The only reason they like people to donate the double reds, really, is because then they are guaranteed that double amount of blood in one shot. A lot of people will come, and then not return. Or return only sporadically. So if you're not going to come back in the 56 days (or whatever it is), they're missing out on that second donation. Whereas if you do the double red that first time, they're getting the equivalent of two donations. Of course, you have to wait double the amount of time to donate again afterward, so if you DO return regularly, it won't make a difference in the end. If you're less likely to return every 56 (?) days, then a double red would be more useful. But keep in mind that for the double red, the iron has to be even better than usual so that might be a factor for you, and you have to weight a certain amount (I think over 150 lbs for females?) I'm type O negative too! I try to donate regularly but sometimes life gets in the way. I did do the double red last time so that I could go less often and not feel guilty about it if/when I don't have the time lol. It's easier to make time when you can only go every 112 days or whatever.

Well, I'd respond by being pretty darn impressed! LOL. He doesn't like to draw. To me, it's just not a big deal. I wouldn't force the issue. Maybe when he gets a little older he'll develop an interest in trying to draw more elaborate pictures. Maybe he won't. Either way it's just not the end of the world to me, he's smart, obviously- I'd let him focus more on his interests, and if drawing isn't one of them, that's okay. In the meanwhile if you want to leave things available to him to pick up and use should the mood ever occur (like the draw-write-now books, or maybe you can google WordToonz, those are pretty cool and my daughter enjoys them), go for it. But it's just not something I'd worry about or an issue I'd see the need to force.

We have "Fun By The Numbers" (preschool), Totally Tut (elementary school), The Allowance Game (elementary school), Make A Pie (simple fractions) and stuff like that- of course things like Monopoly and Life are good for money skills, and in any game "keeping score" is math. If you want to work on addition, subtraction, or multiplication, you can play a "Memory"/"Concentration" game with a deck of cards, and whenever someone finds a match, they have to (for example) multiply the numbers on the cards before they can keep their match. You can also do that while playing War. There are also electronic games... my daughter has MathBlaster for DS. She enjoyed playing Timez Attack and different games on multiplication.com for example.

Thanks for the update! That was fun to read! You're right, they learn all of those "subjects" through conversation, movies, books, getting out and about, it's great the way you are trying to integrate them all in such an interesting way.

LOL I hear you. My 4 year old is in gymnastics every Wednesday from 4:30-5:30. My 9 year old is also in gymnastics every Wednesday, hers is from 4:30-6:00. She is also in Girl Scouts, every Thursday from 6:00-7:30. She's also going to be in a few "temporary" activities, like a fifth grade book club at the local library that will run for a few months. Both of them will probably join the winter/spring homeschooling bowling league again, and that's weekly. My oldest does Special Olympic sports and two days a week I have to pick her up at school (20 min away). I go to a weekly weight loss support group and now I'm trying to fit in workouts at a gym, too. Plus we do all sorts of outings and field trips with the homeschool group. So I'm constantly running and sometimes the thought of that is what's exhausting, not what any given child is doing, and I wonder if it's going to seem even worse in a couple of months- especially mid winter!

Well, I agree with her! My daughter was in public school from K through most of third grade before I pulled her out to begin homeschooling, and let me tell you, she was CONSTANTLY losing her recess (all lousy 15 minutes of it) even in KINDERGARTEN because of "talking too much." Kindergarten is too academic these days (already geared toward standardized testing), they weren't allowed to socialize in their classroom... ...and you'd think well, okay, they can talk at lunch, right? Wrong. They had "silent lunches." Nobody was allowed to talk in the lunchroom. This was so they could hurry through their lunch so they could have time for that lousy 15 minutes of recess (if they hadn't already lost it), so they could hurry back to their desks for more teaching to the test. And that was how they expected 5 year olds to thrive. My daughter gets way more and way better "socialization" being at home. And I'm thankful that at least I "discovered" homeschooling before my son got put through the same public school nonsense my daughter did!

