Starfall.com?

If feel sick now. Oh. my. word.

I appreciate you posting this. We are of an average, maybe higher income, but high cost of living, and have no college savings. I have no idea what we will do when the time comes. Find our own path I suppose. I will be reading the high school and college boards when the time comes to help me figure it out.

Well, I didn't get that at all. Why can't we just respect both of them? They disagree so they went separate ways. It's not that earth-shattering, really. I've quit a job for the same reasons. Difference of opinion and going in different directions. *shrug*

:seeya: Good to hear from you! Been thinking about you and hoping your dh was mending well. :grouphug:

I'm near you too! Looks awesome!

Looks like I have a lot of soul sisters here! I even posted a thread a while back that "my husband wants to sleep with me!". HA! Meaning he really wants to go to bed at like 9:30 and wants me to come to bed too. Just like on TV I guess. Supposedly we could snuggle and talk and wind down from our day and fall asleep. :smilielol5:Uh, 9:30?!?!!? When I still have 3 loads of laundry to finish, lunch to make, coffee to set, dishes to go in the dw? Not to mention the first quiet moments of my day with no one asking me for anything or interrupting me at all. I don't mean to be disrespectful, and I do wish I could accomodate him. But I just can't. On the meds front, I take 3 benadryl a night. It's the only way I can get sleepy. This is a problem, but I don't know what else to do. It doesn't seem to matter if I cut out caffeine. And I did read the comments about exercise, but I hate that too. My schedule is ready for the school year and it has me up at 7. :001_huh: To go for a walk. *sigh* We'll see how long that lasts. But it's the only way I can see to get the day going so we can salvage a little time in the afternoon for other things like playdates and chess club and music lessons, etc.

Rotisserie chicken (mesquite flavor), fiesta corn and BBQ baked beans. But I had steamed broccoli and a little basmati rice with my chicken. I'm looking forward to tomorrow night because I am going to make what looked like a super easy Lemon Chicken Noodle Soup from Giada deLaurentis. And some tomato/basil burchetta to go with it. Yumm!:D

Kari, this is awesome! I knew a cruise would be great and I think you will have a fantastic time! I can't speak for all your stops, but I can about Cozumel. I loved it. We were staying in Playa del Carmen which is an easy ferry ride over. Lots of cute shops and restaurants. And the ruins at Tulum are just down the coast, I'm sure there will be many offers for tourist visits there. We loved our day there, and the beach is the most gorgeous beach I have ever seen in my life, counting California, Florida and Hawaii. I adore the Caribbean. Anywho, if you are not really all that into ruins, I personally wouldn't leave Cozumel. I'd rent a car (NO mopeds!!!!!) and ride around the island. They have a little ruins there you can visit, but the beach on the eastern side is wild and wavy and spectacular. The snorkeling on the Western side is awesome and there are little boat and snorkel excursions you can do that would be much more relaxing than trying to cross over to do Tulum. (And Chichen is wayyyyy too far for a one day stop). We rented a funky little VW bug and drove around. Stopped at a great place called Coconuts (I think) for lunch. It sits on a bluff overlooking the incredible Caribbean. Had the best margarita of my life. It was one of those sun/beach/wind filled days that I will never forget. Here's a little sample :D:

I think your idea sounds lovely. I am hearing you say that your kid is special, but not mathematically inclined, so taking some time to explore a different side of math than what textbooks offer is called for. Sounds great to me and I would be very interested in following along as the year progresses. I have a feeling my dd is much like your 14yo. She is just not ever going to love math or be a mathematical genius. And I don't want to crush her confidence about her outstanding abilities in other areas because of a struggle with math. A year of exploring it in a different way sounds like a nice way to decompress from the pressure and make it real. :thumbup:

I made this one. We all thought it was delish. I guess I did tweak it a tiny bit by adding a little more spice, like Ital seasoning to the cottage cheese mixture, and some garlic powder (but I pretty much add that to everything). It made a very large pot (my 4 or 5q crock pot full) so we ate it for 2 nights. Will do it again. And yes, I did use the whole wheat lasagna noodle, even though we don't normally like ww pasta. We never knew it was ww. My kids gobbled it, spinach and all.:tongue_smilie: Next time I will probably skip the chicken. It didn't add anything to it, and wouldn't be missed. I'm always looking for meatless options and this would be an easy one to skip the chicken.

No school room. We will use the breakfast table and couch and back porch. The formal dining room houses the armoir with computer, 3 bookshelves, file cabinet and big chair (mostly used by the dog). There is no room in here for desks and I don't think my kids would use them anyways. As a pp mentioned, my dd likes to get away from the noise to work independently so a room that forced us to be together wouldn't work. I think it's fine the way it is and if I had a room for school I wouldn't use it for that anyways.

