Or Los Angeles. For my dd's 15th birthday a couple of years ago, we went to LA AG Place, and took two other 14yo girls with us. They all brought their dolls (that they had had since they were 8yo or so). It was so dang cute. :) It was a weekday, so the restaurant wasn't very crowded, but everybody else had very young children. One mom stopped by to say how sweet she thought it was that these teenagers would still bring their dolls to the cafe. Gets me all teary-eyed to think about it. All that to say - I think you should get the AG dolls if you can afford it. As others have said, they will probably have the dolls forever and they will have some great memories.

I will try doing his assignment tomorrow. I sure hope it doesn't take me 3 hours. :D

Here is my freshman's schedule, which caused him to do schoolwork for several hours yesterday: German - 45 minutes/day of Rosetta Stone Geometry - approx. 15 problems/day. This takes HOURS. I think it should take no more than 1.25 hours. English - He is in a 1 hour class 2x a week. There is homework 4 days a week, which I think should take 45-60 minutes. Usually a chapter or two of reading, a little vocab work, or writing or revising a paragraph. (they will move into essays later, and I think the homework gets worse). Bible - He is in a 1.5 hour class 1 day a week, plus a short daily lesson (15-20 minutes max) Piano - He is in a 45-minute lesson 1 day a week, he also practices 5 days for 45 minutes. Biology - he is taking this from an outside teacher. 1 day a week is a 2.5 hr class. The other 4 days is assigned homework, which I think the teacher expects to take up to an hour a day. AP Human Geography - daily assignments (including discussion) should take 45-60 minutes per day. So if I add this up - it should be about 6 hours a day, which I think is not bad. The day with the bio class will be a little longer. The biggest problem is he stretches geometry out to 2-3 hours. Then after I grade it - he spends another hour re-doing the missed problems. Argh. His other activities/interests are Ham radio, Royal Rangers at church (meets every 2 weeks; not a lot of outside work has been assigned this year yet), and going to the gym.

My 14yo ds is a freshman this year. We told him when the school year started that high school is the real deal - no more mr. nice mom. To emphasize the importance in his mind, he doesn't get any computer time during the week, until all of his assignments are done by Friday night. Well, all of his assignments were NOT done. He got up this morning and did his yardwork...and after that, other than a lunch break, he has been doing schoolwork ALL DAY. It's gonna be a long year.

I think it would be hard to live at what the Census Bureau considers poverty level in the US. But, I have been reading a lot lately about the definition of poverty. In Asia and Africa, many suffer in what's called "extreme poverty" - they literally don't know where their next meal is coming from. Their kids don't go to school (there is no school). They die from easily preventable & treatable diseases that we don't even have in the Western world. They own only the clothes (rags) on their back, and might not even have a pair of shoes. The next level of poverty is also found in the developing world. These poor people have enough to get by, but not to get ahead. They *might* have access to a school for their children. But they probably don't have any running water or electricity or a myriad of other things we find to be necessities of life. In the Western world (US & Europe) we have the third level of poverty. Our poor have enough food to eat (they are, in fact, overweight or obese at a much higher rate than higher-income families). They have roofs over their heads, with running water, electricity, and possibly cable TV. Their children go to school. They can get health care services. I'm not trying to minimize the difficulties of being low-income in America. We have been unemployed and poor and on WIC - it was degrading. And I guess this is off the topic. But I just find it sad that we use the same word - poverty - to describe the state of 14.6% of lower-income Americans, and the state of desperate, abject poverty suffered by the poor in Mexico City or Bangladesh. (The three books I have read on this topic in the last month are: Revolution in World Missions by K.P. Yohannan, The End of Poverty by J. Sachs, and The Hole in Our Gospel by R. Stearns.)

I decided to try to rub the skins off because I tried eating a few with the skins and they were yuck. I put on an audiobook and sat at the kitchen counter for 20 minutes. I got a huge bowl of 1/2 cup! :001_huh: I tossed the unpeeled ones, and am adding my little 1/2 cup to a curry dish tonight. Before I throw away the rest of the dried bag, I'll ask around to see if any of my friends want them.

I don't like it, but have read that it is now generally accepted.

Good idea. :) I had searched on "chickpeas" and didn't come up with anything, so I just went back and searched on "chickpeas with skin". It looks like they are edible, but some don't like the texture, AND they have a more gas-producing effect than peas without the skin. Bummer. I don't have time or inclination to rub the skin off as some people do. I guess I'll send some through the food processor to see what kind of hummus they make.

I hate the changes, too. It used to be so easy to search by ingredient. I was looking for a specific peanut-butter brownie recipe the other day. It came up with more than 300, and I couldn't search by ingredient. I gave up - didn't have time to open 300 recipes to find the right one.

I bought a 5# sack of organic chickpeas from a co-op. Imagine my surprise when I opened the bag to find tiny (less than half the size of what I'm used to), reddish-brown balls. At first I thought they were a different color than normal, but I discovered the color is because they have a skin on them. I soaked for a full day and then cooked in my pressure cooker, wondering if (hoping) the skins would fall off. They didn't - most are still firmly attached. I had planned on using these for hummus, but I don't think that would work now. I'm not even sure I want to try them in my favorite chickpea stew recipe. Help! What am I supposed to do with these?

