I'm so sorry. :( We had a GS growing up, and she was the most beautiful dog. She used to walk half a mile every day and wait for me and my brother to get off the school bus. Back then, the neighborhood dogs used to run loose. Some of my best childhood memories are with 'Lady'. It's never easy losing a pet. My heart goes out to you and your family.

That was really cool!

:iagree: I really think the pool of candidates would be better if they knew going in that there were term limits. Along with that, I'd suggest a slightly-above minimum wage for this public service as well. Political office should be done out of sense of duty, not a life-long career of sucking off the public teet. WRT the OP; yes, the election campaigns last too long and the amount of money spent on these campaigns is obscene.

12lbs @ 6 weeks is only 2lbs a week. That is healthy weight loss. I would do Weight Watchers. But that's only because it works when you follow the program, and because I'm doing it now because I have about 10lbs to lose in about 6 weeks. ;)

We did this with our DD when she was 9 y/o. We own our own business, and Dh does the work the onsite with the clients, while I do the administrative stuff. We had DD dressed in our company polo shirt and a pair of nice dress pants. Dh took her on site with him, then took her to lunch. They finished out the day and came back to the house. DD thought she was finished for the day, but I had her do MY job too. She thought my days were spent cleaning house, cooking dinner, and waiting for her to get home from school. LOL She quickly found out that that wasn't the case. I had her invoice the clients, update the inventory, and record the expenses for the day. It took her about an hour. After that, she thought she was done. But oh no...I had her write an essay about what she had learned that day, then I had her turn it into her teacher for her to sign. The teacher was thrilled. She had the other kids who were out write an essay too. So, I DO think that kids can learn a lot of necessary life skills tagging along on one of these days. They learn how to dress professionally, interact with professionals, and in our case, accounting and language arts.

I see it several times a day as well.

Wow. I didn't even know that existed. DS7 would LOVE that.

Nothing yet. I will leave that up to Dh though. Our pastor recently discussed sexual immorality in a sermon. He has two teenage boys, and he was talking mostly about the barrage of porn our kids are exposed to in their young lives. He taught his boys the "one look and bounce" rule. If they see a pretty girl, look, then bounce your eyes elsewhere. This is to help teach the young men that women are not objects...which kind of goes against the porn POV (which was the main topic of that day).

I blog at least once a week. Usually Friday evenings or Saturday mornings. Generally it takes about an hour. Most of that time is uploading pics to photobucket.

:iagree: I also do it because this time last year was when I realized we were going to be homeschooling for the first time. I scoured the internet gathering "real life" information of families who were homeschooling successfully. I want to offer a peek into what we've done through the year for people who are new to the idea. I also wanted to reassure some of my reluctant family members that my children were indeed being socialized. They're not so worried anymore. :)

I've spent the last 18 years teaching my DD work ethics and finances. She has been told from an early age that she will be responsible for her own college. She will begin college in the fall, and has merit scholarships that will cover it all for four years (assuming she meets academic expectations for all four years). We just had to take her car to the junk yard because it was worth more at the junk yard than to fix it. So she has been saving her paychecks (she works at Burger King) for the past 4 months to buy a car. She will work two jobs over the summer if she needs to (her idea, not ours), in order to build her savings back up after she buys a car. We will be giving her a laptop for her graduation. That's our contribution. However, I will be sending her care packages every month...but she doesn't know that. :) My parents didn't pay for anything for me. Not college, not cars, not weddings...nothing. I paid for it all myself. It never even dawned on me to ask them for those things. I just assumed that with freedom came responsibility, and wanted my freedom more than I wanted their money. ;)

Adding to the excellent point Marie just made; if you know you're having a c/section ahead of time, there could also be MORE trips to the OB, or in my case, more trips to the Maternal Fetal Medicine group. ONE u/s from MFM group cost my insurance $900! I had to have one every single month leading up to the c/s date. So the costs involved are insane.

We are HUGE Lego fans here. DS7 "discovered" his love of Legos about a year ago. *what are some of your children's favorites? Space Police, PowerMiners, and now Prince of Persia. But they will play with all of them. *when and where are the best places to buy them? That depends. I've picked up some sets from Target that are normally $30/set for about $10/set on clearance. I also bought the entire Lego Space Police set (I think there were 10 sets?) for $150 with shipping, brand new, off eBay at Christmas time. A great deal, considering the biggest set is $100 retail by itself! Toys R Us has Lego sales all of the time too (Buy one, get one 50% off). *how do you store them? I bought one of those plastic 3-drawer organizers from Walmart. They had it in a blue color that matched the bedroom perfectly! We just dump them all into the drawers. I originally bought two of those organizers, but DS6 has discovered his love of Playmobil...so we had to consolidate the Legos a bit to make room for Playmobil. *do you find the younger crowd likes the Duplos as well? My boys never got into Duplos. I bought them a Duplo table with Duplos, and they never played with it. *do you have a lego table for building? We used to. I bought a train table off Craigslist for $10 and turned it into a Lego table. We ultimately did away with it because it was taking up too much room in their bedroom, and DS never used it for Legos. Instead, he and his brother enjoyed using it to climb up on top the dresser. I got rid of it. Have fun with your legos. The only "con" to Legos is finding them in every nook and cranny of my house. I tell the boys over and over to keep them in their room, but they can't help themselves. They build little ships and fly them everywhere. :)