:iagree: Seeing a ped endo is a completely different ball game than a regular *old school* ped. Let a specialist interpret the numbers. In my area the ped endo is obviously a ped diabetes expert (ds saw her for growth issues) so she has a dedicated nutritionist on staff, trained to help parents with specific issues. Personally, unless your pediatrician has to be the gatekeeper here for insurance reasons, I'd scoot around him immediately and go straight to the endo. And :grouphug:. It'll be okay. Put on your best Mama Bear pants and get after it!

Finger weaving is a possible option. At least it's not messy! Thing is I would be willing to bet all these kids already do it at home. Anyone else?:bigear:

I am not sure how many kids. I am guessing 6-8. Ages could vary quite a bit, like anywhere from 5yo-12yo. It's actually chess club but I am supposed to do a craft with the kids that don't want to play chess. So it needs to be okay for varying ages, cheap, not too messy, but not so easy that it's done in 3 minutes and they are looking at me for what to do next. I'd love the craft to last at least 45 minutes and then we can play outside if they want to. I will probably bring a few board games for them too. Any ideas? I thought about hiking around the park and looking for rocks and sticks and leaves, and then coming back in and painting and assembling them into fairies or gnomes or something. But the glue drying part could take too long. :confused:

WOW!!!! You did great! I had to laugh at you saying you wanted to go back and give the man more money. He knew what he was doing. You wanted what he had and he didn't. I've given some stuff to Goodwill that many people would have said I should have sold on eBay or craigslist, but it wasn't worth the hassle to me. See...you did him a favor!:D:tongue_smilie:

Stefani at Blue Yonder has a great blog. I also like Heidi at Mt. Hope. And Smooth Stones. And I read Simple Homeschool which I guess is less like an actual blog and more like a website with conrtibutors. The rest that I read are very faith-based.

I can't find this as a side effect through much googling and binging. DH is exhausted all. the. time. He is 46. Probably 25lbs overweight. Takes Paxil and has for many years. Also takes Lipitor (for bad cholesterol and very, very bad triglyceride numbers) but I am working to get him off that stuff. He sleeps 8 hours a night, sometimes lots more. His job is stressful, but not physically exerting. He's just so tired all the time. No energy. He could easily nap for 3 hours and still go to bed and sleep another 10. He does have undiagnosed blood sugar issues (meaning it's not been technically tested but we know he HAS to eat on time, gets shaky and sweats when he doesn't, almost passes out). He also snores quite a lot. He thinks its the fish oil supplements I put him on. I think that's ridiculous. I am thinking sleep apnea? His dad had this but he was much more overweight. Maybe low testosterone? But I don't know if there would be other symptoms of that. I think in terms of hormones because I am female, maybe men don't have those issues. I am not sure where to begin to figure out what is wrong with him. We can't really afford a lot of expensive blood work and testing, but will have to go that route if we can't figure it out on our own. Any ideas?

Oh. my. goodness. Dashing over to Amazon right now. I have a few other things I am needing, so this will save me a bit. I have no idea what B&N will charge for it but closer to $17.99 retail less maybe 30%, so Amazon is a better deal. Thanks for the tip!!!!

:seeya: I don't have it pre-ordered and it's not on my library list, so I can't even put it on hold. I just plan to dash out to B&N the minute it's released and pay full price. I can't wait! I'm also completely immune to Twilight, etc, but these books grabbed me immediately! I guess I should plan on at least one 4am night when I do get it!

I used this recipe to make a "Crispler" with peaches and blueberries tonight. :drool:

That's why I like those triangle math flashcards. It just makes sense to me (a visual learner like my dd) to see the family together so that you get to where you will know what's missing when you see 13-7.

Bless your heart! I think you did great! My dd just turned 10 and she's a young 10 too. Was the book "The Care and Keeping of you"? If so, it's fine. Not about s3x at all. But it does have a two page spread on tampons and how to insert them, so I kept the book and we read parts together. Then I recently told her about periods and those changes and now I am ready for her to have the book in her room. My dd is VERY shy and modest about these things, so for us it's best for her to have the privacy of reading a book like that and then talking to me later - which I hope she does. I also got an idea from this forum about having a journal that we can pass back and forth with questions and discussions about things she too embarrassed to ask me about face to face. These are tough but sweet times I think!:grouphug:

Did you make it yet? Curious how it turned out! I have some strawberries like that and could add some blueberries to it too.....

Samantha, what level of MM are you guys in? We're only going in to 4 even though dd is a rising 5th grader because of pulling her from ps, starting with Singapore, then trying CLE, and now in MM. I am sticking with MM for sure, but we have had to remediate some things (like mental math) that she had never gotten before. I still have concerns but we are moving forward. I was wondering because I also own LoF Fractions and would love to do some of it, but I'm not sure if she's ready for it yet. I'm guessing she should be at least through level 4 of MM?