I like specificity. The more specific any thread title is, the happier I am. IMO CC clarifies the thread topic, so it's good.

Naked bicycle riding....owie. No, it wouldn't bother me, but it would make me cringe a little inside whenever I walked by.

My favorite mechanical pencil and a notebook. I do some homeschool planning on computer, but only the stuff that really works better on it.

I think it's a very natural thing to want to do something big for God, something significant. The thing is, though, that you'll never do "something big" if you don't do a whole lot of small things first. In fact, the small things are harder to do. It takes some growing up to realize that all that small stuff is the big stuff, but to start with, you just have to learn that God won't ask you to do anything very big unless you're already faithful in all those small ways.

I agree; it seems that they did their best to be respectful of the girls and were handling it the only way they could. I think the youth pastor was way out of line, and so was the driver. It's understandable that a driver would be reluctant to pull over, but it sounds like there were some serious lapses in judgment. (I am a mom of girls, and if I had been one of those girls I would have been sympathetic to the boys.)

My mom always did it, and I always do it, even though there isn't anyone in the front seat. I hope that I would keep both hands on the wheel if necessary! Several months ago when I had to swerve suddenly to avoid a collision, I did everything right, so that was good.

I'm under a lot of stress these days, and last month I figured it was that--my period came several days early, and was kind of different--I usually have a day or two of warning, and get tension/headaches, and last month it hit hard and fast, with cramps and backache. It was over quicker than usual, too. And since the week had been particularly stressful, I chalked it up to that. I'm still under the same stress--we're looking for work and have had no income for months. I'm 35, have always been healthy, but need to lose some weight. No weird losses or gains lately. I haven't noticed any weird grumpiness, and in fact haven't had any pain of any sort yet this cycle, though I am a little tense in the shoulders. I figure I'll call my OB on Monday; I have my yearly in October but I do want to ask about this now. I think I'll go get some vitamin pills too--I was worried about anemia, and just last night we were discussing Vitamin D deficiency!

My cycles have been getting closer together and a bit heavier. They were fairly heavy to begin with. It's now about 3 weeks in between, which gives me all of 2 weeks off. :glare: Any thoughts, information?

A sploosh of grape juice.

Yeah, as the mom of a nut-allergic child, I can't get too worked up about the peanut ban. PB smears, it sticks, it gets all over. A couple of years ago a young friend of ours told about how a boy in his class would, every day, try to shove his PB&J into the peanut-allergic kid's face. I'm sure he thought it was a very funny joke. Otherwise, you all are making me very grateful to homeschool! The sheer hassle involved in PS makes teaching my two kids look easy by comparison. (And even though we just started, we're taking Monday afternoon and Tuesday off so we can care for a niece while her dad's in the hospital for surgery. I don't even need a note!)

My mom had Hepatitis A when she was about 10. She was in bed for 6 weeks solid, only allowed to get up to go to the bathroom, and it took months to recover fully. We get that vaccination.

For 1st grade we should be done by lunch, with plenty of breaks for running around. 2 hours of solid work sounds about right (that comes out to 3 hours, once you include the breaks).

Wow. Who knew that Arthur Ransome proposed to every eligible girl he knew, was good buddies with Lenin, and married Trotsky's secretary?? Oh, and he was a spy. History is weirder than fiction.

We are similar. The math books the local district uses have so many pictures and boxes and colors that it's hard to see the math! I like the plainness of Saxon, though the single color in the older-grade books is very welcome. In science and history I prefer color, because so much is dependent on making things real to the student. But in math, it can be counterproductive, because it's easy to take it too far.

The whole South Bay was pretty small and rural until 25 years ago, but there are lovely older areas here and there. San Jose has a great spot full of 20's houses (Willow something-or-other), but all that sort of thing is hugely expensive AND for a while there people were buying the properties and building huge new houses on them. :( Cupertino has a great library. I used to work there sometimes. The whole area is very good, library-wise. It's a good place to live if you can take the traffic and house prices! We used to live in Campbell, which is a suburb of San Jose.

I have only managed to get hold of Aristotle and really enjoyed it--I was sad that my kid isn't quite old enough to love it yet! I learned a lot. There was kind of a weird chapter in the beginning about creation myths in different cultures, and as Julie said there seemed to be a very slight anti-religious bias (when talking about the medieval church) but it was small and easily dealable (yes, I know that's not a word). I hope to get all 3 for my own someday.

I'm a 'do the next thing' person. Over the summer, I plan by making a reading list for history so that during the year, I can just look at the list and go get the books from the library. Otherwise, I don't do a whole lot of planning what will happen in each week, because it will just get messed up and then I'd have to re-do it.

Sewing cards! I always find it so much easier to focus and listen when I'm doing embroidery or something...

Whoa, unbelievable--it's a free download right now. Thanks Verity, I hadn't thought that would happen. I didn't remember the sample having week 2 in it. :001_smile:

Dagnabbit. I've really been looking forward to using the CW Primers, and I ordered the Autumn one, and it came and I was really enjoying looking it over--and the entire second week is missing. :glare: It was ordered by my charter school teacher from Rainbow Resource, I think. I wanted to start using it next week!! What chance have I got to get a new copy quickly? Will I have to send the old one back? Fooey. Piffle. Great googly moogly.

:grouphug: Oh man, that's no fun. I seriously think it shouldn't be fun for them either. The chairs can go, and they can sit on the floor to work. The toys can go--one toy each, or something. The cute pencils and binders can go--plain paper and one pencil each. They can wear 3 outfits in turn, and if they're ruined, they can still wear them. If they can learn to take care of what they've got and not fight over the thing, they can earn it back, one bit at a time. At least you wouldn't have to pick stuff up all the time. You can use the time to take care of yourself instead. :grouphug: Oh yeah, and it won't kill them to live on PB&J and apples for a while, either.

Yes, we have had this problem a little too. Usually I tell my older daughter that I know that she knows these things, but I'm working with her sister now. It's not 'helping' to not allow her sister to learn her lessons herself. If she's wasn't quiet after that, I would send her out. With my daughter it is often a desire to show off mixed with wanting to 'help,' so I have to say a lot about how it isn't kind to say things like "It's easy, I know how to do that!" I don't know why it doesn't occur to her that those aren't nice things to say, but it seems to be a general kid thing.

Yeah, I'd agree that it's between you two and the Lord. It's going to be different for everyone. In our case, I had had two and wanted another, and my husband pointed out the health difficulties that might not make that a great decision. Through a lot of prayer, we decided not to have more children. I was not very happy about that at all (3 was my bare minimum!) and pretty much told God that He'd have to do something about that. One day soon afterwards my desire for more children simply disappeared. It was taken away. That was quite a surprise, and took me a year or so to get used to. Since then I've been at peace about our little family. After we had been sure for a while, we went the surgical route. We decided that we would be open to adoption if we felt that was something we should do, but nothing so far.

Well, grammar seems to come in a pretty basic order. We've only done Aesop so far--we're about to start Homer--and in Aesop we never seemed to run into a grammar concept we couldn't deal with. I was sort of planning to just go through R&S and see how it goes, but maybe I should look more carefully?

I use R&S; we had already started it when we got into CW and I've very fond of it. I looked at Harvey's a bit, but didn't see any reason to change.