My parents (late 60s) and grandma (early 90s) are scheduled to get booster shots on Monday. Mom called and wanted to know if she should get hers or not. What are the latest reports saying? Dad was vaccinated in Jan with Pfizer and Mom & grandma in Feb with Moderna. None of them had bad side effects.

Two and a half weeks before our exposures skyrocket. We will have packers in our house before the actual moving, but then we will have the unpackers, the family, the work crews for the addition. And the family is the biggest risk. FL is a disaster. I think I've said before that the four 65+ family are all vaxxed and masked when they go out, except they eat in lots of restaurants, and go to church, have friends over, etc. But my generation (siblings) are anti-vax and anti-mask and living ‘normal’ lives. So the younger vaccines need to hurry up!! 😭 My 8 yr old and 4 yr old need the protection! And I will be in line for a booster if it gets approved.

Congratulations! She is adorable! I’ve promised dd15 she can get kittens after construction is finished. It’s hard to wait! I miss my cat every day - I even bought a stuffed kitty to sleep with me. DH laughs, but it helps me.

Yeah, I think this is partly the reason for me. I don’t want to follow trends, I like what I like, but at the same time it’s hard to find new items that deviate from “what’s in”. Stores will be full of the current colors/style. For example, I don’t care for shiplap. I think it’s nice, I just don’t want it in my house. But it has dominated for many years now. The walls in our new house used to be vibrant and very southwest (my parents live there). I loved them. Several years ago, they repainted everything to the grey it is now and I really don’t care for it. It’s not so bad that I want to repaint it all yet, LOL, but I know I won’t like it forever.

I’m right there with you. I had to make a grocery run today - absolutely no one in the store had a mask. A couple people going in did. Then I saw a post by a former church’s pastor wife on FB - it was praising McArthur and his church and I just can’t anymore. I’m done with people. I’m not sure how to ever re-enter community, especially when we move so soon and I have to find new people. It just all so messed up. Of course, I’ll have new problems with family members once we move. I know they will want to act like “normal”, but with a mask. But there is no normal anymore. My mom and grandma went to the ER last night for a blood pressure issue. They will live with us (same property) once we move. I think I’m just going to resign myself to my kids being exposed, one way or another. I don’t know if I have much more endurance to have strict protocols when the onslaught will surround us.

I’ll post for a little while, but I’ll delete them soon, so please don’t quote. Some of the smaller pieces of furniture will change, as well as artwork.

Me too! I love color.

I’m choosing new colors for our new house- the open kitchen/dining room/living room space. Besides gray (blah), what is out there? In our current house we went with blues/white/light turquoise colors. The new house has fairly neutral taupe-ish tile, gray walls, maple cabinets, black granite, black appliances. I’d like to brighten it up a bit.

of moving. (We move in 3.5 weeks) Our addition won't be finished until Dec, maybe by Christmas. *sigh* I'll be sharing my room with dd15 and dd12 until then. *Stress Alert One* It was supposed to be done by Oct. I almost had a panic attack on Friday because of it, and seriously need some more strategies to help with that. I have to fit a lot of things into a tinier living space and figure out how school will get done, since the addition includes our school space. *Stress Alert Two* We are pulling the camper down there when we move. That will be fine, but we are planning on doing it in two days because we have to travel with dd's two adorable rabbits (who I'm mildly allergic to) and we don't want to stress them and they take up a lot of space. *Stress Alert Three* Our family in FL (who will live by us, and see us every day) are all vaxed, but not particularly cautious. They go and do with surgical masks: shop, eat, church, have my sister's kids over, etc. My sister and dh and 3 kids (not vaxed, will not see them often, no masks) had covid last year, so obviously they are "immune" to it, and have never stopped living life. *eyeroll* I'm going to have to have hard conversations with all of them - and I don't know how it will be received. *Stress Alert Four* Any ideas on stress relief, and maybe how to talk to the family?

I have a mare with a large hay belly and I’m suspecting she needs to be dewormed. I hope there is something left to give her!

Wow. Entitled is what comes to mind. Try being a military family, where there is no one but the parents! It is us, only us, all the time! I think they need a reality check. Maybe you could send them regular Instagram-like updates of your pain levels. They obviously can’t comprehend how much pain you live with and lack the empathy needed to give you compassion.