That's hysterical! I love it! :lol::lol::lol:

What is your DD's passion? My DD wants to be a vet. So she volunteers at the Humane Society and a local vet's office. She has learned a LOT about her field of interest, and has been able to meet volunteer hours for scholarships. Before she knew what she wanted to be, she volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, but I hear that it's difficult to do that now because Disney has some program that allows for a free day at one of their theme parks if you work a day for Habitat. She also volunteered at a public elementary school helping kids who had trouble reading. Other areas of interest might be a local Children's science museum (ours just sent emails out asking for summer volunteers). Do any of the churches in your area run the Angel Food Ministry? Our church is always looking for volunteers to help distribute the food (once a month, Saturday mornings).

LOVE the Office! We watched it on Netflix (all of the seasons) a few months ago. Our DD was the big Office fan and convinced us that we HAD to see it. Now we're all hooked. I don't think I have ever laughed so hard at any tv show, than when Dwight showed up at Jim and Pam's wedding wearing that wolf t-shirt. I literally had tears from laughing so hard.

I did gain a lot with the last one. He was over 10lbs, and I had PIH/pre-eclampsia (I looked like Violet from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - minus the blue hue). He was born at exactly 37 weeks because of the PIH. I've never in my life been as big as I was with that child. At the 6-week check up I asked the doctor when I could expect it to go away. His response? Unless you have surgery, it's there to stay. I lost all of my weight and then some, and it has never gone away.

I used to be one of those crazy, obsessed scrapbookers. I loved it. Even had an entire room devoted to my Cricut (which I still have), stickers, paper, computer, etc. When I realized that I no longer captured real moments on my camera, I decided to stop. A lot of my pictures were manufactured experiences simply because I found the "cutest paper". That, and I was spending about $500/month on paper and stickers. I was more of a collector of scrapbooking things than an actual scrapbooker. I took the room down. Sold what I could sell, and boxed up the rest for the kids to play with. Except the Cricut. I still haven't found the courage to get rid of it. I blog now. And those moments, while not the same as my scrapbooks, ARE real. The kids aren't perfectly posed, and the 'jounaling' is more authentic as well.

I've had natural, and back-to-back c/s. The recovery time is awful. Especially the first 24 hours. Demerol was my best friend. And I have trouble with taking tylenol. I don't know if anyone else here had this problem, but my last baby was over 10lbs, and as a result, I am now the proud owner of a "Mommy apron". I was completely unware that this happened, and was shocked and saddened to learn of others who had experienced this. Basically, it looks like my abdomen slid off my body, and it grossly hangs. No amount of dieting in the world will get it to go away, and my doc tells me that plastic surgery can fix it. I hate the idea of surgery more than the apron, so it's now another proud 'battlescar' of motherhood. I apologize if this is TMI, but it was something I would have wanted to know (to at least prepare for!) prior to having a c/s.

I briefly thought about having DD17 stay with them, but the tent only holds two small children. LOL I wanted to do a fire, but we don't have a permit for that...this was completely last minute.

This has been an interesting 'camp out'. I'm blogging about it 'live'. http://arkofcovington.com/wp/?p=755 My youngest is getting scared...but my older DS is trying to convince him to stay and camp. LOL I may have to be "mean Mom" and put an end to this soon.

My boys are science experiment nuts. They would love to do some of these. Thanks for sharing. :)

I dunno...I think I would try to use that to my advantage. If I were truly interested in their product, I'd want to know how low they'd be willing to go on pricing...how badly do they need the sale? KWIM?

:iagree: We were saying last night that if they ever decide to do a remake of The Monkees, he could play Davy or Mickey. LOL

I'm non-denomination. I cross myself after I partake in Communion. I also have a rosary, that a very good Catholic friend of mine sent me. She had it blessed by her priest before she sent it to me. I was so touched by the gesture, that I carry it with me in my purse. I've never attended a Catholic mass in my life. ETA: I was ELCA Lutheran before I was non-denomination. So maybe it's a Lutheran thing too? I didn't grow up in a church, so I don't know for sure.