It's normal to feel anxious about doing something different and making a change. It's normal to have that nagging feeling about "what if I screw them up" when YOU are taking on the responsibility instead of passing it off to someone else (the school). Isn't funny how we don't think that way about sending them off to school? ("What if I screw them up by sending them there???") Just because it's considered "the norm" to do so? I know how you feel because homeschooling was never on my radar a little over three years ago. My daughter started out in public school. I pulled her out toward the end of her third grade year and I had that nagging feeling, too. But I was surprised at how quickly it just felt right and natural and how easily we fell into our own way of doing things and how relatively smoothly the transition went and we just never looked back. Three years later my only regret has been not doing it sooner, and she's only 11 but so far I don't feel like I've ruined anything or anyone. I feel that I have a lot to offer my kids, that homeschooling has a lot to offer, that I have a vested interest in their outcome, that I can offer them a more customized education, a more well-rounded one, we enjoy being together, I'm enjoying their childhood and they are getting more out of it, it's really been great overall and I found myself wondering, if anything, what I was ever worried about. I think you will be just fine. :) You're obviously putting a lot of thought and research into this, you obviously care about your kids, so do your thing, and try to enjoy the process.

Yes, definitely. I used to say I wanted to be a teacher. Now I feel like I am. I was a stay-at-home mom before homeschooling was ever on my radar and while I liked not "having" to go to work and having the opportunity to raise my own kids, adding homeschooling to the mix feels more purposeful and fulfilling for me. But I also organize a homeschool Meetup group and it's a very active one, and I feel that this adds a social element for ME as I get to chat with the moms while we're on our various tours and field trips...I think the adult interaction is important. I think I'd go a little nuts if I didn't have grown ups to talk to on a pretty regular basis (I mean this board fulfills that to some extent too but it's nice to see other adults in person). :) And sometimes I'll get my mom to watch the kids and my husband and I will go out together, or my husband will watch the kids and I'll go have a girl's night out somewhere, or I'll tell the kids "go do what you want" and I'll take a little time for myself, and I do things I like to do...I keep up with my blog, I post here, I read, I watch shows I enjoy, before she stopped circulating it, I wrote a few articles for Secular Homeschooling Magazine, there are a couple of video games I like to play...I think it's important to do things you like to do for YOU and take time for yourself as well. Now that the weather is nicer, we get outside almost every day and go for walks, the kids and I, and even though winter can be a little depressing for me (though the field trips and tours and outings do help with that), fresh air and exercise and sunshine and spring around the corner always gives me fresh perspective. So, yeah, I feel pretty fulfilled by what I'm doing. I guess everyone could always have a touch of The Grass Is Always Greener Syndrome if they let themselves, I mean, could you always think of something you'd like to be doing? Traveling, owning your own business, going off to your dream job, I suppose. But could you be fulfilled by and love what you're doing right now? Definitely. I chose this, it's important to me, and most days I really enjoy it.

I went to summer camp when I was 11. It was a lot of fun! 14 and 16 certainly seem old enough to me! There must be ways to look up 'reviews' or to make sure there aren't official complaints against the camps you are considering. Maybe you can go visit it. They're going to have a brochure or website that will include a FAQ type thing that will answer most questions you have. I would think most would not allow them to have cell phones but would contact you in an emergency and would have certain "family days" and would let them write you snail mail letters and let you send care packages and so on. I'm sure it could be a great experience, and a relatively safe way to branch out before (in just a few short years) they do it anyway in a more serious and less supervised way. Let them go!

I am so sorry. I have a relative that's been struggling with addiction for years. It's sad, scary, so hard on the family, and I can't even imagine how much worse that would be if it's your own child. I would look into a long term in-patient rehab program. I'm not talking 30 days, I'm talking like months. There are ones that go up to 18 months. She needs to be removed from this lifestyle completely while getting professional treatment and counseling to have the best shot at anything. That worked for my relative for over five years. And even then there was a series of relapses and constant struggles. It's crazy. Although I don't know what your daughter is addicted to. I am thinking of you and hoping she gets the help she needs and becomes one of those who can turn her life around.

