I have 5 qt heavy duty one from Sam's. I love it and it has never once had any complaint about what I put in it. My only regret is that, for our family of 7, I probably should have gotten the 6qt. Sometimes I have to make just a little more than the 5 qt bowl can hold comfortably with our larger family. But I only paid $100 for it brand new so I could hardly pass it up. ;)

Hmmmm...on the surface, I can't see any problems with the procedure other than the same problems that are associated with IUDs (improper placement, rejection by your body, small risk of infection at insertion....) Some people may not tolerate it well, it could cause unmanageable menstrual cramps because the body is trying to force out the foreign object. I would definitely consider this procedure but I am on my third IUD so I know I tolerate this type of birth control well. I LOVE my IUD! :lol: No hormones (I cannot use hormonal birth control methods), very little maintenance (just check the strings once a month, I do it after my period ends each month), its effectiveness rating is within 1% of tubals and vasectomies. I have the Paraguard, hormone free and lasts for 10 years. I paid out of pocket for it (about $600 once I negociated with the OB office) and then to my surprise, my current insurance company reimbursed me in full for it! :clap: I still think $600 for 10 years worth of bc is a good deal though. ;) I have had 3, first one I got 6 weeks postpartum after my now 8yo dd. Had that one removed 3.5 years later to get pregnant with next dd. Insurance paid 100%, no out of pocket for both insertion and removal. Got pregnant 5 months after removal and opted to have another one inserted post partum. It's a long story but the dr who inserted this one didn't know what she was doing ( could tell during the procedure, it didn't not go nearly as well or as smoothly as the first one). I was sick with several health problems that they swore up and down could not be IUD related starting the day after it was inserted. After almost a year of unexplained health problems and nothing was working to fix it, I requested they remove the IUD just to see if maybe it could be the problem. They didn't think it would help but since I requested it, they did it and all my health problems disappeared. :glare: Got pregnant while looking into IUD alternatives. Decided to have a different doctor at a different practice insert another IUD after ds was born and I have been happy as a clam ever since. Don't plan to have any more kids so this IUD will be staying in until 2018. ;) I would imagine Essure would have the same or similar pros and cons. I'm going to consider it instead of another IUD when I need to replace this one. ;)

I have kids from 3yo up to 11yo that use the card games. Excellent quality on the cards, the book I feel could be better organized to be more user friendly but other than that I'm more than pleased with our investment. :thumbup:

Currclick has always had some great free giveaways on Black Friday.

My MIL brings those over from England when she visits at Christmas along with all kinds of other British Christmas treats. She came in September this year instead of Thanksgiving/Christmas :sad:

Brach's Peppermint Nougats! The round individually wrapped candies that are red and white around the edges and have a Christmas tree in the middle. Dh's grandma sent me a big bag of them every year when we lived overseas. :D

First of all, thank you to all of you who responded to my previous foreign language thread. I'm really excited to try and take on a few languages. So here's my plan so far.... We are going to be doing Latin for Children. We already have it. I started it with my oldest but we never got very far with it so we are going to do it as a group with all my older ones (8, 9 and 11yo). I don't really consider it a foreign language but it is a consideration when I look at our work load and what we can handle. We all already know a decent amount of Japanese and the kids all expressed an interest in keeping it up and learning more. We learned most our Japanese from my dh's very kind and helpful co-workers and other Japanese friends but I do have a few resources on hand and I found the online access to the Irasshai program and I love it and the kids like it too. Plus we have movies and print materials from Japan and I'm sure we can get in touch with our old Japanese friends and penpal with them. So now on to my questions... I think we are going to take on Spanish as well. It seems to be the most useful and easiest for me to teach since I already know about as much Spanish as I do Japanese (just need to brush up a little :blush: ) Plus Japanese and Spanish are different enough that we won't be confusing vocabulary or mixing the accents (like my college professors often caught me doing since I had studied both Spanish and French :blush: ) I need some recommendations on a Spanish program that (in order of importance): 1. Has an element of fun, not just memorizing vocabulary and verb conjugations 2. Fairly well laid out, not a lot of lesson planning for me 3. Focuses more on conversational Spanish than written Spanish at least for this first year 4. Is good for upper elementary / middle school beginners (we focused more on Japanese while we were in Japan so they have forgotten most of the Spanish I taught them when they were preschoolers/early elementary) As much as I would love to just pick up Rosetta Stone, it's just not in the budget this year. :( So if you are still reading and don't think I'm asking for too much in a foreign language program :lol:, I am :bigear:.

