How long has it been since you tried WW? They updated their point system in December 2010 and how emphasize protein and de-emphasize carbs and fat. Also, you can do South Beach or whatever diet you want while doing WW - just stay within the points. WW can also be helpful in gauging how much to add for exercise - you can choose to eat your activity points earned (you don't have to wait until you've used your weekly points first) and that helps you gauge how much extra to eat for working out. I would definitely recommend yoga or light weights or something to build/maintain muscle mass while losing. Then you won't just lose muscle.

Most banks have bill-pay where you go online and order a check and they send it for you either via snail mail or electronically depending on the recipient.

I have taken our curriculum and spread it over 36 weeks. We school year-round so that is 3 weeks per month. Then I divide the week's work into four days. So that's twelve days a month. That gives us flexibility to take days off when we need them (one a week for library/errands) while not stressing over whether school is getting done. And no, we don't take our week off all at once - I don't think that has ever happened. I think the key is knowing what you need to get done (rather than how much time you need to spend like "doing school every day") and then making sure you do it.

We have a routine. I take our curriculum and break it down by week, and then I give my kids a list of what we need to do that week. Granted, I just have one doing this right now, but it would be the same if I had five. We school year-round so we do three weeks worth of school each month. On days we do school, I know how many readings we need to do (subjects we hit only once a week) and everything else we do daily. We start out our daily schedule with Bible, then do scripture recitation, our hymn for the month, and poetry and poetry recitation. Those are all daily subjects. Then we pick a weekly subject or two. Next block we do language arts. We do oral reading, spelling, copywork/dictation and grammar, and then another weekly subject or two. Next block is math - the next assignment we need to complete in math followed by a weekly subject. Finally we have science along with weekly subjects like art, nature study, composer study, artist study, etc. We may do two blocks in the morning and two in the afternoon. They may each be done individually or we may go through two blocks and then take a break. But we have the routine of subjects we follow so we get everything done. I would suggest scheduling your subjects one by one. Don't try to schedule everything at once - that would be an abrupt change. But start scheduling your core subjects or the easiest things you think would be to schedule. Stick with that and add to it. That's how I started homeschooling in the beginning. I started phonics, then the next month we added math, then we kept adding subjects every month until we were up to speed (took about six months at that level). You could schedule your core subjects (reading, writing, arithmetic) and leave the rest to being eclectic if that works for you. I know eclectic is a way of thinking, and I myself highly resist a schedule because it feels more like a cage. That's why I like sticking with a routine. At the beginning of a given week, I may have an idea of how many school days we will complete, but something may happen and that may change, which is why I love the flexibility of schooling year-round. When opportunities for field trips and such come, we take advantage of them; at the same time, we are on schedule with our basics like we need to be. Hopefully some of those ideas will help get you started.

If it comes down to a choice between me reading aloud and our listening to an audiobook, the audiobook wins, hands down. DS8 has to do oral reading every day (one lesson from the McGuffey's reader) - when I was in school, I read aloud once a week. If it's available on audiobook, we have it and listen to it. We also listen to audiobooks regularly in the car (we have a nice long drive to town in addition to long trips to see family). We also have ongoing read-alouds with each of our children. SWB strongly recommends in Writing With Ease that children listen to audiobooks so they can hear stories ABOVE their reading level and become better writers because of their wider exposure to good literature. She even gives a detailed reading list in the back of the book, which I have found to be an invaluable resource. To quote: If a child doesn't know that a sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark, then they haven't been doing the copywork and dictation that SWB recommends, using literature as sources for those exercises. A good grammar course would also help with things such as basic sentence structure. Other than that, I am not sure what a child would be missing that would be caused by using audiobooks rather than sticking to only books that the child is able to read himself/herself.

This is exactly why I think the change is rather stupid. Who actually says "I have hunger" as a part of daily speech? When my kids walk into the kitchen, they say "Mom, I'm hungry," not "Mom, I have hunger." German also has a habit of taking the second half of the verb and plopping it at the end of the sentence. So a direct translation might be something like "We are in the car with the family to Grandma's driving." That may be a direct translation of how the Germans might say something, but that's not how we say it in English. So just because they say something a certain way in Latin doesn't necessarily mean we need a literal translation into English. As we went through the mass Sunday I was looking to understand new meanings in things, but it was basically saying the same things with different words. I gained no new insight. It's just a different way of saying the same things. For instance, I don't understand why we need to use the word "consubstantial" when most people have no idea what that means (I looked up that term online and it was labeled "archaic" - as in, it's a word nobody uses anymore). When you look up the definition of consubstantial, it means essentially what we were saying in the old translation. The whole point of translating the mass into the language of the people was so that the people could understand what was being said. Using awkward phrases that nobody uses in real life and archaic terminology doesn't jive with "in the language of the people" in my mind. Like with versions of the Bible, you can speak proper English that people know and understand without using current slang (NIV vs The Message - I'll take the NIV any day!). I don't see how the new version improves on anything, and I don't see the reason why we need to be more "literal" in our translation. If you aren't translating something from the original, you shouldn't expect the translation to be as correct as something that was. I guess I just don't get it.

