On my iPhone no setting I've tried stops that happening. I eventually set my browser to 'private browsing' and that has worked.

I replied 'Don't see the need' relative to our winter here in Australia. However, in December we'll be travelling in Europe and I do plan to contact a travel clinic to see if we can get flu shots. Flu at home isn't fun but we only get really sick every 5 years or so. We were sick with a flu-type virus while travelling a few years ago and I can't do that again. It was a horrible experience. ETA: I've had the flu shot once.

Ds loved audiobooks at this age. Still does, but then he used to put his iPod in a backpack and ride up and down the road on his bike. Or jump on the trampoline while listening. The more I think about it, he does all sorts of weird inventive stuff. A few minutes ago he was outside rolling backwards down a slope while balancing on all fours on my large exercise ball!

I definitely don't print all, but I do print out some for scrapbooking (I don't actually scrapbook, I just buy paper, and print photos in the misguided belief that one day I will, at the same moment in time have the time, the space and the inclination to scrapbook. I have scrapbook paper that's lived in more counties than most people have.)

Do your hardware stores allow fundraising sausage sizzles (I may be talking Australian here...). The quickest fundraising money around here seems to be to hold on one those. The main hardware chain (but other stores too, outdoor type stores often) provide facilities (bbqs and shade and tables) for groups to cook and sell hot dogs (with fried onions, always) and soft drinks outside their stores on Saturday and Sunday. It's hard to get a booking, but if you can, you're assured regular traffic of people with wallets in hand who expect to tag a hot dog onto their hardware purchases. It's an adults thing, though, due to health and safety issues.

I think screen time has a lot to do with it, and personality. Ds doesn't play with toys. He jumps on the trampolining, kicks ball, has sword fights with the palm tree, listens to his iPod (audiobooks), reads, plays on the computer (weekends only). We have Lego sets he got when he turned 5 yrs that haven't been opened. He does have an older sibling, but she's not inclined to play much with him, except the odd board game.

I rarely button cardigans. i do like them to have buttons, though. I don't buy the ones designed specifically to drape.

He mentioned once to the kids how he used to listen to a particular radio programme when he was a kid and it was sponsored by a peanut butter company. I found some episodes on the Internet, and learned how to edit them (as they were poor quality and different sound levels). We gave him those and the brand of peanut butter (from our home country). We sat around listening to "his" programme that evening. That was for his 50th.

That sounds really good, I'm going to get it. Another book that had a similarly powerful effect on me was "Your money or your life". The book has a specific financial plan that isn't for everyone, but what I took from it was that the stuff we buy is actually costing us the time (and stress?) of work. So that haircut and colour (or whatever) literally takes your husband away from the family for x hours. The cost isn't "just $xx", it's the opportunity cost of whatever else might have been done with the time it took to earn that money.

The very best thing you can do is go through a year of credit card and bank statements statements and work out what your specific expenses are. That's essential. If you can also figure out where the extra money is actually going, that's great, but a lot more work than the 'big bills'. You'll probably realise there's a pretty big gap between expenses (let's say food, utlility bills, gas, car repairs, insurances) and the amount coming in. It's sobering. I've always been good at tracking and monitoring spending, but at one stage dh got a substantial raise and I got lazy about tracking. After a year I went through everything and tried to account for his salary increase. We had some new furniture, had done some stuff to the house but thousands were unaccounted for. The next day I doubled the mortgage repayment (paid off now!) and made a 'virtual' envelope budget. Each expense (total for the year) is divided by the number of of pay days in the year and I 'deposit' into each 'envelope' with each pay cheque. I just use an Excel spreadsheet - it works better for me than any of the apps although I've tried a few different ones. Our savings are generous enough that we can run over in a couple of categories for a few weeks, but then I make an announcement that we need to quit spending, and it's coffee in the park instead of lunch in a restaurant for a few weeks, or mostly vegetarian simple food instead of steak and caviar (!) at home until the budget categories are all back on track. If I make good decisions (like tracking gas prices to buy the cheapest) and an 'envelope' builds up an excess, I'll use that for something fun, or transfer it into the holiday fund or something. I track everything. That's easy except when I use cash, so I almost always pay on card. I switched to a debit card because charges show immediately, whereas on the credit card they could take a week or 20 days to show which makes it much harder to track. I update the excel sheet every few days or every week and I balance to the cent. It can be frustrating, but it helps me keep spending under control, savings at a maximum, and I feel I'm modelling good financial values for the kids. We enjoy life, we have what we need and some things we want, but we don't have much extra stuff / clutter. It works for us!

Dh loves what he does (electronic/ radio communication engineer), although right now he finds the work situation very frustrating. If he won a million he'd still work, he'd just be more picky about what work he took, and would be able to take the better jobs that pay less. I enjoyed some of being a researcher, but it was the introvert stuff - writing, thinking, ideas, reading - working with manufacturers doing field research, hated, hated, hated. I'm about to do 3 weeks of prac work in a public library. Looking forward to to it, but I think I'll ultimately end up in an academic or government library - that's where my academic background lies.

I use this style of 'squeegee' mop: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Marko-Cleaning-Extending-Telescopic-Microfibre/dp/B00S8GRI4O So I'm wetting the sponge mop between each wipe, but it's well squeezed out before it hits the floor, and if any traces of water remain on the floor a quick wipe with the squeezed out mop will remove it. The floors are dry enough to walk on pretty much immediately. It's definitely removing dirt, as the water gets dirty, and if I use bleach in the water you can smell it afterwards on the floors. I love bleach as well, although I'm not big on cleaning products in general - it's usually vinegar, baking soda and bleach here! I don't use bleach every time, but after 5 years there hasn't been any damage to the finish.

Third post - can you tell I take flooring seriously :-) We're in the process of selling / buying and its flooring that's the deciding factor for me! In terms of buckling etc: thin IKEA type stuff is bad for this, but it's also about leaving the necessary expansion gaps. When we moved into this house it had cheap stuff with no gap and in winter when it rained a lot the flooring would buckle from moisture-related expansion then settle in the dry summer. The other issue is the underlay - a good quality underlay makes a huge difference. Without it you get the hollow 'tinny' feeling when you walk on the floor. I don't know how else to explain it. The flooring doesn't feel solid when walked on.

Why not? I use bleach on the laminate floor. Am I not supposed to? Although I use a "dry mop" type technique, well squeezed, definitely not lots of water.

I wouldn't go for timber laminate in the kitchen. Ours is chipped from all the cutlery that gets dropped in there, and we've had one leaking pipe that badly damaged the floor (luckily under the dishwasher so out of sight). Basically laminate and water or sharp objects doesn't go (similar chips around dining table). I'm tempted to go with vinyl floor boards in our next house, or bamboo (although bamboo flooring in a rented house scratched quite badly).

Insomnia is the primary reason we're moving to a bigger house: I assume eventually ds will get sick of his mom sleeping in his bottom bunk - that's where I can hang out at night to avoid waking anyone. I had insomnia last night (worries about moving house) and it's 4pm and I'm exhausted. I have an assignment due at midnight, though, so I'm not likely to be in bed before then.

What brand did you go with? I'm tempted to try the Asian ones available on EBay that are going to cost me about $4 each rather than $25+ each (Australian $). They're not especially attractive, but I can't say 'attractive' is a really high priority in the situations I'm wanting them for!

I'm thinking outside the box, but what about the tape over some sort of fitted tank top, so that the tape is not directly on her skin?

That's the primary effect for me. Especially if there are multiple memorials along a single stretch of road. It makes me more conscious of what I'm doing. More respectful, perhaps, of the power we have when behind the wheel.

I agree that there's a 'feel' to bread. And there really aren't many rules, despite the number of books and blogs! For instance, kneading really isn't as crucial as it's made out - many recipes use minimal kneading. And rising times are irrelevant - your bread is ready when it decides to be ready. And the whole 'rise in a warm place' - that would be apart from when you opt to let it rise in the fridge. No recipe suggestion here - I get interested, find a recipe, get good at it, forget to bake for a while, find a new recipe and repeat! I find pasta is the same - you only get good at making it once you've had a certain number of flops. What helped me was accepting that, and not acting as though we had to eat bad bread (or pasta) just because I'd made it. The family were more tolerant of my experiments after that!

That's what I was going to suggest. They're such fun.

Shipping to Australia probably isn't practical, unfortunately. But as soon as we move house I'm going to look for a local alternative. Technically it's dh's "fish freezer" though, I just use it for overflow stuff - bread, milk and my icecream machine's bowl. He tends to object to my organising, until he gets used to the changes!

I wanted to describe my dream storage for the deep freezer - stackable baskets with long handles - and decided to actually look, and it does exist! http://bemyguestwithdenise.com/deep-freezer-organization/

I do that while also wondering, "Why am I not getting up to do all the stuff that I'm going to be too tired to do by 10am because I've been up since 2am and only had 4 hours of sleep?" Which was last night, so it's off to bed for me!

Must have been a mobile thing. Now I can get to the survey but not the dots. I'll crank up the laptop later - I'm interested now!