Unless we have an appointment to keep, I generally let them sleep until they naturally wake up. The only exception has been my oldest who would become nocturnal if left to her own devices. Since the rest of our family operates on daylight hours, it wouldn't work well for her to be waking up as we went to sleep. I usually made her get up by 10 or 11. She's an adult now and sets her own hours unless I need her to do something. One of my girls naturally gets up around 7:30. (she's the first of us in bed every night too, around 9-10). One gets up around 9:30. She stays up until around 11 or 12. The nocturnal one is usually awake until the wee hours of the morning, no matter what time she has to get up. This has not affected her ability to show up for class at college, or be at work at 8AM over the summer. She usually crashes at the end of the week and catches up.

We aren't nearly as rigorous as many on this board, but we definitely aren't unschoolers/extremely relaxed. We set a schedule, and we finish texts about 90% of the time. The ones we don't are the ones that have flexibility built in. I expect hard work from my students, and good grades. I definitely am concerned about providing a better academic education than they can get at our public school.

Concurring that she's too young. It seems to me that an motivating interest in their education only really comes when they have a goal that doesn't seem like a lifetime away. To a 4th grader, the end result seems out of reach at this point. A 4th grader can BE interested when there is a subject that they are passionate about. My 4th graders never had such a passion that was school related. My kids began to show an interest when they reached high school. (Honestly, one never really got a general motivation...she just wanted to check boxes while learning every language she could get her hands on. Telling her that math and science would allow her to learn more languages never really worked..lol) My younger two, however, are suddenly very motivated to finish up their last two years well so they can go to a good school and study things they love. That kind of goal/motivation is a foreign concept to most 9 year olds. It'll come with time.

Only one of mine has ventured into self-hair cuts. She was around 3. She and her twin sister had very quietly gotten up before I did one morning. I found them sitting at the little table in the kitchen with glue, paper and scissors. DDM, however wasn't cutting paper. She had crocodile tears rolling down her cheeks and was trying desperately to glue the hair back on. I nearly fell over laughing. She still gets upset when her hair is cut, even though she requests it herself!

"We take each year as it comes, but yes, I plan on homeschooling through high school". To the people that think that I keep them locked in the basement: "Have you SEEN our schedule? I couldn't keep them home if I tried!" Now that I have one graduated and doing well in college, the questions have ground to a halt. I tend to get more comments like "Oh, its great that YOU are doing it, since you are so smart, but I'm really against homeschooling in general. Most parents have no business educating their kids" This is usually from teachers and school officials, which we have a glut of in our family. I usually remind them that I have only graduated from high school, and that the average person CAN in fact do this well.

This is how it is here too. My oldest attracts needy people like a porch light attracts moths. She is an extremely caring person and is kind to everyone she meets. This has put her in a couple of relationships with some very mentally unhealthy people. My biggest job with her, is to keep reminding her that the actions of these people are NOT her responsibility. She had a very good friend that was suicidal and had some severe mental health issues. My fear was that if he ended up being successful at a suicide attempt, that she would somehow blame herself. Their relationship has petered out, and he kind of vanished from her life, so it never escalated to that point. But basically, we talked a lot about mental illness, bad choices, and how to be a friend without assuming responsibility. We also talked a lot about reporting dangerous activity to trusted adults. We've also tried to model what it is like to be strong and have the ability to walk away from a dangerous/unhealthy situation. She has been able to successfully set boundaries in a couple of romantic relationships, and even put a halt to one that began to feel too co-dependent.

Food is probably first. We like expensive food..lol. When we have extra we often go out to eat somewhere nice. Then hobby stuff. Dh loves to have old tractors around to tinker with. I have an art supply fetish. We both like computers, tablets and such. Third would fall under household improvements I guess, but it is more like property improvements. We buy stuff for the garden, trees, gravel, etc.