Thanks for your comments on the clomid, guys...I will definitely keep that in mind. Hopefully it won't come down to needing that and the metformin will be enough! Hi, no, I am not currently trying to conceive. I am going to be soon, but first I am losing some weight and getting myself a bit healthier. I just lost about 45 lbs and would like to lose a little bit more. I will probably start TTC with May's cycle, I'm thinking. I will stop taking the Topamax when I start trying. Topamax is NOT safe to take during pregnancy. My doctor said I'm doing really well with my weight loss and I should keep doing what I'm doing for another month or two to try to get my BMI under 30, and then I should stop taking the Topmax when I start TTC. In the meanwhile I'm just going to start upping my Metformin to see if my stomach can handle it and see if that starts regulating my cycles to have me ovulating earlier and such but I'm not actively TTC just quite yet. Soon! :)

So, I saw my doctor today. She agreed that getting a positive OPK test around cycle day 18 was unusually late. But she didn't think that a prescrip to lengthen my luteal phase was the way to go. Her advice was to bump my metformin up from 1,000 mg a day to 2,000 mg a day (she said go to 1,500 first for a week or two to make sure my stomach could handle it), and she thinks that will get me a positive OPK test several days earlier in and of itself. If not she says we can always add clomid, but not until after I stop taking topamax, which we're going to wait another month or two on as I'm going to lose a bit more weight first (we want to get my BMI under 30). She also wants me to have my FSH levels tested on day 3 of my next cycle as she thinks that will give her the most information right now as to where things stand with me. So I'm going to start increasing my metformin today (hopefully that works the way she thinks it will), get that test done next month (hopefully it will show decent results despite my age), and we'll see where things stand after that. I should know more in about a month, and will keep working on more weight loss in the meanwhile!

Congrats, that's great! :)

:lol: While the riches and perks that come with it might be nice, I'm not sure all the responsibility and scrutiny and lack of privacy would be! Probably no.

We have some places here in Pennsylvania (some environmental education type places) that do maple sugaring programs/tours, too. They're pretty fun. :)

Wow, they now have over 169,600 signatures and going for 200,000. Somebody has to take notice of this! It'll be interesting to see how it plays out!

I read What To Expect When You're Expecting when I was 18 and pregnant with my now 20 year old. I read The No Cry Sleep Solution regarding my youngest (now 6) who always was a horrible sleeper. I read some homeschooling books when I started looking into homeschooling but that also included a couple that maybe weren't quite homeschooling books but more a philosophy like Better Late Than Early, and The Power of Play, and Preschoolers at Risk. I've read some of Dr. Sears' articles online. As for "choosing a side," I naturally leaned more toward what I later heard called (mostly on message boards) attachment parenting.

Thank you!! And I forgot to say but I did LOL at that out of context line! :D I don't think that will ever happen, although I do think my daughter is currently starry-eyed and plotting on how to run away and join the circus since she's discovered that I don't think it is reasonable or realistic for us to sign her up and travel together as a family so she can be a circus performer lol. I told her she can try to marry someone in the circus and have circus babies and that way they can be a circus family and all travel together when she's an adult but that it's not going to happen now. She didn't love my answer. :confused: (She did seem over it in the car on the way home, though, when she moved on to her next big dream of convincing me to take her to Hoboken so she can meet her idol Buddy Valastro of Cake Boss and order a cake from him, even though that's a five hour round trip, and even though I said he's probably pretty busy and famous now and doesn't come out to say "hi" to every person who walks in looking for him, assuming he's even there. She said if we went for a consultation, like for an Easter cake, he would meet with us. I had to point out the obvious which is that 1) we don't celebrate Easter and 2) he does consultations for really BIG cakes and we have a really smallllll family, and 3) his specialty cakes are probably ridiculously expensive... I'm really starting to feel guilty about destroying all of her dreams here!...We did look up his cake shop address and let her write him a letter last night though, so Buddy will be getting fan mail from my daughter (most 11 year old girls want to write to Justin Bieber, mine wants to write to Buddy Valastro LOL. She gave him her email address, I wonder if he'll ever email her). Maybe for a special occasion some time I'll coincide a visit to my aunt's house in NJ with a visit to that bakery so she can get something from there. I highly doubt she'll see Buddy but maybe she'd recognize somebody she's seen on the show, and she'd get to taste something from the bakery, she'd get a kick out of it. We'll see! On the bright side, the scale said 201.8 this morning, so I'm even CLOSER to being out of the 200's!!! Can.Not.Wait!!!

