John Stossel did some kind of coffee taste test awhile back for 20/20. I think (unfortunately) Starbucks did come in first, but Sam's Club's house brand came in second. I found a link to a print version of his report. I only drink iced coffee myself. Sweet tea is the monkey on my back.

I just let them horse around with it however they wanted. I let them be completely unstructured with it. They played it as a "treat", like any other computer game.

For some bizarre reason my kids really, really liked a PBS documentary we rented from Netflix called "Sandwiches You Will Like". Some guy travelled the US sampling....sandwiches. Regional sandwiches. It was educational.....US geography, culinary history, etc. Don't ask me why I rented a sandwich documentary in the first place. :lol: On a more serious note, my kids love Kim Possible (Mom and Dad like it, too.)

If you are spending $10 in ink to print 125 pages, you need a B&W laser printer. Of course, if workbooks/workpages are cheap enough, I'd pay a little extra for the convenience of having it copied for me.

:iagree: Wow, I thought about posting some rambling thing, but this sums up my belief on this perfectly.

Another thing: My DD hated any form of math drill. We did Calculadders (I have Masterpaks 1 and 2 :lol:), QMM, Rainbow Rock, Flashcards, Times Tables the Fun Way...I tried just about everything. She hated them all. We had the best results when I physically sat with her and did flashcards with her. Every other method allowed her to NOT actually try to study the math facts. What I discovered, with her, was that it wasn't so much the method, but accountability. Since she hated the tedium of it, I had to make sure she was doing it. There was no fun and painless route for her. BTW, we got through it, and she knows her math facts today :001_smile:. My DS does not appear to be as put off by drill work. We'll see how this one goes... As with all things YMMV

Rainbow Resource Rod and Staff (NOT the web retailer, the actual publisher) Amazon Sonlight Christian Book Distributors Veritas Press

Yeah...this, I think, is most of the problem. DS gets to use Cuisenaire rods, base 10 blocks, a Judy clock, etc. for math. I'm using Start-up Science with him which involves getting out magnets, putting together circuits, cutting out and coloring little color wheels to see how colors blend together, etc. I also read aloud more to him....SOTW, James and the Giant Peach..... DD has already "been there, done that", but she thinks everything he is doing is fun....I guess more fun than what she is doing. I suppose I really can't blame her. I'd rather play with blocks than find common denominators, too. :lol: I do try to involve her in most of his science stuff even though she knows the concepts already....but if she listens in on his whole school day, she'll lose about 2 1/2 hours each day. Ugh. I have told her if she finds herself getting distracted she should take her work to the dining room or to her desk in her bedroom, but she tends to want to stay put. I guess I could MAKE her leave. I can only imagine this getting worse when my younger two kids start school. Thank you for the suggestions though. I need 4 schoolrooms...that I can monitor at all times to prevent dawdling.

I have QMM. I don't know which version I have :lol:. But I just wanted to add in here, my eldest absolutely detested QMM. My second child tolerates it. I would personally go for the cheapest version I could find first to see if my kids liked it or not. (I should add here, both of these kids love video games of any kind so the ambivalence toward QMM is not due to any kind of problem with electronic games in general....just QMM.) I still have two more kids to try it out on. I'm hoping at least one of them LOVES it as much as the box told me they would. :001_smile:

We have a school room we do school in. Our school table is a retired breakfast nook-style table. I have two kids currently doing school. My youngest had so little work last year we could get it done while his big sis was doing her independent reading for the day in another room. This appears to be no longer feasible. DS is requiring just a teensy bit more time year so I'm having to instruct him while DD is still working at the school table, too. I think this is distracting her. Those of you with multiple kids: Do you instruct youngers while the others are working in the same room? Do you send the older, independently-working kids to another room? Is it unreasonable of me to teach DS in the same room as DD, or will she get used to this after awhile and begin to tune us out? My own (dim) memories of public school include memories of having to tune others out while the teacher explained something to another student. I don't want to be unreasonably distracting to DD, but I also don't want to coddle her if this is a skill she needs to develop. Help!? :confused:

I use Singapore and Miquon together. With my two oldest kids I use Singapore as a spine and then add in Miquon to reinforce what they are learning in Singapore. Sometimes I'll add in Miquon if I see they approach something in a different way too. I think the Cuisenaire rods are just great for visualizing the math when they are just starting out. I have even used Cuisenaire rods with my eldest dd recently even though she has left Miquon behind now. I used them to help her visualize what Singapore wanted her to do with bar diagrams. Worked like a charm. :001_smile: Every child is different, and I've read that some kids do better with other programs, but Singapore has been fantastic for us so far. (I still have two more kids coming up...)

:iagree: I read an article about this doll as well and I was furious to read some people think it will promote teen pregnancies. If that's true, then ALL baby dolls would make little girls want to go and get pregnant, not just the breastfeeding ones. Ridiculuous. And as others have pointed out, my dd's both "breastfed" their baby dolls, too...without the help of some themed toy. Does that mean my dds are more likely to get pregnant as teens? Gosh, maybe I should've bottlefed my kids to prevent teen pregnancies....

