Play board games, card games or video games. Cook a new recipe together. Give each other manicures or pedicures. Goon nature walks. Go on field trips. Read aloud together or listen to audiobooks together. Volunteer together somewhere. Do some sort of craft or learn a handicraft together. Go to a teaching school and get cheap haircuts or massages. Take a class of some sort together. Clean up litter in your neighborhood. Go to yard sales or a flea market. Write a book, a story, or poetry together. Have a fun ABC photo contest where you each take pictures of things that start with or remind you of things that start with each letter of the alphabet. Compare and see what creative interesting pictures or ideas you both came up with. Redecorate, paint, or move things around in a room of your house. ETA: Go fishing, make a campfire and cook over it, deliver for Meals on Wheels, visit a nursing home, spend time at the library, go geocaching, do some outdoor activities, take an exercise class or rent exercise DVD's, scrapbook, etc.

Every six months. I think you could get away with yearly if they've never had any problems.

Just wanted to say I am sorry for your loss. I had an ectopic this summer and had it ended with a shot. How you go about it is up to you, just wanted to offer my sympathy!

No

Ugh, I'm glad your kids were never alone with him and glad he was caught!

Thank you, so much all. While this is all very overwhelming and stressful I am happy to say we did get my loved one off and on the way to a 12-14 day detox just a little while ago. I am just so hopeful that this works.

Going to make every possible effort to get someone close to me in a detox program today (which will hopefully be followed by short term rehab at least, even though that's going to put some additional responsibility on my shoulders for a while). (This is NOT about my spouse btw). I've been down this road before, more than once with this person, and I hate that it has become necessary again. But it has. Things are getting pretty bad. :( That's all I want to say here but if you've been down this road too and feel up to a more in depth conversation about it that you feel might be helpful because of your experience/knowledge, you can PM me, preferably with an email addy as that won't restrict how many characters can be typed etc. So, yeah, also only PM if you have time for something wordy. Sigh. This sucks.

Meal times. I read while the kids eat breakfast pretty much every day and often during lunch. If we hadn't finished enough pages during the day, I sometimes read more before bed if I'm not feeling too tired. Sometimes my daughter will read aloud in the car, too.

My daughter just started 6th grade. She will be 11 in October. For various reasons we decided that we are going to stretch 6th grade out over the next two years, so she will be 13 when she is in 7th grade! I think having that extra year to grow and mature will help as she goes into junior high and then high school level work and will help prepare her better for whatever comes after high school too. She's not behind but I think she would get more out of and do better with various topics, research skills, writing assignments, etc with that extra year of maturity and will be more mature when she finishes school, too. I regret that I didn't wait an extra year before putting her in kindergarten with her birthday ON the 10/1 cutoff date (which changed from 10/1 to 9/1 the year after she started school) and want to do this now while she is still in the elementary level years and okay with my decision.

We choose our kid's seats and we do so first for safety and second for peace. For me that is. No way am I letting kids who tend to bicker or get rowdy while I'm driving sit next to each other!

:iagree: What's with all the anti-sleepoverness? Some of my very fondest memories of my childhood and early teen years involved sleepovers with close friends!

:lol::lol::lol:

Yesterday, for "Health," I read a couple of books about bodies to my Kindergartener. We read "My Body, Your Body" first. This is a great picture book by Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom which talks about different parts of a person's body and what those parts are for and what they can do, and compares our parts to those of several different animals. One page said: “Squeeze your arm! Feel your muscles! You have 650 muscles in your body. They help you move about and lift things. Guess what your biggest muscle is. Your biggest muscle is your behind!” Before I could continue to talk about how “Salmon are so strong they can swim up waterfalls,” and how “Ants can carry up to fifty times their own weight in one trip” and so on, my son interrupted with: "Soooo, you mean, you can attack someone with your butt?" Er, no. No, you cannot. At least, I hope not.

Logging minutes starts today! What are you guys playing? :)

I think that sounds wonderful. I HATED my daughter's academic, strict Kindergarten, it was the first step that led to me finally pulling her out toward the end of third grade and beginning to homeschool her instead. It was one of the reasons that led me to choosing the curriculum I did, which is creative, hands-on, Waldorf-inspired and not overly academic in the early years. So at least my son will have the sort of Kindergarten I think kids should have!

These Happy Golden Years with my almost 11 y/o daughter. Finally nearly done with the series! "Disney Adventure Stories" with my almost 6 y/o son- I have always had SUCH a hard time getting him interested in sitting down and letting me read to him, and finally here is a book that he pays rapt attention to, asks questions about, and begs for "just one more story" when we're done!

