I didn't witness this one personally, but my grandmother was picking up my sister from middle school when she got into a fender-bender with the father of one of my sister's classmates (who happened to be an immigrant from South America). No one was hurt, and the damage was minor, so everything was all right until they exchanged contact information. My grandmother (who was normally pretty mild-mannered) flew into a rage and shouted, in her VERY Southern accent, "Your name is not JESUS!" (English pronunciation) Um, yeah, grandma, his name actually IS Jesus (Spanish pronunciation). I think my sister wished the earth would open up and swallow her.

I tend to agree. And knowing the level of stress my friends' kids who are in ps go through at the end of the year when the test rolls around, I have to wonder if this isn't just going to make every quarter as angst-inducing as the last quarter already is. My guess is it will fizzle out in the testing stage (no pun intended).

From the Raleigh News & Observer: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article26900362.html What do you think? Will shorter, more frequent standardized tests be more effective than longer end-of-grade tests?

:eek: Jean, have you been hiding the fact that you're really Beverly Cleary from us ALL THIS TIME??? I SO wanted to pull other girls' boing-boing curls when I saw them... even before Ramona. I had stick-straight hair, and I longed for ringlets! They looked like so much fun! IMO, these books are classics simply because all the characters are so relatable. To this day, I sometimes think that, like Ramona's mother, I'd like to spend an afternoon sitting on a cushion blowing the fluff off the dandelions instead of being so SENSIBLE all the time.

:lol: That's one of my favorites, too. And the time Ramona invites all the kids in the neighborhood for a party and Beezus and their mom have to figure out how to entertain 20 preschoolers on a rainy afternoon. And the "Dawnzer Song." And the time she decided to run away and her mother packed her suitcase with all the heavy stuff so she couldn't lift it. Or got stuck in the mud with her new boots. Or threw up in class. And when she came down with "siblingitis" -- mostly because my youngest sister was born around the time I read that one, and I totally had siblingitis too... Somebody above nailed it -- I think I loved those characters so much because they were just so REAL. BTW, if you were/have a Ramona fan, I highly recommend Beverly Cleary's autobiography, A Girl from Yamhill. I must have read it as many times as I read her fiction books.

Thanks for sharing! We are just about out of last year's supply -- this one will get us through a couple of years at least! (DH is doing a happy dance! :lol: )

Me too! I'm flabbergasted that anybody WOULDN'T let their kids read these books! I have so many great memories of them, and dd loved them as much as I did. Can't wait to share them with ds in a couple of years. As an older sister, I always identified more with Beezus, but I always wished I could be more like Ramona!

Yay! I'm not the only cherry vanilla fan!! :hurray:

Seconding Lulu. They have lots of good options for binding, etc., and the prices are reasonable for even one copy. You can keep your book set to private so no one else can access it. We just had dh's grandfather's WWII diary printed as a gift for his grandmother.

I make an all-purpose cleaner of white vinegar and dish soap to use for virtually everything, from kitchen counters to the bathtub. I like that the kids can use it without any worries about chemicals.

I was in Hong Kong in the summer of 1997 when control was passed from Britain back to China. The Chinese army marched through downtown and we went to watch the celebration. Dozens and dozens of lit-up floats on the harbor and fireworks. It was pretty cool. I remember seeing the Challenger blow up. We were watching it live on TV in our first-grade classroom. I remember sitting on the tile floor and that it was warm because our room was over the boiler (weird, how things like that stick out). When it happened, our teacher jumped up and ran to turn the TV off, but I was confused because I didn't understand what had happened. I remember my mom crying that night and thinking it was weird because she didn't even know those people. Of course, 9/11 was a biggie, but I wasn't doing anything special. I was at work several states away. It was still awful.

My dd10 has zero interest in makeup, hair, clothes, or anything of that nature. It's literally a fight if she needs to wear something other than sneakers. Even flip-flops. She hasn't shown any interest in boys romantically; most her of her friends have always been boys, as she seems to have more common interests with them. Wait, I take that back -- she did seem to have a teeny crush on Thor for a bit after she watched The Avengers. But hey, who doesn't?? :D I do think the "boy crazies" are more common at this age in school settings, although I think my dd would be pretty much the same wherever she was.

Wow, really? From the pulpit? I know we're in the same area, and I don't think I've ever seen this. Not from the pulpit anyway. People here are generally pretty open about their political leanings (you don't have to guess which side our pastor is on, for example) but I've never heard candidates endorsed. Not saying I don't believe you (not like I've been in THAT many churches, anyway), but I'm just surprised. Or maybe I'm just oblivious. :D To the thread in general: Does anybody know how this line is drawn, legally? Someone upthread was saying churches are still allowed to teach on social issues (abortion, etc.) as long as they don't endorse any candidates. So is that the line? Everything's good, just don't name names? I'm just curious.

