Here is a link to what synthetic stucco (EIFS) is. http://search.creativecommons.org/?q=eifs+synthetic+stucco&sourceid=Mozilla-search The main problem with it is that for years it was installed incorrectly (or maybe correctly and was just a bad product, I don't know) Anyway, it can wick moisture up from the ground and inside your house. The worst horror story I heard told of a woman whose house was completely rotted from the inside out. Thus my reluctance to move forward with buying this house. On the other hand, this house was built after a lot of these lawsuits (2000) when supposedly synth. stucco was being applied and installed correctly. The sellers have had a stucco inspection done and have fixed the minor-ish problems that were found. My gut is telling me to stay away from the house. However if you could see some of the other houses that my dh likes, you'd understand why I'm even considering this one. :)

After looking at 65 homes, dh and I finally found one we can agree on - however it has synthetic stucco exterior. The sellers got a stucco inspection and have fixed most of the problems identified (the temperature has precluded the others from being fixed.) If we bought, we plan on having the stucco removed and replaced with stone or hardy plank asap. So, do you have any horror stories about synthetic stucco? Would you buy a home with it? If you have, any advice, warnings, etc? TIA

I did search for this b/c I'm sure I'm not the first to beg for help on this subject. I'm looking for ways to require more from my kids (and myself) and am hoping for some inspiration. (kids are older elementary/lower middle) Like most of your kids, I'm sure, mine can pretty much cruise through most of the work I give them without too much effort. We go quite quickly thru curricula but I don't feel like I'm challenging them enough. Basically, what are you doing to encourage your kids to meet or exceed their potential? Thanks!

Great questions and I'm interested in hearing the answers. I can only help a little. I only do TOG with 3 kids. Impressed you can do anything with 8. :) Beginning - I started out by minutely planning our first month. I had all the copies made, supplements ready, etc. Our daily and weekly schedules were planned to the half hour. It was beautiful. Of course, it needed a lot of tweaking but it helped to be hyper-ready for it. You'll find out what works for your family pretty soon and that will make it so much easier. Review the materials a lot before you start. The more famlliar you are with it the better. Grammar - not enough in TOG imho. I use R&S along with it. We mainly do it orally so that we don't spend too much time. This may not be necessary for your 9th grader - we're not there yet. I'd guess though that if you have her do all the writing exercises and use those to check grammar you may be alright. Guessing here though. When you get your IG take a look at the exercises and see what you think. As far as books, we buy multi-week and multi-unit books and any books that I just think we'll want. For the rest, I try to use the library. That said, clearly there were a hundred people doing the same thing b/c it was sometimes hard to get the books. If you can afford to buy all the books, I'd do it just to make life easier on yourself. With 8 kids, that would be a nice baby gift for you. Good luck!

I'm sure I just blew past where someone suggested Versailles. It is great for kids and adults - esp. the "farm" where Marie A. pretended to farm. Kind of like how I pretend to garden by perusing catalogues. I second the Arc and Musee D'Orsay. The Rodin museum is outstanding too and since it's sculptures primarily it is very accessible for kids. (my kids don't love looking at lots of paintings but can get a cool sculpture.) The Centre Pompidou is a wild modern art museum that has tons of unsual things to keep a 7 yr. old intrigued. Sacre Coeur and Montmatre. Lots of artist in Montmarte - cool for kids to get to see people creating right there. If you are going outside of Paris (farther than Versailles which for some reason never seems that far outside to me), Normandy and Verdun are fantastic. The beaches of Normandy are great for kids to run and be outside and you can soak in the history. Verdun is just powerful. Food - godiva ice cream! Croque Monsieur and Madame are still favorites in our family. Cheap and ubiquitous. We also just liked getting baguettes from the nearest bakery and maybe a little cheese and voila. Oh and if you're trying to save money, check prices on drinks. A friend came to visit us when we lived in Paris and tried to save money buy ordering hot chocolate. Wine is actually cheaper. (For you, not your 7yr old.) Bon voyage!!

How do you judge if your child's IQ is exceptionally high or if they are just achieving more because they are in a rich learning environment? My first child went to K at a good local private school. He hated it because he was reading chapter books and they made him go back to A says A. However, compared to my other two, his achievements are later. My second child is doing the same work as the older one despite being two years younger. My third is reading, writing and doing basic math at age 2. Are my younger children so much brighter or is it just that our environment is geared more toward learning? (Rhetorical question to try to communicate my point. Not working well since brilliant 2 year old still gets up in the middle of the night and we ran out of coffee) I think all my kids are fairly close to equally as bright. Hope this is making some sense. Basically, how much is IQ, how much is higher expectations, becoming a more educated oriented parent and secondhand learning from the others?

As a yoga instructor, this just makes me mad. He was wrong. I'm sorry he did that. Yuck. Glad you didn't go back. I'm a Christian and taught yoga for 8 years. However, in the back of my mind there was always something that bothered me about the spiritual part of it - not that I taught anything other than non-spiritual gym yoga. One day I went to my favorite yoga studio (in another state, so I only got there a couple times a year), with my favorite yogi and the class started chanting. Not ohm, but words I didn't understand. The whole class was chanting them. No one explained what it meant. What I found out later was that it was something saying roughly that we bow to the great sage who wrote the book the Yoga Sutras. That's fine if that's what people want to do and say, but it weirded me out that 50 people were chanting something they didn't understand. (I asked most other students and none of them knew what they were saying). Namaste itself can have several diff. meanings. Most people just think of it as a sign of respect. Still, I've heard people say it means "peace", "health" or even "class over". :) Namaste can have spiritual meanings though. Usually along the lines of "the spirit in me honors the spirit in you" Again, fine if that's what you want to be saying, odd if you're just saying a word you don't understand. Reminds me of a friend who taught her cousin from a foreign country that to say excuse me in America you say "Move" Her cousin meant to be polite, but was actually being rude because she was saying a word that she didn't understand the meaning of. (bad grammar, I know) Long story short- too late I know - you have to be informed, aware and go with your faith/conscience - as with most things in life. I never taught a class that was spiritually objectionable - we just did stretches and breathing. However, I couldn't shake the feeling that somehow that wasn't what God wanted for me, so I quit teaching it. Does that mean yoga is bad and wrong? Nope. I loved yoga, but I love God more and honoring what I perceive Him to be saying to me was more important. I still have plenty of strong Christian friends who take yoga and have no qualms at all about it. Romans 14:19 19Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. 20Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food Swap food for yoga and that verse sums up my thoughts on the matter.

Must be the age. My 9 and 8 yr old boys do like to mess with each other during lessons. Used to drive me nuts because I would plan on history taking 45 minutes, but they would delay, whine, fuss, play, fill in the blank and 90 minutes would be gone. Completely threw me off my game. A few months ago, I told them that whatever time they waste, they have to make up on the weekend. I plan for 45 minutes for history. If they don't get it done, we stop and they have to do it on Saturday. (This only counts if they don't get it done because of poor behavior. If we're getting into great discussion or there is some legitimate reason, then we just finish the work.) They've only had to finish on Saturdays a couple of times. They get the message pretty quickly. Hope this helps.

My kids have used MUS for 4 years and love it. They still think he's fun to watch. I just like that he explains things so clearly the kids think it's SOOO easy. This is the first year I've used the tests and faithfully used the student book. Wish I'd done so from the beginning.

FFX Co is a great place to live, but traffic is a serious consideration. We lived for years in Vienna (end of the metro line). Loved the community feel, great people, great school district - for resale - and very close to shopping. That said, it took a good 45 mins to get downtown. The closer you get to DC, the higher the prices and the smaller the homes and lots, in general. We lived in Arlington for years, too, but it was just too much of a pain to get around with little kids there, imho. With a 7 year old, that won't be a problem for you. Alexandria is a great place and some locations there are convenient to shopping so you don't have to get in a car. My sister lived in Chevy Chase, MD. Great location. Once we moved out of the area, we would visit her and I was amazed how convenient it was to many points - even ones in VA. It is also a good place if you don't plan on driving much. You can walk to most shopping and you're walking distance to metro. Don't know about homeschool groups. We moved away before my oldest was 4. Good luck!!

I use both. The activity guide is the best of the 4 imho. Great ideas for projects, memorization, even some math. The map work is def. stepped up in this one and I like that. I use the tests because it keeps me honest and teaches the kids to take tests. I do grade them, but if I think a question is a little trivial, then I don't count it if the kids get it wrong. Only downside to the activity guide this time - not a lot of coloring pages. My kids love the coloring pages and are disappointed that there aren't many. Plus side - timeline figures are included.

