My name is Kathleen. I am called Katherine/Catherine and assorted variants thereof all the time, as well as the 1000 variants of Kathleen/Kathy/Katie. Unless it's family, I just don't care anymore. (My husband calls me Catalina most of the time, and has a very strong accent in English, so my name comes out Kah-tha-len even when he tries for my English name. From him, I like it, but not from anyone else.)

My daughter's name is misspelled more often than not, for similar reasons. We named her Rebeca (Spanish spelling, to honor her father's heritage). She more often gets it spelled by the two US variations--Rebecca or Rebekah. She just learned from an early age to tell people "Rebeca with one c", and expect it to still be misspelled as often as not.

We started school 2.5 weeks ago. My 7th grade daughter is using: History/Geography Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, Middle Ages sections Wikipedia and library books for reports on topics from Kingfisher Magna Charta (James Daughtery) Magna Charta (document) Asser's Life of King Alfred William of Malmesbury's Battle of Hastings Whatever Happened to Penny Candy (probably) My Family and Other Animals Geography Songs Science Ellen McHenry Cells Ellen McHenry Elements TOPS Analysis TOPS Weighing Math finish Singapore Primary 6B, then NEM 1 (probably just the first 4-5 chapters this year) English Writing With Skill 1 Dictation (for spelling) Practice Voyage (MCT--she already finished Grammar Voyage in 6th grade and isn't ready for Essay Voyage) Caesar's English 2 Reading: Light a Single Candle, The Door in the Wall, Otto of the Silver Hand, Daughter of Time, Jungle Book, If All the Swords in England, Whatever Happened to Judy, Daddy Long-legs, The Hobbit, Watership Down, When the Tripods Came, The White Mountains, City of Gold and Lead, Pool of Fire Free Reading: anything she likes. Currently, Love Inspired books and some books by Margaret? Haddix DVD (extra literature): Ivanhoe, Taming of the Shrew, Henry V Spanish Daily SSR, mostly spent reading various picture books Grammar practice, mostly conjugating verbs and putting subjects and verbs together to make sentences Logic Fallacy Detective (once a week) Bible daily reading and oral narration (assigned passage, currently from Acts) self-chosen weekly memory passage

I was not quite 1 year old (born Aug 13, 1968). I don't actually know, but I was probably asleep in my crib. I wish I had been old enough to remember that!

We live in the south, but have traveled in other parts of the country. You can't GET sweet iced tea north of Maryland or west of Texas, with rare exceptions. If you ask for sweet tea, you get baffled looks and a couple of sugar packets. According to my husband and sons (the sweet tea drinkers, I have never liked it), the sugar packets don't dissolve well in already cold tea and it doesn't taste good. In the south, however, sweet tea is the default and you have to specially request unsweetened tea (and it is assumed that you must have diabetes or be on a diet, so artificial sweeteners are provided with it). However, I have always ordered water in restaurants and don't get strange looks. When I was a child, though, my parents made me order my own water because the waitresses always thought they were somehow punishing or depriving me when they ordered soda or sweet tea for themselves and my brother and water for me. I just don't like soda or tea much.

She probably means ricotta cheese. My husband hates ricotta cheese, and won't eat lasagna made with it.

The only "dates" my husband and I go on consist of him inviting me to go with him to Lowes, Home Depot, the doctor's office or other errands. Usually we will stop by Chick-Fil-A or Waffle House while we are out. Once he took me to Olive Garden while we were out. This is when my older son is home to watch the younger two. He goes out by himself once or twice a week to church music practice (he plays bass for church, and also plays guitar). Beyond that, we go to church on Sundays, he goes to work nearly every day, and the children and I go to lunch and the library with my mother once a week. I have read/heard many authors and speakers suggest a weekly or monthly date night for couples, but that doesn't work well for us.

My kids (19, 18, 12, 10) can finish off the huge Sam's boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios in 2-3 days--which is why I buy them only rarely, for snacks, not breakfast. Even now that my oldest is not living here, the others finish the cereal in that amount of time--and most of it is eaten by the younger 2. The amount of cereal eaten is not surprising. The hiding in the room is also not surprising, but I would feel uneasy about it. I would be more bothered by not having a way to contact her family.

We have 4 children, but only 3 still live at home. We have a Chevy Silverado (6 passenger pick-up truck) that I drive with the children, and a Toyota Sequoia (8 passenger) for whole family trips.

I don't think of onions, garlic, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers (green bell peppers, red bell peppers, and jalapenos), or carrots as vegetables--we nearly always cut them up to add to another dish, so I guess I think of them as seasonings. I think of lettuce as either a sandwich topper or salad, so it is also not something I think of as a vegetable. We only use pumpkin for pumpkin bread/muffins or pumpkin brownies, though I have often wanted to try it another way. Vegetables I buy otherwise: broccoli cauliflower peas corn green beans cabbage brussels sprouts spaghetti squash zucchini yellow squash butternut squash There are a few others I buy once in a while, but these are the ones we buy often.

My older boys were 6.5 & 7.5 when my daughter was born (and 7.5 & barely 9 when my youngest was born 16mo later). They never thought anything at all about seeing babies breastfeed or get their diapers changed. (One of my husband's sisters hurried her 3.5yo son away so he wouldn't see my daughter getting her diaper changed. She didn't want him to notice that girl parts look different than boy parts.) I don't cover the baby with a blanket while feeding, because every single one of mine shoved the blanket away. I just chose shirts that could be easily lifted up for feeding, covering nearly everything that the baby's head and body didn't cover.

Lots of classic novels (Hound of the Baskervilles, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Oliver Twist, etc) are available as graphic novels. All of these have been checked out from the library by one or the other of my children. Since many of them were checked out by my 18-19yos, I haven't looked at all of them carefully.

My 1st two boys are 15 mo apart. With them, it was easy. When I first starting doing formal kindergarten with my oldest, his younger brother insisted on being part of the lessons. He would NOT be left out of anything his big brother was doing. Those two ended up doing the same work for everything except math and grammar by the time they were about 5 & 6, and for everything but math by 4th & 5th. In high school, the younger boy (who was ahead of his brother in math by the end of the year they were K & 2nd grade) ended up doing more challenging science also, but they did the same literature, history, geography, writing, etc--though the older boy did extra history because it interested him. For my younger two (16 mo apart) it has been more difficult. They are studying the same time period in history for this year and using the same science (Ellen J McHenry Elements & Cells, with some TOPS units), but they are nowhere near the same level for writing, grammar, reading, etc. Although I try to combine them for various subjects once in a while, it hasn't worked out very well overall so far. I doubt I will be able to combine them in high school like I did with their brothers. So, combining them both is a definite possibility, but be prepared with a back-up plan if it doesn't work out.

I figure he doesn't have his reading glasses with him (or he was busy) and that when he gets home he will be asking me to check if he has any text messages and read them to him. He does this a LOT, so I don't count on him actually reading any messages I send. He does the same thing with voice mail, but will usually notice I called and call back.

Minor error here: furry animals are mammals--day 6. Perhaps you were thinking of fish & water reptiles? However, I think that might overlap a bit with the previous section.

My older boys and I saw that episode a couple of years ago, and it has definitely stuck in our memories. What on earth does homeschooling have to do with size? [it turned out that he was small for his age because of some sort of medical condition, which actually was part of the reason he was homeschooled, but really!]

We leave the downstairs bathroom closed, because it's really close to the kitchen, and it just doesn't seem right to leave it open. I don't really care about the upstairs bathrooms (one in the hall and one in my bedroom). Those mostly have the door open, though.

I bought the largest I could find. I think it says it is for 6-8 people. I have used it for pot roast and such, but those recipes haven't been a big hit with my husband, who thinks most dishes should have jalapeno. (He complains that American food is too bland.) However, the crock pot allows me to make beans without forgetting about them and letting them burn. (And we need to make 2-3 pounds at once, because if I make only one pound they are gone in 2-3 days, even though none of my sons will eat beans.)

I kind of wonder if the child even remembered what he had done by the time Mom came to pick him up and asked him to apologize. 2yos tend to live in the moment, and 20-60 minutes is an eternity to them. [Most Sunday School nursery programs I have experience with last about 30 minutes to an hour or a little more if they are only during one church service or adult Sunday School, or double that if they last through both the church service and adult Sunday School.] I have taught 2yos, and we did put them in time out for 2-4 minutes for things like this. We also asked them to "say sorry"--which they interpreted as hug each other. No one expected them to really understand what the apology was all about. The point was just to accustom them to the idea that when you hurt someone you say you are sorry. I don't think it would have done even that if we had waited until pick up time (for Sunday School) or 20-40 minutes later (for the all day daycare) to do the apology.

My husband is Guatemalan. He says they have a pledge of allegiance, but they only say it once a year, on independence day (Sept. 15). He doesn't remember it, so I haven't been able to teach it to our children. When our kids are little (up to about 2nd), we start the school year singing the US anthem, the Guatemalan anthem, the US pledge of allegiance, and our current Bible memory at the beginning of school every day. This usually lasts a couple of months, gets dropped for time constraints for a few months (except for Bible memory, which is much more important to us), and then gets done again once in a while. It is not a big deal for us, so I don't mind dropping it when we have more important things to do, but I do think they should be familiar with it and the ideals it expresses of what we want our country to be. When I first start doing this (around 4yo) we discuss regularly what each is talking about and what it means. As they get older, we also also discuss that these are ideals of what we want our country to be, but that our country has not always lived up to these ideals. I also stress from babyhood that our first loyalty is to God, not to our country/countries or to ourselves. While my kids think I am too "talky", they do understand the national anthems and the pledge of allegiance.

I usually put 2 lbs of beans (black beans or pintos) plus about 1.5-2 gallons of water in our crock pot. I don't know how that would convert to a smaller recipe.

That is cool!

Having teens/young adults is lots of fun. Sometimes we stay up late just talking about one thing and another--politics, Bible/God, history, TV shows, video games, science.... It's odd how one thing leads to another, and the connections they find. I really miss my oldest in particular, now he's in Japan. However, I still have my second son to talk with, and my younger two are moving into that stage.

I would stop waiting for her. Plan something fun you can do with her sister while still keeping her in eyeshot--perhaps a fun craft or experiment. Just say something like, "I'm sorry you didn't finish your work in time to do this with us. Maybe tomorrow you can do it, too." or "We're starting our craft/experiment/game now. If you hurry you can do it with us." If you keep waiting, she knows that she won't miss out, or that at least her sister will, too.

All of mine score the other way--much lower on math computation than on the other math areas. I don't think this is entirely the curriculum--some children are stronger in one aspect than the other. However, Abeka and Saxon both emphasize the computation aspect, while covering the other areas more lightly. Perhaps a child who is naturally strong in computation and weaker in concepts/problem solving/etc needs a text that focuses more in his/her weaker areas? On the other hand, if the materials appear to be working overall, you might not want to make a big change. (I'm not very helpful here, am I?)