Yes. I was just looking into this yesterday, actually, because my son's wind symphony is moving from outside to inside rehearsals (which he will not be attending). Plenty of long term lung damage in asymptomatic people. I found multiple studies that found the same thing (so maybe not a good idea to expose a bunch of serious young musicians who play wind instruments to it, but what do I know? 🙄) https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200811/asymptomatic-covid-silent-but-maybe-not-harmless

The bigger Ninja does that, too....we can fit full size pizzas in it, two at a time, and it says it will cook a 12 pound turkey. It takes up a lot of counter space, though.

We just got the bigger Ninja air fryer oven, and we're a little obsessed with it. I mostly got it for our travel trailer, since we only have a convection/microwave in there and it doesn't work great or hold much. But it turns out we're using it all the time in the house; I've only turned on my real oven once since we got it.

We just got Mysterium for my 15 year old's b-day, and it's a rare game that's a hit with the whole family (my nearly 8 year old handled it fine, too). It's a cooperative game--sort of a cross between Dixit, Codenames, and Clue.

We watch that one, and Less Junk More Journey is another favorite.

We use corelle in our trailer....just be sure to secure the cabinets while you're driving, because they WILL break (some of them at least) if they all go flying out of it while you're going down the road. Ask me how I know 🙂 We got our quick dry towels at JC Penny when they were having a giant sale (they're often having a giant quick drying towel sale, it seems). Congrats--have fun! ETA: if you like podcasts, RV Atlas and RV Miles are my favorite about RVing (focused on travel with kids, which can be hard to find in the RV world)

I need to go through and add some of these to my playlist! I'm a little obsessive about my Christmas playlist. Here are my top 20, but I can't find the Linda Stonestreet one anymore: O Come, O Come Emmanuel–Sufjan Stevens Merry Christmas, Baby–Otis Redding Alone on Christmas Day–Phoenix Fairy Tale of New York–the Pogues O Holy Night–Tracy Chapman Tiny Tree Christmas–Ryan Miller Christmas in Hollis–Run-DMC Christmas at McKinley Pub–the Stone Foxes Christmas in Prison–John Prine Go Tell it on the Mountain–The Blind Boys of Alabama God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen–Barenaked Ladies with Sarah McLachlan Merry Christmas from the Family–Robert Earl Keen Someday at Christmas–Stevie Wonder Thank God It’s Christmas–Queen Children Go Where I Send Thee–Natalie Merchant Here it is Christmas Time–the Old 97s Beautiful Star of Bethlehem–Emmylou Harris Twelve Days of Christmas–John Denver and the Muppets Christmas Time–Linda Stonestreet Boxing Day–Reliant K Auld Lang Syne–Barenaked Ladies

I don't have any issues with how the sodastream looks; it's just sort of fine. I do wish it weren't another thing on the counter (it has to be out all the time since we have it hooked up to the big CO2 tank, but it's not a huge deal. And, incidentally, I'm still using the one I bought probably 10 years ago, so I'm impressed with how well they hold up (or at least how well the ones they were making a decade ago hold up)

my kids say it's very similar to Ticket to Ride. We have it; it's fine, but it's not really my kind of game, so it's not ever what I pick.

We did this, and it's been amazing. so much fizz! our big ugly canister is under the kitchen sink, out of sight.

I hope they can figure something out! Taltz has been life changing for my husband (psoriasis, but not psoriatic arthritis)...but he tried a million different things before he got to that. It seems like it's something different for everyone.

I'm not sure it's really possible to pay firefighters what they deserve. I have a very high opinion of firefighters. Early retirement is a nice perk, but it's also such a physically demanding job that you really have to either retire or move into a more administrative position as you get older I would think. But decent benefits that give you something like the safety net that used to be more common across the board is one nice thing about most government jobs. Assuming the money for pensions is actually still there in a few decades...

Firefighting is certainly another profession I'd put in the "you have to be doing it for something besides the money" category. Community college professors are woefully underpaid. I talk about teaching because I have a personal connection with it; I'm not implying that teachers are in a unique situation with regard to the pandemic or to being in an undervalued profession.