That's really awesome to hear! We just started TT this year...TT5. We only just started school this week, so we've only done the first two lessons so far, but my daughter loves it. She begs to do math every day lol. It seems like a great curriculum to me and I love how they make it so easy to understand and explain it so well by showing and telling what they are doing and so on. As long as it keeps working for us and my daughter keeps enjoying it, we'll continue to use it. It's good to see someone say that their child used it in the late teens and got into college no problems! But I figured worst case scenario if the time came and she felt she needed extra tutoring for anything, we'd deal with it. In the meanwhile, during these earlier years especially, if math could be "fun" and as stress free as possible, and come across as "easy" enough to boost her confidence (rather than something else causing her to develop a "math is hard, I'm no good at math" kind of attitude), then GREAT! That's exactly what I want in a math curriculum! And with TT, I think we've found it! :)

I don't think it's possible to blow K, and a K'er really doesn't need to do handwriting, either. There's time enough for that in 1st IMHO! Some nature walks, some gentle crafts, read alouds, music/movement, plenty of time to imagine and play, and sitting in on whatever he's interested that the older kids do (you mentioned science and history) sounds like a great K year.

My daughter was in 4th grade last year. We use the Oak Meadow curriculum, which was all inclusive. It did start getting a little heavy on writing assignments as of 4th grade but overall is still a great, creative, hands on curriculum. We spent on average about 3 hours a day doing schoolwork last year. Sometimes we finished sooner and could be done in like 2 1/2 hours. Other times we were doing some particular hands on project that brought it up to more like 4 hours a day. But 3 was about average.

I am pretty sure I am stocked for life already! I sent a few dollars to the March Of Dimes. I sent a few dollars for breast cancer. But I can't single handedly help cure diabetes, help the homeless pets, and whatever else everyone and their mother is suddenly sending me donation envelopes (and return address labels) for. What do they do, get on a fundraiser forum and post a thread titled, "Hey, everyone, come quick! I GOT ONE!" and then they list your address and everybody else sends off pleas for help (and return address labels), too?

The first two discs of the last season of "Lost," that is! We watched all of the available seasons on Netflix via the "play now" option this summer. We'd watch at least one episode and sometimes up to three a night! We were hooked! Of course, the very last season is not available to "play now" and when it was first released it said there was a "long wait" but I just checked my queue to see what they were sending out to me because I knew we were due to get another two DVD's, and I see that they're sending Disc 1 and Disc 2 of the last season of "Lost!" Yay! :D

My oldest daughter spends a huge chunk of the summer with her father, but he continues paying the same child support payments. He once asked me if I still wanted/expected him to pay child support for the months when she was there. I said 'Of course!' and to my surprise, he just said "okay." Which led me to believe that he knew darn well the law would have been on my side, but he just wanted to test the waters to see if i'd let him slide. Like another poster said, all of my expenses are the same over the summer. They don't stop just because she's visiting her dad for a while. I still maintain a home for her to come back to, buy her things she's going to need for the following school year and so on and so forth.

I agree, adoption is definitely an option and not "shocking" to mention. It is not an option that should be PUSHED on her... but then again NONE of the options should be PUSHED on her. She should be aware of what her options are. They are: 1. Keeping and raising the baby. 2. Aborting the pregnancy. 3. Placing the baby for adoption. Regardless of what anyone else's personal feelings are on any of those options, they ARE all her options, and she's got to be able to choose which one she wants. She should have someone she can talk them out with if she wants to, she should know what type of support her family will or won't provide in each of those cases, and she should have some time to think about it... right now she's probably in shock herself and the hormones? Sheesh. Once she makes a decision and starts imagining and planning for the outcome in her own head, and knows what sort of support she's going to have, it's all going to get easier from there, and whichever way she goes, her life is not going to end, and someday none of this will seem as big a deal as it does today (coming from me 18 years after the fact of being in the same position lol).

