I would go because by now they have probably ordered catering and such and because you will continue to have a professional relationship with this person after the party. If you decline, there should be an excuse involving specific reasons. An unexpected obligation in your husband's schedule, perhaps? And of course send the gift anyway. A velvet skirt (I'm assuming it's a dark solid color), solid color silk or similar material shirt, fancy up-do hair & classy make-up, simple jewelry (I get costume jewelry at Goodwill all the time) and nice formal shoes. It doesn't take much to make a velvet skirt formal.

Check out this guy's creative commons info-sheet style of music theory summaries. If you studied all the topics mentioned and combined this with some deeper reading/googling of terms involved you could quite easily take out a semester or two of undergrad basic music theory. As a neat addition, his website (take the page address below and delete everything after ".com" has some resources for Braille readers. http://tobyrush.com/theorypages/index.html My quibbles: I can't stand all-caps and it's hard for my boys to read (but they are pretty young). I would love more links. Audio must MUST go with theory imho... But these are a great skeleton to a basic understanding of theory.

24/7 hotline needed ASAP. With the attention span of a curriculum-buying fruit fly, I need to be able to buy things quickly, lest I forget and get mad at myself later. Please spare me this personal abuse and install an answering service who will take all my money in the middle of the night.

We don't have a yard so it's hit or miss. We go to the park and sometimes put out our plastic caution flag guy to play in our communal parking lot driveway. Just think about how many people in the world do not have the luxury of outdoor space. Your kids might like to be out playing, but they will not suffer to do that indoors if that's what works for now. Weather wise, we live in Oregon and are not stopped by rain. We're completely spoiled by temps above 50 almost year round and surprise sunny days mid winter. Snow here is rare and then they REALLY want out. I grew up in Alaska, so my tolerances may be skewed, but I take them out in almost any weather. A sweatshirt and rain slicker do the trick. We keep a ratty towel in the car for slides at parks. We also used to walk or bike 2 miles to swimming 3x a week. I need to get back to that.

The steering we do involves mostly the big picture. I am hard wired to steer, so I have decided I better at least give them freedom to figure out where they want to go and then they can use my advice when they get there. 1. Specialize 2. Be ready for auxiliary careers and careers within careers. Try not to get set for just one version. 3. Consider how your job can serve your life (schedules, level of autonomy vs control, pay) 4. Even in a dream job work is sometimes work. Prepare to do it anyway, and to show up consistently throughout your life.

Sorry, OP! It feels awful to feel left out. I hope reading all these similar stories and empathetic posts has made you feel a little better. It has for me! FWIW, if I were one of the families you had invited over for dinner, I might not reciprocate because we live in a townhouse and it's hard to have more than a couple of people over at a given time. If somebody invites us to their home, then I might feel awkward inviting them to eat out or whatever. I have had more than one friend with a really crazy house (messy, animals, just not a public space, etc.) and maybe some of those families had that going on, too. To truly have a friendship where husbands, kids and moms all match enough to hang all together seems exceedingly rare. I really liked the advice of making your own groups and even better the advice about finding friends through mutual interests outside of your children. I totally (TOTALLY) get that it's hard with little ones, but maybe connecting with some kind of a group even a few times a year can lay a foundation for you to build on later. In my short 4 years of hs'ing so far, I think a lot of moms assume they have nothing in common with me as soon as I tell them we're homeschoolers. Some feel like we are somehow superior and start justifying their school choices, some are incredulous that we would ever choose to hs. Most of the stories you told seem to involve hs'ers, but even within that there are a lot of little divisions. Perhaps you haven't quite found the rich vein of kindred spirits in your available groups. I think the folks telling you not to pay attention to who initiates but to focus on the quality of the friendship once it's organized are spot on.

I didn't have a tv until I got married. Now we use it to watch Netflix and to play things for our memory work from Youtube. We also put music playlists on it through our iTunes. I cannot wait to have a house where we have a separate room for the tv and our general living space. I am 100% certain my "collateral watching" while my husband puts things on will go down by a lot.

