Personally, I like the size of the 4 as a phone I carry around in my pocket or wallet... I do WANT a bigger device though, which is why an iPad Mini has been in my wish list for over a year. (And a 64G refurbished is currently $379 at the Apple store as well as 6 months same-as-cash via BillMeLater.)

This is me, as well. I've been strictly an Apple user since about 1983… But I still have a perfectly functional iPhone 4, too. Much as I love checking out their new gizmos and whozits, I am happy to wait a while to get certified refurbished via the Apple store, or even downright used on eBay. Like Hoppy, I also like to own my phone outright so I don't have to be trapped in a contract with my cell carrier.

{ :huh: 76 miles is driving "across the state??" I agree with the gist of this, but that is one TINY state...}

DD's run-of-the-mill 7th grade public school text (Prentice Hall maybe?) has negatives and at the least the beginnings of exponents--squares and cubes, if nothing else. I'll poke through it tonight to see if it goes further into exponents. I know she's doing pre-algebra stuff for sure, though. Just today she had 45n+45=90. It blew her mind because both the co-efficient AND the constant were 45 lol

I'm going to guess you're probably lonely more than anything. You just moved. You have small children. I don't live in the middle of nowhere, but it's pretty close (in the true "middle of nowhere," you only have mail delivery every other day, because the off-days the carrier does the other side of her route. ;) ). However, because I have daily mail delivery, I am not as removed as I have been in other years. lol That said, I AM 150 miles from a shopping mall. Thirty miles from a grocery store than has more than three aisles. Thirty miles from church. Ten miles from pavement… I drive for a LOT of services and social events. "Homeschool Group," for example, is today. We meet once a month. It's 50 miles away if the dirt roads aren't muddy. If they are, it's 70 miles of highway. It's worth it. Some of Buck's best buds are in Homeschool Group (his "homeschool homies" lol) We'd even do it twice a month if it were an option. For that matter, I used to drive my kids 40 miles to preschool, twice a week. It was the only one available and we loved the program. BUT, is a co-op a once a week thing? Because I can say, I probably wouldn't drive my preschool/kinder 70 miles, once a week, for a co-op. I'd keep looking closer to home. Though I get it. In my area, homeschooling is really unusual. Consequently, most kids' social events tend to be connected to school so we homeschoolers grab 'em where we find 'em!

:blush: I know it's not sexy, exciting, or even cool, but we like Saxon here...

Not usually during the reception itself, but it's pretty typical to open them Sunday morning...

Oddly, I think there might be a happy-medium between a completely dry event and people drinking to the point of violence...

Actually, the learning itself is pretty easy. He is *always* spouting random crap that he read/watched/heard somewhere. lol He absorbs information pretty readily, so long as it's not the fourth assignment he's had that day that he had to *physically* read. (He's pretty much shot if he had that many readings in a single day.) And yeah, I'm happy to use assistive options wherever possible. Like I said, many (most?) of the books he reads are on audio, or at least text-to-speech. I haven't delved too far into outputs for the simple fact that I didn't think he HAD much for output requirements. But we're experimenting with a modification starting next week where he records responses and prewrite type things into his ipod. We'll see if that helps. Yeah, I'm researching neuropsychologists in the area (which translates to, "200 miles away" lol) Then I'll have to see if we can possibly afford something like that.

Not tacky. I've never understood why people have rules about something like a wedding... It's a joyful celebration where a couple invites their friends and family to celebrate with them. So long as they aren't being blatantly rude, demanding, etc., I tend to think the couple gets to set the rules for their celebration. Potluck? I'll bring my broccoli raisin stuff. :)

