When you’re clueless about homeschooling, this is the book to buy. It will help you solidify your decision to homeschool, decide what kind of learners you have, what kind of teacher you are, what kind of approach to take, and which curriculum will best suit your needs. It does exactly what it advertises–narrows the search for curriculum.

There’s a ton of stuff out there on the internet, in teacher supply stores, and even the dollar section of Target. A LOT. Once you make the decision to teach your children at home, your eyes open to the different things you can use to teach them. Things will jump out at you and you’ll want to buy them all. Unless you have unlimited funds, that is a problem that you want to keep in check. One of the pros is being able to reuse curriculum you buy for the oldest when the younger ones grow up. Another is being able to sell curriculum back to your local homeschool store. 100 Top Picks helps gives a list of what to look for when you’re in the used sections of such stores. You will find treasures in the piles and piles of stuff they accumulate. My advice is to not write in any books or on any worksheets so that you can sell the stuff back. It’s economical, saves the Earth, and provides yet another teaching opportunity. (I’m telling you, they are everywhere. It’s like buying a car and then suddenly seeing the same car everywhere you drive when before ownership you never noticed them.)

One of the great mysteries that this book solved for me was helping my husband and I see eye-to-eye on what and how to teach our kids. I thought that we would be on two sides of the spectrum with him being more traditional and  me firmly on the unschooling side. I learned that we are more on the same page than I thought. Both of our second choices were for the Charlotte Mason method. We are still going to be eclectic so we won’t abide by CM solely. Traditional worksheets and unschooling experiments will definitely come into play. It was great to discover a good jumping off point, however, and it has helped me to stay afloat in the giant pool of curriculum choices.

I am just diving in and keeping my eyes open for when learning clicks for my children and the lights go on in their heads.

It’s a little can and went for about ten bucks in the wholesale store, so probably costs twice as much retail. A little can with giant letters big sexy hair. That’s a brand name, not necessarily my objective. I just wanted to see if it worked… you know, for when you’re without water and need to look presentable?

Here are the before and after pictures taken by my lovely assistant and husband.

I brushed my hair both times, so you can see an improvement in the after pictures. I think I would rather just wash my hair, but nice to have an alternative when you push the snooze button one too many times before you realize you have an appointment.

It felt like hair spray… you spray it on like hair spray and it smells pretty good, but makes you cough if you stay in the hair spray cloud. It felt like I had just doused my head in Aqua Net. So I teased it a little and here are my wannabe rock star pictures.

I want to test this product more fully in the humid South Texas air. Because the rock star pics are pretty high hair for me. I guess I could spray some more on tomorrow and continue with this science experiment. Who knows? Maybe 80′s hair will come back in style.

The time is now right for me to go with my earlier convictions. When I heard about a friend’s decision to homeschool her children, I was so inspired. A five-minute conversation, standing in the street under the hot sun made me very excited about the possibilities. Josh had a similar experience having lunch with a homeschooling parent on the same day. That day (Wednesday, July 8, 2009) and every day since, I have been researching how to put homeschool into action. I have found several websites, talked with friends who are homeschooling or going to homeschool their children, emailed family for their take (with some surprising results), cleaned out the 371.042 catalog section of the local library, and talked with everyone in the house about their expectations. (Sarah wants to be Christopher Paolini and learn how to write fiction, Zack wants to learn about Japanese instruments, and Seth wants to learn about animals that he hasn’t heard of before. Josh wants to have a schedule and regular testing. I want to get my priorities straight and serve my family while strengthening our relationships with each other.)

I have purchased two books that I think will be a good resource in this venture: 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum and Home Learning Year by Year: How to Design a Homeschool Curriculum from Preschool through High School. The reason I picked the first is because two friends recommended/lent it to me and the second because it wasn’t available at the local library and I needed a $25 order to get the free shipping. (Maybe I’ll learn something when we study mathematics.) Everything else I have borrowed from the library.