I'm not familiar with K12, but Kindergarten doesn't require a whole lot. You would need some form of phonics program to teach reading and maybe a beginning math program. You can either buy or borrow (library) some fun kids books to read aloud to him. There is a lot of great information on these boards. If you search for "Kindergarten" you will probably get tons of ideas. And of course, read The Well Trained Mind if you haven't already. :001_smile:

:iagree: I didn't read this entire thread. But yeah, my thoughts exactly. Wow, just wow.

That is precisely my size. My favorite jeans are from LLBean. I hate low rise jeans/pants.

:iagree: Yup, that was my sequence Back when I was in high school.

We would never get consensus here... DH's favorite meal My favorite meal - with homemade biscuits and mashed potatoes. I use boneless skinless chicken breasts for this one. DD 9's favorite meal - Ramen noodles with Chinese sausages Ds5...hmm he never cleans his plate. He's never met a potato or bread product he didn't like though. The youngers are too little to express an opinion yet.

:iagree: Also, I have only skimmed this thread this morning (gosh, it grew overnight!) so I don't know if this has been pointed out yet. Total Depravity does not mean that we Christians stand pointing our fingers at non-Christians calling them "depraved". We are depraved, too. We believe everyone is totally depraved and that is why we ALL need Christ as our Savior. This is not some kind of weird judgmentalism. Also, depravity is not calculated with respect to our human standards, but against the perfection of a Holy God. I hope I made sense there....Gotta get lunch together. :001_smile:

Ooo, thanks for the heads up!

I make a hot lunch almost every day. DH works in town so he comes home for lunch each day, so I also have to have it ready at precisely the time he gets home so he can eat and get back to work. I need things that are fast. I rotate through cold cuts, homemade soup, breakfast for lunch, and some kind of hot sandwich like sloppy joes or shredded chicken. I try to save enough leftovers from dinners and lunches throughout the week for a "leftover buffet" on Fridays. I keep emergency frozen convenience foods for times when I just can't do anything else. Chicken nuggets, fries, taquitos, corn dogs, etc. I don't keep ALL of those on hand at one time, but I try to buy something for one emergency meal per week. If we don't need it, I save it for another week.

I guess that's why this is called "The Problem of Evil". I'm not saying I understand EVERYTHING. I don't. There is much mystery here, just as there is much mystery in the Incarnation. Fully God, yet fully man? How? The Trinity. Three in person, yet one in essence? Many many things I do not and cannot understand. However, I believe what Scripture attests to. Scripture tells me Jesus suffered and died like a man and was tempted in every way and did not sin, yet He is also I AM. Scripture tells me "The LORD your God, the LORD is one.", yet we are to baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Scripture tells me God chose us before the foundation of the world before we did anything good or bad. Scripture tells me I am DEAD in my trespasses and sins and that NO ONE seeks God and NO ONE understands. Scripture tells me that NO ONE comes to the Father unless the Spirit draws him. But the beautiful part of this is: Romans 8:38-39 38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[m] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Before I understood the doctrines of grace, I thought my salvation was dependent upon my own effort. Even though I knew I could not save myself through my works, I thought my salvation was dependent on my own human ability to believe on Christ. My salvation is dependent on my faith in Christ, but my faith is not of myself, it is a gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast. God began the work in me and He finished it, and now NOTHING can separate me from the love of God. I had no lasting assurance before. I do now. I know this is a hard word. Please study the Scriptures for yourself though. It is so freeing.

When Adam and Eve were created they were created good. They were also able to sin and able not to sin. I was taught this in Latin: Posse Pecare, Posse Non Pecare....Correct me if necessary, Latin folks, it's been awhile. When Adam fell, we all fell with him, and that is when humanity became totally depraved. We are now non posse non pecare....not able not to sin. But at the Fall, God made mankind a promise He would make it right. Genesis 3:15 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring [a] and hers; he will crush [b] your head, and you will strike his heel." This is the protoevangelion. The first allusion to the Messiah to come... The Second Adam, who would represent us just as Adam did, but to redeem that which was lost. If it is unjust for us to be blamed for Adam's sin, it is also unjust for us to be redeemed by Jesus' righteousness and substitutionary atonement.

Romans 9:14-26 14What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."[f] 16It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. 17For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."[g] 18Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. 19One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?" 20But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' "[h] 21Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? 22What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— 24even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? 25As he says in Hosea: "I will call them 'my people' who are not my people; and I will call her 'my loved one' who is not my loved one,"[i] 26and, "It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' they will be called 'sons of the living God.' "[j]

:iagree: Fantastic explanation of the Calvinist position.

Chicken fried steak, scrambled eggs, hashbrowns and whole wheat toast.