eggs (but only on the weekdays--price goes up on the weekends) Silk soy milk half and half frozen chicken breasts frozen salmon fillets provolone cheese parmesan cheese portobella mushrooms button mushrooms oatmeal canned tomatoes flour yeast fruit (depending on season and price)

I agree with all of this. My daughter had a severe reaction to pistachios at age 4 and we have been carrying an epi pen since then. She has had incidents with other tree nuts: --a neighbor gave us some cinnamon rolls that had walnut powder on the bottom, she complained of a burning in her throat when she ate a bite. She threw up, took a benadryll and was fine a few hours later. --a friend had muffins at the pool, my daughter asked if there were any tree nuts, the girl said no. About 10 minutes later, my daughter told me that her stomach was upset and she was worried about having eaten tree nuts. I call the mother and find out that she ground up almonds in the batter. My daughter took benadryll, slept and was better later that day. I will say that she avoids all tree nuts even though I don't think her reaction would be as life and death as others in the same scenario. I wish you the best of luck in finding a helpful doctor and managing the allergy.

I was born in Tucson and recently returned from a trip there. I will add that I have traveled to Sedona as well many years ago. I am familiar with both places though I will state up front that I am a bit biased in favor of Tucson. Sedona is beautiful! It is pretty self-contained. It is a great place for hiking and biking. The drawback that I found was that it has a certain element of being exclusive and ritzy (to a certain extent) and therefore lodging and restaurants tend to cater to a crowd that likes to pay extra. Tucson is a much larger city but has a lot of options for hiking and biking as well. You will have to drive to any one of the outskirts to do those things. There are lots of lodging that surrounds the city (resorts as well as B&Bs) so that you are not driving so much. A benefit is that your food options are much more varied in type as well as price. If you decide to go the Tucson route you could PM me and I could offer up several suggestions of hikes as well as bike rides (mountain and road).

At my kiddos school, 3rd graders and below do Shurley Grammar and Singapore for math.

I hope he heals up quickly. I have to share that I did the same thing with almost the same results...only both of my parents were at work and only found out an hour later when they came home to a crying girl and a bloody towel. My dad later said that it was a lesson learned the hard way for me. I hope your son isn't being too hard on himself for the same thing

My two entered a charter school two months ago. It was the first time in a traditional school setting for either of them. The transition has been surprisingly smooth. I had considered myself a slacker homeschool mom ("I'm not doing enough!") so I was delighted that within just a few weeks the kids had a handle on the homework loads and the tests and that their teachers were thrilled to have them in their classrooms. The school is considered to be the most academically rigorous in the city and does not teach to the test yet regularly has some of the highest scores on it. It also uses curriculums that I have either used in the past or that I have at least heard of through WTM boards, so that was a plus as well. So, academically, I have no complaints with their experiences. Socially? Well, it has been mostly positive. My daughter is the one who comes home and tells me about something a kid has said that is troubling to her. We have interesting discussions about how peers say one thing but do another or how girls can act like they are the best of friends and then one day be decidedly not friends. One incident that stands out is when she felt like some girls she was hanging around with were just not as friendly as at the beginning of school. Knowing that my daughter is at the top of the class, regularly finishes her work and then helps the teaching by filing papers or tutoring her peers in class, I asked--as gentlely as I could--if maybe they didn't like her because she always did well. She said, "Oh, because I'm a goody-two-shoes?" (:lol:) Yes, I said. Her response? "Well, I don't care. I think I'm well-rounded and that's all that matters." I think she'll be fine. The downers from my point of view? The time preparing a healthy lunch with snacks. The 15 minute drive to the school. The homework. The bureaucracy. I had to fill out a load of paperwork simply for the school to have an epi-pen in case my daughter injested a tree nut. Then I had to do it all over again--with doctor's signatures--when there was a field trip. Ugh. I will say that for my kids right now, this school is the best choice. I certainly wish it was still homeschooling. I miss them and feel as if my days are lacking a purpose that they used to have. But that is not the plan the universe has for me right now. Best of luck to you as you and your family make the decision.

I agree that there is no harm in letting her hang out with the big sibs and see if she can do it. FWIW, my daughter was a newly turned 4 when we started level A and she had no problems. Good luck!

:iagree: Thanks for sharing the link, OP. I'm sharing it with family and friends that had to listen to my rants last year when I tried reading it and was personally offended by the poor writing.

This is spot on advice. I just went through the whole "man, I don't want to come off as that crazy over-involved ex-homeschooler mom" thing myself. I bit the bullet and contacted the teacher (much about some of the same stuff that you spoke of) and was met with utter friendliness and understanding. Things are going much more smoothly now. I really urge you to contact the teacher in the manner that Cadam suggested. Trust me. :)

Which is what I thought I was doing. I HAVE homeschooled exclusively until this coming August 18th. So I felt like I could see where she was coming from. My kids have endured all the nosiness, the random quizzing and so on. We've lived it and I still say I "get" what she's saying, but I think she's too heavy on the vehemence. Finger-pointing, labelling and what-not are never positives regardless of the situation. That's true. It's hard. But what isn't? I'd rather be positive in what I'm choosing to do, than feel an angry need to delineate what is/isn't homeschooling to validate my choice all the more. That's what I feel like she is doing. Again, IMHO.

This is all too true. I thought I would be homeschooling until high school and in three weeks my two are going to be attending traditional school for the first time. *SOB* Seven years ago--when we were first starting out--I probably would've pumped my fist right along with her. But along the way, things change and while my kids have gone through the inquisition from strangers regarding being homeschooled, I've stopped feeling threatened by others' choices and labels and concentrated on being okay with mine. Maybe the author of the blog should consider doing the same. I mean, why so angry? *shrugs*

I'll back up others suggestions of Yuban--the dark roast. I'm not an ultra coffee snob, but this one is pleasant but dark tasting without being acrid. I can score 33oz for $5.99 when stores have a sale and I have a coupon.

Even better than reading Twilight is watching a 20 year old British guy reading it and posting his thoughts on youtube. He starts with chapter one here: If you can ignore some er, colorful language from time to time, then I say give his videos a chance. He's up to chapter 14 right now.

LOL. A day later I am still upset about how the show ended. Jack was my least favorite character and it seemed as if everyone else was framed to fit his story arc. I'm glad that some people loved it, but I sure as heck didn't. It was like the producers wanted to gloss over story arcs and consistent characterization in order to have all this glowy reunion flashes so that the audience would be so swept up in the emotion of it all that they wouldn't care to think about what was actually happening. Ah well. Give me a few more weeks and I'll be over wondering what those six years of pondering Lost were for. :lol:

My daughter came back from a friend's house the other day and shared a little convo they had about crushes: DD's friend: I bet you'll get a crush this summer (:blink:<--me) DD: Oh? Do you have a crush? Friend: Yes, his name is Jake. DD: Let me guess, he's cute and funny, right? Friend: Yes! Do you know him? At this point in my dd's recounting of the tale, she told me, "Mom, I didn't have the heart to tell her that I've seen enough movies to know that girls ALWAYS fall for the cute, funny, dumb guys." :lol: