We made breakfast. Bacon, scrambled eggs with cheese, breakfast potatoes with onions and peppers, blueberry muffins and fruit salad.

hugs and prayers and then more hugs and prayers

We put up our tree Thanksgiving weekend. Ours is artificial because I am allergic to real ones. The hubster is going to get it out of our storage and start putting the actual tree up this weekend. We will put up the lights and ornaments, etc. next weekend. We also keep our tree up until after January 1st.

Love Elemental Science too! :hurray:

My daughter's piano and voice teacher are the same person, so I am getting her one of those small godiva boxes with a twenty dollar gift certificate to Barnes and Nobles. She has two small boys and is a single parent, so I think quiet time with a good book, some good coffee or tea and some chocolates are in order. I also know she likes all those things.

This has been an extremely bad year for us and money is so tight, so very tight. I know my parents will send my husband and I a check for one hundred. We will be using that to purchase our daughter some presents. It will be plenty and I am thankful they send it. She is my youngest though and I do like to splurge on her when I can. Hubby and I will pick and choose from this list She wants a Barbie and some outfits. She wants an Ever After High Legacy doll She wants a couple of board/card games She would like some new arts and crafts. She has a few books she would like such as Land of Stories 3 and one for Christian preteen girls. play make up, bath stuff Breyer horse I can't think of anything else. Other than the Bryer horses her list is inexpensive. whew! My parents will get something for her too. :) So still a good Christmas even if I don't get to splurge on her a little bit.

My daughter has VACTERLS Association. She has the V, A, C, R and had the S. She did have a feeding tube and has hypoparathryoidism again. She had tethered cord as a baby and had surgery. It has come back and she will eventually have surgery again.She just turned 11 and puberty is a time for a tethered cord to come back because of the growth spurt. She saw her neurosurgeon and surgeon this Tuesday and she will be seeing an urologist and getting an MRI. She does see a pediatric neurosurgeon. You have gotten some great advice in this thread and I would change doctors, yours does not seem to be taking it serious enough. Best of wishes and know you are not alone. It is good that you are being proactive.

Prayers for your family and the best of wishes. My daughter has VACTERLS Association, hypoparathyroidism is back and her tethered spinal cord. It is hard to see your child go through trails. It is the most helpless feeling in the world. God is with you and will carry you through, your little one too. hugs

I bought one of Janice Van Cleave's science experiment books, that Momables lady lunch ideas book, the wig to go with Madeline Hatter costume.

Thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers. :) We have a place! We sign papers tomorrow. He did not care about the credit score. He saw that we had excellent rent history and excellent job history and is giving us till the end of September to give him the deposits. We will spend this weekend moving and should be settled the beginning of next week. Again, thank you all so very much for your thoughts and prayers, it is appreciated. :grouphug:

You have gotten some great advice here, what an incredible group of ladies you all are. :) When our daughter Emily Grace died, the most helpful were notes of encouragement, people listening. A couple of people sent me cards of remembrance a year later on the date of her death. It helped knowing others remembered and the support was heartfelt. I love the locket idea. hugs and prayers

Thank you for your prayers and support. We liked one of the houses we saw yesterday and put in our application. It is an individual owner and two of his places are not rented, I am sure he wants to get them filled and collect rent. We also had a lady contact us and we expect to hear back from her this coming Tuesday. My husband did talk to the pastors at our church and several people have contacted us. Either the rent was too high or the house was not right or not going to be ready in time for us to move. This house is not perfect but it is a good fit for our family. Sitting on pins and needles, packing and getting ready for a moving sale.

Hello, We have done Elemental Science for three years now. I am using Biology and Chemistry this year, doing each half a year. I only have one child that I am homeschooling though. Elemental has schedules for two days a week and five days a week. We do it two days a week but we do both two days in one day. So we will be finishing Biology in 18 weeks not 36. She really loves science. We do the demos, sometimes we wait until Daddy comes home so she can do those with him. We do the reading and then the narration pages.We do one of the crafts and do the other things such as the animal diet chart, vocabulary, etc.We did not use the lap book or do the color pages. We like to get math and English out of the way first thing in the morning. Then we do science on Tuesdays and Thursdays and history on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Tight hugs! :grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug:

When the video was watched with our troop the girls were taken elsewhere. We have a fantastic troop, we are grateful for it. I hope your troop is a wonderful experience for your family.

