We saw an influx of folks into our area from the Detroit region if one of the parents had a solid work remote situation that was going to be permanent or if the main source of income was willing to commute. Much of this was because the other parent had quit work to supervise children in online school, to be the one to stay home with the endless rounds of quarantines due to school exposures, because about 33% of daycares/after school care slots were permanently lost in Michigan during the pandemic, because a parent has long covid, etc. These families moved because the cost of housing is much lower making it is easier to survive on a single paycheck. But, this has not come close to balancing out the loss of families in the last ten years. The schools stink, and there is very little for kids here. We have the world's greatest idiots for county commissioners so if any decision can be made that will cause young people and parents with children leave, these jerks jump on that! I do know that the three homeschool groups in the area fell apart during the pandemic, and are not re-forming. A lot of it was because of division among the parents between let er rip folks and covid cautious folks. These relationships have been permanently severed so I can only imagine how hard this is for the families involved, how many friends the children have lost. OP, I am very sorry this has happened! Many hugs.

We have not had professional photos except at weddings, and those included a wide variety of groupings. Last Christmas we did a photo of us with our sons, dd, son in law, and grandsons. I got the camera focused in, made sure everything looked right in the frame, then handed my camera to my mom, and jumped in with the group. It turned out nice. Then Dh and I stepped out and had the grandmas get into the mix, and took one of all of them together. We will do something similar this year because we are getting a 2nd year in a row of scheduling working out that we have all of our adult children able to be together for Christmas. We are extra kind to our son in law because his parents are both still working, have very very little vacation, and are foster parents in a state that is super restrictive so his foster sisters are not allowed to travel ever, and it is rare that respite care is provided. Dd and DSIL's 2nd munchkin, our grandson #2, is almost two and his other grandparents will just get to meet him for the first time next month. Throughout the pandemic, the agency the grandparents foster with, restricted them from having visitors at their house and only just now provided respite care so they could see their family. Dsil sometimes is sad about how little he gets to see his folks. I would not in a million years even think to pile on that by ridiculously claiming he is not family and excluding him! We consider him our fourth son. Dh is also sensitive. His father was a putz and deliberately excluded me, as well as his siblings' spouses from everything he could think of declaring us not real family. Yet my family acted like dh had always been one of us. So he was included with great warmth. He determined early on that as a father in law, he was going to be as welcoming and warm as his kids' spouses were comfortable with. We have always been careful about boyfriends/girlfriends though. Being included in family photos, on display in pics of family activities can be too much pressure in a relationship that is still casual. So engaged or living together long term/committed partnership, is when we begin considering the partner as family. Though that said, we have two honorary daughters who are "family" and always will be. They appear in a ton of our photos. So "definitions" And how things work out can be complicated.

Oy! This scares me about my middle boy who is medically underweight. If he lost weight, it would be terrifying. I don't even want to think what covid would do to wreck any gains in metabolic function he had made in the last three years.

So in more wild animal news, my almost six year old grandson caught a chipmunk! He did not trap a chipmunk, he caught it, barehanded. And I have no photo because he was running towards my dd screaming, "Mama, look what I found!" And she was so frightened he would get bit that she yelled for him to drop it on the spot before she did a quick draw for her cell phone. I am bummed not to have a photo. I am wondering if N should be on a team to round up zebras because he seems to have some serious skill! Meanwhile, his mother seems traumatized because later he was out trying to catch a squirrel. I think she has her hands full with this one. She claims that I must have invoked "the mother's curse", but I maintain my innocence. 😉

Suzuki Level 7 is no quite as advanced as Beethoven Concerto. So my first suggestion is that you look at pieces based in the violinist's capabilities, not the pianist. Mozart's Violin and Piano Sonata duet K304 might be a good one for them to wet their teeth on. It is a lovely piece, but not taxing.

Well, so think I am eligible. I think our local pharmacies are interpreting the guidelines very narrowly. Maybe they don't have that much vaccine on hand.

