Curriculum choices

It's that time of year again, the time of year when every homeschooling mom starts losing sleep over curriculum choices for next year.  Well...not every mom., there are of course those who are blissfully happy with a satellite school or "curriculum in a box"....and of course there are those even more blissfully happy unschoolers.

However, for the rest of us....those who like to "mix and match" well choosing curriclum can be quite the experience, almost as difficult as choosing a house or a name for our child....we make it out to be some sort of momentuous decision that will profoundly affect our child for the rest of their lives.  Choosing the wrong curriculm could deem our child to being forever behind, missing vital parts of education and destined to forever working at Burger King, while not even knowing how to give change for $4.48 from a $5 bill.  Oh wait...there *a few* public schooled kids who could fit that desciprtion too.

Anyway, back to curriclum choices.  I'm fairy happy with what we use for reading, math,  phonics, grammer and science for the Social Butterfly.  I'm NOT happy with what we used for history/social studies and writing.

So....l'm looking for recommendations.   Anyone know of any good (preferably Catholic or at least nothing anti-Catholic in ir)  history/social studies curricula and/or a good writing curricla for the elementary grades.  Yes, I know writing isn't THAT important for the 3rd grade, but I tend to think writing is the most important skill one needs to learn.  If my kids learn nothing else, I want them to know how to write well, if anything just so they can start their own blog that people actually want to read.

So.....I'm open to suggestions?  What curriculum do you use and why do you like it?