Owning a gun is legal in South Africa if you have a license. People who apply for firearm licences have to undergo a competency test after basic training course and pass police checks. Of course, this does not deter criminals from carrying unlicensed firearms. I explained in the other thread why I don't see the point of owning a gun for personal protection. Violent crime here shows that if the criminal is carrying a gun, he's already decided to use it. Unless you're carrying it on you, are an experienced shot and can pull and shoot faster than the criminal pointing the gun at you, you'll come off second best. In a housebreaking situation you'd have to sleep with a loaded gun under your pillow for it to be effective and the risks with children in the house count against that. I respect people's right to own guns, but for self-protection, I think they give people a false sense of security. There are other ways - vigilance for one - which are probably going to be more effective to save your life. So, no, we don't own a gun.

My closest friend moved to Australia last September. Before she moved we saw each other at least twice a week and spoke on the phone a few times a week - usually short conversations. Now we Skype weekly. The Skype conversations last at least half and hour or longer. I miss seeing her in person. I am very close to my sister who lives in Ireland and we message or Skype daily. It's usually text though.

How do you explain "Classical homeschooling" philosophy to interested family and friends?

I made a timeline that follows the triangular shape of the Konos timeline and made cards for SOTW1 and SOTW2. You can find downloads of it at the file section at this Yahoo group.

Thanks for sharing this beautiful tribute to your brother. I hope that the lovely memories that you have of him will sustain you and your family in this sad time and going forward. {{{hugs}}}

I read about this on the boards and have been doing the same for about two years now. I think it is called the "Curly Girl" method. I also have very fine, very dry, and very very frizzy shoulder length hair. Shampoo dries my hair and I can't bring a hair dryer close to my head without looking like a scarecrow. I went from a daily wash to washing when it is really necessary.

In South Africa, the law applies to all children resident in the country, irrespective of nationality. The law also stipulates that you must register with the provincial education department, unless you have good reasons (just cause) not to do so. However, the restrictions that the education departments place on home education as preconditions for registration are all considered "just cause" and the result is that about 98% of SA homeschoolers are NOT registered with the education departments, but choose to be members of a legal defense fund instead. You might think that the government would have "better things to attend to", but still homeschooling is regularly in the spotlight as an easy ideological target. Indeed. It would be best to contact people in the country (Niger or neighbouring countries) to find out what the educational laws are. If you contact people in the specific area within the country that you are planning to go, you will know what the infrastructure is like in that area regarding delivery of containers, electricity supply (or access to generators), electronic communication, internationally sponsored libraries, fellow homeschoolers, etc. If you're going with a mission organization, they should be able to answer some of these questions.

I agree that this is the crux of the matter. If one chooses to have an ongoing relationship with the person, then one has to make an effort to focus on the person's good points and to understand their temperament - and if there's enough reason to stay, then the person does have good points. Learn to be grateful for and focus on those. It is necessary to acknowledge and mourn what you can't have - the unfulfilled dreams and unmet expectations, but one also needs to move on. There's no point in dwelling for years on what can't be. It may be necessary to work through this loss with a sympathetic counselor as others have suggested. A good counselor is always on your side, but is also willing to lead you to fresh perspectives on your situation. If the other person acknowledges that there is a discord in the relationship and is willing try new things from his/her side, it is helpful to focus on what you want them to start doing, rather than what you'd like to stop. Spell out your love language to the person.... "If you do xyz, I will feel cherished". If necessary, spell it out in baby steps. They may not even realize that a little thing can go a long way. The other person may want you to do things too that will acknowledge their needs. Start new habits and rituals. It will probably feel awkward and forced at first, but at least you know that you are trying. Also try to recognize what the other's love language is. They may be expressing their love and concern in ways that you don't recognize, because it isn't yours. I know someone who shows he cares by by being a "fixer". Both physically, which is usually highly appreciated and with advise of which the unsolicited kind did not always go down well. I think the correct jargon is "acts of service". He and his partner finally came to an agreement that she'd give him the heads up with "I'm just telling you.." and he would share his concerns by starting with "I'm concerned about..", rather than stating things as tactless facts. It worked! As did the humour with which they approached this.

I was recently given Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather's Blessings by Rachel Remen. Both are collections of short stories drawn from her life as a doctor and counsellor. I found then very inspirational and thought provoking.

http://www.homeschoolfreebie.wholesomechildhood.com/ ? It only has one freebie per day though.

You can find copywork at Lulu.com - some of it in GD Italics and some of it is free. In the Files section of the Ambleside Online Copywork Yahoo group you will find literary selections for the different years. These are not GD Italics. Italic Builders has GD Italics copywork. You could also get a program like Educational Fontware and make your own from the above selections.

Thanks for the reminder to be thankful for the luxuries we take for granted! We had frequent power cuts last year, but not nearly as bad as yours. Ours were only twice a week for 4 hours at a time, so easier to plan around. Enjoy the board time!

Are these online? Please share.

Wow! These lists are AWESOME!!

One disk of my daughter's Ella Enchanted audiobook (from Listening Libarary) was scratched and now she cannot listen to it. I need to find a way of replacing just the one disk (disk 5 of 5). Has anyone done this before?

I'd love to hear your comments on this article. 'Give up work to help your husband' KATE BUSSMANN - Feb 27 2009 08:00 Megan Basham seems surprisingly shy for the latest controversial American author to have charged on to the public battlefield between mothers who stay at home and those who work. Ordering an iced tea in a New York restaurant, the 33-year-old conservative commentator appears to be cut from a different cloth to the ever angrier voices on both sides of what the American media refers to as the "Mommy Wars". Her new book, Beside Every Successful Man: A Woman's Guide To Having It All, reads like a cheery pep talk for women alienated by the increasingly polarised debate. In the book, Basham sets out a strategy for women who want to stay at home but can't afford to. "Most research says 80% of women want to work fewer hours when their kids are young," she says. "How can you ignore that and tell them they're wrong or naive?" She argues that women can opt out of the nine-to-five by focusing on helping their husbands be more successful in their careers, and find fulfilment by doing so. And as a happy side-effect, she says, these more traditional marriages are less likely to end in divorce. She cites herself and a series of high-profile couples as examples, and backs her argument up with statistics such as: "Men whose wives aren't employed earn on average 31% more than single men, but for men whose wives have full-time jobs, that number drops to 3,4%." Critics have denounced the book as irresponsible, delusional, immoral and misleading, but Basham insists she didn't expect such reactions. "It wasn't originally meant to be political," she says. "But at the time, there were books coming out saying that women must work full-time, that it's not fair to the sisterhood to take any time out. I just didn't feel they were realistic. I'd noticed how many successful men would say, 'I wouldn't be here without my wife,' and I was curious, I wanted to know what these women were doing. I wanted to emulate them." In fact, she already had: the book tells the story of how she helped her husband, Brian, now a TV weatherman, work out what he wanted to do with his life. But more than just acting as cheerleader, she rewrote his CV, researched jobs, wrote letters and found him an agent. And when he landed his first job in the business, she quit full-time work as a journalist and university curriculums editor, went freelance and moved from Arizona to Texas. They now live in Tucson, where he works on breakfast television. After a long time trying for kids, she is five months pregnant and looking forward to "finally scaling back" her work in the summer. "Women are collaborators," she says. "We have a more communal concept of success, and a lot of that applies to our relationships. Look at Michelle and Barack Obama. People forget she introduced him to the political scene in Chicago." Her main critic is the formidable Leslie Bennetts, a Vanity Fair contributor and author of The Feminine Mistake -- an urgent warning to women that if they step out of the workforce for as little as three years, they will permanently damage their earning potential. When the pair appeared on a television show together, sparks flew. "After the cameras went off, she turned and screamed at me," Basham recalls. "She must have misunderstood me, because I didn't say all women should be at home, barefoot and pregnant. I'm talking about women pursuing their dreams. I was shocked that she would brook no alternative, that there is such a violent reaction to suggesting other options." For her part, Bennetts accuses Basham of misrepresenting facts, and it is true that Basham knows how to spin her statistics. Take what she refers to as the "male marriage premium", which states that when a man gets married, his earnings increase by between 20% and 50%, while women often experience the opposite: a "marriage penalty". While this kind of inequality enrages her opponents, Basham argues that if wives encourage their husbands to earn more, the extra household income enables women to take a pay cut. Basham's approval of the "traditional" family is clearly influenced by her own experience. The daughter of an unwed teenage mother, she grew up to be, she says, "pretty pro-life". Her parents reunited and married when she was five, before having two more children. After all her offspring had left home, her mother became an interior designer, and Basham holds her up as an inspiring example of a stay-at-home mother going on to have success. Basham's book has arrived at a point when the Mommy Wars debate is more polarised than ever. One month after her row with Bennetts, a section of the American religious right launched their True Women Manifesto, calling for a counter-revolution to the advances of feminism. It asserts that men and women are designed to reflect God in "complementary and distinct ways", essentially arguing that women belong in the home, men in the workforce, and that women can be liberated through submission. It's an extension of a Biblical concept known as "complementarianism", one that Basham doesn't entirely reject. "You can see that biologically there are differences between the way our brains are wired. And some of the things we prioritise might be different," she says. "The problem is that I know couples who are the opposite, so you can't say all women are complementary to their husbands. At the same time, I think the negative thing is pretending that women are men, setting up a paradigm by men's rules, assuming that only success in business is achievement." Does she receive hate mail? "Yes," she says, with a dismissive laugh. "I've had a lot of emails from college students who are clearly in the midst of their women's studies, saying I must be uneducated. I took feminist studies like everyone else." She describes herself as a "choice feminist", and in the book, writes that "though the feminist movement was essential in many respects, certain factions of it have led to a place where women are encouraged to treat their husbands as rivals and their homes as battlegrounds over whether everyone is doing the same amount of the dishes and earning". Indeed, in the Basham household, she does more housework, "but he gets up at 2.30am. My schedule's not as tough. I think it's a bit silly to insist that the division of labour be 50-50, because, well, whose version are we talking about? Most men have a higher tolerance for messiness than women so they think the labour is being evenly divided. It's so funny, because when you show any love or support, well, you're letting down the sisterhood. Really, I'm not." - guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2009