We haven't needed to use the teacher's guide, but we're only in levels 3 and 4. Don't know about the higher levels.

Can you look the company up online and either email or just send to their mailing address?

I have an 8 yr old ds who also has legible, but not great handwriting. Rather than fighting the battle for each subject and every assignment, I have picked a few. I nitpick his handwriting on copywork, writing exercises and cursive writing pages. Other than that, if I can read it, I accept it. If I can't, he redoes it. This has eliminated a lot of stress and his handwriting is improving in all the areas. Oh, I also have him correct his own handwriting pages. He gets to pick a color (actually he uses a three color system) and he rips his page apart. He's tougher on himself than I would be, but he handles the correction a lot better.

Part of that seems to be human/kid nature. I agree with the poster who suggested putting everything away that you were going to get them if they whine. We have done that with good results. Have you tried taking them to volunteer? When my kids see how little others have, they whine a lot less. I also try to read them a lot of books about people, esp. kids, who have less and are satisfied and happy- Little House on the Prairie series, Anne of Green Gables, heck even Harry Potter. Good luck with it and remember you are fighting the good fight. :)

Wow! Lots more rules homeschooling in TN. So, in a spin off, do you use a CRS? If so, which one and why? If you don't, does the DOE interfere or are they fairly laissez faire? Thanks!!

Wow. I'm sorry you had such a bad experience, esp. at a Christian school. That is def. not right. Thank you for sharing it though. Apryl, I agree with you that people expect newcomers to reach out to them, not vice versa. I found that when we moved here and I'm sad to say that as I've gotten busier thru the years, I've fallen into the same bad habits. We are so looking forward to camping, hiking, kayaking and rock climbing. Kinda hard to rock climb in the corn fields, kwim. :) Thanks for the great info. Please keep it coming.

FYI - homeschooling and having your house on the market are two mutually exclusive things for me at this point. How does anyone do that? I feel like I spend all day cleaning up. We get maybe 3 hours in on a good day. So ready for someone to just buy this house already! Whoops, where did that whining and venting come from? Sorry. :) On to the next question - what do you wish you'd known before you moved to (or near to) Knoxville? Thanks!! Jackie

Thank you for all the great info!! I can't wait to get our current house on the mkt and get to the fun part of looking for our new home. I appreciate all the help!! :) Jackie

Hi, We are very excited to be moving to Knoxville in two months. I'm planning a house hunting trip in two weeks. Anyone have some good recommendations of places to live? DH will be working downtown. We'd like something within about a 30min. drive and on an acre or more. Also, I'd love recommendations about any homeschooling groups. TIA!! Jackie

Please, please tell me that was just a joke. If not, yikes.

I definately agree. Their are two many of those. I wish peeple would chose to proofread. (yes, tongue is firmly in cheek on those errors above. Any below I will blame on poor typing or a wild two year old.) What about the grammar errors? Any favorites that drive you bananas? "he thinks he's better than me" or "Joe, Jim and myself are going...?" or "We don't have no apples." Arghhh

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704746304574505643153518708.html#mod=todays_us_nonsub_pj This article was a little shocking. Here are a few excerpts. "Because so many people in their teens and early 20s are in this constant whir of socializing—accessible to each other every minute of the day via cellphone, instant messaging and social-networking Web sites—there are a host of new questions that need to be addressed in schools, in the workplace and at home. Chief among them: How much work can "hyper-socializing" students or employees really accomplish if they are holding multiple conversations with friends via text-messaging, or are obsessively checking Facebook" "More schools are now allowing students to use their cellphones between classes, or even as a learning tool in the classroom. Some teachers are having students text their friends during classes to share feedback on what's being taught. The mantra among educators who try to be enlightened: It's no longer about attention span. It's about attention scope—being able to concentrate on many things at once." So many things spring to mind. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this, too.

I have not signed my kids up for one of the classes, but a good friend of mine had her son in one. They were very pleased with it. In fact, she has signed him up for two more courses next semester.

I just ran across this and am interested also, so I'm bumping it up. Looking forward to reading the responses.