My daughter begs to do math now that we started using Teaching Textbooks! :D

First, congrats and happy anniversary! Second, yes, I would be disappointed... but then again I found out a few years back that the best way for me to enjoy an anniversary was to announce to my husband that rather than buying each other gifts (he'd forget or wouldn't know what to get me anyway), that I wanted to start a tradition where we put that money toward a little getaway or vacation instead. It doesn't have to be right ON our anniversary, but in the vicinity of it. And we'd celebrate that way. It's worked out well and I've been happy with the results. This past summer we celebrated our 10th anniversary at a dude ranch lol... with the kids! But it was great because there was a day camp where the kids could go whenever we wanted to just relax by the pool or do something without the kids. The meals were all inclusive. There were great nightly shows. It was fun! I think you should tell your husband that the truth is, you were disappointed by such a landmark anniversary not being celebrated in a more special way and by not receiving any sort of gift and that therefore you are going to treat yourself to (insert whatever here), or that you'd like to plan a getaway (even if it's just a one night thing) or something like that!

I was 17 when I got pregnant with my daughter. 18 when I had her. SHE'S now 18... it wasn't always easy, having a child so young. But neither was it the end of the world. Give her a little time to get used to the idea and to decide what SHE wants to do, and then let her know what ways you feel you can help or support her in that decision, and then just go with the flow. Everything will turn out okay. It did for me, anyway! (And in my case, my mother's response was wanting me to have an abortion, and when I said no, she kicked me out of the house and told me if I was old enough to make a decision to have a baby, I was old enough to be on my own. It was tough there for a while! I ended up choosing to go into a group home for pregnant and parenting teens and I accomplished quite a bit while I was there, from a GED to a driver's license to starting my first year of a two year business college etc. Maybe you'll be a little more helpful to your daughter, but either way, she can manage if she decides she wants to have the baby. And if she doesn't, well, that's her choice, too)!

Oak Meadow :)

I got mine yesterday! (I'm in PA)

My daughter stopped on her own around the time she turned 8.

I went for my second results weigh in today: WEEKLY REPORT: Start weight, Week "0": 237 1/2 Starting BMI: 37.2 Current weight, Week 2: 234 1/2 Current BMI: 36.8 Lbs lost this week: 1 Lbs lost total: 3 Goal: 58 lbs. 3 lbs down, 55 to go. --- So, yeah, this week I only lost one pound. (But, hey, that's another 4 sticks of butter, right?) I actually think it would have been more, but I had some pretty high sodium meals last night and the night before, which probably isn't a good idea so close to weigh in. I did not "cheat" at all in regard to going over my points, though (and I even turned down cake the other day!) I've been trying to go for more walks lately, and today I went for a free hour with a trainer at the gym we just joined for a one month trial period. I'm dying, my arms and legs feel like limp noodles right now lol. I will be going back again on Tuesday to work out again. Hopefully doing so will help me lose a little more weight over this week (even though I have two challenges coming up this week... lunch out with relatives Sunday (I should be able to do pretty good with that by ordering grilled chicken or some such), and a barbecue here for my homeschool group Monday with everyone bringing a side or dessert or some such which will be harder not to indulge in). Wish me luck!

Well, normally I wouldn't bother "correcting" someone over something like that (I, too, see that as pretty minor). But if you think she'd rather know and that the correction wouldn't bother her, you could always email her with some sort of positive comment pertaining to the blog content, and then add a friendly P.S. at the end so it's more of an afterthought... so that it seems the main point of your email was a positive comment, not a correction kind of thing).

