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CalicoKat

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Everything posted by CalicoKat

  1. Sigh I just can't see how to make Sonlight work for my family. I'm bummed. 1. I don't want to do a 3rd year of Am. History. 2. We're at the end of another sweep through history with everyone studying Ancients again at their grade level. If combine the older two, SL is recommending Core 100 - Am. History There's no good Core for combining my middle three + it would still leave me with additional for my 1st grader. Essentially 3 core hell. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
  2. We're wrapping up a two year trot through Am. History. If we were staying with MFW we'd be back in the Ancient time period part of the 4-year cycle. I c o u l d team up my delayed 7th, 5th and 3rd grader in one Core. My 1st grader won't be able to join them. I wonder if this isn't why folks send their high schoolers back to ps.....can't fit them in with the rest of the crew any more. She's able to work independently with weekly check-ins with me. Hate to just throw her in, so to speak. Cuddle time. . . . . that doesn't happen around here with my energetic can't sit still kiddos. No one can sit still that long. No dreams there about it happening too. Especially for my one son with body tic's. He's always twirling, kicking, rolling, jumping, . . . . . constantly. A Sonlight advisor made the original recommendation and said that it'd be doable. It just didn't sound right! Thanks for confirming my thoughts. I'll keep playing around with things and see what I come up with.
  3. Would 3 Cores be walking the edge of insanity? Specifically Core B, Core F, and Core 200. Can Core 200 be done mostly independently? There's a vitual ps that allows families to use Sonlight that I'm looking into. :hurray:
  4. I tried crocheting the hat from red heart. BIG FLOP. It's flat. It's a flat polygon. I can't figure out what I did wrong. SC's and I blew it. :bored: And I stalled on the nadia beret with the decreases at the end...... I'm calling it a night. Frogging the crochet thingy tomorrow.
  5. My ds is (a very active, super destructive) 7 who's pestering us for a double bass. :smash: It would be kindling by the end of the first day at worst, or by the end of the week at best. :smilielol5: No way are we buying it for him. So now he's been working gma. :svengo: And she's like, "Well he is interested. What if he's talented?" This is the kid who can't walk straight through a room on his feet!!! It twirls, cartwheels, hops, sommersaults, army crawls, martial arts kicking.....you get the idea. Gma's going to take him to an orchestra concert and pay for a couple lessons with an instructor (on a borrowed instrument. We'll see what happens next. She's offered to keep it at her house and he can only practice there if he's got any talent. I wish he was still pestering for his own horse. That I could manage. :lol: Maybe you can't get her a horse. But you could start on lessons. It would give her an advantage when she does finally get her horse.
  6. Cables.....I've never done them. But this is the style of hat I'm looking for in a pattern. I found a crochet pattern over in the free patterns on Red Heart I've only crocheted a scarf so I'm a little nervous about trying something like this. They had this one too. And it's knitted. But I wasn't sure about the ear flaps.
  7. Yay, I'm almost finished knitting for my girls 3 scarves, 2 hats--only one more hat to go! So for the boys.... I'd better knit them something too, right?! A hat & scarf for them. Scarves, no problemo a simple ribbed scarf I'm thinking. But the hat needs to be special, like the girl's berets. Free, easy to intermediate, handsome. :)) I've been posting my FO's on Ravelry.com if you're curious. I'll have another one out there tonight to match the blue fringed scarf.
  8. The interview went well. They'd already checked a few of his references. He's being recommended for the 2nd round of interviewing for the position. It'd be the better job if he gets offered. But he has the offer that starts in January. :)
  9. WOW, You guys are good prayers, good thought thinkers, and good vibration senders! The interview hasn't even started.......... DH just walked in the door from his realtor gig AND He got a job offer from his financial planner contract gig he's been working too. Yes, he's been working two jobs. It's for a FT position starting Jan 1st. :hurray: He's still going to do this other interview today because it'd be a stronger offer and in his former technical field. If they make an offer that's the one he'd choose because it's almost double in salary and more stable. What a great problem to have. You guys are fantastic! Thanks. :001_tt1:
  10. There have been more than a few interviews in the past year. And I hate to mention it because i hate it when we have to say, "Nope, not this time, again." But it wouldn't hurt to get a few extra prayers, good thoughts, energy sent our way. It would be a mostly telecommuting position. He'd have to do 1 to 3 months of on site training. It's contract work (of course). Now I gotta get the kiddos and dogs out of the house for a while.
  11. if I say that my son's breathing & vocalization tics are really getting on my last nerve. He just started these this fall. Doc says to not mention it.
  12. Yup, my 5 year old had trouble focusing, waiting, going in a straight line etc. Still does, but it's better. Her martial arts instructor has her pick out two plastic round "spots" when we check dd in for class. She gets to put one "spot" on either side of the mat. When they do activities part of her extra work is to "slap her spot!" She very good at finding her spot and slapping it. I have noticed that they tried this with another young fellow and it didn't work. He's not there any more. I was glad it did work for dd, at least in Karate class. :laugh:
  13. Melatonin is the only way I get to rest. I call it "old lady sleep."
  14. Hmmm, maybe I should rethink my request for tile on the cement floor spigot-on-the-wall-in-the-basement-shower that's most popular here. We have some tile left over from a remodel we did two houses ago and DH says it's enough to tile the shower. We do have a full bath upstairs but no one likes to use it and I can't imagine why not. It's nice enough.