Thank you both. I have scoured Craig's list. We also have excellent references too. People we have known for ten, twenty, thirty years.

We have had a horrible year to say the least. My mother had a massive heart attack in January. She had a triple bypass in February. My daughter and I went to Fl to help my father and be there for her. In March my daughter had a severe UTI. She only has one kidney, and she has ended up in the hospital when they have resulted in a kidney infection. April, we found out her tethered spinal cord is back. She will need surgery at one point. May I had an ischemic brain stem stroke. June and July had incidents too. Then August, we received termination from our landlord. Her husband died and she is downsizing. She sold her house and wants to move back into this home. We have lived here over ten years. We at this point have twelve days to be completely out and in a new place. The problem is my husband has bad credit. When the recession hit, his pay took a 20,000 hit. They also took away bonuses, payment of cell phones and other extras. We have medical bills from our daughter and now from me. We have paid things late but we do pay. We have an excellent rental history. 10 years at our current place, 10 years at our last place. My husband also has an excellent work history and has been with a corporation for 11 years, working one of their local stores for five years before that. But it seems all that matters is that almighty credit check. We have tried to get into some seedy apartments and all that matters is our credit check. :( We are to look at two houses today and if we like one...heck we have to like one, we are desperate. We did let the property manager know about my husband's credit. He said he would have to pull it (and each pull brings his credit rating down more) and work from there, talk to the landlord. We are offering to have the payments taken directly out of our checking. The other options are that my daughter and I move down to Florida with my parents which would be incredibly hard. She would have to give up her AHG, her voice and piano, her pets and I could not get to therapy. I am suppose to be in OT, PT and ST to get my skills back but finding a home is top priority right now. Plus my parents are elderly and set in their ways, they are very strict to put it lightly. My husband would have to get his work to keep him on the road that way he would stay in a hotel. The other option is to rent a long-term hotel. They don't allow pets though and a kennel for months at a time is expensive. I am just really hoping this landlord will work with us. I have prayed until I am blue in the face about this situation and for a peaceful rest of the year. Would you please pray for my family? We are not doing well at all. :(

Hugs to you. I hope the police find who did it and brings them to justice.

Prayers for you for justice, strength and peace.

Thanks for the advice so far, I am looking into them all. I am also trying to figure out what level to put her in. How do I share an attachment?

Hi, thanks for responding. We just started fifth grade this Monday. I am talking about her printing. She asked to start learning cursive and I was looking at curriculum for that but the last two days of school, I have noticed her handwriting is practically illegible. She just started fifth grade. She went to public school until the middle of second grade. I pulled her out and we did Calvert that year. For third and fourth we did CC. The last half of forth was a disaster because of my mother's heart attack and my stroke, other things too. Other subjects took priority and she usually types/texts or talks. :p

Okay, I cringe while I type this but I have to admit my daughter's handwriting is atrocious. It was something I meant to get to but with her surgeries, illnesses, my mother's heart attack and my stroke (and now a move in less than three weeks), I have continuously pushed it to the wayside for a couple of school years. Please don't look at me like that. *has the decency to be ashamed* She is left handed and has had strength issues in the past. She does not space well between words, her letters sometimes float in the air and she will make make her lower case look capital and her her higher case look lower on occasion. By that I mean like her lower case r will look like a capital R only small like a lower case. I was looking at Handwriting Without Tears, A Reason for Handwriting, etc. What worked for you? Any tips? Thank you.

We have started with King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table with the teacher and study guide and we love it. My fifth grader is an avid reader though. I see no cons, it adds to the reading and helps her get more from the story. It also helps with her writing and grammar. We will be doing Robin Hood next and then the other two novels in the fifth grade literature with the study guides. We do two a month as required reading for Literature. I plan on purchasing the sixth grade literature set too and one of the poetry ones.

Incredibly sorry for your loss. Prayers...tight comforting hugs.

Will gladly pray! It will work out one way or another. God has you in the palm of His hand.