We've done a week (7 nights) twice now (kids ranging from 9 months up through 6), and it was a good length of time. I wouldn't have minded an extra day or two, though longer than that would have been too much. I would feel rushed with 5 nights, but, then, I'm also of the Disney freak persuasion ;). The crowds shouldn't be bad while you're there, so that makes planning (or not planning) a lot easier. I think the only thing in Dinoland for non-thrill seekers is Tricerotop Spin (basically Dumbo only with Dinosaurs). Oh--and a really cool playground called The Boneyard. But there's lots of other great stuff in AK...it's nice because you can hit the major attractions pretty quickly while still having time to linger and check everything out. I don't think there is a bad age for Disney, as long as you prepare and have realistic expectations. My kids all had a great time both times we've gone; we're heading back again in about 7 weeks, in fact! For books, I think the Unofficial Guide is best. for websites, check out the Disboards and Allears.net. Don't get overwhelmed! make sure you have reservations for any sit down meals you want to have and have at least a general outline of what you want to do each day, and you'll be fine. Take your time and let the kids spend all afternoon at Tom Sawyer Island and ride Winnie the Pooh 10 times in a row if they want to. And take lots of pictures!

We had 2 rooms at Pop last year and liked it a lot. The year before that we stayed at the Wilderness Lodge, which was really lovely, but not worth the extra money, IMO. We were able to get 2 rooms at Pop for less than one room at WL. I DO think it'd be worth the money to get a deluxe with a better location, though--on the monorail or in the boardwalk area (especially here; I'd love to be able to walk to epcot). But since we don't have the money, it's sort of irrelevant whether it's worth it or not ;). If you wind up sticking with the All Star, it'll be fine and you'll have a great trip!

I might toss in one more short story, since they're a pretty easy (or at least short) read, but I think that'd be plenty. The average high schooler needn't linger on Poe, IMO.

I usually like Usborne stuff, but I found the Greek Myths book very poorly written. That said, my kids liked it. They wouldn't have followed D'Aulaire's at the time, I don't think, but they were younger than yours.

I can't imagine using paper plates at every meal--it's so outside of my version of "normal," but I do think disposing of solid waste paper products has a lot less environmental impact than a lot of other stuff we do without thinking. I try to use reusable stuff, but it's not as high on my list of priorities as some things. With the first baby we took cloth diapers with us on vacation; by the third, I used disposables if I was going to be out of the house more than two hours :lol:. This discussion reminds me of a friend I had in grad school. She was so fanatical about not using paper plates that she had been known to get in her car and drive home to get her own if she showed up somewhere where people were using paper plates. Umm, there's some irony in there somewhere ;).

yeah, we didn't really think about how the apples we were using were all pretty sour, so I just went ahead and made it without sugar like I always do....and it's pretty tart. It tastes fine if you like the taste of sour apples. 2 of my kids liked it, but the oldest one didn't, so I let him put a little brown sugar and cinnamon in his (and then of course the others wanted some, too). Anyway, I think I'm going to use this batch mostly for baking and then make a bunch more when I can get the sweeter fall apples.

that's awesome! I canned 9 quarts of applesauce yesterday, and I thought I was working hard :lol:

:iagree: I have a veggie garden in my front yard and chickens in my backyard, so I'm pretty sure an HOA and I wouldn't get along. I have very little patience with the kind of aesthetics over function rules that all the HOAs I've ever heard of seem so fond of.

fudge? the kind that's just chocolate chips and condensed milk is easy and yummy.

Our white leghorn went broody while we were out of town a couple of weeks ago. I thought she was supposed to have every last ounce of maternal instinct bred out of her, but I guess not. What we did was have her sleep in a dog crate and keep her locked out of the hutch during the day. So we'd let her out in the yard and lock the pen while the other chickens were laying, and then, when they'd finished (everyone lays in the morning), we closed up the hutch where the nesting box is and let everyone run around together. I think we did this for 3 nights before we let her back in with the others. She still hasn't laid an egg, but she's not sitting in the nesting box anymore. I was very tempted to get some eggs for her to hatch, but we're just not ready to deal with chicks again yet.

