who is so weak he later passes out)? Also, they have been driving all over the place getting supplies for almost two years. How did they never run into Terminus before this? They can't have walked all that far since the prison was over run especially with kids and stopping for the night.

We used to live on a small lake where the kids could fish, canoe, catch frogs and tadpoles, and watch the geese and swans come in to breed every year. We live in a pretty nice location within driving distance for a day trip to Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington D.C. which allows us to attend cultural events (mostly Irish...we've also attended many ceilidh) and visit national monuments and historical sites. We also can spend a day at the beach or go fishing in lakes, ponds, bay, or ocean (or crabbing) and are close enough to forests to enjoy them.

I have 3 of my favorite childhood stuffed animals. One is an old teddy bear...my first stuffed animal ever given to me by my grandmother when I was born and it sits on a shelf with antiques. The other two are from when I was closer to a teen and they are in my daughter's room sitting on her dresser.

I will take along any special items my kids want to eat along the way (healthy snacks) and something I baked for our hosts. We get groceries while there and one night cook for our hosts. There are 5 of us and I don't expect anyone putting us up to feed us every meal. Most of our family members do not have the extra money to afford to feed an extra 5 people unless it's just a night or two.