:iagree: I agree absolutely 100%! My dad has been preparing them this way since I was a little girl. I think I talked him into coming out here to have Thanksgiving with us next year (for the first time in my adult life) and showing me how to make "rotisserie bird" as my best friend in high school called it. I also can't wait for my kids to experience chewing on the cotton twine after it's been cut off the turkey. Sounds gross but it tastes soooo good. :lol:

How are you doing it? Do you expect fluency in all languages or just exposure and fluent in one? Do you study them concurrently or study one in middle and one in high school? I think Spanish will be useful to my kids. I grew up in the Southwestern US and I learned to understand Spanish but I speak only a little. I took French in high school and it has served me well when we visit my MIL in England but again I understand more than I speak. We lived in Japan for 4 years and my dh can understand almost anything spoken in Japanese and we all speak a little. One of my dd's is absolutely fascinated with all things China and knows a few words in Chinese (Ironically, this is the dd who was born in Japan :lol: We moved to the states when she was 18 months old though so she has no memory of it) One of my ds's is interested in German and another in Italian. We also study Latin but I count that as part of our language arts, not as a foreign language. I think it would be fantastic for them to learn 2 languages or more if they desire. The logistics of learning two is holding me back. :confused:

Depends on your 7yo and what you want to accomplish with her. You could just teach to your 10yo and have the 7yo pick up what she can. I've done this numerous times when trying to save my sanity, just teach to my oldest and whatever the youngers gain from the exposure is fine with me. If you aren't comfortable with that you could work with them together just and just lower your expectations for the 7yo. The 10yo might right a report on the study topic while the 7yo might write only a sentence or two. If it was to save my time and sanity, yes I would try to do Beyond with both of them but if I had the time and energy to expend I would definitely rather do FIAR with the 7yo. ;)

We like the first two phonics ones (Letter Factory and I think the other one is Talking Words Factory), didn't care for the 3rd one (just doesn't jive with our phonics program) and haven't seen the storybook one. Math Circus is also a favorite. :thumbup:

We love FIAR especially in the early years :thumbup: Yes, your 10yo and 7yo could use the same volume but you'd be making the lessons more age appropriate for the 10yo. Not hard to do but no everyone's cup of tea to do so. You might consider doing Beyond FIAR with the 10yo and FIAR for the 7yo. For the 7yo all you would need is FIAR, math and phonics, for the 10yo you would need math, grammar and Latin if you wanted to continue that. FIAR doesn't have a schedule included per se. You would complete your FIAR activities and other subjects at your own pace and on your own schedule. The volumes are full of lesson ideas, you choose the ones you want to cover at this time (you can do a book more than once so you don't have to do all the lessons listed the first time you do it) Also you don't need to do the lesson manuals in order, you can skip around in them. My preschooler is doing books this year from Before FIAR and from FIAR volumes 1-3 this year. I just pick and choose books I think she can gain something from no matter what volume they are in. Obviously I have to change some of the lessons a bit but it's not a big deal. And she will very likely do the books again when she's older so we can do the lesson as written or do more than that with it when she's a little older. FIAR has their own message boards if you want to visit them. ;)

Thanks ladies and thank you Miss Moe for posting your schedule. ;)

no problem ;)

The diagramming and grammar are in the textbook, typical Saxon style textbook where you copy the problems onto a separate sheet of paper. I wouldn't call the writing and grammar lessons integrated at all, as in they don't refer specifically to each other but the first writing lesson does assume that you already know what nouns and verbs are which have been introduced in the grammar lessons that should have already been completed before beginning the first writing lesson. There is a schedule of lessons, when to do the writing lessons and when to do the tests, in the teacher booklet. But if you just wanted writing and already had a grammar program with diagramming that you liked (like say Junior Analytical Grammar which we were doing before Saxon), you really could just work with the Student Workbook only and just go through the lessons at your own pace. ;)

