I'm just back home, and have been praying earnestly all day. I'm so thrilled to hear that it has been postponed!!!! May it continue to be postponed until the due date :) May the Lord be glorified in all of this, and may the precious baby and mother feel His love, mercy, and peace.

I will be driving (by myself!) all morning tomorrow and figure I can spend the time in prayer for this girl and her baby, that the Lord will change her heart and she will not go through with her appointment. Anyone care to join with me? Blessings, Rita

Wow. I so did not know that. I'll have to rethink when it comes time to renew :( Rita

I view it as insurance. We live in Virginia, and in their last magazine, there was an issue in the county we used to live in :scared:...we're only 2 counties over now. I agree that it's a chunk of money, and I really hope we never need to call on them, but if someone ever comes knocking on my door, I can say "Let me call my lawyer" :) Rita

:lol: that is so something I would have said too!!! Rita

I spent some time on the HST forums and found a link to the yahoo groups. There are soooooo many lesson plans out there that people have shared. I would recommend that you go look on the website and spend some time looking around :) Like I mentioned, I just bought this today, so I'm not the one to answer your questions fully ;) Blessings, Rita

:grouphug: I'm so sorry that you had to endure that. I clicked on your blog link, and your family is beautiful. Rita

I just bought this today, and am very overwhelmed by it all. I am confident that I'll get it figured out. My favorite thing is the yahoo groups that you can import lesson plans from :) I will still have to make several of my own, but Saxon, Apologia, and Wordly Wise were all easily imported today :) Rita

DS 14 went to Boy Scout Aquatic Camp this year. They were required to put a vinegar/water solution in their ears when they came out of the lake. They kept it in baby bottles down at the dock, with nipples on the bottles and everything! I believe it was a 1:1 solution. Rita

What if her parents did not threaten to kick her out, but that is what she is assuming? Tough, tough, tough call. I have no idea what I would do if a friend of my child was in a similar situation. I have already told my boys that they ought not to have s*x outside of marriage, but IF they get a girl pregnant we would be supportive. Rita

If she didn't say she really wants to take Chinese, I'd go with History. Chinese, in my opinion, is a difficult language to learn if you're not motivated and wanting to learn it (to me, learning the Chinese "alphabet" or whatever term they use for it would be HARD :001_smile:) PLUS, you have the out of pocket expense for an online class. Rita

I totally agree with this. blessings to you and your family as you walk this difficult path. Rita

:iagree: Rita

Oh, but I'm lusting for an iPod (specifically the iTouch) for several reasons...mostly the cool apps that you can get. You do make an excellent point about just putting them on the computer :) I love practical ideas :D Rita

I so need an iPod. Big sigh.

If your dd is excited to be studying Chinese, I'd go for the Chinese and toss the structured history for the year. I'd give her some historical books (like a previous poster suggested...use SL Core 5 as a book list) Rita

That's why we're also using Write Shop. A friend started teaching it in the Spring, and is continuing in the Fall, which makes me very, very happy :) I have to say, I saw a HUGE improvement in the boys' writing after just a couple of weeks. Rita

We are doing a mix of Lightning Literature (British Medieval), Wordly Wise, Jensen's Grammar/Punctuation and Write Shop. Rita

Just a guess...but the dog was probably pregnant when she was rescued... We've ended up fostering several pregnant cats that way and have had the opportunity to foster a pregnant dog, but it didn't work out as we already had the pregnant cat :) Rita

No advice, but your Miss Scarlet comment made me LOL ;) Rita

I try to have the start price fairly low, to bring people in. For my things that have actually been worth something, I do put a reserve on the item. If your item doesn't reach the reserve, I think you can sell it to the top bidder after the auction ends (I haven't sold on eBay for awhile, so that might not be correct). Blessings, Rita

I'm very jealous. We were unable to work it in this year :( We're at the other end of the state of VA, and it's a long haul for us to get there (6 hours), but we loved going when we went 2 years ago. It's a great size convention.....big enough to have big names, but small enough that you're not overwhelmed :) Blessings, Rita

We will be using Truthquest Middle Ages (my boys are 14 and 12). Blessings, Rita

Regarding the Learnables. We are on lesson 6, and so far the boys only listen to the tape, with no repeating. They simply look at pictures and hear the German spoken. It starts really basic (man, child, table), but has moved on to full sentences. There are 10 lessons like this (I think!) in the Learnables book, then we'll move on to Basic Structures. I'm not sure how that book works :) My very loose plan is to have us work through Basic Structures 1 and see if the boys REALLY want to continue learning German. At that point, we'll probably enroll in the Potter's School. They use Deutsch Aktuell Level 1 and their tutition runs $460/semester. There is another online option, by Oklahoma State University http://germanonline.okstate.edu/ which, now that I'm actually looking at it, runs $389 a course. So we'll see which route we go if they decide they love German. Blessings, Rita

We have just begun The Learnables in German. As we have only just started, I can't really comment on it, but so far, so good! Rita