Thanks for the great ideas!

My dh is away on business at least one night a week and the girls have asked to have this as a weekly "girls night". What fun things can I put on our to-do list?

I really appreciate you posting this! Thank you.

But, but, but ...the weather's great!!! Do you have ties with South Africa?

Ours is a wall timeline. You can see pictures of it, a template for the lines and pics for SOTW1 and SOTW2 at the files section (History) of this Yahoo Group. I also have composer pics in the Composer Study section. We put the pictures on the timeline after completing the SOTW chapter.

I'm in a management position in a completely unrelated field, so these are general comments. There is nothing wrong with moving to a more senior position in another store of the same company. Especially if your supervisor has no problem transferring you. Even if you do interview for another position, you can say that you were promoted within the first three months. Consider that you're re-entering the job-market and as such you've already started crafting your CV for the day you qualify. When screening CV's (which I do a couple of times a year), I generally look at qualifications or study history; experience in a related position; management experience if required; career history, life experience, etc. One change in company in less than two years is acceptable - especially if the new position was a much better fit, but as soon as I detect a job-hopping pattern, this reflects very negatively on the candidate. If you should change, make it very clear why you changed companies in the short period. If the person has advanced within the current company, I view it more favourably than a person that has job-hopped to advance. Some people interview really well and can talk their way into new positions, but advancement in the current company shows that the person was capable of doing their job well enough to impress their superiors. Considering that you took the first job that came along, I'd definitely shop around and put career-advancement high on the tick-list of what I'd be looking for in a new position. Don't overlook that your current company could still be "the one". If the company has good policies for resource development and clear advancement requirements, then it means that you know exactly what is required of you at each step of the career-ladder. Also ask whether you can be promoted in a current position or does another position need to become vacant for you to earn more. TeacherZee makes good points about how comfortable you are with the values and policies of the current and possible new company. Good luck!

I vote for White River. Cape Town's getting a bit crowded.... I grew up there and my father now lives in Gordon's Bay. Nice for a visit, but its too metropolitan for me now. White River is growing too, but it's still a town - and close to the bush! Where did you have your baby?

:smilielol5::lol::smilielol5::lol::smilielol5: You might as well come down south then. We still have running water, single digit inflation compared to 2300000%, a fairly stable currency, an economy affected less by the global crisis than others (compared to Zim that means food in the shops), great sunny weather for most of the year, a democracy that is still intact, incredible opportunities for entrepeneurs ...... homeschooling is legal.....and the few problems we'll just ignore shall we? Anyone else for Southern Africa? :rolleyes:

Wow Pam!! Awesome achievement!