If you're interested, here's a link to one of our OM4 sample weeks...it shows how I broke the schedule down into a daily one rather than a weekly one, mentions a couple of the things I added on, shows pictures of at least some of the things we did that week, and at the end there's a link to our first official day of OM4, from which you can click "next" as many times as you feel like it to read our daily blog entries from when we used OM4. http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/126472.html (We've used OM4, OM5, and are starting OM6 and OMK this year)

DON'T buy Great States!!! I did and was appalled at how many "errors" and "typos" and incorrect things I found on that game. Here are some of the Amazon review excerpts that sum up some of the same types of things I personally found when we played the game: "is it too much to ask International Playthings to proofread their questions? We came across a number of questions with incomplete answers, which are easy enough to fix when we know the answers. It makes me wonder about the ones we don't know (state birds?), however. Are those correct, or misprints? Also, some of the pictures don't match what is on the card, which makes it tough for young kids when the directions say to match the pictures. Finally, for advanced play it recommends using the cards that are "starred" to indicate a question that older children should refrain from looking at the board. Not one of the questions has a star. Ridiculous. Great concept, but this isn't nuclear physics. Of course we can work around it, but it's unfortunate that the execution is so sloppy" and "we have come across numerous cards with incorrect answers on them. (Example: What are the two states that start with the letter O? Answer: Oregon and Ohio. Last time I checked Oklahoma was still in the United States.) I am very reluctant to keep playing this with her as I'm wondering how many other answers are wrong that we don't know about." and " During our first game we found errors on four of the question cards. The colors on the cards don't match those on the board which makes identification of state birds frustrating to impossible for young children. What a shame quality was not an objective in the production and how misleading the Oppenheim Toy Award is in this case." and "while playing the game for our first time, we encountered several game cards with incomplete answers. For example, the answer given for "Name states with double N's in their name" omitted Connecticut" --- I've never heard of the Sequence game but it can't possibly be worse than Great States. :P

The "Girl Scout Promise" says: The Girl Scout Promise On my honor, I will try: To serve God and my country, To help people at all times, And to live by the Girl Scout Law. As per wikipedia: "Girl Scout policy states that the word "God" may be interpreted depending on individual spiritual beliefs. When reciting the Girl Scout Promise, "God" may be substituted with the word dictated by those beliefs." My daughter attends Girl Scouts at an elementary school, not a church, and other than reciting the "Girl Scout Promise," (and having a Christmas party!) there's never been any religious aspects to her participating. Anyway, thanks to whoever told me about that cloverbuds thing- I have an email in to them and to that campfire usa thing asking if there is anything in my more immediate area. I think I'm also going to email the leader of the local cub scouts and just ask outright how much of an issue it would be with our particular group. I've exchanged a few emails with her in the past (it's a husband and wife who run it) when I was asking other questions about the age, and the types of things they do etc, and she was nice; I think I'm just going to be honest about our family's stance and ask if it's going to be an issue. If it's not, maybe we'll still join. If it is, we won't bother.

How cute!! I had my "Not Back To School Picnic" on Monday... too bad I didn't get to see this a few days ago!

lol...my son started soccer this year for the first time, too. So, soccer....check. Minivan...check. Oh wow, I really AM a soccer mom?! haha.

Darn. My daughter has been in Girl Scouts for like 4 years and is starting back this year as a Cadette. I did think Boy Scouts was the same organization but for boys and was going to start him next year. But after reading this thread, I guess not. We are secular Jews and I'd call myself agnostic and my husband leaning strongly toward atheism so I guess that's out. That Camp Fire USA sounded good but doesn't seem to be local enough to us. Guess we can do 4H but that will mean waiting a couple more years. Oh well!

My husband cooked dinner tonight. A roast in the electric smoker, roasted potatoes, and corn on the cob. He also randomly encouraged me to buy some fall clothes yesterday at the mall after we ate dinner at the Chinese buffet there! Nance, Who is spouse-praising today. :D Before and after pics of the roast, and a pic of the potatoes, just for fun:

In a vacation rental, I'd Fabreze and air the room, light a scented candle if it can be put in a spot where it's safe/you trust the kids around it, and ask the landlord if there is any way to get the carpet cleaned tomorrow.

I honestly don't have a final goal. I want my kids to aim for whatever they want to aim for in life and to be happy. I don't even care if they choose college or not- that's up to them. I just want them to follow their interests, to be close to their family, to be happy, to feel fulfilled in whatever it is they choose for themselves. So right now we are trying to be well-rounded, having fun, learning what we can from our curriculum and our own interests and from life, and as their interests and life goals grow and develop, I will do my best to help them to whatever extent I can.