I very much wish he had cancelled before his visit to Lincoln, NE. We live in a city nearby and school started the same week - many districts mask optional. The concert drew ~90,000 people, not a mask in sight (saw many pics). I anticipate an explosion of cases soon, and I made the decision to drop my needed Physical Therapy where no masks are required. 😒

Schools here started last Thursday. We only have weekly updates from the counties, and the school district dismantled the dashboard they had last year. So, we won't know the impact of "masks optional" until Saturday. On a different note: does anyone know if kids who had COVID in Dec (one family I know) or in Feb (another family) would still have antibodies and be less at risk?

Anyone know of a wildfire risk site? I found this one: https://firealert.app/what-is-my-wildfire-risk/ but am curious to know if there are others?

Congratulations! It must feel so nice to get a timeframe! We are trying to add on to a new house. We hired a contractor in May and told him it needed to be down by first week of October. We are still waiting for them to start!! It’s been SO frustrating!

We got through the first 5 days with daily negative over-the-counter tests. DH started sniffling today (day 6), but “it’s just allergies”, so doesn’t want to test again (I think we are out). It is oppressively hot here, and allergies are bad, so I’m hoping that’s all it is! He moved back upstairs yesterday, so if it isn’t allergies, it’s too late.

Dd12 made cupcakes last night! So we have celebrated! 😆

Unfortunately it is being fixed right now. They should have had it done by now, but they just started this week. They have had it 2.5 weeks! 😣

The basement room has a camping mattress in it...we put the "good" mattress in our trailer, LOL. I don't think we would all fit, the room is quite small. I could give him the master bedroom. It just puts a lot of inconvenience on the rest of us. I think we may keep him in the basement, put an air filter down there, mask in the house, test him with the Binax every day, and see how it goes?

DH is in FL. He flies home tomorrow night and wants to isolate for several days. All who are eligible here are vaccinated (4 of us), but our 2 youngest aren’t. Our options are to hole him up in the basement bedroom with no window, have him wear a mask when he comes out to use that bathroom. (We have our schoolroom down there.) Or we could put him in the master bedroom, except kids always sleep in there with me - so that displaces 3 people. His home “office” is our dining room. I’m not sure how to keep him out of there if he sleeps in the basement - he doesn’t want to be without sunshine for that long. I could move his “office” to the bedroom. Is it good enough if he sleeps in the basement, wears a mask around the house, uses that bathroom? What about when we are down there for school? It’s going to be over 100 degrees here the next several days, so leaving the windows open will be hard. I really would like to keep my bed, LOL.

The Walmart in the small town of Deland (about an hour away from Disney) just closed down do to soaring cases of COVID. 😣 That is where DH has to be next week. The hospitals there cancelled elective surgeries this past week, too.

Just seeing this! I'm so sorry!! Hopefully he recovers in a couple days and it isn't spread to the other kids! Praying for you all.

DD12 is way behind in skills. Not for lack of intelligence, but her mental health has precluded good progress. We only got through half of her studies last year. She isn't excited about re-starting, but she never mastered those skills so I don't want to buy "new & shiny" just because she is bored. Anyway, I'd like to try some project-based learning with her, but I've never done anything like that. Any good places to start? She has an SLD in math, slow processing, some dysgraphia. Her other weak subjects are grammar, writing, and spelling. She has some vision issues which make reading a chore, but she reads well, she just can't read for a long time.

I repeat Dawn - UGH. I was hoping things would be heading in the right direction before we move. I was hoping that my little kids could get a vax before we move. I was hoping we could celebrate moving home with a Disney day in December. UGH 😣

The ESV seems to be translated in a way that supports a calvinist theology. In my personal studies, that is why I do not use it - we have attended some calvinist churches, but I am not personally aligned with the calvinistic view of the world. I'm currently reading "The Making of Biblical Womanhood" by Barr, and she supports a theory that many modern translations are interpreted/written to match the reformed, the calvinist, and/or the complementarian viewpoints. It's a new area of study to me - and something I'd like to research further. With all that has happened in the last year, nationwide and personally in our church, I'm just not sure where I will settle on these things. That led me to be curious on different translations of Scripture.