Congrats on your 30 pounds! That's great! You're definitely ahead of me! I started my weight loss program on August 26th. So far I've lost 19 1/4 lbs- although I weigh in again tomorrow so it should be a bit more by now. I'll update my weight loss thread tomorrow with my weigh in results. I started at 237 1/2 lbs. I'm 5'7". I was getting a lot of backaches (I have sciatica but it tends to be worse when I'm too overweight), and when I got up from laying down for a while, like to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, my ankles would kind of hurt, like I had bad circulation or something. Now that I've lost some weight, my ankles no longer bother me at all, and I just recently noticed that I'm definitely getting fewer backaches. I have been exercising regularly, and now I don't get out of breath as easily. The biggest benefit for me is more emotional I guess. When I'm overweight and NOT motivated to do anything about it, I don't feel good about myself and it can be depressing sometimes. I'm still overweight obviously (I weighed 218 1/4 lbs as of LAST week's weigh in, looking forward to seeing what tomorrow's brings), but because I'm making positive changes and continually working on it, I feel a lot better about myself. Challenges- well, it's not easy. I mean, I've been on a diet for three months straight now, and sometimes it just gets old. You want to be able to eat whatever you want, and tasty fattening foods, and as much of it as you want... but you can't. Not if you want to lose weight. And sure I can "indulge" now and then, and sometimes I do, but I find that when I get off track, it can be VERY hard to get back ON track. And the weight sure goes on a lot faster and easier than it comes off! It's a constant struggle, but it's worth it, for my health and for my self-esteem. ETA: I just saw your post, Judy, congrats on your 44 lbs! That's amazing!

Hi, My daughter and I used Oak Meadow for 4th grade, and we are now using it for 5th grade (we're on Week 11). We love Oak Meadow over here, and I'm committed to using it through at least Grade 8 and then I'll look into what their high school is like if we're still homeschooling for high school. If you're interested, you can read more details about OM and see schedule samples for 5th grade, anyway, along with pictures of some of the things we did, in my blog (see signature line below). Just look on the sidebars to the left for the information you're interested in. We use Teaching Textbooks for math (although I do think that Life of Fred sounds really interesting and I may buy the first one just to check out for next year, and if my daughter is interested, I may let her do it at her own pace alongside TT next year. It'll be up to her though, I won't 'force' her to do two math programs or anything. Actually, I WOULD have continued with Oak Meadow's math except that I have an older, used version of the OM curriculum and in my version, it only had its own built in math through 4th grade. Back then, as of 5th grade, it wanted us to switch to Saxon. Well, Saxon looked miserable to me, so I opted for TT instead. I later found out that more recent/current versions of OM continue to have their own math program even from 5th grade on, though.

It depends. Oak Meadow assigns a particular book every like three weeks for my daughter's 5th grade curriculum. And it does want us to look up unfamiliar vocabulary words. Since we read the assigned books together, it's pretty easy for her to ask me "what does that word mean?" and I jot it down and then I either tell her what it means, or we look it up if I'm having a hard time defining it. When she's reading on her own for fun, she might occasionally ask me what a word means, and I'll tell her. When we're reading a book aloud together just for fun, I usually just keep the flow of the story but every now and then I'll say as an aside "that means ______" if I think it would benefit her to know). The truth is though most of the words, even if we look them up, she'll never remember most of them at this age if they're words she doesn't hear regularly. So it seems almost a waste of time to do so much stopping and looking up of words with the assigned reading, but we do it anyway (most of the time). :D

During meals is our favorite time for read alouds. I usually eat breakfast later than the kids do though so at most I'm sipping a cup of coffee while they are having their breakfast. That's when I most commonly read aloud, while they eat breakfast. If you really want to do more read alouds, go back to reading over meals. Let them help you put away the meal prep stuff and everything afterward instead of you doing it while they eat. Then continue on with your business. :)

You can go see it and try a workout for free. I considered joining one but found out a family membership at the Y was better and more cost effective AND offered childcare. AND has more variety of workout equipment, group fitness classes and so on. I did do some asking around about Curves when I was considering them though and got lukewarm responses at best, the majority seemed to feel it became boring and/or wasn't all that effective.

I agree that you need to keep control of the journal. You bring it to the table, tell her to sit there and do what she needs to do, and when she's done, you take it and put it away in a place of your choosing.