One book that I did not plan to borrow beforehand and ended up getting (it would have looked lonely sitting there by itself after I cleaned off the shelf anyway) is The Homeschooling Option: How to Decide When It’s Right For Your Family. I highly recommend this book for anyone with children (homeschooled or not). I like that it was written just last year and the information is current and relative to today. It brings up valid points about education in an objective manner. The author is a university professor who claims to be biased for homeschooling, but she doesn’t come across that way. The language she uses does not offend and it is easy to take or leave it without feeling guilty for whatever road you choose to take. She draws on her own experience as a homeschooling parent and even though our situations are vastly different, it was nice to hear what it was like for her. Quotes from homeschooled children and their parents are scattered throughout the text and I loved reading about their experiences because their backgrounds were all different, too. Reading what the children wrote, mostly teenagers, was insightful as well. (I wish I could reserve Tim for marriage to my oldest, but he’s already twice her age… oh well.) There’s a “coffee talk” chapter towards the end where the author and other parents get the chance to answer frequently asked questions in a more complete manner as they rarely get the chance in real life, on-the-spot settings. The Appendix at the end of book gives web addresses for legal regulations  and support groups in every state. All in all, this book covers a lot of information to help guide a completely clueless person like myself, and I happily blazed through it towards enlightenment.

I’ve learned so much in the last week! I never knew there was such a thing as Unschooling. It gets me really excited to read about families implimenting this approach, but I know Josh is expecting something more traditional. I know what a Unit Study is and I am amazed at the experiences some families have gone through. The more I have researched, the less I have thought of this as an exercise in “what if” and moved more towards “when”. We can do this to we will do this. The children were already talking about homeschool in terms of when and not if (like it is in the title of the book), and I have gone from cautiously giving vague answers to more definitive ones. We still need to find out if Sarah can continue with band at her current middle school, but I’ve been told that our county allows homeschoolers to participate with public schools. I hope it’s true because this has come on so suddenly… I don’t have any immediate alternatives for Sarah’s career in percussion.

We have already decided that the first year is going to be a work in progress. We have talked with the kids about their expectations. I still have a lot of homework to do on what my Education Philosophy is and what category of learning styles my children fall into. But as each day passes, I get mental glimpses of what it could be like. The other day I dreamed about us planting a garden and got out of bed to peek through the blinds to see where the sun touched the backyard in the morning. I can already see that my attitude towards my children is changing. Instead of waiting for school to start so that I can have the house to myself and just one child who takes naps, I’m noticing opportunities to teach. I’m cherishing the time I have with them now and am looking forward to all the time we will have together “when school starts.” I feel that I will finally be taking veteran moms to heart when they say, “Enjoy it. It goes by so fast.”

My favorite excerpt from the book:  Homeschooling works because it offers a unique and exciting vision of how education, family life, social needs, and the individual can come together at a time when we are questioning the kind of life we want for our children in this new century. Homeschooling gives families the time and space to live together for more than a few minutes each day. Homeschooled children learn that they don’t need to wait until they are eighteen or twenty-two to take their place in society. Home education is tailored to all the child’s needs—intellectual, emotional, social, psychological, and spiritual.

This being my first David Lodge novel, I was not familiar with his writing style nor could I compare it with what he has done in the past. I just happened to catch the title of the book while at the library which led me to read the inside cover. I felt that I could definitely relate to hearing loss being “a constant source of domestic friction and social embarrasment.” My hearing loss is a perfect graph of high frequency loss that is easiest to correct with hearing aids. They have certainly made my life easier (and everyone else’s around me), but they are not foolproof. It’s still very hard to hear what someone is saying in a crowded or noisy place. So everyone in my family has felt the frustration of having to repeat themselves to me. My husband has to consciously tell himself to have patience, but there have been more than one incidence of him asking, “Do you have your hearing aids in?”

Growing up, I didn’t have hearing aids. I told my mom that I didn’t want them because I didn’t want to be different. I was defiant. I never sat in the front row in order to hear the teacher better. And while I probably missed a lot, I was still able to get straight A’s. Still, every year when the school did their annual screening, my mother was told that I failed the hearing test and she would take me to a specialist to get tested. I always cheated on the hearing test. I know it wasn’t in my best interest, but perhaps the unwillingness to fail was too strong. I still cheat, apparently. My hearing specialist told me last month that I don’t test the same as I hear. I just laughed knowing that my mom would think it was funny, too.

