We EO believe that hell is not a punishment at all: when we pass into eternal life, we all experience the love of God more fully, more intimately; for those who've loved Him, this love will be the fulfillment of every longing, but those who've rejected Him will perceive His love (which it is important to note is unchanging, as He is unchanging) as a burning flame. This is like Katie's analogy of the child and the stove--God doesn't will our suffering, we have willed it ourselves.

This book has actually been saved by being redone as the Story of Little Babaji, with ethnically appropriate illustrations.

We are having ham, mashed blue potatoes, spinach salad with caramelized nuts and mandarin oranges, stuffed squashes (modified version of this http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/pumpkin-stuffed-with-everything-good-361169), cranberry sauce, and apple and pumpkin pie.

When this happens to me, I listen to an audio book quietly, one that I know well, and don't need to truly follow. It engages me enough to take my mind off the 2 am worry, but not so much that I can't sleep. It's like a reset button for me.

Budget Bytes has a great recipe for turkey burgers with spinach, feta, and onions. We make it often, and I never used to buy ground turkey. :)

I used pads for about fifteen minutes in my early teens, switched to tampons, and used them for years. About 8 years ago I switched to a cup--miles better. Dds use cloth pads and a cup, respectively.

Yes, I think that would be a good idea. We have used Kilgallon in interstitial years, and concurrently with ML.

The ML books are the most repetitive of the level 2 books, but each one is more detailed than the last. Dds say, "more implementation, deeper detail."

Man, I haven't been here in a long time, but this is a topic dear to me, so I'd like to comment on it from the perspective of a family that has used all 6 levels of MCT with success. Those who say it's not a good choice for parent-teachers who are not the best in language arts themselves are probably right. It has a high level of presupposition of teacher knowledge and comfort. I am a professed language nerd. Although I had not the benefit of the best grammar *instruction* growing up, I had the advantage of hearing flawless grammar *usage* in my home, and of being exposed to a wide, wide variety of really good literature, children's and adult, in my own homeschooled experience. MCT gave me names and understanding of WHY things that are correct are, but nothing in it was new to me in terms of actual usage. So for ME, it was easy to jump into and use, but I realize my experiences are not the norm. OTOH, I have recommended it to several friends IRL with backgrounds far different from my own and they too have been using it with success. It's really the ultimate YMMV curriculum, I think. As to whether it is appropriate for non-gifted learners, ie ordinary bright kids, I think it is. I used Voyage level this year with my ds13 in 8th grade and another student, a sophomore who had struggled with LA in the past. For him it provided a level of instruction in the grammar, vocab, and poetry that appropriate for him, and I was able to use the writing portion to good effect with him in combination with the LToW level 1. I think that the idea to keep in mind is that it's vital to use the level that is suited to your student, without regard to what grade it's "supposed" to be for. In the case of my student, it was just that he was not ready for Voyage level material before 10th grade. Good. Start there with it, and keep moving ahead. The important thing is not to have completed all the levels, but to find the student's level and begin instruction there. But. But. But. Yes, I'm a confident writer, and yes, I'm good at critique. But using MCT gave *me* language to use to help direct students toward beauty in their writing; I felt that the direction he gives is sufficient for that for me. This is likely not the case for everyone, and I see and appreciate that. However, and no offense to you, SWB, I couldn't have used WWE, WWS, or FLL if you'd paid me to. I found the approach to writing incoherent, and the scripted lessons stultifying. I love your history books, and I love the WTM approach, but we just approach language skills differently, I think. The oft-quoted maxim of "the best curriculum is the one that gets done" certainly applies here! 😊 Now, my dds17 have used all the levels except Island, and they have told me that they have found MCT valuable and easy to use. They are NOT LA types--they're heading into the sciences--but used one of the three secondary levels for each of their three years of high school. We had done the first two levels together, and they did the second three independently. They are not my best writers, but they are proficient enough. (They would not be my best writers, regardless, I think. They're just not interested in English the way I am; but one of them said wistfully on the way to church today, "I can't wait to start calculus. I miss Ms. S, and I just love math!" 😂) Given the people they are, proficient enough writers satisfies me. The last thing I want to say about MCT is that I think his focus is on beauty in expression in a way that no other program's is, and it is that that I find most valuable and outstanding. Nothing else I have seen is as focused on choosing the very.best.words in your writing, on tightening up your prose till it sings. Beautiful expression is so important, and it can easily be lost through worry about the number of adjectives or variations in verbs of speaking. (This last is one of the ways in which I eliminate novels at the library--I open to a passage of dialogue and if there are more than two verbs of speaking on the page, I won't check it out. Life is too short to read bad prose.😛) I find that MCT increases awareness of really good writing by drawing attention to what makes it beautiful, and how the author achieves that goal. This small treatise has taken me an hour to compose, and that'll have to do, but the TLDR: do please include MCT in your recommendations; it has many strengths which are unique to it, and it can be valuable for a wider audience than is sometimes supposed.

I'll put my own saint's name into the mix: Kassiani (also spelled Kassiane, or Cassiane) She's a shared saint from before the EO/RC split, and she's venerated as one of the only women hymnographers in the church. 😃 Zebulon Gideon

You can substitute 1/4 C cocoa and 1T of butter for one square of baking chocolate in any recipe you happen to like. Our family's favorite is the Joy of Cooking's brownies Cockaigne.

Katie, when we go to visit my MIL in Omaha, we attend one of the Orthodox churches down there. In the western rite parish to which we usually go, we make no special efforts in advance to make our arrival known, because it's a VERY small parish, and I have a big family--they remember us! :) if we go to the much larger Serbian Church, it is incumbent upon me to email or call in advance, tell the priest who we are, where we go to church, and that we are members in good standing with permission to receive the sacraments. It's not that we couldn't just go to church and receive--it is just courteous. :)

Rosie, love and hugs. There are no words. He was a beautiful boy.

My daughters' names are Susannah, Eleanor, and Cecilia; middle names Elizabeth, Beatrice, and Rose, respectively. I still don't love Mabel. I don't hate it, and I don't think it's too "old," but it's not pleasant to my ear. Ruth, otoh, I love. :)

Hurray! :party: so happy for you all!

If rothfuss endorsed it, it might be almost enough for me to play candy land! ;)

This? http://thewelltrainedkitchen.wordpress.com

This seems like a good list: http://www.flandersfamily.info/web/age-appropriate-chores-for-children/

I make the pizza dough recipe from the Joy of Cooking (if you want this, I can give it to you); the sauce I make from scratch by sautéing onions, garlic in olive oil, then adding some canned diced tomatoes, a can or two of tomato paste, a slosh of red wine or small slosh of balsamic vinegar, a spoonful of sugar, and all the Italianate veggies I can round up--mushrooms, peppers, eggplants, zucchinis, etc--and cooking down for a couple hours. If you have an immersion blender, you can partly purée it, if that's to your taste. I don't add extra veggies to the toppings because of all the stuff in the sauce.

I think the distinction they're making is between the sound of a in man and the sound of o in Ron.

As long as the spider is not crawling on me without my permission, as perhaps, in my bed when I'm asleep, I don't mind them and think they're interesting. I think tarantulas are especially interesting.

I always wanted to use Mairead, but dh vetoed it every time! She'd have fit right in with me and my sisters, Siobhan and Rhiannon. :)

Totally guessing, as I have never seen it, but 1999? DYKWG--what is the quadratic formula?

We love audible here. We have listened to books on iPads, kindles, computers, and phones, all with great success. Otoh, we drive quite a bit (30 min to get anywhere), so listening to audio books makes time pass much faster.

Ds5 got one for his birthday, and loves it!