I think you'll find that they will figure out a way to entertain themselves! I don't think you need to plan activities for them to do all night, they'll talk and laugh and come up with games and activities. But some we did when my oldest daughter had some sleepovers for her birthday: I set out various crafts we did temporary tattoos- actually I think we had tattoo stamps with tattoo markers that could then be colored in, and they enjoyed putting those on each other they did each other's nails they sometimes played a board game they played with the Wii and/or Rock Band 2 they ate they watched movies and mostly they stayed upstairs and giggled a lot. movies...hmmm... Ella Enchanted? Tuck Everlasting? The first Harry Potter movie? I'm not sure exactly how conservative you want to be!

wizard 101 pixie hollow webkinz freerice.com multiplication.com

:iagree:

I'm so sorry :( There have been issues in my family too with drug abuse. It's so hard on the family, and really scary.

It's the same as the regular WW program but you get an additional amount of points for nursing. It did work well for me while I was nursing my son and doing WW!

There's some very good info here: http://www.buddhanet.net/r_talkcn.htm

I know that *I* still played with dolls til I was at about 12.

I agree with this, too. I have a preschooler and a 5th grader and so far I've found this board great- it's active, lots of traffic, lots of good responses when you need one, etc. I think if it was divided up even more, it would just slow down this board and the responses it gets and when all is said and done, I think getting fewer responses to your questions/posts would be more frustrating than having to look for posts that pertain to middle school.

I'm sorry. :( FYI your library probably has picture books pertaining to the death of a pet, if you are interested in reading one with your 4 y/o. Here are some titles: http://childrensbooks.about.com/od/themesubjectbooksby/tp/petdeath.htm ETA: Oh wait, it's early. I read that too fast. It's your 11 y/o and a 4 y/o pet. I thought it was your 4 y/o's pet. Never mind! Though I'll leave the link in case any of it is helpful! P.S. I was 11 when my hamster died and I was devastated, too!

Heck no, I wouldn't get up that early to work out! :D

Let him pick the books he wants to read. Take him to the library and/or used book sales regularly, and let him choose. Offer, where relevant, to rent and watch the movie after finishing a book for a fun comparison. Try things the characters try (like my daughter enjoyed trying goat's milk after reading Heidi- she didn't enjoy the goat's milk, but she enjoyed the opportunity to try it haha. After re-reading Nim's Island for library book club, the children's librarian had the kids make a tinfoil "raft" and see how many crayons they could float on it in a bowl of water before it sank, etc). If the characters go somewhere, maybe you can go there too (or someplace similar). Try audiobooks sometimes, or read aloud, or see if he wants to read aloud to you, or take turns reading aloud (often my daughter likes me to read aloud to her but she wants to "read the things people say.").

No ideas without doing some research, but sounds fun :) Last year, we had a birthday party for Dr. Seuss and invited other families from our homeschool group and had a blast with it. Hope you enjoy it!

Absolutely not.

Yep, mine too! Between 2 and 3 every night. Can you believe he shut off the alarm and then GOT BACK INTO BED?! I had to go up there and get him up again anyway. I hear him walking around now at least. Sheesh, what a pain though. So much for my brilliant idea of letting the alarm clock do the trick. :P

He's not a morning person. He hates getting up early. And with his job, he doesn't have to. But we have an ongoing appointment to go to the gym Monday and Wednesday mornings now. We can ONLY go from 9-10:30 those two days a week, because that's when childcare is provided there at the Y. Evenings are out because of his work schedule. And week after week, I wake him up going "We have to leave in a half hour. Get up, we have to leave in 25 minutes. Are you up? We're leaving in 20 minutes. Can you get out of bed already?! We're supposed to be out the door in 15 minutes!" In between all this, I'm trying to get myself and the two kids ready to get out the door. Then, finally, with about 5-10 minutes left before we're supposed to leave, he rolls out of bed. Gets ready. We leave late. And arrive with at least 10 minutes cut out of our allotted workout time. It makes me nuts. So I just went in there to give him his first (and only) half hour warning, and then I set the alarm. And then I walked out of the room. So in about...oh, three minutes now, the alarm's going to go off and that can wake him up instead of me going in there five more times. He's not going to be happy with me LOL. (Blah, knowing him, he'll sleep through it and I'll have to go back up there anyway). Wish me luck. :lol:

Aw, that must be so scary. I've had bleeding in all three of my pregnancies but they were all like one time deals (twice in first trimester and once in second trimester), not ongoing. It is a good sign that the baby is healthy as of right now! I hope that it continues to be so!

He's very cute! I hope he has a wonderful birthday! And yep definitely a little boy, not a baby! My "baby" turned 5, too, just eight days ago. It's quite bittersweet, especially when it's your youngest. Time flies!

Do you use any artificial sweeteners? That's something I'm strongly considering as the culprit for me these days. Sigh.

I've always had somewhat of a talent for writing. I use it to some extent- for fun, for a creative outlet mostly. I did teach a couple of writing workshops to my daughter and some of her friends. I did have a few articles published in Secular Homeschooling Magazine. But that's about the extent of it so far. Maybe some day I'll do a bit more with it.