I get the convenience of this, but ... I've been burned too many times by prices that have increased (don't just use the "Place this order again" button!) and by insane shipping charges (don't use the "1-click buy now whatever it's called" button!). I've seen price increases from $35 to $50 only a couple months later, and shipping charges of $60 on an item that only cost $5. For me, any convenience would be negated by having to remember to check the order to make sure the price and shipping charges were reasonable. ETA: I do a lot of shopping on Amazon. But I've learned to always be careful, to check the item price and the shipping charges BEFORE I hit "place my order."

It does actually bother me some when people say that a certain child or group of children is the most anything in the world--cutest, smartest, most adorable, etc. It's because I'm such a literal person. When I hear that kind of statement, my mind goes not to the children being complimented, but to all the other children in the world who are being dismissed as not as cute/smart/adorable/whatever as the children who are being complimented. I know that most people who say that type of thing don't intend to disparage other kids, but no matter their intentions, that *is* what their words are saying. I don't say anything about it to the person who made the complimentary comment, just say "thank you" if it's my kid who's being complimented, because I know that no harm is meant. I don't make those comments myself, though. I say things more like "He's so adorable!" or "He's such a cute kid!" Even with my own daughter, I only make comparisons that I'm certain are true--I will tell her that I love her more than any other child, or that she's my favorite child, because she is (I don't have other kids--if I did, I'd have to start modifying). I will tell her that she's more polite than a specific other child (but not until we're alone!). I do not, however, tell her that she's the "best" at something, or "cutest," or "smartest," or "anything-est" unless it's clear that I'm comparing her to a specific group for whom I believe the comparison holds true--not to all the kids in the world.

Congratulations to both you and your son--your son for earning the reward, and you for obviously having done a great job raising and homeschooling him!

I'm so very sorry for your loss.

I can't recommend from experience, as I'm in the same situation as you, but I've decided for now that we're going to start with ARTistic Pursuits, the preK one. We haven't really done a lot of art projects, so I think starting from the very beginning will be good for my daughter (only 6 months younger than your son), and I noticed that for grades K-3, they only have 3 books listed. I figure if we do preK in K, then that'll leave those 3 books for grades 1-3, assuming we like the program. I'll be interested to hear from those who are more experienced than I.

I agree with tm919 that much of the preK instructor's guide isn't relevant if you only have the workbook (or only the workbook and wood pieces, like we bought). However, the first time I looked at the workbook, I was thoroughly confused! On the letter pages, it's pretty obvious what to do. However, there are several pages at the beginning of the book that I didn't know what to do with until I looked at the IG. And for me, the IG also had helpful hints about how to teach proper pencil grip. I'm not sure if I'll buy the IG for future levels, now that I've gotten the hang of the program, but I really needed it for the first one. Be warned, though, that the IG is a bit confusing, too--it took me a while alone with it in a quiet room to figure out its organization and how to pull the bits I needed from all the bits I didn't need.

Anchorage, AK Fort Collins, CO Ann Arbor, MI I guess it picked up on the fact that I like winter!

Once we started HWOT when my daughter was 4, my daughter flat refused to do any other tracing books. She loved HWOT--I think because she loved the wood pieces. She could use the large and small curves to make Mickey faces :) ETC preK levels (which we also did at age 4) cover the consonants, but not the vowels. It doesn't teach their names, though it would be easy to add that in. It teaches their sounds, letter recognition, and writing lowercase letters. (HWOT does capital letters for preK, so it is different.) We didn't do the writing portion since we were doing HWOT. My daughter tolerated these workbooks but didn't really like them. They were almost completely review for her. I wasn't fond of them, either--they were boring and repetitive, which may be ok for new material but is just rotten for review. Some people use HOD all the way through high school. It wasn't a great fit for us, but I can see why people use it long term. Good luck!