I have a book of wild edibles, but I haven't really tried anything other than blackberries (we have a bunch of wild strawberries, but I give those to the chickens). I might try doing acorns this fall, since we have approximately 476 oak trees on our property. You can grind them up and make stuff like acorn pancakes, but it sounds like a lot of work (you have to rinse them a bunch of times to get the tannin out or they'll be really bitter). My SIL just told me about a park nearby that has a bunch of paw paw trees, so I'll probably check that out (we just planted two on our property, but it will be a long time before they fruit).

well, I voted liturgical and no. We actually do keep my oldest son with us, but that's because that's what he chooses to do. There is a children's worship service offered for kids up to 10, and the majority of the kids attend (though we've certainly never felt at all pressured to send DS)

Well, I don't really have expectations, but I picked, "I hope they live next door" because I'd love that. Maybe it's just because my kids are still so young it's hard to imagine being away from them for long? But at least for now I think I'd really love it if we lived close enough that grandkids could drop in whenever. I suspect I won't change my mind, really. My mom lives 5 minutes away, but doesn't see us super often, and I'm always wishing we saw her more. And my in-laws are 1000 miles away, and I'd love nothing better than for them to move close by. And then I actively fantasize about my sister-in-law moving closer so my kids could see their cousin more...yeah, I'm kind of dorky like that.

I send some of my kids away and keep one with me, so that I can get judgment from everyone ;). My seven year old isn't interested in going to children's worship, so he stays with us. Our church has a nursery for kids up to 3, so my 2 year old goes there. And then there's "extended care" where 3 and 4 year olds go after the first few minutes of the church service. So my just turned 5 year old has been going there, but he'll start going to children's worship (also after the first part of the church service) in the fall, which might in turn mean that my seven year old wants to go there, too. Sunday school (for adults and children) is before our church service. The kids go to their classes, and we go to ours, but we have always felt free to bring the toddler into our class when we've needed to. I'm genuinely perplexed by the contention that Sunday school or children's church are somehow philosophically at odds with homeschooling. I guess I just view homeschooling differently; I don't feel like it means I never want other people teaching my children. Quite the contrary, I see one of the advantages of homeschooling as being that we have more time to seek out mentors who can share their areas of expertise with my kids. They have, at various times, gotten outside instruction in art, soccer, spanish, gymnastics, chess, and music. I certainly don't have a problem with people we care about and trust in our church community also sharing their knowledge with our kids. And, as others have said, Sunday isn't the only day they get spiritual instruction. For me, homeschooling means I am able to meet my children's unique needs, whatever those might be. I'm grateful to have a church that allows me to do that for each of my children in different ways, without judgment.

I think it's nice to have some sort of gathering to acknowledge second (and third, etc.) babies, but a full blown shower is, barring special circumstances, overkill. Among people I know, it's common to have a Mom's night out kind of thing or a baby blessing...if there are gifts at all, it's usually something small for the mom (nice bath stuff, tea or chocolate, etc.).

I like Square Foot Gardening for the method, along with Rodale's for organic pest control, etc.

I think it's pretty clear if you look at the statistics from countries where routine infant circumcision is not the norm that it's very, very rare in such countries for older children or adults to be circumcised for medical reasons. It makes perfect sense, really, that doctors in a country like the US where circumcision is seen as normal would be quicker to suggest it as a solution for medical problems than doctors in countries where it's nearly unheard of. From Wikipedia: And I would further argue that it makes more sense to look at countries with a very low rate of infant circumcision to get a true picture of how often circumcision is "necessary" later on. In those countries, they look at circumcision as a last resort. Since that's how I would also view things were one of my boys to develop a medical problem, these statistics are much more meaningful for my situation than statistics or anecdotes from this country. Unless someone presents evidence that Finnish men routinely drop dead from phimosis that is, but I'm nearly certain that that's not the case ;)

well, penile cancer is rarely seen in anyone, really. There are about 280 deaths a year in the US from penile cancer. There are about 390 a year from appendicitis. Unlike foreskins, there aren't really any arguments whatsoever to be made for the necessity or usefulness of the appendix, so it seems to me that it makes more sense to routinely remove appendixes. Appendectomies (on unruptured appendixes) and circumcisions have similar complication rates as well. Given how many hundreds of boys one would need to circumsize to prevent a single case of penile cancer, it doesn't make sense to me as a reason to do it. Anymore than routine appendectomies or mastectomies would. Of course, if my boys view things differently when they are older and think circumcision is a good idea, they can make that choice for themselves. The reverse is not true.