Okay, here is what I see. Take a look at HIS birthday. What part of it did she plan and execute? HE planned to take the day off work and arranged it. HE stayed in bed until 10:00. HE decided to go out and buy a tv as his birthday gift. HE decided what restaurant to go to. If she wants to celebrate her birthday like that, SHE needs to plan it. So to me it just sounds like he did a better job planning something special and enjoying it while she just treated it like a regular old day and felt sorry for herself and bought a cake. She could certainly arrange to have lunch with a couple other homeschool moms on the weekend to celebrate her birthday (like him going out to lunch with his co-workers) if that's important to her. She could pick a restaurant to celebrate her birthday at and tell the family that is where they are having that meal. It sounds to me like he's a little better at looking out for himself than she is. That's all. She needs to decide that SHE is important and make it a point to do something SHE enjoys on HER birthday - whatever that is. It doesn't have to be anything like she did. But if you compare the two birthdays, I think the blame is mostly in HER court, not his - she didn't do much for his birthday either unless he specifically asked for it.

:iagree:

I've found some good ones at Target and Old Navy. They have different styles you can try on and I usually end up finding one I like. Love them! Lands End are great, too.

We do three weeks per month. I take days off during the month as I need them...or I use them to make up days if we somehow get behind. Every year October seems to be a train wreck for us (due to external factors) so we didn't finish our October plans until November 14, but we should be able to catch up by the end of December if we keep our nose to the grindstone and don't take ANY breaks. I've also condensed school into 4 day weeks, so three weeks of school times 4 days is only twelve days per month. We do enough field trips and such to make up for the remaining days quite easily.

At our house, I am the one who apparently forgets things. DH will talk about things we did and places we went - like back ten years ago when we were dating - and I have no memory of it at all. It's embarrassing to say the least.

All those same lines, I must confess, if I had come home after a bad day/week/month (just having finished one of those myself), I would probably have had a fit, though it would have been behind closed doors and I would not have called and left a message on your phone. Give her a couple days to cool off and then next week watch for a chance to talk to her and open the conversation by apologizing for your note, that you never intended to offend or upset her, and then focus on your concern for the unhappy dog. If the follow-up conversation goes poorly, you'll know you're dealing with someone a bit off kilter rather than someone who just had a bad day and is blowing off steam and you simply happen to be in the way or doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Sorry you have to deal with this.

I say, cancel the boy scout troop. People will understand. And your drain may not be fixable via snaking. You may have a root in it or something that is causing the issue. Get a plumber out to diagnose it so you know what you're dealing with. It's much easier to deal with a defined problem than a mess or a problem that might be fixed by taking a certain action. Totally worth the house call fee for a plumber in my POV.

You can have up to 5 devices on the same account, I believe. I know I have my computer, my husband's computer and my kindle all on the same account with the same books downloaded to all three.

We bought our house in 2002 and a month later, a bad storm came through our town and everyone got new roofs. Last fall my husband got up on the roof to clean out the gutters and noticed some of the shingles were having issues with thermal splitting. The guy who put the shingles on our roof is no longer in business, but we did work with the company he probably bought the shingles from (apparently he was a favorite customer of theirs and no longer has a credit account with them). The guy that put the shingles on our roof did not specify in the paperwork the brand or type of shingles. I just have a receipt saying he replaced the shingles on our roof. Someone from the shingle supplier came out and verified the brand and the failure is due to defective shingles. The said, "Don't worry - we'll take care of you" and that's the last we heard from them. Supposedly it's a lot more expensive now to shingle a roof so this shingle company is dragging its feet when it comes to honoring the warranty on the shingles. Last week my husband got on the roof again to clean out the gutters, and more shingles are failing. Unfortunately we don't have $10K laying around waiting to be spent on installing new shingles on the entire roof. I assume homeowners insurance wouldn't do anything about it because the shingles are defective and it is the shingle company's responsibility to honor the warranty. I know it was hard to identify exactly which shingles were put on our roof - apparently they don't label them or something or maybe you have to take them off completely to see exactly what they are? I would think that you should be able to identify from the shingles themselves who made them and with a receipt prove when they were installed and have proof of warranty that way. But let's say my husband hadn't gotten on the roof and noticed the problem, or if he had, he didn't recognize it as a problem that needed to be addressed, and then we got a leak. Would the homeowners insurance cover the damage then and pay for the repairs, including installation of new shingles? Anyone else dealt with something like this? What are our options? Thanks!

