We have a Town and Country and find it works for our family of 6 adult sized people very well. DH is 6’3” and has plenty of space. DS14 is a little over 6’ and can still fit in the third row, although it is a bit of a tight fit now. We like that all of the seats in the second and third rows fold down into the floor. The seats fold very easily, in seconds, and we can fit a full sheet of plywood flat in the back, and have even moved a large couch in it with the back closed. We only have a cello to fit, but I think you could fit a double bass depending on which seats you fold down. I’m really not sure why the Chrysler minivans aren’t more popular. We’ve had several. They’re so much cheaper than the Odysseys and Siennas but we’ve found them to be very reliable. We’ve gotten all three of ours to 200k miles +. The last two were still running fine when we sold them, and our current one is at 210k miles and still going strong.

What is the Common App? I ended up just sending the transcript with all of senior marked “IP”. Oh well, if they want more than that I guess we’ll get another email.

Yes, I have a transcript template that I’m using. It doesn’t feel like it should be this hard. I think I’m just feeling out of my depth. I was a homeschooled kid but my parents didn’t make transcripts for us and I didn’t go to college so everything involved with helping my kids go to college feels very foreign to me. I think I‘ll just submit what I have and mark this year’s classes as in progress. If they have more questions I’m sure they’ll ask.

They want her “current” transcript now, and then they want her final one submitted after graduation. I’m just not sure what they’re used to seeing as “current”. Up through 11th grade? Or the the first semester of 12th? I’ve asked a few people how to do things as a homeschooler but no one seems to know. So we’re just filling everything out the best we can. It’s a community college and I know tons of home schooled kids go there so they must not be too picky about any of it. Could I do a mix of full year grades for 9-11 and then 1st semester for 12th? I’m just not sure what’s “normal”.

My high school senior is making her college plans for the fall and the school wants her current transcript with the final, updated version sent after graduation. What does the “current version” mean and how would I format it? Just grades 9-11? Or should I send something for this year? Oldest DD took a break after high school so I just sent her final transcript. I’m not sure how to do a partial one.

We do something similar. We currently have three cars and four drivers, but one is away at school without a car. We have a 2010, 2002, and 1998. Two are currently over 200k miles and still running strong. Yes, they tend to need repairs more regularly, but we are careful to maintain them and will drive them til they die. We’ve found over the years that even with the repairs we still save money over buying newer cars. We look for good deals, my DH is particular about the number of owners, checking the car thoroughly, and trusting his gut. He always finds us great cars. We also save A LOT on insurance and taxes buying older cars. We live in one of the highest COL states and pay less than $2000 a year in insurance for three cars and four drivers (two of them teenagers), and our vehicle tax bill for this year was $112 total. Another advantage to having three cars is that when one needs work we can make do with two. We live rurally and having transportation is a must, so this meets that need while avoiding debt and keeping our costs low. Our minivan is one of our higher mileage vehicles so we’re looking for a replacement. But it still runs fine, and we have a back up car, so we can take our time.

It says that I have to enter our AGI from last year’s tax return to confirm that it‘s me. Since we file jointly DH and I’s AGI should match. They do. I’ve double and triple checked. And it’s only 5 numbers; it’s not that hard to get wrong. But I keep getting emails saying mine doesn’t match his. I haven’t had time to try to figure it out today.

I filled out FAFSA for my two older girls last week and have now gotten eight emails saying that they have requested my tax information. The emails are identical. I was expecting two emails, but eight is surprising. I’ve been getting two roughly every four hours since sometime yesterday. Is this normal? Or does it mean there’s some kind of problem? I’ve also been unable to file my taxes after trying multiple times on Saturday, and was unable to confirm my identity on ID.me to try to fix the tax filing problem. I’m trying not to read too much into any of this but I’m wondering if these things are all related….and not in a good way. Ugh.

I might do this. I don’t want to put Algebra 1 twice, once in 9th and again in 12th. It’s what she needed and part of the magic of homeschooling is that we can do this. But it wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. I wonder if we have done enough to cobble together a consumer math credit. Or even just half a credit. She’s done some stuff in co-op that could fit and she started working this year and has learned some stuff there. We’ll be working on taxes this week. I have a consumer math text. I’ll see how much we’ve covered and maybe switch to that through the end of the year.

DD2 is a high school senior. Math is not her best subject and we’ve been a little all over the place with it. We did MUS Algebra 1 in 9th grade (she did ok with it but not great), MUS Geometry in 10th (she did fine with this), MUS Algebra 2 in 11th (we pushed through but it was a struggle), this year, for 12th, we’ve decided to just review Algebra and solidify as many concepts as possible. We’re using Saxon Algebra 1 right now. I was hoping to get into Algebra 2 by the end of the year but I don’t think it will happen. I’m not really sure how to list this year’s math on her transcript. I’d rather not list the Algebra 2 with the low grade it will have but I think I’m kind of stuck with that one. How would you do this?

I’m giving Bullet Journaling a try this year. I’ll admit that I haven’t gotten far with it. The year started off a little rough and we’re just now settling back into our “normal”. I haven’t completely figured out how I want to do it but I’m attracted to the idea of it being whatever I need or want it to be. I’m doing a very basic version similar to the original, I think. I love the look of all the artistic ones but I don’t have the skill or time for that.

