The best homeschool decision I ever made was putting DD who was then 13 in charge of lunch every school day. She gets to pick what they have and she makes it and I no longer have anything to do with it except making sure staple ingredients are on hand most of the time and replenished when they're out. I call it her home ec and it's great! Now that she's older and has more school work, the next DD in line has the job.

We didn't/don't have any savings to speak of to help pay for college. Our local state U is one of the least expensive for in state students in the country (thank you, Mitch Daniels!) and we still can only swing half tuition for our kids. And the only reason we can do that much is because we scrimped for the past 10 years to pay the mortgage off early. If we still had a mortgage payment there's no way we could contribute anything for college. I tell my kids we invested in me being home with them for 18 years instead 🙂 They have to use their savings and work to pay for the rest of tuition.

If you're comfortable with Young Earth Creationism, I think Apologia offers those components with their middle school courses.

Yep, January - after the New Year's weekend. My college age boys don't start spring semester til after MLK Jr Day, so we we're taking advantage of their extra time off 🙂

In lieu of gifts this year we are planning a surprise trip to Florida (driving, rental house, cooking for ourselves, beach, kayak, hiking, and other outdoor activities) for ourselves and the kids. Made my shopping very easy as all I had to do was stocking gifts for everybody! I designed and am getting printed a puzzle piece collage of pictures of the rental house and pictures of activities we will do there and each kid will open a puzzle piece. I'm so excited to tell them about it! (and also to actually go, of course!)

We've brined ours the last few years and I'll never make it a different way now! We use Kate's Thanksgiving Turkey that I printed off several years ago but can't find the link to right now, sorry. I've done it both ways - the day before and reheat slowly in a roaster with the juice and some gravy the next day and also roasting right before serving. Both are delicious. I like using a countertop roaster for the turkey so I can use the oven for other stuff.

I think starting with real printed photos from 2020 onward is a great idea! Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good and all that 😉 If you like the printed photos better than the digital books, then go for it! But if you want the backlog to just be done and accessible to look at and off your mental to do list plate, I'd consider doing a digitally printed book for the mountain of photos from pre-2020. Forever.com has something called an Auto Book. You can upload photos and print them in books (4 to a page for 99 pages for a total of 398 photos per book) and the program automatically

Some texts don't require a response, and I'm not talking about those. Silly "hey look at this" type texts or random observances or info given with no response required - then no response is no problem. But if a question is asked, then yes, I think over a day means something is up. Most of the time I would assume it was my fault for poor communication - that I had somehow worded my request in a funny way that didn't come across the way I meant it. I mean, if I left someone a voice mail and they didn't get back to me by the end of the next day, I would think something was wrong. Wouldn't yo

I often don't have my phone with me or am doing something that can't easily be interrupted, so I definitely don't always text back immediately. But I check it several times a day when I do have time, and try to respond to texts then. If I text someone and it goes several hours with no reply, it's no biggie. But if it goes a full day or more, I assume (rightly or wrongly) that I said something wrong and they're upset or offended or are struggling to formulate a response.

Well, switching to online school is just going to result in the same problems, but leave you with no power to control the assignments or time spent, so there's that 😉 I also have to spend time with my 12 and 8 year olds doing school right with them most of the time. I tell them they are welcome to waste their own time, but they aren't going to waste mine and I need them to focus while we work together. I work right there with them until I'm satisfied they understand the lesson and what is expected of them, then I leave them to the assignment. There's usually not much to do on her own for

I was on BC as a teen til after after I got married for heavy periods and intense cramps due to ovarian cysts and I took them for about 7 years. After I went off to try to start a family, it took me over 18 months to have a period and my new obgyn wasn't sure my hormone levels would ever support a pregnancy. Obviously, that turned out not to be the case, but it made for a very emotional and angst ridden time for me and I have had trouble with irregular periods and hormonal issues ever since. I don't have any medical proof, but I blame the extended use of BC pills during my development for mess

I actually bought one very similar to this on amazon. They personalize them up to families of 9 🙂

I have 1 friend who says if she could take a pill for the rest of her life and never eat again she'd be thrilled. I can't wrap my brain around that. Like, at all. But I know my friend is awesome and not overly weird and so you're not the only one 😁

1 & 2 - I have no idea. We usually did take out even before covid hit. 3 - Hu Hot! You just can't beat mixing your own sauces and watching them cook it on the stone in front of you and going back for seconds ... yum 4 - I don't care where I eat it as long as I don't have to cook it. 5 - I don't think any have closed so far around here.

I don't have any idea ... mine are about 15+ years old!