It has just occured to me that perhaps the reason why I could not fail the hearing test is because of what Lodge writes about in his book about the difference between the disability of seeing versus hearing. He says that blindness is tragic, but deafness is comic. And it’s true! No one pities the deaf. My family has often laughed at me when I answer the phone when one rings on the TV (even if it doesn’t sound anything like our phone ring). If a blind person were to walk into a wall, no one laughs, but they jump to the rescue to help the poor soul. Did anyone pity me and care to repeat the punchline to jokes? Nope. They were too busy laughing, so I would laugh along with them. If someone happened to ask me what the punchline was, I would have to break cover and acknowledge that I had no idea. They would look at me with a raised eyebrow and ask, “So why are you laughing?” No one asks the blind why they stumble. “Deafness is always comic.”

There are many such truths in Lodge’s book, and the lengths that his character goes to in order to keep his deafness under wraps is comic and a bit painful. The opening scene of him pretending to hear a conversation with a girl in a noisy art gallery reminds me of an experience I had when I forgot to wear my hearing aids to school. I had gone to the photo lab (at the University of Hawaii) to work on a project. It was very late and the only other person in the lab was the lab manager, Roger. Poor Roger poured his heart out to me about his girlfriend. I pretended to hear what he said, and I guess he only needed someone to listen to him because I rarely needed to respond. I think. All the while, I was matting prints and making what I hoped to be appropriate facial expressions while he went on about his relationship. I went home that night with no idea what he had said. It bothered me so much that the next day I told him that I had not heard a word he said the night before, and offered to hear him now that I had my hearing aids in. He just shrugged and told me that it was OK. There are things I will never know and the conversation (albeit one-sided) from that night is one of them.

I found Lodge’s book to be educational. I never knew or just forgot that the official name for people talking louder in a noisy room is called the “Lombard Reflex, named after Etienne Lombard, who established early in the twentieth century that speakers increase their vocal effort in the presence of noise in the environment in order to resist degradation of the intelligibility of their messages.” My own mother, along with the girl in the art gallery, is an exception to this rule. While it was she who toted me to hearing specialist after hearing specialist, even pointing out to them that if I could see them during the test that I was most certainly cheating, she will not automatically raise her voice when speaking to me in a noisy environment. She will after multiple repeats, but not initially. If she is speaking about something particularly serious, she also will keep her voice down so that I have to strain to hear her. I may look normal on the outside, but on the inside I’m like Hiro from Heroes when he’s stopping time. Anyway, Lodge’s character being a Professor of Linguistics helps justify all the educational parts in the book. He even switches from first person to third person in one section as an exercise. I thoroughly enjoyed these parts because I happen to really like Linguistics. The Lip Reading Class near the end also becomes a source of interesting information.

I also enjoyed all the British jargon. It was obvious to me early on that the character was British when he said,”going to the gents” (going to the men’s room) and “battery packed up” (battery died) and “hallo” (hello) and “put the phone down” (hung up the phone). I just think it’s funny how they say things so differently and wish that I could use them, too, but know they would not go over well being that I’m American. Wouldn’t it be loverly if I could just once say, “Oh dang, I’m craving  chocolate, but all the shops are shut.” I would love to incorporate that phrase into my normal mode of conversation.

It is not lost on me that the character that I so easily relate to is a 60-something-year-old man. It makes it all the more funny to me. The parts that I cannot relate to by personal experience in this book just so happen to be the not so terribly funny parts. Namely, the relationship with his elderly father, the crazy meetings with the Fatal Attaction-like young American woman, retirement, the effects of alcohol on libido, and the visit to Auschwitz. Silence was tangible to me when he described how he kept his hearing aids in even though he was alone on the grounds of the extermination camp “because [he] wanted to hear the silence”. In all these subjects, the writing is honest and human, but not heavy or melodramatic. He doesn’t hold back and because the book is written in a diary form, we can forgive the flaws.

There is so much that I like about this book, but at the same time, I wouldn’t readily recommend it to my friends. There are so many parts to it… like an onion, as Shrek would say, that would not float everyone’s boat. How funny could it be to someone with perfect hearing I wonder? Well, I’m sure that David Lodge did not write this book just for me, so there must be something that my friends could get out of it. Still, it’s not entertaining in the sense that Harry Potter was entertaining. There’s no magic in this book, but there seems to be a bit of magic in the writing.

**SPOILER ALERT**

First, I blame myself for the rose colored lenses I was wearing up until the moment I walked into the theater. How could I forget that there would be screaming little girls everywhere? I may still feel like a teen, but I am definitely in the Twilight MOM (read: old lady who should not be crazy about Edward Cullen) category. My kids ate cold cereal for dinner, the laundry did not get done, and any interruptions while I read each of the books in the series were met with barely contained snarls and baring of teeth. Luckily, I read fast and happen to have the best husband in the world who, without being asked, quietly led the children away, shut the door to our bedroom and left me in peace to be dazzled. Excepting the second book, I was blissfully happy to live in the world of glittery vampires and superhero powers. There is a reason why Stephenie Meyer has been called the next JK Rowling–it has nothing to do with the quality of writing or subject matter–it is because you want to live in the world she creates and see the characters yourself. You wish it like you wish you knew what butter beer tastes like. The movie could not compete… and incidentally, the only book to movie that I think stands on its own is the Jason Bourne movies. Yes, I know the movies detour from the books, but watching Matt Damon kick booty makes up for all–in the end, you just like the movie for what it is. This movie will not stand on its own, but will be the immortal Grease for all those teens who were there tonight (and for my own preteen who will be seeing it on Saturday with a bunch of her friends).

*take a breath* * think good thoughts* *positive mental attitude* *redirect*

THANK YOU to the person who was parked three stalls from the entrance and left right as I arrived. THANK YOU to my friends who saved me a seat in the theatre so that I could get there a mere hour before show time. We took up almost two rows… a raft of Twilight Moms in a sea of screaming teenage girls (although the youngest in our group was 8 years old–shout out to MM who took a nap after school so she’d be able to stay awake for the midnight show). THANK YOU to the friends who waited for me to pee before walking me out to my car after the movie so that I did not have to go alone. THANK YOU to Zoe for sleeping the whole time I was gone and Josh for watching over her and the kids. THANK YOU to my friends in CA who texted and sent me a picture of them with the security guard working at the theater. THANK YOU for freshly popped popcorn and icy drink. That, my friends, is the summary of good things related to my night. And the rant continues…

Second, I wanted to scream myself multiple times throughout the movie because the audio sucked. There was humming and static and crackling and break ups. Yes, I got my free pass along with everyone else as we filed out to the closing credits because the theater was at fault, but my first experience of the movie is forever scarred. So a free pass cannot be listed among the positives. You can only see a movie for the first time once. I endured to the end because I could not walk out. How could I? All the anticipation building up for the girls’ night out and close to bubbling over… I just couldn’t.

Third, the make up was BAD. You’re not supposed to notice it, right? (Shoot, you’re not supposed to feel like you’re in a theater at all if they get it right, but the sound quality and constant twittering of teenagers also made that impossible.) Rosalie is supposed to be the most beautiful and perfect blonde, but she wasn’t. Her make up and Carlisle’s were the most infuriating. Edward looked good sometimes, but I saw the edge of his contact lens in a close up. Same with the special effects, you’re always aware that they’re on wires.

Fourth, the acting was lacking. Jasper reminded me of Johnny Depp’s Edward Scissorhands… he’s supposed to be trying to contain himself, not look dumb and mute. They’re supposed to be arrogant, godlike creatures… never fragile or scared. Edward is supposed to be very old and it should reflect in his speech and choice of words… more formal. When he first came on the screen, the little girls errupted into a frenzy of screams. That was actually kind of cool because you can’t get that energy by yourself, at home, with a DVD. They did a good job with Alice, she rocked. Bella was cast right because even though she’s supposed to be ordinary in the book, you secretly know she’s got something going for her. Why else would Edward want her? Anyway, Kristen Stewart did OK… a little too tightly wound so that the audience who did not read the book will think she’s got some kind of disorder. That’s nothing to what they’ll think of Edward and his slam dunk seduction in the woods—that went WAY too fast. What the heck are they doing up in the trees? That was not part of the story, but I guess they had to convey quickly some kind of high that this love story took pages to achieve. And the rest of the time the movie dragged. Only people who have read the book will have the patience to sit and wait for it. (Lan can thank me right now for letting me boss her into reading the book first.) And Jacob… his hair was obviously a wig, but who really cares about Jacob anyway? (Sorry Kristen.)

Fifth, I am a nursing mom and my right side was hurting so badly by the time the movie got out. I was happy that Zoe woke up a little while after starting this post so that I could feed her. I was typing with one hand for a while there and now she’s crawling around somewhere probably eating the first forbidden object she can find. I also mysteriously sprained the bottom of my foot in between the heel and arch… I could barely walk to the car. I don’t know what I did, but as I write this, I get up every few minutes and gimp walk to the bedroom to peek in on Zoe (she’s just eating a phone book). Can you feel my dedication?

OK, they did get the dazzling part down right. I like the way Edward sparkled. Rob Pattinson is cute, but not true to the description in the book, and it will not matter to hard core fans. He’s the face of Edward now and I hope he lives through it. Edward in the sun is supposed to be excruciatingly beautiful and they did a good job of that in the movie… so it’s in keeping with my assessment.

OH! I do have a favorite part in the movie… and it has nothing to do with dialog or acting… it was when Supermassive Black Hole played during the baseball game. I danced in my seat because it was nothing compared to my surroundings.

I watched the women’s beach volleyball gold medal match last night and I have to say that after the first game, I wasn’t worried at all. I knew they’d win it. The first game was just to size up the other team with their crazy Chinese fans yelling in the stands. There was a moment during the first game (score was around 13-10) when the Chinese team got three points in a row to tie up. Homegirl (the drama queen one) was getting the serves and hitting the tape so that it rolled over and dropped just on our team’s side. The fans went nuts and even the line men were flipping their flags up or down with enthusiasm. During those three points it felt like the dreams of the Chinese team might actually be possible… a spark. They were smiling and happy and reveling in the glory of it all. And then there was a sideout and USA shut them down. They were neck and neck up until 17 points, but after that May and Walsh went for the jugular.

China celebrated too soon during those three points. The dream was like a flame that never took. The second game blew any chance of it right out. And the Chinese drama queen used three different ways up her sleeve to stall the inevitable. She stopped the game when she fussed with her ponytail and hat. She took a while to try to get sand out of her eye after Walsh intimidated her at the net pretending to hit the ball when it threatened to come over on the second hit. She even faked an injury or maybe she just wanted the medic to give her a massage on her arm. Whatever. It didn’t work. They got up to 18 points like they did the first game, and that was it. An image of them sprawling on the sand and getting the ball pounded at them is all that remains.

I’m proud of the way May and Walsh handled themselves even through the mistakes. It’s just a game afterall, and you can’t really think about it too hard. Not like Branaugh and Youngs, the other US team. Holy cow, their behavior was embarrassing. Poor EY, her last Olympics and her partner acted like a spoiled thirteen-year-old. Both of them making mistakes, but Branaugh unable to keep her anger in check and refusing to speak to her partner. The camera even caught her rolling her eyes at something EY said. Tsk, tsk! None of that emotion was evident with Misty and Kerri… they were focused and steady.

It was after the match when they got all goofy. Misty was jazzercising along with the Chinese cheerleaders. Kerri was looking around for someone to hug. It was weird how they took off separately instead of staying together the way they do when they’re playing. Still, it’s nice to see them acting human after such focused iron faces during the match.

Congratulations to these girls. Now go make some babies already.

I was supposed to post this yesterday, but since I’m doing it now… Here’s my take on the men’s team.

Congratulations to the US Men’s Beach VBall team! I just watched Dalhausser figure out how to block the Brazilian team (ooh, man, they’re scary) in a third game. The first game was tied all the way to set point and BRA was looking invincible. The second game hurt a lot, but Rogers and Dalhausser kept their cool even when Dalhausser’s blocks were looking like field goals (close the gap!). I will say that BRA got shown a yellow card almost unfairly. True, he probably was being as much of an a$$ as he looked to be doing, but Dalhausser touched the ball upon closer scrutiny.

What is it with the men’s teams and owning to their touches? We saw it happen with the indoor men’s team also. My face actually blushed when our indoor team didn’t own up. Don’t they know that cheaters never prosper? And that they’re representing our country? It makes winning cheap and losing ungraceful. Funny how I don’t feel as strongly about it for beach as I do for indoor… maybe because indoor has always been so mathematical and strict while beach has that hakuna matatah attitude.

At any rate, the third game was a slaughter. Way to go USA! Two gold medals to add to the pile.

It was good. The first book is still my favorite, but this one comes in second.

Sarah and Josh watched a program on TV about a man who learned Icelandic in less than a week. I caught glimpses of the program watching him do large calculations in his head that scientists checked (and found correct) with a calculator. That’s all I remember about the program because I didn’t sit and watch the whole thing with them.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for a book in the autobiography section of the library and found Born on A Blue Day. I thought it was an intriguing title for a book, so I checked it out. I found it funny that as a child the author, Daniel Tammet, would scan the shelves at the library looking for his name on a book. He learned later that in order to find his name on a book in the library, he would have to write it.

Before I could read very far into it, I got excited and told Sarah that she needed to read the book. His prose is very easy to understand, so I thought she could easily follow it. I couldn’t wait, so I read the first chapter out loud to her. She said, “Oh, it’s like that guy on TV.” I flipped to the back cover of the book and she saw a picture of Daniel Tammet and yelled, “That’s him!” We laughed! Of course, there can only be one Daniel Tammet. Up until then I had been looking at the picture wondering why he looked so familiar.

He is an inspiration. He is able to give scientists new insight into the world of autistm because he can tell them exactly how and what he is feeling and seeing in his mind. Numbers are like beautiful landscapes in his mind. He successfully memorized over 22,500 numbers of pi (a record) and the scientists asked him to look at a page of the numbers of pi while he was hooked up to a galvanic meter. They messed with him when they purposely substituted sixes for nines and were fascinated when they saw a physiological response. He described it as having his numerical landscapes vandalized.

One of my favorite parts of the book is when Daniel got to meet Kim Peek. He’s the man that Dustin Hoffman spent time with while shooting the movie Rain Man in order to become the character Raymond Babbit. HIs having an instant connection with someone was heart warming.

Reading Daniel’s book confirmed to me the things I learned from a friend about her son who also has Asperger’s syndrome. Not all with autism are like Raymon Babbitt in Rain Man. There are high functioning autistics with invisible disabilities like Daniel and my friend’s son. The need for a set daily routine, literal use of language, and finding comfort in counting are eye-opening nuggets of information that lead to understanding and acceptance.

I highly recommend this book! The program Sarah and Josh watched on the Discovery Channel was filmed in 2005 and is called Brainman, according to the book. If you can find it, I recommend that, too.

Well, I found The Sea of Monsters at the school’s book fair a couple of years ago. It looked cool and I thought Sarah would read it. She didn’t. So when I decided that I would read it, I was bummed that it was Book Two of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. I had to wait and get the first book from the library.

When I did get it and read it, it was pretty dang good. It had lots of action, was heavy on the sarcasm (Sarah loves reading these parts back to me and then laughing), and is an introduction to mythology. (I like Homer’s books and my 9th grade English teacher, Mr. Peebles had a lot to do with that. He was such a great teacher.) After reading the first book, I moved on through the series, getting books three and four from the library also. Still, Sarah didn’t read them.

And then a couple of months ago, I banned her from reading the Harry Potter and Eragon books. I think she has read all seven of the HP books at least 5 times each. She has read Eldest nine times. She lives in these books and I wanted her to expand her horizons. And I think it is working.

Desperate for something to read, Sarah finally borrowed The Lightning Thief. She then raced through the other three books, borrowing them from the library like I did. The second she read the last page of the fourth book and closed it, she began counting down the days for when the next book would be out. She acted like she was in pain because she couldn’t stand to wait even another minute.

The fifth book of Rick Riordan’s series came out two weeks ago (the same week as The Host–and I noticed that in my previous blog I put that it came out last week… I’ve been so busy that I lost a week in my internal clock… I’m jet-lagged without even leaving my own time zone) and I bought it for her along with book one, three, and four to complete her collection. Aren’t I an awesome mom? Now she’s reading them over and over again…

I foresee another ban in the future. If you have a kid around 11 years old who needs something to read, I highly recommend this series.

Incidentally, when I was surfing through Rick Riordan’s website, I picked up on another series by Erin Hunter since he claimed that she was his son’s favorite author. I also found the Inkheart series which I checked out, read and found it really creative. I couldn’t get to the first of the Warrior books by Erin Hunter, so I offered to let Sarah read it first. She surprised me by reading Into the Wild even though I suggested she read it.

We went online and requested the next two books through our library and she can’t wait. Again.

This did feel different from the Twilight series, so go get it! Unless you already did… tell me what you thought!