We can tell our local anecdotes all we want, but there's actual data about teacher shortages that predates covid: https://www.epi.org/publication/the-teacher-shortage-is-real-large-and-growing-and-worse-than-we-thought-the-first-report-in-the-perfect-storm-in-the-teacher-labor-market-series/ I mean, it makes sense, right? Teachers--particularly in math and science--are compensated poorly for the level of education they have (more than half of public school teachers hold a masters degree). So if you want to attract highly qualified teachers there has to be something attractive about the job other than the pay. Given that more than 40% of new teachers leave the profession within 5 years, it seems that schools weren't doing a great job with that even before covid. Throw risking your life or health into the mix of low pay, seas of bureaucracy to wade through, not enough respect, and long hours, and it's no wonder so many teachers are looking to get out. The satisfaction of helping kids learn coupled with a long summer break (if you don't have to work through it to make ends meet) can only go so far. Incidentally, DH's superintendent confirmed it in his cheerful end of the week e-mail yesterday: in addition to cancelling step increases this year, there will be no one time bonuses.

He didn't HAVE to work, but he did both because it was better for his students and put less of a burden on the people who were having to fill in for him. And he was well enough to work...he stayed home because he had a cough that was probably allergies (and it was; he had a negative covid test), but you can't just stay at work coughing this year even if it's probably nothing...another big problem for staffing.

There are no subs, and we're not to the worst of it yet (more and more covid everywhere, and cold and flu season on top of it); my husband was out sick for a couple of days a few weeks ago. He taught from home (while using up his sick days) while teachers from other departments took turns giving up planning periods and lunch to cover his classes. Two teachers just in his department took long term leave this year because they didn't feel safe being in person. There are no subs, so their classes got split up and shuffled around to other teachers. He knows teachers at other schools who've looked for other jobs while teaching this year and quit as soon as they could find something. And every day I see angry parents on social media telling teachers to "just quit" if they're not happy with how covid is being handled. They REALLY need to be careful what they wish for. If every teacher who wanted to quit right now, schools would be paying a whole lot more than what a one time bonus costs to try to staff schools again.

I love the NV! 9400 is the number for the cargo version (adding seats decreases the total amount of weight available for the trailer + van). The passenger is 8700 (assuming you have the V8); there should be a sticker on the door that gives your vehicles numbers. (I recorded a podcast about towing with vans awhile back, so I have a stupid amount of knowledge in my head about it).

I'm 45 and if someone wanted to talk me into trying for a 5th kid, they probably wouldn't have much trouble (no one would, certainly not my husband!)....I had my youngest at 37, and it was my easiest pregnancy and birth. On the other hand, my 3rd and 4th are 7 years apart, and it's sometimes pretty tough on both me and my now almost 8 year old having that trailing sibling behind a pack of older kids. I'm sure a lot of it comes down to individual personality, but he demands a lot of attention from me because he doesn't have siblings close to his age and he has trouble relating to kids his own age a lot of times. I mean, I certainly don't regret having him (and I have more patience with him and more time to enjoy his childhood than when I was younger and had 3 preschoolers running around), but I can't pretend there aren't times when I don't stop and think about how much less complicated life would be right now if I just had my three relatively low maintenance teens.

I think I'm particularly sensitive to arguments about the taxpayers at the moment because the taxpayers I see in my county are people like my next door neighbors who are throwing a big Christmas party with "masks and social distancing discouraged" while putting their kid on a bus to school every day (and working from home themselves). Or a kid my husband tutors who went to Universal Studios for her birthday and then flew to Mexico for vacation over Thanksgiving and then went back to school as soon as she got back. Those people don't deserve in person school at all, much less an assurance that their taxes won't go up to compensate teachers for the extra work and risk they're taking on this year (and, to be clear, there's been no mention of any kind of bonus for teachers here). It's possible I'm casting too wide of a net with my outrage 😉