Well. As others have said, an agnostic is someone who just doesn't know whether there is a God. An atheist is someone who has decided there isn't. I'm not 100 percent sure where I stand. I was raised Jewish, but we didn't go to temple, I didn't have a bat mitzvah etc. We celebrated the major holidays, basically (more so when my grandfather was alive, not so much after he died when I was in my early teens). For a couple of years as a teen (age 14-16) I lived in a foster home with a Methodist Christian family. They took me to church with them, they let me go to youth group (which I was happy to go to because my friends did) and for a while I decided I, too, had Christian beliefs. After I left there, I gradually drifted away from those beliefs (I just found them less relevant to my real life, I guess, when I wasn't living with that family). I had my oldest daughter when I was only 18 and allowed her to be baptized Catholic because it was important to her father's family, whereas I really couldn't care less. I didn't consider myself particularly religious at that point. He and I eventually split up, and I've now been married for over 10 years to a guy who, like me, was raised Jewish. So we call our younger two kids "Jewish" and we celebrate the major holidays with them, but I think it's really more for the sake of tradition and heritage than for the sake of religion, because none of us have particularly strong religious beliefs. I guess at this stage of my life I might consider myself agnostic-leaning-more-towards-atheism. I homeschool secularly and we live a mostly secular lifestyle (no temple or whatever, still). With all of that said, my "moral compass" or whatever you want to call it is just as strong as any Christian's is. Like the first person to respond here said, I tend to live by "the Golden rule." If I wouldn't want somebody to do it to me, I try not to do it to them. If I would want somebody to do it for me, I try to do it for them. I consider myself to be a pretty good person. I'm there for my family, I take good care of my kids, I try to be a good friend, I donate blood regularly, I do community service and volunteer here and there and encourage that with my children, too. I try to recycle and do my bit for the planet. I try not to do anything that would be hurtful to others. I believe in living and letting live... love who you want to love. Worship who or what you want to worship. Or don't worship at all. But play nice. Don't be so quick to judge. Do good things. I DON'T believe that any one religious group has "cornered the market" on what's "right" (and it seems somehow arrogant to believe otherwise). Like others have said, some "Christian" traditions and stories were told way before Christianity even existed. I DON'T believe that if you're a good person who does good things but you happen to be Jewish or Buddhist or Wiccan or Athiest or whatever the case may be, you're going to "hell" automatically on principal. I believe that if there IS a God (and while I mostly don't think there is, nor a hell, either, I suppose I can't prove that there isn't)... that what's going to matter is how I lived my life. How I treated people. What sorts of things I did to help others. And if that turns out NOT to be true, which I doubt... then that wouldn't have been a god I wanted much part of anyway. I don't belittle people who believe differently, I respect their rights to their beliefs. I don't particularly want them pushed at me or my children and I certainly don't appreciate or believe in a "we're right and you're wrong and we're going to heaven and you're going to hell" attitude, from anybody. Some of the attitudes rub me the wrong way I guess. Sometimes organized religion seems way too judgmental for my tastes. To the OP... whatever your family member calls himself or believes or doesn't believe just shouldn't be the issue. The issue should be how he treats his family and what sort of person he is in general.

I am usually up earlier than my two homeschooled kids. I get my oldest off to her special needs school, and I enjoy some quiet "me" time at my computer, with a cup of coffee while everyone else is sleeping. I'll usually also use that time to start a load of laundry, run the dishwasher or whatever. My homeschooled kids almost never wake up before 8:30 and if they haven't by then, I usually wake them up around 9. My daughter gets dressed, comes downstairs, tells me what she wants for breakfast, and while the kids are eating, I read aloud to her. We like starting the day that way. Then they'll brush her teeth, and we'll move on to other "school stuff." I often try to let my daughter pick the order in which she wants to do things as she likes doing that, and if she's starting the day with things she likes best, it sets a good tone to the day. I learned that last year after making her do daily journal for a while first to "get it over with" because it was her least favorite thing and she dawdled at it and so on. But all it did was make the day start unpleasantly for her and had the potential to get me aggravated/stressed if I felt like it was taking ridiculously long, because there were other things (both for school and not) that we needed to get to.... Life was much easier after I stopped trying to enforce that. And after getting a little further into the school year, journal became more tolerable and faster anyway. This year we're not doing a journal and we're only 3 days into our school year, but so far so good. And we're still starting our day with read alouds at breakfast time. :)

LOVE that series. It's my favorite series ever. I remember the first time I tried reading it, I couldn't get into it, and I put it aside for probably over a year. Then I was bored one day and had nothing else to read so I gave it another shot. And once I stuck it out to the point where she went back in time, I was hooked. But you're already there and if you're halfway through and not loving it, then I guess it's just not for you! Weirdo! (LOL JUST KIDDING)! But yeah I love those books, love the story, love the characters, love Jamie, all of it!

I think Weight Watchers is the best/healthiest/most realistic weight loss plan. If you can't afford those regular meetings, what if you join to get the materials and go long enough to make sure you know how to do the plan... ...and then go to TOPS meetings instead of WW meetings? They're way cheaper and plenty of people do just that (go to TOPS for support but follow the WW eating plan... that's what I'm doing)!