We have a lot of activities as well. I’m homeschooling 3 who are in 12th, 11th, and 8th/9th. This year I made a conscious choice that each of our activities met a very specific need and would be valued pretty much equally to our book work. That means that most weeks are 4 day school weeks. I’m ok with that. The plan is that each of the four core subjects will be done for 150 hours over the course of the school year (one hour per subject, per day, for 150 days) and then we’ll be done with school. We started after Labor Day and will finish before Memorial Day. In reality, my oldest is a week or more “behind” the pace she’d need to be on to finish in May. She will likely get even further behind this spring due to speech tournaments and work. As long as she continues to work diligently in the time she DOES have available, we will still wrap up school about when co-op ends in May, even if we haven’t quite hit 150 hours. Co-op is mostly enrichment, but the music, arts, and other classes that feed their souls are important. My oldest has a part time job that is teaching her valuable skills not easily taught out of a textbook. All three DC will work 20 or more hours a week this spring at a seasonal job that will last a few weeks. They’re involved in a musical. Younger two are working hard towards their black belts and will hopefully achieve that goal in the next few months. There is church and scouting, and running club. But as I thought about how to fit it all in, I realized that I couldn’t fit it all in. I thought about dropping activities but decided that they are all important in different ways. So I scaled back on school work. Other families may have different priorities but this is where we ended up this year and it feels like a balance we needed.

January pretty much disappeared on me. Spent a few days cleaning up and recovering from hosting 40+ for Christmas on New Year’s Eve, a week getting my daughter ready for school, another week driving her out there, came home and got the flu, recovered with a day to spare before taking another daughter out of state for a speech tournament. And now January is pretty much over. My goals for these last few days of the month are simply to catch up from traveling and being sick. There plenty of laundry and house cleaning to do. Also need to check in with my younger kids on where they’re at with schoolwork and probably check a lot of stuff. I need to order groceries and restock. We start back to co-op this week and I have things to do to get ready for that. I had started getting my bullet journal going while we were stuck in our hotel room in a blizzard on the college drop off trip, but need to get the daily pages going. That should be helpful this week as I sort through what needs to be done to get life back on track and get the second half of our school year going.

Week 2: We are taking DD19 to school 1200 miles away this week so that’s where most of my attention will go. We leave on Wednesday so have a some shopping and packing still to do. I also need make sure younger three DC are set with what they need and which grandparent or aunt/uncle will be helping them out each day. So progress on yearly goals will be almost nothing. That’s ok. My goal for January was just to think through and prioritize so that I’d be ready to start really working towards some goals in February. I’ve decided to give bullet journaling a try. Nothing fancy or creative (although some people really do beautiful ones!), just minimalist and basic as a way to keep track of my schedule, to-do list, goals, habit building, and thoughts. I’m going to try to get that set up this week. I can maybe work on it while we’re driving if I don’t get to it before. My goals for this past week were to return all the things I borrowed to host Christmas, and put away the Christmas decorations. Everything has been returned (but we broke a coffee pot and crockpot in the process. Ugh. Need to order replacements), and Christmas decorations are down and the tree is out. I still have a few things to box up though and the boxes need to be put back in the basement. I need to do that before I leave Wednesday.

I have attempted to participate in this goal setting thread for the past two years. The first year I posted fairly regularly but at the end of the year didn’t feel like I had achieved much. Last year I gave up by late spring as I was tired of posting “didn’t really make any progress this week, I’ll try again”. Now we’re at the beginning of another year and I still think goal setting is important and beneficial. I feel like my days need the direction goals could provide. But this year is going to bring a lot of change for our family and I’m not sure what is reasonable for goal setting. Next week I take DD19 halfway across the country for her first semester of college. DD17 graduates high school in the spring and starts college in the fall. DD16 will be a high school senior in the fall. I’m aware that I really have no idea what all of those milestones will mean for my time. Then there’s DS14 who will officially be in high school at some point this year (a timeline we’re still debating), and I need to make sure that he doesn’t get lost in the shuffle of his sisters’ big life changes. What I’ve decided for now is that January will be a month of reflecting on what my priorities should be this year and what sorts of goals and/or changes would be helpful. I’ll probably need to take it month by month. We just “finished” Christmas. I hosted 40+ for Christmas dinner on the 31st and then 30 for a New Year’s Eve party after that. It was a great time, but I am definitely NOT ready to jump into January with any sort of gusto. Things that I would LOVE to work on this year include my personal health in the areas of healthy eating and movement, spending more time outside walking and working in my gardens, getting back to reading regularly, working on a morning routine that sets the tone for my day, decluttering some forgotten areas of my house, and having friends over on a more regular basis. This week’s goals specifically will be to put the Christmas decorations away and return all of the borrowed tables, chairs, and dishes from this past weekend. I would also like to spend some time learning about bullet journaling. I think this is a system that could work for me. I wouldn’t do any of the pretty, creative stuff, but having one place to keep track of things, customized to my needs, is intriguing.