Have the family's main entrance directly into the living area. The door from our garage leads directly into our living room. The front door also leads directly into this room, and it's the only space we have for entertaining visitors. Every. single. thing. that comes into this house when we get home gets dropped in the living room. We're constantly tracking in dirt and leaves. I cannot keep it clean. It's a magnet for mess. And, of course, it's the first thing anyone sees when they drop by. Never again. My next house will have a mudroom, a back entrance through the kitchen... anything but this.

My apologies, my question wasn't worded well. But this still doesn't answer it. Obviously no one is harmed by another's private, unexpressed thoughts. No one can be shamed, or made angry, or what have you, by another's private thoughts either. But if we have to take responsibility for our own shame or anger when it is in response to someone else's words or actions, why do we not have to take responsibility for our own hurt?

I'm curious as to how one reconciles this line of reasoning with the line that claims that it's not okay for those who believe same-sex relationships are sinful or degenerate or [insert unpleasant term here] to express that belief because it hurts those of same-sex orientation and/or those who love them. Is "hurt" the only emotional response for which we don't have to bear our own responsibility? Or are their other exceptions to your rule? ETA: Edited to clarify my question. I am not especially articulate today.

We're reading A Really Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson right now. Kids are loving it. It's easy to break down into shorter segments; each "chapter" is about two pages, and we usually cover about 10 pages at a time.

I'm in the minority here, but I'd at least consider it. People make mistakes. It sounds like she has been petty and selfish in the past, and she has brought at least some of the alienation from her family on herself, but unless she's truly abusive I would be inclined to try to look past that and give her another chance. She's getting older, and who knows how many more of these opportunities you'll have? My MIL is a wingnut. There were some times early in our marriage when she was truly awful to me (and more times that she was even worse to dh). She can be very selfish. But she loves our children, and I want them to have a relationship with her. She has come a long way (and truthfully, so have I), so even though we have virtually nothing in common and will never be *friends*, we can spend time together and even enjoy it on occasion. My kids love her, and I am glad I didn't deprive them of a relationship with her (not that you are). In the end, we're all she has, and I can put up with the annoyances in order to be kind to her. Even if she doesn't deserve it. I'd certainly draw the line if there were potential for real harm to my children (or to dh or myself) but that's not our case, and it doesn't sound like it's your case either. I would probably not jump right back into the week-plus stays, but maybe invite her for an extra day. "We were thinking of doing X on the day you have to leave; would you like to stay an extra night and go with us?" If that goes well, think about extending it further.

Grammar comes easily for dd, so I pick and choose based on how well she understands the concepts. Usually she reads the lesson for herself and then does some of the practice exercises (whatever I've assigned). Often we do the review exercises as well, but not always (we skip stuff she knows cold, like capitalization). We rarely do the oral exercises, unless she needs additional instruction on the topic. Then we go over them together. Sometimes we do them at the end of the unit as a review and so I can assess what she needs to work on. We usually skip the writing lessons since we use an outside writing program. We also skip the "non-grammar" lessons, like how to use the phone, since we cover those kinds of things in other contexts. [FYI, we have done books 3 and 4 and will start 5 in the fall.]

Our master is in the basement, out of necessity (our house only has two bedrooms). I cannot stress adequately how much I HATE IT. It is like living in a cave, despite the fact that there are three good-sized windows and a door with a window. It attracts many more bugs than the main level (we had to hire an exterminator to come every couple of months). I can hear every single step someone makes upstairs, and since we have early risers, it's impossible to sleep in. It is a wide-open space (except for the bathroom and closet) that just fills up with junk because we need the storage too. I feel like I have no space to call my own, as it's not a pleasant place to just "hang out." The only benefit was that, when ds was a newborn, one of us could care for him in the living room while the other slept in the basement, relatively insulated from the noise. (This was much better than our previous house, where we lived when dd was a newborn.) Now that ds is pushing 5, it's really not a benefit anymore. The kids' rooms are right over ours. We never had any trouble hearing them from downstairs, so that hasn't been an issue. In the end, of course, you do what you need to do. I'm grateful to have a roof over my head and a warm place to sleep (or cool -- it's 100 degrees here this week!). But it's not ideal -- not by a long shot!

My inlaws did. DH was in college and his older brother was already graduated and living on his own. MIL had what I can only describe as a mid-life crisis. There were even some suggestions of infidelity (after they had separated, but before they were divorced, so not sure that's really infidelity or not? FIL was still trying to reconcile but MIL was clearly not interested). Even then they were able to split everything up with very little disagreement (at least that we ever knew about). For the first few years, we still did holidays and such together. We had lunch with them two weeks ago, along with MIL's mother and FIL's new wife, at FIL and new wife's new home. Totally amicable and a nice time.

If anything, I heard these wild stories about kids doing crazy things at some bizarrely young age and tend to think I'd better get on the ball. But then, I figure most of that is probably embellished, at the least. Seems like I run into a lot more of that kind of thing in the homeschooling community than I did in public school. My 10yo thinks cleaning toilets is well above her maturity level, so there's that... :tongue_smilie:

Oh bummer! I'm so sorry. I know how disappointing that is. Hoping it all works out for you in the end!