yes, we grind our own. We have a grain mill (it's electric--you just dump the wheatberries in and flour comes out). We live about 15 minutes away from this place: http://www.breadbeckers.com , so we buy all ours there, but a lot of people organize co-ops to do big bulk shipments from breadbeckers or other places.

If I traveled just me and one toddler, I could probably just do carry ons, too. But when we've flown, it's been me and my husband and 3 kids under 7. So we have the two older kids carry their own bags with books, stuffed animals, and snacks (and you DON'T want to be a passenger on a plane with us if we don't have this stuff). One of us carries the baby in a backpack carrier, the other one carries the carseat (I won't check carseats anywhere except at the gate, after one hellish experience with it getting lost when we were about to drive 3 hours in a rental car), and then we also carry the bag with the laptop/dvd player and a diaper bag. That leaves us each with exactly one hand free to corral loose children or hold the little one's hand when he's tired of the backpack and insists on walking. We check two big suitcases with clothes. It's a totally different situation than if we had 3 older kids who could each be responsible for one carry on size bag of clothes, no need for carseats, kids could look after themselves, no one needed to be carried. I hadn't thought of it before, but I totally see what the OP is saying; we don't bring any more total weight than 5 adult passengers (in luggage, but also not in people, since the kids pay full price but weigh much less than adults), and we actually bring far fewer total bags than we'd be allowed as carry-ons. We could certainly fit all our clothes and then some into our allotted number of carry-ons, but we couldn't physically get them through the airport to the plane, so we have to do fewer but bigger bags. At any rate, we decided to avoid the whole thing and take the train for our trip up to visit family this summer. :tongue_smilie:

right now it's costing me $70 to fill up my minivan, and I've been mostly stretching it to filling up every week and a half. So say $210 for me. DH is a teacher and just finished school for the summer, so he's not driving his car much at all right now. During the school year, he drives 6 miles (no traffic) to work--maybe fills up every 2-3 weeks? So, all told, somewhere between $300-350, I'd say.

and if this story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21494919/ from msnbc last fall is to be believed, 36 states will face water shortages within 5 years, so a lot more of us will be thinking about how much water we use before long.

yes, I think about it a lot since last summer when everyone in Georgia started freaking out about running out of water. We've cut way back on our consumption, and we're down to averaging 2000 gallons/month for our family of 5 (although I'm sure it will be higher in summer. I don't water the lawn (weeds are remarkably drought-resistant ;)), but I do have a vegetable garden. And dirtier kids in summer who can't go as long without a bath!)

We came close to combining our names when we got married (adding them together; two last names, no hyphen), but we never really got around to it. I didn't really consider changing mine to his. The kids have both, mostly because it seemed like the fairest way to do things. Both names are long and have to be spelled every time (they're not difficult to pronounce, especially, but they both have common alternate spellings), so I pretty much expect the kids will drop one of them when they get older (in fact, my seven year old already chooses to use just his father's last name when he writes his name). That's perfectly fine with both of us. I like both the names very much, and they both bring something to the table, I think, so I like that the kids have both. Put together, they tell a story about their heritage. Neither name is common outside a particular area/group of people. My name is very common in the specific area where I grew up and where we live now, but rarely heard elsewhere. I'd hate for them to miss out on hearing, "like the road?" because they only had my husband's last name ;)

I don't know how it works out these days, with gas prices and all, but I used to make pretty good money delivering pizza...definitely more than starbucks, and you can drive around listening to CDs while you work.