I agree, it is about priorities. We spend money on "luxury" items too, but they are usually in the form of tech gadgets and tractors. We don't vacation all that often, and our big trip to NYC last year was a huge splurge for us. It was also the last time we'll probably go on a trip with all the kids before they head in different directions. Now our priorities are shifting to more savings and debt reduction. No big vacations in the plans for years to come. (Not to mention becoming a full-time student has put a big damper on that)

We don't really. I have an office/studio space that some of our school stuff lives in, but actual school-work is usually done in their bedrooms or on the couch downstairs. We had dedicated school rooms in a couple of houses, but they ended up just being where we kept our stuff and had the kids' computer. They always preferred schooling somewhere else.

I see someone answered this already :) The only thing I wanted to add is that registering under the umbrella with HomeLife is very easy. You pay your reg. fee, and they will walk you through everything you need to do. They have always been very good at answering any questions I have. Once you get settled in, I can give you some information on co-ops in Knoxville if you need it. There are many different groups and co-ops in the area. And an early welcome to TN!

Oh, and I'm in East TN if you need any info about the area.

We are in TN. We take the second option, under an umbrella. We use Home-Life academy, which does not require a statement of faith. It is online based, so you can use it anywhere in TN. We have to report grades twice a year, report attendance, and list what curriculum we use. This is all done online. We have no testing requirements. I have used them all the way through graduation with no issues. I've also homeschooled in TX which has no regulations, and do not find TN any harder.

I'm smack in the middle of pre-menopause. My periods have lost all sense of "normal" I might have two months of perfectly normal ones, then go for two months with nothing, then have two less than 20 days apart. The amount ranges from normal, to "will I need a transfusion?", to "you call that a period?". My moods are all over the map. Some months I feel EXACTLY like I did when I was pregnant, nausea, fatigue, sore bOOks, the whole 9 yards. My GYN has checked everything out, and assured me that I'm well within the range of normal, and to expect another 3-10 years of this wonderful stage of life. I'm 39, btw....this stuff really can hit some women earlier than 45 :D I POAS when the curiosity gets the better of me...usually after I'm about 2 weeks late.

When mine have taken DE classes, we haven't adjusted anything at home to fit in a semester. She would either take another class at CC the next semester (an extra-curricular? another needed credit?) or she would have a slightly lighter class load the 2nd semester with nothing filling the slot. In the end, the transcript will still show X number of credits. They don't really look at whether you filled every available space with school work. (I hope I'm making sense)

My best seasoned pan? It is the 100 year old small pan I fry eggs in bacon grease in almost daily..lol. It works better than teflon.

I use Spectrum Vegetable Shortening or actual lard. Like the an above poster said, something with a high smoke point, and I prefer something organic (mostly because that is what we try to eat)

This is what I do. Scrub it with salt and cold water. Rinse and wipe out with a cotton rag. Rub it down with a quality vegetable oil or bacon grease. Put it in a 400F oven for around 30-40 minutes. Wipe it out again with a cotton rag. Repeat with the oil and oven if it still looks blotchy. After cooking, wipe out with salt and a rag. Rinse with cold water. My dh has also sand blasted them before seasoning, but not everyone can do that. ETA: I've heard flax seed oil is the best for seasoning, but I'm too cheap.

We use it as a full credit. Our umbrella school also takes it as one credit. We did a little extra lit just as a filler.

I feel a migraine coming on.

Leave it up to the adult child. I moved 4 hours away from home at 16. I stopped going to pretty much all major family events (for more reasons than distance). Trying to make me go to anything would have ended badly. I don't think it is reasonable to ask a new college student to pick up and travel that far for something that she doesn't feel the need to attend.

Tennessee is super easy if you use an umbrella school. We use HomeLife and they pretty much let us do as we wish as long as we report grades/curriculum and attendance.

My then 16 year old moved from a queen to twin with no issues for a similar reason...new room that a queen wouldn't fit comfortably. She was happy with it.

Note the ages of my children below. I can fully appreciate this thread.

Pickles have been canned this year, and my husband did those. I also canned 15 jars of blackberry jam (yum!) I usually can more things, but college happened.

Well, the supplies the art stores get are also shipped by the same companies, so your odds aren't really increased either way. I've had pencils purchased from a nice art supply store with broken cores...I think it is the luck of the draw. <- see what I did there? ;)