Groceries and clothing. I did a LOT more "putting up the harvest" this fall than in previous years, and we go a wonderful deal on half a beef, and some Mennonite grown roasting chickens. So we filled the chest freezer. Combined with my preserved produce, it will really cut down on how much I have to buy from the supermarket. Dh has taken up baking and has been able to make GF products we both like at a fraction of the cost of buying. He seems to really enjoy it, so have at it, Mark! I have been trusting my vaccine and Kn95 in order to do a big round of the thrift stores for some things that I need as well as the collegians. Though two graduate this year, and one is in grad school, we still help with things like this because they live on such tight budgets. Except for presents under the tree for the two little grandsons, we are concentrating on experiences for the adults/making memories. So Christmas is an extravaganza of good food and games, movies, merry making, and as a gift to all the grown ups, Dh and I are staying home with the little ones on Dec. 26 while Dd and son in law, my mom, and our sons all take a cruise on the Southern Belle in Chattanooga with the cheese tasting. The tickets were super reasonable, and they are all very excited about it. Everyone is getting their Pfizer or Moderna booster next week, so immunity will still be quite fresh, and knowing them, they will spend a lot of time on the deck in the open air. It is actually cheaper, given the inflation in goods, than buying each of them a nice gift. Dd is very happy about the break from parenting! Gas prices are up. But, since our cars get 30+ mpg, we are doing okay. I am happy to stay home anyway, and dh works from home. It mostly affects our son who is commuting. However, his in person class is only two days per week, so he is also managing well.

Up the stairwell? Rubber mats to keep from dinging things up, and then all the kids "heave ho". 😁

I am so sorry, OP. I had two fibroids but they were very small, and we would not have known they were there if I had not been in the car accident and had a CT looking for possible internal bleeding. It was what the radiologist called, "finding accidentals". I was so injured, I could not really handle obstetrics examination and treatment for six months, and by then with the care of our very much more injured son, I totally forgot to do anything about them. Then I got into the nearly menopause stage of menopause, and they shrank up, disappeared, something. Not really sure, but they didn't show up four years later, and thought, " Sheesh. I should probably see the Gyn." I think that if I had them at this stage, and they were big enough to be causing issues, I would consider a hysterectomy. But, it would be a tough call. My mom had a vaginal hysterectomy, and despite them tacking her bladder back in place and putting in some sort of support mesh, she has had bladder issues ever since. Her hysterectomy could not be avoided because it had prolapse badly. She kind of wishes something else could have been done about the prolapse in order to keep her uterus so she would.not have the bladder issue. I hope you get very good advice, and whatever you choose to do, works very well for you!

As for other kids of self-care like boundaries, alone time, nature, etc. there was absolutely nothing said. But before my parents became fundamentalists and lived a fairly secular life (ages 0-11 for me), they each had hobby pursuits, time spent away from the family, strict boundaries with toxic family members, good times with friends, family vacations as well as individual vacations. They were really fairly relaxed, happy go lucky people. Then they got fundie religion, and all that went away. Can't have hobbies, got to give all the extra dimes to church. Can't play cards with friends, it is of the devil. Can't have a wife who paints or goes antiquing because she has to slave away at home, and be at the church 24/7, and yada yada. Never had another family vacation, and forgive and forget was the motto so no matter what heinous thing someone in the extended family did, we all had to pretend it was wonderful and be up in each other's business all the time. Life was profoundly stressful, parents became depressed but didn't recognize it, and our lives train wrecked. My mom had an oops surprise pregnancy, and my sister entered our lives to two very depressed and mostly angry parents. Her childhood sucked to high heaven. After the almost but not quite a year of very abusive, fundie school, and the fall out of that, I put my nose to the grind stone, tested out of a ton of high school coursework, and moved in with my dear aunt and uncle to attend a very robust community college near them. I graduated high school and community college at 16.5, toured with a music group for the summer, and left for university/LAC in the fall before I was even 17. I learned self care in this regard simply from my memories of a time of a much more relaxed and happy mother, and because my mother in law, a career woman, was an avid hiker, camper, seamstress, crafter, etc. and not only took annual vacations with father in law and kids, but also took an annual camping/hiking/fishing/arts festival vacation with her sister each summer between college semesters (she was a professor of nursing). I took cues. And of course I have always had my music, and could easily lose myself in hours at the piano.