:grouphug: It's so hard when anxiety rears its ugly head! These kinds of thoughts occur to me, too, though not often with relation to everyday driving--for me, it's more when my husband goes on a business trip, I have a hard time getting it out of my head that something will happen to him, and on those rare occasions when I fly alone with my daughter, I worry about what will happen to my husband if the plane goes down, or we're in a wreck at our destination, and we're both killed and he's left alone. I'm sure that if he ever traveled (overnight, or on a plane) with my daughter without me, I'd have a hard time with it. I don't think this kind of worry is that uncommon, at least not with regard to long trips or in certain situations. I know a family with 4 children who, when one parent has to travel, ensures that at least one child goes and at least one child stays. That way, they reason, if there is a catastrophe, the surviving adult has at least one family member left. I also knew a family with only one child in which the parents worked together and took the employer-provided shuttle to work--but there were two or more shuttles each morning, and two or more each night, and they never rode the same one together, so that if the shuttle was attacked (the employer was a high-value target for terrorists), the child wouldn't lose both parents. That said, I think that it becomes a problem when you're in a normal, everyday situation and the anxiety is such that it affects your life to the extent that you're talking of. I wonder if some counseling or medication for anxiety may be useful for you. Do you feel anxious about other things as well, or just this? If you worry about other things, too, do you seem to worry more than others about rather routine events, or does it affect your life more than it seems to affect others'? If so, you may want to mention it to your doctor or to a counselor. (I'm probably preaching to the choir here--I wouldn't be surprised if my own tendency toward negative emotions, especially anxiety, is at clinical levels. I do well enough controlling it, and it affects my behaviors little enough, that I haven't seen a need to get professional help, but if it ever gets to the point where I don't want my husband to take a couple hours' drive with my daughter, I'll be making an appointment rather quickly.) And sometimes a worry will hit so suddenly, with such conviction, that I just *know* it's really a premonition. I haven't been right yet, thankfully, and I pray that I never am ... because how in the world would I live with myself then, after ignoring what turned out to be a real premonition, a whisper from God, because I've trained myself to behave as if my unreasonable anxieties don't exist?

I wouldn't worry about going completely formal if it wasn't on the invitation--as WoolySocks said, others probably will not assume that an evening wedding is formal. However, when going to any evening wedding, I would assume that it's more formal than an afternoon wedding--I would encourage my husband to wear a suit, and I would wear the nicest non-formal dress I had (I own a couple of formal dresses, but it wouldn't occur to me to wear one of them unless told the wedding was formal, so in your situation of not owning one, I wouldn't think twice about it, and there's no way I'd wear the MOB dress before my own daughter's special day). I think virtually any long, simple dress would work, especially if you have or buy glitzy accessories and some high heels to go with it. (They don't have to be expensive, just sparkly!)

Salt Lake City, UT I lived there for 3 years and loved it. I'm not as sure about museums and such--not my thing at the time--but there was a decent bus system, it was bike-able, the University of Utah is there, the weather overall was nice with some good winters (and Park City for excellent skiing very close by). You could live in the city, then drive 10-15 minutes and feel like you were in the middle of nowhere with good hiking. I don't recall how cloudy/overcast it was, but I do remember being stunned by the beauty of the sun shining through the clouds. It's much higher elevation than I was used to, and I remember a native Salt Laker laughing at me when I exclaimed that I felt like I could reach up and touch the clouds.

Apparently they can ;) However, it's pretty stupid of them. I haven't sold things on ebay before--is there a way for you to present the tracking information to ebay so that the dispute is resolved in your favor? Also, be on the lookout for negative feedback from this person, which can seriously affect others' decisions about whether or not to buy from you. If negative feedback is left, be prepared to respond immediately with your side of the story.

Following! We have 3 smaller rugs that my husband bought on his travels before we married. We really like them, but rarely have a space where they fit perfectly. Every time we move (every 2-3 years), I end up looking for ideas of how to use them in our new space! Moxie, I really like the layered rug look, but I'm not sure that it would solve the size problem, since the larger rug just becomes the floor for the smaller rug. I do love how a rug can help define a separate seating area--like you suggested, the coffee table and two chairs. It also could work well as the base of a reading nook if you have a suitable area where you could put a bookcase or two, a comfy chair (maybe with a footstool), and a side table with a lamp and a coaster. So much depends on the layout of the room you're working with. Any way you could post a picture, or a hand-drawn diagram of the room, including where the windows and doors are, as well as an idea of the relative size of the rug and furniture? (I'm almost positive I found a website where you could enter dimensions and it would allow you to virtually rearrange furniture to see how it fit, but it was a long time ago and I have no idea where it was.)

I'm my phone now and can't figure out how to quote ... If you can't use his power tools to build the coop without injuring yourself, pay someone else to do it for you.

Your husband has made it very clear that he doesn't want chickens, and that if you get them against his wishes, you're on your own with them. The bolded part is disrespectful of your husband--even if you're not a wifely submission type, it's just wrong to go against someone's wishes, knowing they want nothing to do with your project, and then try to manipulate them into helping you with it. If you do this, you need to do it without expecting him to be involved in any way.