  15. Which room? :laugh: The basement, with the pellet furnace is approaching the 80's. The kids love to sit by the pellet stove in the a.m. while they wake up. It's pretty cute. We have a picture of our youngest sleeping in a chair by it once. The main floor is about 60-65 My bedroom, on the main floor, is in the 50's Upstairs bedrooms are a chillly 40 degrees. Yup, old farm house. Last year this was troublesome. But this year I've got kids who can't sleep in 70 degree bedrooms because they get "too hot to sleep, Mom!" Dressing in layers means you bring your own heat to which ever place you like to sit.
  16. Starfall.com, it's free online reading games. My 5 yr old just wasn't getting blending sounds on her own. She's spent a good bit of time the last month "playing" games. I pulled her over to her school books to see if there'd been progress and it's working. PLUS all the time I get with the others while she's distracted with the screen. . . .
  17. Starfall.com has been a huge help this year for my 5 yr old. It's free and it's also helping her to learn her blending. So I don't feel completely bad about parking her in front of a screen. :closedeyes: Gma comes to get her on Wednesday a.m. and she stays there until 3:30. AND the time from 6-8 a.m. when she's still in bed and the older kids get up to work on the 3R's. :grouphug: It WILL get better in time.
  18. Recently learned that one state doesn't do a state tax. Was it Montana? Lots of older, but not really old, folks here in SW Wi on fixed incomes seem to be moving there.
  19. in addition to any additional certificiations, training, DH wishes he would have gotten those endorsements and recommendations from colleagues for his Linked In before he was laid off. Start working on his resume too. It's a work in progress but it's nice to have that ready to mail out ASAP. Get his interview outfit in order while you still have cash. Does he have a company phone or computer? He's going to need one of each for his home office-until-employment. DH was able to port his company phone number to his new personal phone. That was helpful so he didn't lose touch with his network. He used that phone number for his resume too. Be aware though that you do get extensions and additional unemployment benefits if he can prove his lay off was because of offshoring. DH had saved a memo that indicated this. You'll have to get this kind of information in advance though because once he's laid off it can be difficult. His company was pretty careful to keep that information out of his layoff paperwork. It just said, "your position has been eliminated." COBRA! Know how it works so you don't get burned. Get all your kids through their appointments for the year on your current medical plan. We did visit a financial planner, several times, to help with the difficult $$ decisions. We knew in advance what the re-hire salaries for his type of work typically were and we knew that we'd never make it on that salary with all our other financial commitments. We also started snow-balling to eliminate any debt. We had only house debt the day he was actually laid off. I found this book, Organized Simplicity, encouraging when changes have happened too fast for comfort. We've wanted to live intentionally for years but always felt trapped. I think we'll look back on his layoff as the thing that saved us from a mediocre life. But that's not to say it was easy. :grouphug: My DH worked at a company for 16 years, and then they had him train his replacement in India before they eliminated his position. Sucks. But it's a good reminder that your husband's company is loyalty is to the bottom line, always.
  20. I'm making scarfs and hats for my kids (see pictures on Ravelry.com) I might even make an apron for me. :laugh:
  21. Sorry, this made me chuckle. My baby like this is not 13. She still doesn't sleep through the night. But she has mellowed out some. I used to wake up with her nose mm's from my own in the pitch black room with her whispering, "You wake Mommy?" :grouphug: :grouphug: We used to put her in the swing, on high, in front of the TV, with the tray stacked full of toys. She'd chuck them around the room and she was happy as a clam. At night she listened to hard rock, no lullabyes for her. If it wasn't thumping then she couldn't "turn it off." Family thought we were nuts. In retrospect I should have turned up the classical music. Meh. DH liked to park her on the floor in front of the speakers. She was in heaven. The big thing we did was to teach her to respect lower energy folks sleep & down time. She's artistic. So during the night time hours she spends a lot of time drawing or sculpting with clay. REAMS of paper sometimes each night. Detailed beautiful pictures. Draw Write Now books were a life saver for a while. Nap time is for me. Until she learned to stay in her room she was on a blanket next to me on the floor. It took a lot of work but eventually she got it. Do you have a YMCA membership? Get her involved in swim lessons, dance, and karate ASAP as she's age-ready. She needs a way to learn other ways to run off her energy other than using you. At the Y, when she's in class or y-watch you can get some personal time too. Channel that little person. She's going to do wonderful things with all that energy. Just have to figure out a way to survive it. :laugh:
  22. I plan to do something different. But I don't know what it is yet. We've been doing MFW for several years. We're finishing up the last year in the rotation right now and if we keep going with MFW we'll do the Countries and Geography year next. . . . I don't wanna. :crying: I'm not artsy, crafty, or very good at (patiently) doing all the extra stuff that seems to be required in that year. AND for the higher grades MFW seems a bit light. I'll have a 1,3,5, and 7th grader next year. My 9th grader will do MFW 9th grade materials. Or I'll enroll her in a cyber school because high school scares me. Plus it will be the beginning of my 3rd turn through SOTW vol. 1I'm tired of it. (Can I say that?!) At the very least I'd like to find something similar to the multi-level approach of MFW with some of the artsy-crafty-cooking stuff. Open to suggestions.
  23. Yup, this sucks. The little things are the biggest blessings these days. Eeeking along on thin air, on the narrowest balance beam, all the time is exhausting. And then there are the funny things that almost make your cry in desperation. Like last night I ran over a raccoon with the car. DH went back to pick it up so he can sell it for the $10 to the fur trader in town. Or that I put an ad on craigslist selling chicken poo for $$. Where in my suburban pre-life would these things ever have made the day's highlights at dinner time? DH's still looking for a regular gig too.
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