Well. You know. It depends. Are you a star belly or a plain belly?

I wonder if LibraryLover has checked back on her thread yet. Is she ignoring us in disgust or has she just not had the pleasure yet of seeing where we've taken her thread? hehe

I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam I Am! I will not eat them with Susan Wise Bauer. I will not eat them in the shower. I will not eat them with nutella I will not eat them with Ed and Bella. I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam I Am!

OK I just watched the link. Oh my! I never even heard of fainting goats before this thread! I don't know whether to laugh or feel sorry for them!

I don't know. Someone should start a poll!

Post questions and threads when you want to. And read the ones that interest you or relate to you after skimming titles. Some of the forums might not really apply to you. I tend to only go on this one and the K-8 curriculum for the most part. Mostly this one. You'll get the hang of it! Welcome. :)

Oh, is THAT what you call it over there in your neck of the woods? Wink, wink.

Ouch. You're mean! I'm taking my hair dryer and my shower curtain and my peanut butter and my alleve and going home! :lol:

Blush. Well, you CAN leave me alone for a minute... just not with the goats! Thank you for the RICE advice!

Have you ever read this, by the way? http://sandradodd.com/game/nintendogold

No, I don't think she's missing out. ESPECIALLY not in middle school! Shudder!

I love that site, btw! That worth1000! They've got some really cool pics on there! Some are hilarious but some are just really neat!

P.S. Do you think your parents might want to watch my kids, too? I'll go on that cruise with you!! haha. Just kidding. But seriously, consider yourself lucky. Neither my mother nor my husband's is really in shape anymore to watch young kids for extended periods of time like that. They are older mothers, both unmarried, and for them to be on their own watching younger kids for that amount of time... it just wouldn't happen anymore. They don't have the energy or the stamina. 5 1/2 years ago it worked out that my MIL did it with my almost college-aged niece's help. 5 1/2 years later that MIL doesn't have the energy anymore and that niece IS away at college. So the next time we'll get to go on something like a cruise without the kids will probably be, oh, 13 years from now or so, when the youngest is 18 lol. Point being you never know when you might have this opportunity again so I definitely wouldn't let it go. The kids will survive quite happily without you, it's only one week. :) There's nothing to feel guilty about!

It seems a shame to prohibit friendships and house visits for something like this. I mean it's fine to not use them in your home but does that mean the kids have to be sheltered from them everywhere, to the point of not being allowed to play with other friends? I imagine that could be very hard for them. Admittedly I'm a more lenient parent with this kind of thing to begin with so maybe it's just me. But, with that said, I AM strict (sort of) about which ONES my kids can play and be around. For example, there are two 7 year olds, a 9 year old, and a 10 year old on our block who are all allowed to play Grand Theft Auto. (go ahead, gasp, mutter and curse in surprise and disgust, I'm totally with you!!!) My kids are no way no how allowed to be around it. And so they've been told they are not allowed to play it, not allowed to watch it, and that they must come home if their friends are playing it at their houses. And their friends have been told they are not allowed to play it while here on their DS's. Seriously. It boggles my mind!!!!! So I'd enforce rules like those but not a blanket "you can't go to friends houses who play video games" or whatever.

<pouts> Parrothead TOLD me to use it between my toes!

Admit it. It was the shower curtain and the peanut butter that started this.

Yes, well, I sort of got the feeling/assumed from the initial post that they lived much closer to each other, when I suggested they meet at a local park. At this point the easiest thing to say is just something like: Thank you so much for your email. While I appreciate the invitation, and can certainly understand how difficult it can be sometimes for homeschoolers to find playmates of their age and gender, the truth is we are about an hour away from each other, my family has a very hectic schedule, and on top of everything else, we may be moving soon. I'm sorry I won't be able to take you up on your offer at this time. But I wish you luck finding other girls for yours to play with, I know that can be hard sometimes! Best, so and so.

I'll tell you where the goats go! They go in th.... ow. Wait. My foot hurts.

Well. Just be careful with that while you're in the shower!

Personally, I prefer peanut butter.

Denise, Ouch, sorry to hear you are going through that! Donna, Good for you! I hope you enjoy your walk! The kids and I went on a field trip today that involved quite a bit of walking as we toured an old mining village, so I'm counting that as today's exercise!

Well, for Labor Day with little ones I find it fun to make a "Labor Day Collage"- let them cut out pictures from old magazines of different occupations and glue them onto posterboard and decorate and what not. It's fun to ask them what they want to be when they grow up and write that down for them (if they can't write themselves yet). A particularly outgoing/verbal kid might enjoy interviewing someone in one of his favorite occupations or seeing if they can tour that person's place of business. You can just talk about the different jobs people do, including the non-glamorous ones, and discuss how your lives or neighborhood might be different if it weren't for that particular worker.

Pauline, whenever I see you pop in on here, I feel like I just spotted a minor celebrity or something haha. You have NO IDEA how helpful your site was to me when I first started homeschooling! :D

Well. I'm no neat freak, so that probably helps. Heh. I tend to wake up first in the morning and I'll do a quick straightening of the kitchen, doing any necessary loading/unloading of the dishwasher, and just some quick things like that before anyone comes down. Sometimes I'll also use this time of day to start laundry. If the living room has been left looking like a tornado went through it with toys and whatnot, I will ask the kids to straighten it up before we start school. If it needs to be vacuumed, I'll vacuum it (or sometimes my daughter will). Garbage goes out when we can't fit anything else in the can, regardless of what time of day it is. :) Laundry gets done when someone is out of clean things to wear (which is usually me first since I have the least amount of clothes out of anyone in the house. Clothes that fit anyway lol). And then I'll usually do it first thing in the AM as mentioned above. Kids are old enough to help fold and put away. I make my daughter clean her room when I find myself yelling "WT$#!$! did I just step on? Why can't I even walk into your room without stepping on something?! What are you going to do if there's a fire?!?! Are those clean clothes on your floor?!" Bathrooms I just sort of quick do when I see that they look like they need it, no special time of day. I might sort of give the tub a quick washing while I'm showering. I ask the kids to do a quick straightening of their toys in the living room before bed, right before we sit down to read a bedtime story and get pj's on and all that. On a weekend I might ask my husband to pitch in, he's actually great for mopping the kitchen floor and will even dust the living room stuff if I ask him to. I don't know, we just sort of keep it quick, simple, and I don't stress over it (unless company's coming, then I stress and make everyone clean really good haha). I figure my time is better spent learning, having fun, teaching, bonding and so on than making sure my house is spotless. I do have the kids pitch in which helps take some of the stress off of me. We're not totally unsanitary over here. We just aren't neat freaks.

cook some pasta, then toss it all in a skillet with some butter, lemon and garlic and make it like a quick chicken scampi kinda thing?