Thank you both. I'm relieved, and hope it works that way here.

I almost always check books out from the library on my own card - the kids used to use their own, but it got too hard to track the different due dates on different cards. So apparently we checked a book out earlier this summer that I didn't see was due on my account - because it was on my son's account. It was due several weeks ago. I just looked it up online, and it's no longer "due" - it's shown as lost, with the price of the book charged to our account, along with a lost book processing charge. I'm too embarrassed to ask the librarian this...If I return the book now, what should I owe? $28 for the book plus $5 to process a replacement book doesn't seem right if they have the book back in their possession. 6 weeks overdue fees are closer to $10. I'd be happy to pay the $10 for my idiocy, but if they are going to still charge me $33, then I will keep the book since I paid for it! Anybody know what standard procedure is? Since I'm embarrassed, perhaps I can use my cell phone to call anonymously. :)

Ditto! My dd was feverish with swine flu, and literally too ill to get up from bed on the first Monday of the semester. Luckily she had had that instructor the previous semester, so she managed to e-mail and leave a phone message letting her know, and the prof said it was fine. On Tuesday, she had a different class...she was feeling much better, and although we probably shouldn't have done it, we allowed her to go to class. If she hadn't - she would have been summarily dropped from the class, period, no questions asked. She said there were kids standing there waiting for spots in the class - the prof took roll - and announced the number of spots available to people waiting, based on the number of students who hadn't shown up. This was at a California community college, where the budget cuts have made getting classes quite an ordeal. If she were a student at a private college, I imagine I'd just go the route of sending an email and phone call to the prof.

I wish it covered more than one college, too. At this un-named university in the Midwest (why not named?) 19% of the students attended a Catholic high school...and 68% of the homeschoolers identify themselves as Catholic. So his research covers only a very specific demographic group. So at best, the research proves that Catholic homeschoolers from the Midwest do better in college than their public or private school counterparts.

OK, these were late '80s so not exactly from my childhood, but...for some reason I thought the National Lampoon's Vacation series was appropriate for my young children. I brought home European Vacation before our big European vacation in 2003 - my kids were 7 and 10 - there was a topless girl in it! We didn't finish watching that one... Not having learned my lesson, a couple of years later I decided we *must* watch Christmas Vacation. Clark really has a potty mouth in that one. At least my kids were older, and at least there was no nudity. We still watch that one most every December, and it is a running joke that I always say to the kids, "Well, now I remember why this one is rated PG-13!"

My dh and I are trying to decide where to keep college money for our kids (most of it a gift from a relative) - whether we should keep it in our name, or the kids' names. The plus side we've considered is that by transferring it to the kids, any investment income earned would be taxed at their rate which is lower than ours (it wouldn't be enough income to trigger the kiddie tax). The cons are: Money in the kids' names adds to the EFC for financial aid considerations, and, Our kids could decide to take the money when they turn 18 and buy a Mini Cooper. :) Anything else we should consider? It's not a huge amount of money so I don't know if it really matters!

That is a good point. I don't think my 9th grader will be too discouraged, even though the math will cover things he doesn't know. When my kids have taken tests that are designed to go beyond what they have learned, I have always warned them about it so they won't get discouraged. So I will be sure to do that with ds for the PSAT.

All of us here like Ken Burns. But...we admit they can get a little slow. My kids do like to make fun of his movies because of a Jimmy Neutron episode in which Miss Fowl shows an 80-hr Ken Burns documentary about Egypt: "Sand...so much sand..." :D

I second this recommendation. Even if you can't use a free trial, it would be worth it to pay for a month or two. My dd took algebra in 8th grade. We were with a charter school who wouldn't give her credit for high school algebra 1 unless she passed a "challenge" test in 9th grade. So midway through her 9th-grade year, she went through Aleks Algebra 1 in about a month, and passed the challenge test with flying colors.

Another vote for "take it"! My ds will be taking it this year as a freshman. It's so inexpensive, so for us it's definitely worth it to get the practice environment.

I'm glad he got both classes! As far as getting a better registration time with the 9 credits...Fall semester classes won't count for spring semester registration, which is a bummer. FC only counts hours completed, so for spring registration, which opens before fall classes are complete, only classes complete through summer semester will be added.

If he is still dual-enrolled, he won't get priority registration no matter how many credits he has. Get him to the very next CHSPE test so he can register as a "real" student!

This. Our lawn mower is in the shop right now. I am dreading the call from them, telling me how much it will be to repair...when a new one would not have been much money. :( But I just felt it ought to be repaired since it was not too old, and our first married lawnmower lasted 16 years.

Thank you! We have very hard water and I'm constantly cleaning faucets with vinegar; using bottled water in my Keurig, etc. I hadn't even though about what it might be doing to the hot water heater. Another project for hubby. :)

I thought about using them for that, but we have a library near us with a very active used book shop. I can usually find classics we're looking for there for 50 cents. So I don't want to waste my PBS credits. Maybe I will look into selling them as another poster suggested - I hadn't known about that.