I think it depends a lot on which school and which parish and which CCD class you attended. I wasn't raised Catholic but my dh was (and I converted before we got married). I know the diocese we are a member of is one of the most conservative in the nation, and it also has a very high retention rate (as compare to other dioceses). The mass we attend on Sunday mornings is packed with parents and children. Last weekend we had a visiting priest from Philadelphia and he talked about how different things were here. So I can imagine that her experience was real, but I don't think it was necessarily the same for everybody. I was familiar with most of the terms she mentioned from my RCIA class. I will forward the blog post to my dh and see how many he knows. He went to public school through the 7th grade and for the 10th grade and attended Catholic school in grades 8, 9, 11 & 12. He went to CCD every week when he was in elementary school. He attended RCIA with me and while he enjoyed it, the basics didn't seem to be news to him. He also grew up in a country parish with old priests. Overall, interesting...

Go with needles in the size 7 or 8 range - smaller or larger can be harder to manage at first. Then buy yarn that you think is pretty and feels good and says it is recommended for those sizes of needles. Personally, I don't like any manmade fibers in my yarn, so I stick with wool or cotton or silk and the like. Have you discovered Ravelry? There's lots of help over there.

Are all the leaders in various organizations you participate in perfect? Maybe they're overweight or have a temper or some other flaw. The Catholic church isn't perfect either. I expect them to deal with the problems when they find them, just as I would in any other organization. Just because some priests have had an issue with this doesn't mean ALL priests have an issue with this. Just because some people are allergic to peanuts doesn't mean EVERYBODY is allergic to peanuts. The Catholic church is a prominent organization so it has a lot of responsibility and its mistakes are widely broadcast. I've heard of various educators in non-Catholic schools that have gotten into trouble for molesting children. And maybe if it had been dealt with sooner or differently, the damage would have been less. But that doesn't mean I think all teachers are bad people and not to be respected. No organization is perfect, including the Catholic church.

I have my mom's Bosch that she bought in the mid-1980's and used every week to make 5 loaves of bread. It's still going strong. $500 may sound like a lot for a good bread mixer like the Bosch, but you can make 6-8 loaves at a time with the newest ones, and you can do other things, too. The blender is especially good - it blends everything evenly. Right now I just make two loaves at a time because I only have to loaf pans. However, we go through at least five loaves of bread a week - my kids love bread and especially sandwiches. I make my bread 100% whole wheat and they cannot get enough of it. I highly recommend the Bosch. It takes less time to make bread than it does to make a batch of cookies.

I've read this thread the the one cited earlier in this thread as well as the links given in that thread. I've also read other threads here and there about HSLDA on these forums, and my general impression of the discussions on these forums is that they are very one-sided against HSLDA. In the thread cited in this thread, I would say it was at least 9-to-1 against HSLDA. In fact, some of the statements against HSLDA in this thread came from the same people who use the term homophobic to describe anyone who doesn't think homosexuals are natural and normal. I may disagree with that type of lifestyle, but I have more than one close friend who is gay/lesbian. If I were truly "homophobic," I would think I wouldn't be able to talk to such people, much less be good friends with them. Quite frankly, if the type of people who are strongly anti-HSLDA also think 53% of the population is "homophobic," I figure I am probably someone who might actually like HSLDA and support the work they do.

They quote the law being proposed (which I can find online myself) and then they state their opinion and action taken on the matter. Then I agree or disagree. This is the main basis on which my opinion is formed. The emails I said I don't take very seriously because they are clearly PR, but I do note the types of cases they talk about. Do they talk about defending unschoolers or not? Do they talk about custody cases or not? If so, what types of these cases do they take on? I don't just do random internet searches and believe whatever I find about HSLDA. We all know how reliable the internet can be if you don't pay attention to your sources. I try to base my opinion on first-hand information rather than internet gossip.