Oh, and the getting rid of stuff: I only get rid of my stuff (my clothes, books in genres he doesn't like, kitchen stuff, etc). He only gets rid of his stuff (though I do often point out when his collections are outgrowing their allotted space and ask him to either pare it down or help me find an alternative space). When things are more joint property (books we both enjoy, baby gear, home decor, etc), we have to agree or we don't get rid of it.

I'm one of those wifely submission people. In our family, that means he has 51% say and I have 49% say. We would discuss it and try to come to a mutually agreeable solution. He often chooses to defer to my preferences, especially if I care about the issue more than he does, and often I am able to answer his concerns well enough that he genuinely comes around to my position. (And I genuinely come around to his position equally often.) In those rare occasions when we absolutely don't agree and can't come to an agreement, I go with his decision, whether he decides to go with his own or my preference. In the situations you describe, I'd ask him if he really meant that he didn't object to the chickens if he didn't have to do the work. If he did mean it, and I was absolutely confident that I could do it without needing help from him with it, including building the coop, then I'd go ahead with it. But if it ever got to the point where I needed his help (and he hadn't changed his mind and fallen in love with fresh eggs or whatever), the chickens would be gone immediately. My husband usually defers to me on homeschool decisions because he knows I've done the research and I'll be the main one implementing. However, I do usually discuss options with him, solicit his opinion, and make recommendations with his educational philosophies in mind as well as my own. When we got married, I hated peanut butter. My family had always used creamy. He absolutely loves JIF extra crunchy. I bought it for him, and he convinced me to try it. Turns it I love crunchy peanut butter, too, and dislike only the creamy kind. The more comparable situation for us is that I prefer real mayo and he prefers Miracle Whip. I could get two jars, one for each of us, but I don't care enough for that, so I just get the Miracle Whip.

When I can't sleep due to inability to breathe properly, I use decongestant spray. Wait five minutes after using it then blow your nose ... it works wonders! I also pop an antihistamine or two, which helps with the runny bit and helps me sleep too. You shouldn't use the spray too often or for too long because it can be addictive, but it's the only thing that helps me when I'm too congested to sleep.

Most of the homeschoolers I've heard of there are younger than your son, if I recall correctly--the homeschooled teens I've heard of are departing this spring, I think. I was looking for a different age group, though, so there may be more teens than I'm currently aware of. We intend to arrive sometime in August and hope to start making in-person contacts soon after, to go with the email contacts I've made already. Feel free to PM me and I'll try to put you in touch with families with teens if I've found any by then :)

I usually say different from when I'm referring to objects: these shoes are different from, this museum is different from, etc. However, in your last example, "this ice cream tastes different than" sounds right. I think it's because of the grammatical structure of the sentence. It seems that "different" actually is an adverb modifying "tastes" rather than an adjective modifying "ice cream." In that case, it technically should be "this ice cream tastes differently than that ice cream (tastes)." I wouldn't actually use the word "differently" instead of "different," as that would sound too formal to me. But I do naturally change "from" to "than" when using that kind of grammatical structure. Eta: I would say "this ice cream is different from that ice cream," but it tastes different than that ice cream.

No advice, but lots of prayers.

Better vacation: beach or mountains? Kindle or hard copy books? Legal age for driving/drinking/working/whatever wouldn't be too intense for him: good where it is, or should be raised/lowered?

I would talk to the organizers about methods for kids to contact parents and whatever other concerns you have. I would not send the phone against the rules without organizer consent. Part of participating in organized programs is agreeing to abide by the rules. If you're unwilling for your daughter to follow the rules, she should not participate.

The children's museum is nice but expensive. There's a park ... I forget the name of it ... that has a river running down the middle of it, with a cool pedestrian bridge and lots of green space. Furman University is just outside of town with a beautiful lake with a walking trail around it. Downtown has nice shops and restaurants, but I'm not sure how kid friendly it is.

I've kind of played with a paleo diet and have noticed that overall, I feel better and less tired when I'm eating more in accordance with the guidelines than less. I've also found that I can "cheat" with regard to dairy and legumes--dairy, peanuts and beans seem to be just fine for me. The real kicker seems to be grains, especially wheat grains. When I eat less wheat, I feel less tired and less achy all around (I deal with some unexplained pain in my shoulder that seems less likely to arise when I'm limiting grains). When I eat more wheat, I feel more tired and more achy. I still don't avoid it altogether, though sometimes I think I should.