I just looked over the TOC and there are exactly 3 out of 31 writing lessons devoted to writing an imaginative story. Almost all the other lessons are on essay writing. ;) Really if all you wanted was the writing component, you could just order the Student Workbook. All the writing lessons are in there. ;) Sweetsouthern, it wouldn't take long at all. Just reading through the lesson (1 - 3 pages) and how ever long it takes them to work through the 30 problem review set. When he's on his game, my son takes about 30 - 40 minutes to do the whole thing and can mostly do it independently other than the occasional question. ;)

When my dh joined the military and we moved to our first duty station (3hrs from where I was staying with our son at my dad's house), the military did not pay for our first move. We had to move ourselves. Now it could be completely different going from NG to AD (my dh was a civilian and went AD) but that was our experience. If they are going to move you, they will send your dh to TMO to make arrangements. They can have movers to your house within days, ask me how I know. :lol: For one of our moves, we were cut short notice orders on Friday, went to TMO on Monday and the movers were at our house on Wednesday. :lol:

Yes, I think it's pretty interesting but I find grammar and diagramming to be interesting so take my opinion for what it's worth. :lol: I just asked my ds who is using it (11yo 5th grader) if he thought it was interesting and he said the daily work sentences, copywork and dictation was interesting but he doesn't care for some of the journal topics. I do give him liberty some days to just write about any topic in his journal. Some days I have him choose one of Saxon's journal topics. Saxon has enough journal topics in there that you wouldn't have to think of any yourself if you didn't want to. They write in their journals 3 days a week (copywork and dictation replace the journal writing on the other 2 days). Like I said, you can use their journal topics or just let them write on a topic of your choosing or their choosing. Ds has written stories and other creative things for his journal topic instead of the assigned topic. I'm not sure what you are looking for in the way of time devoted to creative writing but I can look in the table of contents and let you know. ;)

I've not used a lot of other middle school grammar programs as we are just starting middle school but of the ones I've seen and the couple of I've used, Saxon felt solid but yet still gave the information in small pieces (very important for my oldest who is easily overwhelmed when presented with a lot of information) I also like that it had everything I was looking for in one program; solid grammar instruction with diagramming, copywork, dictation, writing and composition instruction (again in little bites perfect for my ds), journal writing and vocabulary words. It's all in one book and covered in one "class period" When I tried to pull together one thing for grammar and another writing and pull my own dictation and copywork and vocabulary, it felt disjointed and often didn't happen they way I would like. I'm so glad we found a keeper for us so early on in middle school. In the Rainbow Resource description of the program it says they have had many homeschool moms wish for a LA program along the same lines as Saxon math. I was one of those moms. ;) I don't like the approach as well for math but I thought it was the perfect way for us to approach LA. And so far it has been. ;) That's our story, FWIW. ETA: Another big thing for us was that it is a secular curriculum. :thumbup:

I found one but it looked pretty dead. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/using_phonics-road/ Maybe I just didn't use the right search terms?

I don't really fall into either camp. :lol: I think history can be equally well presented in both formats (by region or by time period). It's all in how you and your student best process the information. I might change my mind when I get to doing it but I was going to go through each HO2 lesson and then find the SOTW chapter or chapters that used the same Kingfisher pages and then if there were any gaps (chapters in SOTW that weren't covered in HO2 or vice versa) fill them in in whatever way works for me. ;)

I want to coordinate Story of the World with History Odyssey Level 2. I'm combining my 3rd, 4th and 5th graders into the same history year and while my 4th and 5th graders have no problem with HO2, my 3rd grader can't handle it and I don't want to do HO1 with her (tried the sample just didn't care for the level 1 materials but really like level 2). We already have SOTW, books, audiobooks and AGs so I just want to use what we have but try to line it up somewhat. Before I sit down with HO2 and SOTW AG to try and line up the SOTW references to Kingfisher History Encyclopedia with the HO Kingfisher references, has anyone already done this and posted it somewhere? :bigear:

I don't have the book in front of me so I can't remember exactly which lesson it starts in but diagramming is introduced and then incrementally built upon and reviewed in each lesson there after. The book is not laid out in chapters really but daily lessons and the next lesson builds on and reviews all the previous lessons. If you have looked at Saxon approach to math at all, it's very very similar. It is the closest thing to a complete, rigorous Language arts program I could find. I only add spelling (only because my 5th grader needs it still), literature studies and a Latin program.

:D

Yes thank you for the description Tina, that was most helpful. ;)