Update for our grandsons in Alabama: Two families that were former home schoolers, and are good friends with our dd and her husband, are back to homeschooling after nothing but disruption after disruption for exposures and quarantines. I feel bad for them, because these moms really wanted to get back to work. The up side, if there is one, is that they have formed a pod with our Huntsville family so that the three families have each other and their children can be together often. Our eldest grandson, almost six, has been diagnosed with a heart condition that at the moment makes covid, rsv, and any kind of pneumonia extra deadly so he has been a very isolated little boy since his outdoor pool/swim lessons ended. He now has friends to play with again, and our daughter and son in law have companionship when we came be there. Dh, who had JnJ, is anxiously waiting a second dose or a recommendation for a dose of Moderna or Pfizer. I had Moderna and am camping at the bit to get a third dose. Our DWB doctor friend said he would write a script for a Pfizer shot for me by Christmas, off label, if nothing has been offered yet and one for dh as well just for added protection for N. We are going down this month to spend two weeks with them, and will be doing a ten day isolation prior to the trip especially since dh is almost six months post JnJ. I feel a little bit more confident about my Moderna, but not enough to go hang out with other people right before going to see them. Thankfully, the bachelor uncles all have 10 days between finals week and leaving for Alabama (2 grad school students in apartments but face on classes, and one undergraduate in dorms) to Christmas, so they can hunker down here with us, and then we can travel together. I wish I could just walk into a pharmacy and get a third Moderna based on that fact that I help care for two elderly mothers with serious medical conditions and a grandson who simply cannot get this. But, because I am not a professional caregiver, the pharmacies do not consider me a "high risk profession". So that is the line locally. If you get a pay check for it, then you can get another shot of vaccine. If you don't, but you still do it anyway, sucks to be you and sucks to be your patient! Sigh. I don't know. Maybe I should just lie. Seems to be a bit immoral to make the line on medical care giving whether or not you get a paycheck. They are even holding that line on volunteer work for schools. Some people, seeing the sh't show that has been " education" at the local PS, decided to volunteer to work at the elementary school. These folks all had Pfizer last February/March. They went to get the booster because they are now four and five days a week with kids. The pharmacies asked for a prescription or proof of being employed by the school. No shot. Pisses me off monumentally. And some of them are going to quit because covid has just started going around the kids in that building. But without that boost, I can't blame them for bailing. If you live in a place where they are not asking or requiring verification, be very thankful!

Yes, cart cowboys! We need those, and I think they should ride hobby horses in the style of Monty Python and the Holy Trail knights. Someone needs to run around behind them smacking two coconut halves together! 😂

I understand. This would be a deal breaker to me. I would probably legally separate if he insisted, and let him fend for himself. It might be a wake up call for him to confront just how kuch he does or does not care for his family. But that is me. I simply would not tolerate my husband throwing me and the children under the bus, and especially for something that may very well only last a year.

Well, I don't know. If I let it loose, a kerfuffle will ensue, and Hive kerfuffles are entertaining! 😁😉

And I will haul picnic fixings in a shopping cart!

Oh my, that first one! My two grandsons are almost six and almost two. I am pretty certain this is her life now! 😂

I hope she is okay! That is one tough diagnosis. TexasProud, hugs many many hugs from the Hive.

Go team Dazzle! Go team Dazzle! Is it wrong to hope that tomorrow someone wakes up to find a zebra on their porch having a bit of a nap?

In my experince, it takes never. Never is how long it takes!

Wow! Been there!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂

Senior year is a really bad time to have upheaval as well. Really bad! College app season, sports scouts, keeping up grades, etc. I highly advise that for the sake of your senior, you stay strong, and do not cave. One year of trying this out with your husband living elsewhere and being together on the weekends is not going to be a bad. With this level of activity and him settling into a new job, time will fly.