Buck is now a freshman in high school and in his 5th year of homeschooling (with a couple of years in public school in there, which were pretty much unsuccessful). He likes homeschooling better than public and knows a standard classroom is completely overwhelming. We're aiming for junior year, if he ever goes back. In a large nutshell: We don't have any diagnoses on this kid, but I know he's dyslexic. There's no doubt whatsoever, he's just so textbook; late to talk yet extremely bright, had a LOT of trouble learning to read though is finally up to age-level (we were both pretty excited to see that on last year's Stanford), language constructs and spelling are appalling, and so on. He's also got issues going on with working memory and I don't know whether to chalk it up to the dyslexia or if it's ADD on top of the dyslexia. (It presents as distractibility, inability to stay with a task, or hyper-focus.) I also know that it's not unusual for psychologists to misdiagnose one for the other so we've been really hesitant to push for spending the money on a dx. To be sure, routines, lists and even caffeine are crutches that we lean on pretty heavily to keep him progressing. He is currently looking at mechanical engineering and it's probably a good fit. He's definitely got the brains for it and it's a field that has fascinated him since he was little. Here's my issue: He hates school. :( We're only into week three and he says he hates it, though algebra 2 (Saxon) is "okay" and he actually likes chemistry (Spectrum), particularly lab days. He's been waiting for years to do chemistry. History/lit. is TOG. He helped pick what we were doing this year. We switched this year from Sonlight. Much like Sonlight, I've gotten quite a few of the books on either text-to-speech or actual audios to lighten the full reading load. I credit the "lots of reading" approach as the reason his reading comprehension and fluency is finally up to (and even exceeding) grade level. After spending the entire summer weighing pros and cons, he's doing rhetoric level. He's not having any issues with the actual reading material, the questions, the connections he's ask to make….In spite of dyslexia, he has a very good sense of a story and writes fairly well, too. (After you slog through the organizational and mechanical errors, that is). We talked it out and he says it's not so much that he hates school, or even the materials we use, but that he hates the work load. On a given day he does 1.an algebra assignment, just evens or odds, 2.a handful of response questions to his 3.Tapestry readings, 4.chem on MWFs (reading a couple of pages and doing about 3-5 math type questions), a 5.10 min exercise on typingWeb, and 6. maybe spelling (Sequential Spelling). We haven't even gotten to where he's doing any extra-curriculars like Shop or Health because he doesn't have enough day left! He spends ALL DAY doing a few hours of work. Getting dressed down to shoes and socks helps. Drinking coffee helps. Running a constant timer (15 min increments) helps. But he still thinks he's overloaded with school work. I can't get him to understand that his peers in school are doing this much before lunch! I'm trying to keep his reading/writing load below what he would see in school so that it's do-able for him, but what he'd really like to see is none at all. For those who've managed to stay with me this long, I appreciate it! any thoughts? :unsure:

We're hating school. Again. As always. I truly have NO idea what to do with this kid. :(

Spectrum Chem with a DVD instructor. That's about as close to "perfect" as I can think of, personally...

You'll shoot your eye out...

What really bothers me is that the conference I saw him at had several others with a similar viewpoint--that of if you're not YE, you're just not a Christian... They had what looked like a good kids' program running during the conference, so we signed the kids up for that. Buck was 13 and had a choice of being a helper with the kids' program, or doing a teen study. We went the helper route just because I didn't figure he'd appreciate the opportunity to study during a vacation. ;) Consequently, both kids ended up in the same group; Bean as a "kid", Buck as a helper. Day 1 we met up for lunch and the kids said that while most of it was basic Bible school type stuff, there were a couple of times when they were told that believing in anything but a young earth interpretation meant they were liars. And liars can never meet God because it's a sin. <_< Fortunately both kids had already had enough life experience to know that sometimes you just have to ignore the ignorant. ;)

I'll admit, I was wondering what translation you had, too. :)

I've been on online message boards since about 1993. I've done the fun/cute/meaningful names. I'm over it. ;)

Responding to the red--contrary to the image we all hold of things like Gallileo's excommunication, it seems Catholics actually adopt scientific advancements far faster than evangelical branches of Protestants. I've always wondered why that is...

Yes! She comes across as very much like her books. An extremely intelligent woman, successful homeschool mom, well-read/researched (she has her PhD in ed. psych.), open, willing to share... I would drive the hundreds of miles I drove for the conference just to listen to Debra Bell. She was fantastic! I literally rearranged my workshop plans so I could attend all of her presentations. lol

I agree. The only time I've ordered something sight unseen, it was after perusing a pretty lengthy sample...Personally, Ive never really cared about reviews unless they give *very* specific examples and references.

Well you can do whatever you want, obviously. I was just answering the question what *I* do :)

Have you done algebra yet? We did algebra in 8th and decided to do chemistry for 9th...

I make things work. I cant afford to curriculum hop and I dont really see anything positive happening from changing horses midstream... If something was *truly* bad, I suppose I would make it work for the semester, then change out. Because I think continuity is fairly important, I spend *months* researching before I buy something new. I then spend nearly that much time organising and preparing before getting started in it. I've had things I needed to tweak, but I've never had something that I thought was a bad choice...

We're fairly conservative, evangelical Christians, however, we're not young earth. And I happen to think Ken Ham is a whack-job. We saw him at a conference last spring. I caught his first presentation (the conference opener). It wasn't awful. I thought it was full of some pretty strange deductions, but it wasn't awful. However, Trap caught one of his workshops the next day while I went to Debra Bell. He walked out halfway through because Ham was such a jerk about people who dared to disagree with Young Earth. I echo the 237 other people who agreed with Sassenach's letter. That's what I'd send, too.

This is my thought as well. ​Classical means learning to think and question more than anything (probably why logic is so important). Personally, I was raised by a teacher and a lawyer, consequently my home-life was pretty classical. We were taught to always look for flaws in logic, question why things were the way they were, know and consider root words/vocabulary, understand what events lead to other events, and so on. Even though I was public schooled, my education was ultimately determined by my parents, not my school system. Homeschooling just makes that easier...