Me, too, all the above. I'd like to skip all of November and December. Sorry you feel like this. :grouphug:

I'm listening to - One Second After by William R. Forstchen It's pretty good! It kept me up last night!! "New York Times best selling author William R. Forstchen now brings us a story which can be all too terrifyingly real...a story in which one man struggles to save his family and his small North Carolina town after America loses a war, in one second, a war that will send America back to the Dark Ages...A war based upon a weapon, an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP). A weapon that may already be in the hands of our enemies. Months before publication, One Second After has already been cited on the floor of Congress as a book all Americans should read, a book already being discussed in the corridors of the Pentagon as a truly realistic look at a weapon and its awesome power to destroy the entire United States, literally within one second. It is a weapon that the Wall Street Journal warns could shatter America. In the tradition of On the Beach, Fail Safe and Testament, this book, set in a typical American town, is a dire warning of what might be our future...and our end."

I listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks on my iphone and I am always catching the daggoned headphone wires on things and ripping them out of my ears. I thought maybe a bluetooth headset would be a good idea, but I have no idea what brand or what to look for. I don't care about using them for answering calls. I just want to be able to put my phone down and not have to worry about wires catching on things and listen to books while cooking or cleaning.

I'm using it with my 9 yo. I had problems with it at first, but if you just keep following the lesson plan you start to figure it out. One lesson takes two weeks to complete and some of it can be done orally. MP is working on DVDs for Fable; they sent me the first one which is still in Beta testing. The DVD is fairly helpful, but the Teacher's Guide is very thorough so the DVDs aren't all that necessary imho. The Teacher's Guide also explains how to use Fable with a 7th grader and above who is new to Classical Comp.

I was contemplating an online course. Thanks for the review!

Oh, I was just looking around on the site yesterday and I didn't know she had podcasts. I'll go back and look. Thanks!

Thanks, I'll check it out!

Doodler and Colleen, Thank you for the great advice! I am feeling so much better right now! Thank you thank you thank you!

Sure, why not? Someone has to take our drink orders!

just what I was thinking. Painting, done well, is expensive.

HAHAHAHA!!! Love it!!!

Writing instruction has become the BANE of my homeschooling career!! My 22 yo dd was homeschooled. I was pretty new to homeschooling and I never put much emphasis on LA besides reading and spelling. She loved reading and she also liked journaling and dabbling in poetry but we never did any formal writing instruction. No outlining, no book reports and no essays. She is a junior at a good state school pursuing a degree in early childhood education. She has maintained a 3.8 gpa even though she had to learn note taking and composition skills on the fly in college. Then I learned about TWTM and I started reading the forums. I learned about FLL and WWE and WWS and Writing Strands and IEW and BraveWriter and Classical Composition and a myriad of other programs. I began to plan and plot and worry .... My ds, 13, will be the end of me. I've used IEW, WS, WWS and he fights it ALL the way. He's got a great voice and tremendous vocabulary and will type out a 2 or 3 page paper on anything having to do with Japan. But if I ask for a report on something he's read or a book report or a compare and contrast it's like pulling teeth. When we did IEW he could NOT follow along with the SWI dvd even though I did it along side him and stopped the dvd when he needed more time. He constantly questioned everything Andrew said on the dvds. "Why do I have to have x amount of dress-ups? I know how to use -ly words, what do they want me to do? this doesn't make sense" .... and on and on. I'm tired of tossing and turning all night worrying about how badly I'm ruining his life by not teaching him composition skills.

:iagree: Exactly! But, it's not for everyone.

#5 was the worst labor I ever had and dh and I decided we were done. We didn't do anything permanent until I found out I was pregnant with #6 :D Dh got a vas. while I was pregnant because we both knew that we were done. I was SO upset when I found out about #6 that I cried for days! But I can not tell you what a blessing she is!! God knew I needed her and I have peace about being done. I have 2 grandkids that don't feel like grandkids because they are very close in age to my 9 yo., grand-ds is 8 and grand-dd is 10. They all have a great time together but they feel more like my dc. So, I'm looking forward to more grand-dc in a few years!