Here, here! I think people who have loved ones that are avid listeners of FoxNews who got covid and have disabilities or died, need to find some son of a b*tch type take them down with a vengeance lawyers and go after them for practicing medicine without a license. It is incomprehensible to me that they continue to get away with that. Alex Jones just got nailed on Sandy Hook, so why can't Tucker Carlson and company be nailed on covid lies? I don't think the Fourth Estate is exempt from suits just because "press".

We are going with family memory making/experience for all the adults. But it is hard to plan what that is going to be since we don't know yet what covid will look like at Christmas break, and if our high risk by then nearly 6 year old grandson will be vaccinated. Everyone else has been, and will get third doses or boosters as available. That will leave our 2 year old grandson. My daughter is trying to teach him to wear a mask now, but that takes time with one so young. So what we can plan to do is going to depend so greatly on what covid case loads, hospitalizations, etc. look like by the middle of December. We kind of wanted to drive everyone over to the aquarium in Chattanooga and then have a nice dinner, but that is indoors. I need to start earnestly researching a special outdoor memory making option. We would consider renting a pontoon boat, a big one, and have a picnic out while cruising the Tennessee River, however, we have one son that gets motion sickness and has been so sick on one of his friend's boats, that he absolutely refuses to ever get on another one. Back to the drawing board. We will have a small, fun gift for each person under the tree, and a big gift and a small gift each for the grandboys. Those are things I simply must nail down now since shipping and shortages are getting worse. Probably one of the main things we decided was to add Aebleskiver to our repertoire for Danish Smorrebrod on Christmas Eve. We just ordered the pan for making it, and Mark has been watching videos of how to make it correctly while working up a GF version for our son in law and me. Wheat allergies. Ds and I have also come up with a decorating plan, and I am spending the last two weeks of October with them at the mountain house and will be hauling a bunch of stuff for Christmas. Then somehow I am supposed to go down the first week of Dec. after getting our ds back to his college campus, get home, and three days later make the trip back to the U.P. to pick him up after finals week, so that we can then leave the 19th for Alabama! Oy! Just livin' on the road! But, she needs help getting the house ready for such a big infusion of people.

A Dazzle, that is just an awesome term! Part of me kind of hopes they aren't caught until spring just to see if they adapt well, and if they can cross breed. But my weird, sciency curiosity is probably not in the best interests. Sigh. They should probably be caught. Still. Way more fun than a deer sighting!

Yay!!! 💃💃💃

Our DWB friend says this is very true. He is back in the states helping in a state with a big surge, and is just situated by the number of people coming on death's door who were home chugging down Ivermectin from TSC and other supply places. He is so discouraged!

It is attack of the wild critters! Someone dumped a "pet" alligator in the local lake when it got to big and aggressive to keep. It was just captured. Just what we need, gators that adapt to harsh Michigan winters! Here is a question? Could they cross breed with horses and donkeys? This could be a lot of fun! 😁

This. The Detroit Symphony Requires Vaccine proof to attend their concerts. There is nothing wrong with that. No one ahs a constitutional right to attend a concert. Don't like it? Don't go. Restaurants, sporting events, clubs, these are all things that are luxuries. No one has a right to them. So it may suck to not be able to go to them if one refuses to vaccinate or show proof of vax, but that is not a legal conundrum.

He is not guaranteed to get the job even if you do move, so I would not recommend that. Elections are fickle. He should get a place in the district, you should remain with the kids, and this is NOT something he should talk about at work. Take the kids and show up for events in the district, at his place of work if appropriate, etc. The living arrangements do not need to be openly discussed with everyone. Dh has worked for the same company for many years, and yet none of his colleagues know where we live, and he doesn't have their addresses either. He does have a friend whose family lives in Chicago for her work, and works in Ann Arbor. So he has an apartment, and is there Sunday night - Thursday 10 hour days, goes home Thursday evening, and has three days with his family coming back Sunday evening. If someone finds out and asks, tell them since the school year has already begun, you felt it was best not to uproot the children, and will revisit the issue later. Then you can see if he gets elected to the job and have time to explore living arrangements. Plus, as you say, even with his dream job, you are the primary income so that needs to come first.