They may well be thinking that this is a long term investment in teacher retention, and they're probably right. I think people are seriously underestimating the long term effects on recruitment and retention (already huge problems in education) the way teachers are being treated is going to have. I would NEVER encourage any of my kids to go into teaching after seeing how things have gone this year for my husband and other teachers (and that's not something I'd have said before this year). If he could afford to get out, he'd have already done it, as many of his co-workers have (leaving the remaining teachers with larger classes and more work, because long term subs are non-existent this year). And if by "less work to do" you're talking about online teaching, I can promise you that teaching online is not less work than teaching in person--particularly not this year. There are plenty of people who should be getting more money for the extra work and risk they've had to take on over the past few months; most of them aren't going to get it, and that sucks, but the blame doesn't lie with those few people who ARE getting a small gesture of appreciation.

Honestly, I didn't come into the pandemic with a particularly favorable view of humanity....and the pandemic definitely has not improved it.

Agreeing that renting an RV first is a good idea; it's definitely not for everyone! But I'll also say that buying ours is one of best decisions we've ever made, and I wouldn't trade the trips we've taken in it for anything. For us, we bought it specifically because we wanted to do very long trips in the summer (dh is a teacher), and this was the only way we could afford to do it. There are definitely advantages (and disadvantages) to traveling in an RV and staying in campgrounds vs. hotels or airbnbs, but that was the big thing for us: the trailer is how we can afford to travel as much as we want to travel. That said, if we were doing a few weekends and a week long trip here and there, I don't think it would really be saving us money over budget hotels or rentals. We've done two trips where we've stayed gone pretty much all summer--once all over the US to a bunch of national parks, and another up the east coast and to Atlantic Canada--and we had surprisingly few issues having all 6 of us (plus 2-3 dogs) in the small space. In fact, when we got back from the first big trip I spent a few weeks feeling like a caged animal having to stay in one place for weeks on end. The fact that we can bring the dogs is also HUGE, both cost and convenience-wise.

We have 4 kids and pull a 34 foot toy hauler; it has a queen bed up front, two single bunks in the middle, a big bed that comes down in the back, and then we took out the couches in the back and put in a daybed for another sleeping/sitting space. A few random thoughts: 1. As ottakee mentioned, most of the convertible couches are not sleeping space for bigger kids. 2. Converting beds every night can get old really quick, particularly if you want to do longer trips. 3. look at the numbers really carefully: 9400 pounds means that's the absolute most you can tow when the trailer's fully loaded (the specs will list the "dry weight" which is a completely unloaded trailer), and you also want to leave yourself some room below that number or towing won't be much fun. Is it an SUV? You'll likely run up against payload limitations before you hit your tow capacity (unless it's a full size van) 4. some bunkhouses have a bottom bunk that converts to a small dinette during the day, which might be a nice feature with your husband using it as an office....most I've seen are really big 35 or 36 foot bunkhouses, but you might be able to find a smaller one it. Have fun--we've had such amazing trips with our trailer!

We have a family tradition wherein I read The Gift of the Magi aloud and sob while my kids mock me relentlessly. So for real I think the Gift of the Magi is overwrought and fairly silly, but it still makes me cry, and the version with Lisbeth Zwerger illustrations is beautiful. Others: The Nativity, illustrated by Julie Vivas Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree Tree of Cranes Winter's Gift The Great Wolf and Good Woodsman For chapter books, The House Without a Christmas Tree

DS's wind symphony sent out a very long, detailed plan before they started back in person (outside, 6 feet apart, except trombones have to be 9, etc), complete with links to two studies about covid and wind instruments, so we felt reasonably good about letting him go (though we still likely would have told him to take the year off if it were a run of the mill hobby for him). The full orchestra he plays with hasn't gone back and just announced that they'll be starting back in January only for strings--no wind at all this year except for some planned online sessions. Maybe wind players can be moved up on the schedule of when different people get the vaccine: health care workers, nursing home residents, clarinet players... 😂