If you insist. :lol: Elephant pics, just for you! Two of me and my son in front of an elephant, and then a few of an elephant performance (including an elephant standing on some sort of a ball).

Funny you should mention that. I'm taking the kids to the circus today. (Not joking). They'll be riding an elephant while we're there before or after the circus. I am SO going to be having odd thoughts about that elephant. :lol::lol:

That's good, Pamela, I'll still be here plugging away lol...what 'visual' are you aiming for? :)

Congrats, Susan! You're right there with me! lol I really love that chart and the visuals it creates! :D

So, remember this post? Just wanted to come back again and say that as of this morning, I'm now down 45.2 lbs total!! I have gone from 247.6 lbs to 202.4 lbs. I'm happy about the 45 lbs, but I'm getting SO antsy to be out of these 200's already. It's been several YEARS since I've seen a 1 in front of my number instead of a 2 on the scale!!! Just 2 1/2 more lbs... I cannot wait! By the way I checked that Weight Loss Conversion chart to see if 45 lbs was a special milestone and saw that 45 isn't, but 44 was....I had lost an elephant's heart with 44. A heart is okay but I want the penis, darn it! :lol: How's everyone else doing?

My daughter jumped on one at a cousin's house, bounced, her knees somehow came up and slammed into her own chest, knocking the breath out of her and leaving her chest bruised, and the cousin was like "Oh, that happened to a friend of ours, too, you'll be okay in a little while..." She wasn't even doing anything crazy on it. There seem to be an awful lot of ways in which kids can get hurt on those things!

There's a petition on change.org about this if anyone is inclined to sign it. It's already got over 136,000 signatures, they're aiming for 150,000 at this point. http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-usda-to-stop-using-pink-slime-in-school-food?utm_medium=email&utm_source=action_alert

Am I the only one jumping for joy over here about more daylight, being closer to spring and away from horrid yucky winter and cold weather, and all that fun stuff? :D Chipper and perky about it over here! :D ETA: Hey why doesn't THIS site know it's daylight savings time? It recorded my post as being made at 7:44 instead of 8:44! :P

That's hilarious! The most recent dream I can remember just involved sitting around an outdoor picnic table with a bunch of people, and this plump little toad started hopping by on the table in front of us, and I reached out and caught it, and it turned its head and bared its teeth at me and it had human-like teeth. It was kind of scary. That's all I remember about that one. Nowhere near as entertaining as yours! :D

Seriously. When people start saying things like "You're so christian!" to mean something like "you're an idiot," then you can compare the two. These are not remotely the same thing. I think that's a matter of personal opinion. I think many people use gee, or geesh, or jeez, just as a quaint exclamation to avoid cursing and don't mean it in any religious way whatsoever and aren't thinking of God, Jesus, religion, or anything of the sort when they say it, assuming they even believe in those things, and certainly intend no offense to anyone. But I have a question that I'm just curious about. Let's just say for the sake of argument that you're right and it IS a violation of the second commandment. Even if it is, why does it matter to you if someone ELSE breaks it, as long as YOU aren't the one breaking it? I mean, you certainly don't have to use any of those phrases if you feel they are wrong. But do you get personally offended if someone, say, "covets their neighbor's goods?" Works on the sabbath? As long as YOU are doing what you feel is right, isn't that all that really matters? I mean, sure, I can see if they used these words or phrases in front of you in a really nasty or hateful or especially insulting way (I can understand you not wanting to hear curses interjected in the middle of Jesus' name or something), but I just don't see why somebody else saying gee or jeez should affect you any. Certainly, don't use it yourself if it makes you uncomfortable.

:iagree:

I don't think it means anything, but that's how I feel about dreams in general. :D

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