I'm leaving for a nice sunny location on the beach from the day before Thanksgiving until the day after Christmas! Tropical breezes, drinks with tiny umbrellas, somebody cooking for me, maybe a massage and a pedicure! No cooking Thanksgiving dinner for two days and no Christmas shopping or wrapping presents! All I need is lots of money and a clone of myself! How hard can that be? Hurry, let's go before the kids find out! ;) :driving: :party::cheers2:

True, it seems like your brother is trying to do the right thing and not make life difficult for his son. This isn't an isolated incident with these people, though. They all are really dysfunctional and detached. I sometimes wonder if they would act the same about boys? Maybe because they are daughters and granddaughters? Dh said he and his brother were treated WAY better than the 3 sisters. The sisters weren't even allowed to learn to drive. Dh treated our dd different than he treated ds but I brought it to his attention and he's made an effort not to do that anymore. I think it's ingrained in that family that girls just aren't as valuable as boys. It's sad. I feel bad for all 3 of dh's sisters.

Agree with everyone here! Follow their advice. Just wanted to add that 2 of my dd's had their wisdom teeth out. DD #1 had a bad time, the anesthesia made her sick and she was miserable for a week, but that's the way she is about EVERYthing ;). DD #2 sailed right through and had no problems and went out that night with her friends.

He was ordered to pay child support and the money was taken out of his paycheck. Yep, not one person stood up for her. From what I observed, the father was not very loving or very attached. I believe him when he says the girl wanted the mom's new husband as her father, but what 9 year old understands a decision like that? His attitude was "fine, you don't want me then I don't want you!". Very childish imho. Her mother made things pretty messy and complicated but you don't just abandon a child whether or not they are yours biologically. And I still don't understand why they have no contact with 2 other granddaughters that live close by. The mother (of the 2 daughters) lives with her parents (the grandparents of the girls). No one in that family asks questions! I ask dh why his parents don't see them and he says he doesn't know. I had no idea what I was marrying into.

It seems to be par for the whole family. No one kept in touch with the brother's daughter or the sister's 2 daughters. My in-laws were pretty .... um .... uncaring? detached? self-centered? It's mind boggling to me. Every now and then dh brings ds over to visit with his parents. When I ask ds how it went he always says "wow, I try to have a conversation with them but there's no give and take, they just talk 'at' people and it's just one-sided".

Maybe, but the "new" dad didn't last long, 2 years I think. The mom is on marriage #5. I have two grandkids and I would want to visit them no matter who they lived with or called "dad". You know?

I honestly don't think there was too much more to the story. Dh's family is very dysfunctional. His sister got divorced when her daughters were 7 and 9, the husband got custody. She took a job in a state 10 hours away and I was the only one who told her that was a bad idea if she wanted a relationship with her daughters. She was gone for 3 years and now her ex rarely lets her see her daughters. The daughters ACTUALLY don't want to see her. I can't even imagine. On top of all that ..... THE GRANDPARENTS .... my inlaws, have NEVER tried to see them! I'm pretty sure that grandparents have visitation rights but these people could care less. How are these people so detached from their children and grandchildren???!!!

I got everything second hand, but supposedly the daughter wanted the mom's new hubby to her father and bil was fine with it. He didn't want a custody battle and had his hands full with the "new" wife and kids.

Dh's family is the weirdest family I've ever known. His parents and all 5 siblings live within 30 minutes of each other and NO ONE visits anyone. My kids refer to their grandparents as "dad's parents", never ever gramma or grampa. When we first married I invited them over quite a few times and they never referred to me by my name or anything else for that matter. I really think something is wrong with them but I can't figure it out.

Dh's brother married a woman and they had a daughter. They were both pretty young and dumb and ended up divorcing after 3 years. The mom was neglectful and bil ended up with custody until she was 7 and then they had joint custody. The bil remarried and had two more dc, then the mom remarried and told the bil that the girl wasn't his but never proved it. The mom wanted to move to another state with the dd and her new dh. Bil let her go without a fight and hasn't seen her in 12 years, she is now 21. He tells people that she isn't his and no one in that entire family talks about her. She was/is a granddaughter and a niece and they never mention her. My dh and his family just shrug it off like she was never there. I just don't understand how a child can be in your life for 9 years and you just let her go. Even if it turned out that bil wasn't the bio-dad, he at least thought he was for 9 years. Is this weird to you? The reason I've been thinking about this is that she is back in our town.

Do a search for Rosetta Stone on the boards. My kids hated Rosetta Stone and so did I. It was a huge waste of money. They learned way more from Mango Languages which was free from our library.