Thanks for the replies! They have given me a clearer picture of how K12 works. We were looking at 7th, 5th, 3rd, and 2nd.

Thank you, MarkT. I noticed what you quoted on the website, but was wondering if anyone had any good/bad experiences with the independent version of K12 and could give me first hand experience. I appreciate you responding! :)

My husband and I are looking to switch gears with our homeschool method, and have been looking into K12. I know it mainly as the online virtual academies, but there is an independent option. Our question is: if we buy this, is it mainly online (like the virtual school option), but we are just doing it without the K12 teacher oversight, etc, or do they send us books, too? Basically, we would like to know how much time is spent online, and how much is spent with the books? Do the children have to write out things, or is it all online and multiple choice? Thanks!

Awww, congratulations! He is a sweetie.

So glad you found a place where you feel at home! :)

TeacherMom, I am so sorry you had to deal with that! Each one of these stories I hear just makes me so upset that PPD isn't banned already! There have to be hundreds, if not thousands of stories of reactions from that. My reaction was pretty mild, but it was just from doing a strand test with hair on my head, just a small 1/4" or so section... I can only imagine how it would've been if I'd ignored the advice to do the strand and allergy test and had plunked it all on my hair at once! The horrible thing is the allergy test did not have a reaction, but I got one from the strand test. If I had just done the allergy test first, as is advised on the box, and the strand test with some hair from my brush, I wouldn't have known I reacted until I put it all on. :glare: I sure learned my lesson, and will not mess with it! It is in the trash now. I can live with a few white hairs until I do enough research as to what will work best for me. Thanks for posting!

April, do you use the blond or a light color of Natural Instincts? I searched the ingredients, and the PPD is in all but the 002 Sahara, Light Blonde color.

Oh my! I am so sorry your daughter had to deal with that. It is simply irresponsible that the USA has not yet banned PPD in products! Thank you for posting. It sure helped me and hopefully will help others in the future.

I've been reading up on henna and think I might take the plunge and see how it works for me. I do not have a ton of white hairs yet, *but* they have that nasty habit of sticking straight up or coiling out at odd angles and it just bugs me! LOL

I bet you're right- not permanent would mean less PPD, which would in turn mean less of a reaction. I can't imagine what it would've been like had I used permanent hair dye this time! When I dyed my hair back in high school, it was permanent dye...

I'm like you, Shawna, in that I used to color my hair, then stopped, then tried it again just a couple days ago. I colored my hair red a couple times in high school, but then stopped. I never had any sort of weird tingling or reaction back then. So, let's see...That was 18 years ago (gasp). Now, I try it again, and weird reaction. Did I get sensitized to PPD back then and now it will cause me trouble? On another note, I have noticed over the years I have become sensitive to fragrances. Sometimes it's hard to walk down the detergent aisle or the air freshner/Glade type candle aisle. It will give me a headache. I can stand certain scents of, say, Bath and Body Works, but others make me get choked up. I am thinking it probably goes hand in hand with the hair dye reaction...

Barb, I checked the link you gave for Clairol Nice n Easy, and I think it *does* have PPD in it. I copied the light brown ingredients and highlighted what I think is the PPD, but all of the colors have that ingredient listed: Clairol Nice 'n Easy Perfect 10 006 Light Brown Ingredients Nice 'n Easy High Gloss Color Creme: Shade 6 Water, Ammonium Carbonate, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Glycinate, Cetearyl Alcohol, Fragrance, Ceteth-10 Phosphate, Dicetyl Phosphate, Resorcinol, Erythorbic Acid, p-Phenylenediamine, Sodium Hydroxide, Sodium Sulfite, m-Aminophenol, Xanthan Gum, 2-Methylresorcinol, N,N-Bis (2-Hydroxyethyl)-p-Phenylenediamine Sulfate, 1-Naphthol, EDTA, p-Aminophenol Nice 'n Easy Color Activating Creme: Water, Hydrogen Peroxide, Acrylates Copolymer, Ceteareth-25, Steareth-100, Acrylates/Steareth-20 Methacrylate Copolymer, Etidronic Acid, Disodium EDTA, Simethicone Nice 'n Easy ColorSeal Intensive Conditioning Creme: included with Shades 2, 4, 4G, 4R, 5, 5A, 5G, 5R, 6, 6A, 6C, 6G, 6R, 6WN, 6.5A Water, Stearyl Alcohol, Amodimethicone, Cetyl Alcohol, Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine, Glutamic Acid, Fragrance, Benzyl Alcohol, Dicetyldimonium Chloride, EDTA, Trimethylsiloxysilicate, Methylchloroisothiazolinone, Methylisothiazolinone