Oops, I posted before you nm'ed. Hope it all resolved well.

I'm so sorry! What a bummer for your child and for you. I can totally see that kind of thing happening to my DS8 or DS6, in fact we have had similar things happen. I think you should tell the mom. Email's okay but remember to emphasize the least aggressive/ most kind tone of voice first and last. I would simply start out be asking if her LG9 mentioned anything about this evening's events with the older boy and your son. Then I would probably write a bit about not wanting to be a tattler but that you so deeply respect her parenting that you think she would want to know, as you yourself would, about this in order to help her daughter navigate well. If she has been kind to your son in the past, couldn't it be the influence of this older boy? I had a cousin like that. She taught me my first sailor-words and convinced us to pick all my super proper grandma's neighbor's irises. By the roots. And then give them to our moms. Not cool, man. Not saying it's all that other boy's fault, but who knows what the dynamics are. I bet her mom would want to know! In terms of parenting this one between you and your children, the times we've had a similar situation with our boys we aim for empathy and for taking the personal insult out of it. We often compare it to times they have been unkind to one another. Sometimes children do things that are a mistake, a sin, mean. In truth, we all do. They might even be encouraged to imagine a situation where they could be tempted to be mean to somebody or laugh at somebody who is not part of their group. It really has nothing to do with the teased kid. It is much more about the mini-bullies and their need to belong, to experiment socially, or their need to feel cool. Actually, the thing I find most surprising about this is that they called him to come when you were standing right there. Seems like an awfully bold move, and I would hazard a guess that LG9 and that other boy are worse together than alone.

We start around 9:30 and almost always go after lunch. It's easier to do some of the spelling/grammar type things when the 1 year old is napping, and I've started having them do one chore per day in their school time. With music practice and 30 minutes of reading they go until an hour or more past lunch. Later still on swimming days.

If you can find an aquarium shop in your area, they will test your water for free and give you advice. Maybe even Petco or whatever similar shops you have will do that. They will probably also tell you to buy more fish than is wise (I've learned a 10 gallon is tiny and that means the chemistry can go sideways very quickly) and they might sell you fish that grow way too big for a 10 gallon (like goldfish). So take advice from a big box store with a grain of salt, but they might be able to help test the water. We just got this kit: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000255NCI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ...and at the time it was on sale for less than $15. Maybe if you shop around? I've been told that the paper tests do not work, and to get the test tube kind. It seems more justifiable as "science" for our curriculum that way. :-) Sorry about the tetra. Hope that tough betta hangs in there.

Depending how old your daughter is, the tank could be a great hs lesson. I'm really sorry about her first batch of fish. That must be so disappointing. We have just bought, set up and stocked our first tank, a 10 gallon like yours. It took weeks before we added any fish and even then by their standards we were pushing it. I used this site a lot (the link is to their excellent article on the Nitrogen cycle in tanks): http://www.fishlore.com/NitrogenCycle.htm There is a great thread here about mistakes the experts on that board made early on with their fish. If your daughter is old enough, maybe it would be encouraging to her to know that the experts started with a steep learning curve as well: http://www.fishlore.com/fishforum/freshwater-beginners/9081-early-mistakes.html Perhaps you and she can set up a chart for checking the water and noting when they're fed, cleaned, etc. It would be a shame for her to end with discouragement. I hope she catches her stride soon- it's so neat she wanted and bought it herself. Because they died so quickly, it sounds to me like a chemical imbalance rather than the ich taking them out. (Except maybe the Betta...?) If you have a good water conditioner and stress coat, I think the advice to change out 50% of the water is good.

I'm thinking about looking into this for myself (Fulbright Scholars program), to China, involving music. If anyone has completed the application process for something arts related, I would LOVE to chat.

I think I've read it, but it's a little hard to remember... ha. This one's supposed to be pretty good. I had it in my Amazon cart for a long while and then realized I didn't really have time to read it. http://www.amazon.com/The-Memory-Book-Classic-Improving/dp/0345410025/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_z

Wow, thanks, Helena!!!

