Feed baby pump milk wash pump feed toddler make boys eat, dress, brush teeth dress baby and toddler, brush his teeth hopefully fit in a bit of homeschooling fold a load of laundry make dinner feed baby Get lunch stuff together for boys to eat in car pack lunch, diaper bag, tablet, toddler leash, milk pump and little cooler with ice pack, and double stroller in car, plus cello and judo gear in case we run late or get stuck in traffic apply lidocaine cream to ds’s arms drive to city lab draws for ds appointment with ds’s oncologist, hopefully good news drop off stuff at kid store (skip this if appointment ran late) feed baby pump milk in car drive back either take kids home, leave toddler with dd and grab dinner for boys to eat in car, and head to cello, OR go straight to cello and then get drive-through during the lesson for the boys, OR (if traffic is really, really bad) call to cancel cello, get drive through, and go straight to drop boys off at judo Pay for end of year award dinner go home feed baby pick up boys from judo make kids do evening chores & get ready for bed feed baby put toddler to sleep (unless he slept in the car late, in which case he will be up half the night) pump milk family video call before my mom’s surgery tomorrow

I have ancestors who owned a slave plantation, until the Mormon missionaries showed up. They converted, freed their slaves, and headed west to Utah. Some of their slaves also converted and went west, and my Grandma met one of their decendents at an auto shop once and had a neat conversation about family history.

Yes. It wasn't the only reason for having another, but it was a big factor. Having four close together and then a 7.5 year gap before a single little one was fine while he was little, but I worried about when they all grow up and leave him behind at home. I loved growing up in a big family myself, and I know it was hard on my youngest brother to be left behind the last four years at home. I imagine that eight years as an only would be very tough on a kid who was used to being part of a big family.

Took care of tax paperwork, paid the irrigation bill, and bought a car for dh with a loan we should be able to pay off in a matter of months. We also found out some dental work for dd is going to be rather more than expected, and ds got braces (though their cost won’t be as bad as I’d expected). Chances aren’t looking good of our being able to meet our goals for college savings and filling the IRAs this year, but I’m trying to be grateful that we are in a position to use up our savings funds on these things vs. going into debt or being unable to afford them at all. I also spent a few days going back and forth to doctors with what they said was kidney stones, then they said it wasn’t, but it seems to be resolving on it’s own. Baby is now back up to her birth weight at nearly three weeks old, and she and I are headed down to see my mom for a few days before her surgery.

And the transmission went out on dh’s car. Repairs would definitely be more than the value of the car. He is supposed to get the first profit share check of the year next week. I was hoping to put that towards refilling the emergency fund and some catching up on savings, but it will get eaten by this. I don’t want a car loan again, but I doubt we will find something dh is willing to buy for what we could cover without a loan.

I was able to move ds’s scans up to the end of April, so I think I will be able to go down to be with my mom next month. We are looking at four plane tickets, if dh makes the drive down with me and the four youngest kids, then flies back, and flies down with the two oldest when they finish school. We might pull dd13 early to go down with me, too, though. I may need to cancel the chick order that I have coming the first week of June. The hatchery is sold out of cream legbars, so I can’t move the order to a different date.

I’m struggling with things right now, financial and otherwise. My mom was diagnosed with cancer the week before she was going to come out to help us with the new baby. She is still in the process of getting medical tests done and trying to find the right specialist to get treatment started, but it is pretty far advanced. I want to go be with her, but neither the baby nor I are in a fit state to travel yet. I have a uterine infection and baby is down a pound below her birth weight and dealing with jaundice. The new parental leave system is complicated and does not pay as much as we were mistakenly told at first. Dh was saying he just wouldn’t take most of the allowed weeks because it doesn’t pay enough. I think he still should take them, but we do have to space it out more than we had planned. Hence he is back working this week, semi from home. We were hoping that I could go down around the end of the month to be with my mom. I could drive down with the littles and the middles, who are homeschooled, and stay at my sister’s house, and dh would stay here with the oldest two who are in public school until the school year ends. But ds9’s next MRIs and follow up with his oncologist are in mid May, so I’m trying to figure out if it’s possible to get his scans done down there without it costing us a ridiculous amount for being out of network. If not, I will fly down to visit with the baby, but probably only for a week.