The main basis of my opinion is reading the laws being proposed in my state and their commentary on those laws, and I haven't disagreed with anything they've said. I see the weekly emails as PR - I take them with a grain of salt because I am not intimately familiar with the areas where those cases occur. I do note the types of cases they discuss in those emails as it gives insight into the types of issues they like to address. So no, I'm not just buying into their PR.

My library has Overdrive for its electronic content (audiobooks and ebooks) and that is where I find books for my Kindle.

So if you needed a lawyer, before you used that specific lawyer, would you review every case that lawyer had ever taken on to see if you agreed with how the lawyer handled it? Or would you go with what you generally know about that lawyer and if it is generally in line with how you see things, you would hire that person? HSLDA is practical for my purposes. They haven't done anything in my state that I disagree with. I am not familiar enough with other states laws in order to make a judgment call on whether or not HSLDA is lobbying for (or how they are doing it) is what I would want. I doubt that I would agree with how they handled every single case that has ever come across their desk. But in general, what I've heard about them regarding situations I was familiar does not alarm me. We had a trial membership and got on their mailing list that way and were on it for a year before we actually purchased a real membership due to a rogue family member and wanting to have a bit of a safety net in place. I read each of their emails and haven't had a problem with anything I've seen, though I certainly understand there are homeschoolers who would. I also somehow got subscribed to move-on.org and get their emails and read many of them and very much disagree with the garbage they spew (I probably stay subscribed more for entertainment than anything) so it's not like I just agree with whatever I read in an email. I don't expect to agree EXACTLY with how HSLDA has handled some specific cases any more than I expect to agree EXACTLY with anyone I vote for (president, senator, etc.). They generally fit my viewpoint, and at the same time, if they did something I didn't like in my state, they would certainly hear from me about it. Just because I don't agree EXACTLY with everything someone thinks (such as someone here on this board) doesn't mean I think they are the devil. If I were in IL or OK, I might not agree with what was going on either. But I am in NE, and I have read their commentary on the bills that have come up here and have not had a problem with their viewpoints or actions they have taken on those issues (and there have been bills every year that I have been a homeschooler). If I lived in a different state, I might seek different legal counsel (such as others mentioned in this thread) if I didn't agree with actions they had taken in my state. I had a bad experience at Starbucks recently, but that doesn't mean I don't buy drinks there any more and that I tell everyone to absolutely not go there. Starbucks serves a purpose. I would really like it if they would offer salt to go on their otherwise Perfect Oatmeal, and that they would teach their asst managers not to lecture customers when they ask for something simple like salt for their oatmeal. But I still go to Starbucks and enjoy some of the other things they offer. I guess my thing with this whole thread is that I don't mind people voicing opinions against something. But in this thread and the other one linked, people seem to spew venom that would make you think HSLDA = The Devil and I don't find that to be the case. I am simply trying to offer an alternate point of view, which I saw a few times in the other thread but seemed to get lost amongst all the shouting and ranting going on.

I have no specific agenda of replacing all my hard copies of books with copies on my Kindle. However, I have found that I am far more likely to read something if I have it on my Kindle. If I borrow a new novel from the library, it just sits on the shelf; if it's on my Kindle, it gets read. So I check out books from the library and browse through them but if I want to really read them, I get them on my Kindle. The Joy Diet is a book I love reading and re-reading, so I purchased a copy for my Kindle. I have downloaded many of the classics I already own onto my Kindle and love reading them there. With all new purchases, if I can get something on my Kindle, that is my preferred format. If I cannot get it on my Kindle, I see if I can get it from the library or I ask myself how badly I want it. I like having some things for reference on my Kindle. Honey for a Child's Heart, for instance, is a list of good books I've had very good luck with, and I love having it on my Kindle because I take my Kindle to the library with me and that's much easier than taking my hard copy along or hoping that no one has checked their copy out. I also have the Well Education Mind on my Kindle as it is something I browse through or read specific sections from time to time. I don't like Cookbooks on the Kindle. The Bible is good only for daily reading, not for looking up texts during a sermon or Bible study. I've liked Amazon Kindle on FB and they post a daily deal every day which is a book that is less than $3 for one day only. I've picked up some good books that way. I also get their emails with lists of books on sale and have picked up some good ones there as well. I just don't look at the books with the big prices so that way I don't want them. I've bought only a handful of books for more than $10, but they were very intentional, deliberate purchases. Over 90% of what is on my Kindle I've gotten for less than $2 or free. I've had my Kindle since May and this is generally the pattern I've fallen into.