We have gone to schmancier neighborhoods from time to time. It was fun because so did a WHOLE lot of other kids, and because that particular neighborhood really did it up right in terms of decorations. We didn't notice a big difference in the candy, but it's not only about the candy. We are also those horrible people who buy off our kids from their candy. They can eat some of it today, and they can pick 5 or so to keep. The rest we trade for cold hard cash and they love it. Last year I did keep it (mostly I shoved it in the pantry and then forgot) and threw one their way every once in a while. Other years we've sent it to my husband's work or I've brought it to rehearsals. My kids are pretty polite in everyday life, but it takes a lot of work for something as weird as halloween that comes so few times throughout childhood. Here is all the stuff we said tonight, and said more than once: Don't ring the doorbell a jillion times just because you're all jacked up on Skittles. Don't step zombie-like into the house with your gaze trapped by the shiny bowl- let them offer you the goodies without crowding their game. Don't walk across the lawns but take the sidewalks to the next door instead. (It's all squishy here and they leave footprints in the landscaping.) You get what you get and don't be prissy about it. Only look in the next kid's bowl to make sure they have at least as much as you. The first rule of the mom-buys-my-candy club is don't talk about the mom-buys-my-candy club. I'm still tired, and I didn't even think to add "Say trick or treat" to that. They did usually say (okay, shout) "HI! WE LIKE YOUR PUMPKINS!!!!" or whatever. And they are good about thanking everybody, but since their one year old sister likes to holler "BYE!" at volumes that can be heard by passing jet planes I can't guarantee they were always heard. We stayed in our (80 unit) townhome complex tonight and saw exactly zero other trick-or-treaters. About 1/3 of the porch lights left on did not answer, which was totally a bummer but there were just enough to keep the kids trucking on.

When my eldest was one he got eleventy million presents at my inlaws house. It overwhelmed him so much that he burst into tears. So you are giving him the gift of an age appropriate holiday. And that is a very nice gift.

Bigtent's not bad.

Is she one on one with the kids, or is there always another adult in the room? (Can't imagine adults being alone with kids in this day & age but it happens in smaller churches...) If she's never alone with them I would maybe consider it. If she is saying these things in front of the kids, that is damaging and would be a deal breaker. They understand more than it seems even when they're very young. Bummer that her boss didn't listen. So many nurseries are hard up for help. I would not talk to other parents unless you think they may have input for you and even then it's a fine line between gathering information and pumping information out in the community. If she is staying and you are staying, then you may have to find a work-around. It feels like forever right now, but a few years of "plan B" for the nursery is live-able.

I've had my GP's office fax the neurosurgeon's office- I didn't realize it was as easy as that until I just called them directly to find out what constitutes a referral. The PA there who answered the phone said, "Why not have a neurosurgeon take a look at the MRI and hear from the horse's mouth what exactly is going on?" My sentiments exactly. And yes, we're done with the GP. It's too bad, I liked her in person but it's been a nightmare to get ahold of her or ask questions. Feeling reassured.

Loowit, I am looking at her office webpage right now! She's massively unlikely to win, it being Oregon and her being not-liberal. I'm calling her now. Another friend of a friend also recommended her office. Thank you!

Thanks, all! Wow, I did not expect so many responses! Such a pleasant surprise this morning. Thank you all. We have already sent the MRI cd to a specialist in Ohio (though we live in Oregon). If we don't hear from him within a week or so, I'll see about taking it locally to a neurosurgeon (good catch, Wapiti- I meant neurosurgeon). The best one in Oregon is apparently busy running for senate, but there's a sizeable center for this in Seattle. I will research again if there are any other specialists at OHSU or the other local children's hospital. Like I said, the GP said it was completely normal but that does not sound right to me. The report says "Conus terminates at the L2-L3 level with fatty infiltration of the filum terminale". It also mentioned a fibrous infiltration. Because it's just the radiology report there is not a diagnosis. All of these responses have given me new confidence to push forward on this. Thanks again. (Edited to eliminate redundancy.)