Baby was born yesterday.

A normal 7th grader without developmental or behavioral problems is well beyond this and into the stage of being able to be responsible for younger children for longer stretches.

I did every year until last year. Just followed the step-by-step instructions from the IRS, no need for software. Last year, dh's small firm offered to pay for their tax person to do the partners' taxes, too. I was relieved--I had never had any issue with doing it myself, but that was the year dh became technically both a part owner and an employee, and I was stressing trying to figure out what that meant for taxes. I would have figured it out eventually, but having someone else take care of it was a nice luxury.

It's not that I dislike surprises so much as that I would rather have what I really want than be surprised by something I don't prefer. I really appreciate that dh no longer tries to surprise me with gifts, but instead asks me to tell him exactly what I want, because it means that instead of being surprised with things like jewelry, I get gifts like interesting breeds of day-old chicks. But it's not the fact that it's a surprise that's a problem; I have been absolutely delighted on the rare occasion that someone anticipated my preferences well enough to surprise me with something I was excited about. I just recognise that that's really hard to do for someone with interests as weird and particular as mine.

I tried a new recipe and made colcannon for dinner last night. It worked out to $7.75 for the family, and we’re eating the leftovers now for lunch. It is an especially good one for getting extra calories into my underweight kid, so probably not one I should eat too often, myself.

I agree with you on this point. I think that a lot of good would be done by removing many residential zoning restrictions that restrict higher-density housing from being built in many areas. People who dislike higher density housing and want to live in neighborhoods without it nearby could still choose neighborhoods with CC&Rs restricting that, and all other residential property owners could have the option of building several smaller dwellings, or duplexes, or adding a tiny home to the yard, or tearing houses down to build apartments, or taking in several roommates, and the supply of affordable housing would increase. This is especially a great option to increase the housing supply in higher population centers.

So restricted housing supply driving prices up is a terrible crisis that we desperately need to address when you see STRs as a driving factor of the restricted supply, but when the restriction is driven by the federal government holding that land for renting out to businesses for profit, this is a non issue? Restricting individuals from using second homes for income purposes so as to make more homes available at lower prices is a great public good for those most disenfranchised, but restricting the government from holding the majority of the land for income purposes to make more property available at lower prices is "benefit[ing] a very few private individuals, constitut[ing] a form of entitlement"? Make up your mind. Are the people who would be helped by increasing affordable housing supply (by whatever means) a very few private individuals seeking entitlement, or are they a significant portion of the population that needs help to overcome current disadvantages?

The federal government owns the majority of the land in my state. (They own 47% of all land in the western states). I am totally in favor of the government maintaining national and state parks, but most of this land in my area is not in the form of parks that the public can make use of. It is mostly vast tracts of land managed by the BLM or the forest service, usually rented out for use by private ranchers as grazing here or to logging companies near our old town for profit. In our neighboring state, these vast government lands lie right on the edge of the state capitol which has been undergoing exponential growth in recent years. Within twenty minutes' drive of my town in more than one direction, I can reach vast tracts of government land that take hours to drive through. It is not the most desirable locations, but neither is it useless or so out of the way that no one would be interested in buying it, rather it is identical to the privately owned lands of ranches and smaller, affordable outlying communities like ours. The government lands near my old town on the other side of the state would actually be very desirable based on their proximity to desirable locations and are close to an area with an extreme housing crunch, but it is also very profitable to the government through the logging industry. I am not talking about the last bits of green or open space, but places where there is far more open space than there is land owned privately. I recognise that this is a regional issue that doesn't apply in many other areas, but in much of the western U.S., government held lands are a huge factor in keeping the housing supply limited.