You need to rig a pulley system so the kids can haul them upstairs! Good homeschool lesson on the physics of simple machines! 😁

Well, at the time, my relationship with my parents was rather tenuous. I did not subscribe to a lot of their religious beliefs, and I had left home young. But yes, one of the best memories of my wedding day, was making my mom run from on the room with scrambled brains because her "pure daughter" was a debauched harlot! 😂 Of course, that probably speaks volumes about all the family drama on that day. Dh and I still think we should have eloped, and let everyone figure it out six months later when we sent Christmas cards!

This! I am absolutely amazed at the "big bad government, freedom" rhetoric that comes out of Texas, and then they turn right around and legislate all kinds of petty stuff.

Any significant deviations between Michigan and the Federal Government is taught in state history in middle school and in American Government/Civics in high school. It is inappropriate - basically a propaganda campaign - to require it in college and a waste of time when compared to the level of content covered in history and poli-sci classes at the college level. It also makes for one less class of choice for students in programs like nursing, music, and engineering who have so little room for elective learning. I would resent it in a very big way as a parent who has paid a lot of college tuition! Thankfully, my kids gen eds and electives have been really great courses, and often geared towards their major and minors in mind so very relevant.

Yes it certainly does! I have found out though that there are many medical conditions that Medicare allows for monthly podiatry visits, and the assistant will trim toe nails, etc. They visually inspect the foot and look for signs of circulation issues, cuts that aren't healing etc. My mother in law was starting to insist that dh and I do all her toe care, but on top of everything else we were doing, this was just one more stress. Since she had P.A.D., her vascular doc wrote the prescription, and bam, podiatrist does it now, and she hires my mom who is still a good driver to take her. My mom, type 2 diabetic, also signed up and it was covered. If your elder is still ambulatory and doesn't have foot health issues just trouble with maintenance, try a cosmetology school. The local one has students needing to get their clinical hours in. It includes a foot soak, sloughing lotion to get off dead skin, a nice mini foot and leg massage, nail trimming, cuticle care. Of course they also include nail painting, but that is something the men folk can skip. The girls have always been gentle. It was $15 for the service.

My mother never talked about any of it. Just zero help. But, my older female cousin was well informed and we were very close. Her mom, my dad's sister was wonderful about talking about stuff. Aunt L was a life saver. I was also with a group of older teen girls when aunt Flo came the first time, and those girls were very kind and helpful. I never consulted my mother about anything personal. If you ever watched the movie, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" that scene when Tulla's mom comes in on the day of th wedding to tell her, "You have your duties"? That was my mom. Only I didn't say, " Ewww let this be the end of your speech." Instead I said, "Been there. Tamed the stallion, so no need!" She looked entirely mortified, the color drained from her face, and she fled to my great relief. My Aunt L was finishing buttoning my dress in the back and laughed pretty hard. I was pretty open with my own daughter but also bought her the "Care And Keeping Of You" book from American Girl. She really appreciated the book and especially the instructions and pictures for using tampons.

This. And for many parents, they need the younger ones vaxed because so many people refuse to vax their teens. The 12-17 vax rate in my county is only 11%. So for parents desperately trying to protect their elderly, themselves, other sick people in the household, it is vital to vax their young ones.

Holy moly! Man Katie, you need alcohol and a LOT of chocolate!

Yes, but religious schools do not have to report enrollment. Secular private schools might have to, but not parochial. Michigan has a very very hands off approach to parochial schools. I could tell you horror stories about the A.C.E. one two blocks from my house! Basically, meet fire code, water testing, that kind of thing.

Yes, there are some distinctions that should be made for majors pertaining to public safety. ABET for engineering controls this, not the colleges themselves, and in order to maintain ABET certification, the rules must be met. These majors also tend to have weeded classes in order to help students not cut out for the program find out early on. Dd's lab partner for a freshman circuitry class dropped out four weeks into it since he was failing all of the exams and quizzes. He changed to an environmental science degree. But, the drop out rate at Ds's school was not high because they had strict standards for who could even start the program to begin with which helped. Apart from those specific types of degrees, I don't think Michigan has state wide laws however it would not surprise me if our public universities all had somewhat similar policies. But I do know that the limit on 30 credits above the required 120-124 is definitely not a thing. Financial Aid may be limited for the extra coursework though.