Yes! It was darker hair dye... It's the Light Natural Brown. I read and read about the PPD in hair dye the night it started to tingle on my head. So, you think it was a reaction? I wonder if it'd get worse. :confused: I wonder what is different about the Clairol Nice and Easy? I will check that out...

I have noticed some white hairs on my head lately. I am 36, and wanted to try out some hair dye, so I picked up some Garnier Herbashine that washes out in 28 shampoos and is close to my hair color. I'd seen that you can do a strand test with hair still on your head, and not have to hack a piece off, so I decided to do that. I mixed up a tiny portion of the the dye and activator and, using latex gloves, rubbed it all into that portion of my hair then set the timer for 10 mins. After, I rinsed and rinsed it out. I did try to to use a blow dryer a bit since it was very late at night when I attempted this and didn't want to go to bed with a wet patch of hair. :) I also dabbed a tiny bit of the mixture behind my one ear, opposite the section of hair I used for the strand test. I noticed after all this was done and I was sitting at the computer that the side where I did the strand test was tingly. I also noticed the weird feeling began to move to another part of my head. I went to bed and in the morning noticed I still had the weird, tingly feeling on my head. It was like when I'd used this peppermint conditioner on my hair a long time ago, or when you put medicated chapstick on-that kind of tingle. The feeling kept moving around to different parts of my head, but the allergy test patch didn't show any irritation/bubbling/weirdness. :confused: To top it off, my cheeks felt tingly and so did my lips! I was beginning to think it was all in my head, but read up on adverse reactions to hair dye and decided to take some Zyrtec allergy medicine to calm down whatever was going on. After that day had passed, I felt normal again. Has this ever happened to anyone here? I still have the box of hair dye and part of me wants to do another strand test on my head to see if it happens again. Then again, that would probably be really foolish, right? If I did have a reaction to this, then where does that leave me? Should I not use any boxed hair dyes? Would henna be an option? I read that you can use henna and indigo together to dye hair brown.

:grouphug::grouphug:

It will just be my dh, me and our 6 children. Dh is going to deploy soon, so we're going to do a sort of combined Thanksgiving and Christmas this year so that dh can be involved in Christmas. We'll have the kids open their presents from us to them, put up the tree, watch Polar Express and eat a small Thanksgiving meal. No travel! :001_smile:

:iagree:

:iagree: Also, I've found that you must use a moisturizer if your skin is at all dry and really let it sink in before you put this stuff on. Otherwise, it can look cakey.

I am... herbalgirl :)

How do you get on it? It says I have to sign up for an invite. :confused:

You could also buy a flea comb (it actually looks exactly like those combs they give for babies in the hospital, LOL) and go outside and comb the cats' fur. Concentrate on the top of head, neck, back. If they have fleas, you should see flea "dirt", which is dried blood left behind (gag, gag) and sometimes an actual flea or two (or more) stuck in the comb. That would be cheaper than the meds right off the bat, then you'd know whether or not you had to buy any.

Wow! That is so neat. :D

We loved that show, too, and thought it was well done.

Praying for your whole family. :grouphug:

Thanks for the suggestions! I was told by several people that if we're looking into getting a 12 passenger van, we might as well get a 15 passenger, as there would be more space in the back. Any thoughts to that? I've read about some concerns w/15 passenger vans and safety...