I am unaware of these here in Michigan. I have two kids exceeded their degree needs, in terms of total credits earned, by slightly more than 30 hours due to changing majors from BS to BA in their sophomore years. We did not pay a financial penalty other than their scholarships were only good for four years, but they got lucky with departmental scholarships after switching majors which made up for it. I don't think there is a enter strikes rule because I know someone who had to take organic chem four times in order to pass it with a B for her BSRN program, and the only penalty was simply being stuck and unable to move forward with other classes/clinicals until.She passed it. I have never heard of any universal drop or add. These seem to be a matter of individual college policy.

Same here. Two of my kids attended a Lutheran school for a couple of years while I taught, but that wasn't really on the state radar. In total, I home schooled 19 years getting every single one to college, youngest graduates in May, and in all that time, my kids did not exist educationally as far as the state was concerned. They did have state id's before they turned 16, and passports as well, but that would be normal for a ton of kids, and would not cause anyone to be looking for my child. I have personally watched my own grand niece go through the horror of being the parentified child as a mere 11 year old because of her mother's untreated bipolar psychosis. She is a public school student, and not only had there ever been any effort on the school's part to figure out why she missed two straight months of school last spring despite being in enrolled in person, phone calls from family members - my mother, my brother (her grandfather), myself, and her biological father went entirely unheeded by social services. My niece's situation is such that I could easily see her taking off on those kids and the 11 year old attempting to care for her sisters without reaching out for help for a long time. She is very attached to her little sisters and greatly fears being separated from them because they have a different bio dad from her so there is zero chance they will be kept together.

When I was on high school, those who had a doctor's excuse to not participate, books on health, exercise, and sports topics were given to us to read during class. If we were allowed limited movement such as okay to do stretching exercises and walk but no impact or elevated heart rate type things, then we did stretching for 20 minutes, and then headed to the walking track for the rest of the time.

I usually order a matching set from Old Navy for my grandsons. This year I did not like the patterns. I just ordered from Amazon. Not my favorite company, but I was afraid to keep searching and not get them on the way due to how long it is taking to get packages from anywhere. Our first class mail is taking 10 business days, and packages are taking 14 business days. I didn't try to get anything else for the rest of the clan. We are all going to wear black shirts from our own wardrobes, and I am whipping up some quick, plaid fleece scarves. Nothing fancy, but I am not keen on spending much money on it since we are not sitting for formal, processional photos, just using our DSLR camera on a tripod with a timer.

Yes, I am worried. Dh wants to wait until Black Friday online sales for two gifts for the grandsons, but I really think that could be a very bad idea. The only thing I think could work would be ship to store, assuming he gets them from a store we have access to within an hour to hour and half drive, and then curbside pick up since they would arrive on a truck for that company with lots of other things instead of being dependent on USPS and UPS. But I would just prefer that he get them on the way now. My last JoAnns order which had items not available at any of the stores in my region took two weeks to arrive by FedEx. I cannot imagine how bad it will be a month from now!

I love the plaid dress.

Mark did make Aebleskivver for the first time the other day, and they were FANTABULISTIC! So that is one great addition to the Christmas Eve Smorrebrod.

Not cool. Totally not cool. (Faith now running in circles with her fingers in her ears while screaming, "I can't hear you, I can't hear you!) 😱

I walked down the aisle with my dear grandfather. He kissed me on the cheek and sat down. There was no "giving". I would have been furious if the pastor had tried to add that. Dd walked with dh, and her fiance walked with his folks, the parents read a poem and then sat down. I was at the piano providing all the music so I didn't take part in that.

Never heard of it. I couldn't respond though because I am in the Great Lakes Region which is not actually Midwest so there wasn't a box for it.

I do not use my middle name, just the initial. My parents named me after my mother but then called me by my middle name. It was hugely problematic as a child since I went by one name at school and another at home. I hated that middle name. When I left for college dorms at 16, I dropped the use of it.