My narcissistic parents say the same kinds of things... "oh, we MISS the grandchildren!" and other such nonsense. They have convinced themselves that this must be true, because it feeds into their own self-absorbed narrative of what wonderful, loving parents/grandparents they are. When in fact they don't give a darn. What they DO want is stories of how their grandchildren are exceptional in every way, that they can tell all their retired friends, because then we make them look good. Imagine their irritation that the kids have the nerve to be average, and even make mistakes. I'm sorry you're going through all that. It stinks. In a perfect world, we would all have healthy relationships with our moms, it would sure make BEING a mom a lot easier. (and, off-topic: your blog is hysterical. Totally my sense of humor, and I love the kittie-witties. :D)

YAY!!! Hooray for your team - I've been wondering about you guys all day! First place in robot performance is awesome... it is SUCH a tough table this year. Congratulations on making it to state!! We are counting down the days until the state tournament... this time next Saturday we will be done (hard to believe!) and celebrating another successful season. I can hardly wait! Woohoo Spacebots!! :party::party:

Heh, I hear ya. Long, and loud, and exhausting, but so much fun. Be sure to send them good vibes from another team in the FLL family!

Watched! From one FLL mom to another. :-) We survived regional (took first place, yay!) and are heading to state next weekend. I never expected to know this much about macular degeneration while I was still in middle age, lol. Good luck to the Spacebots!

ohmygoodness... you had to put this temptation out there for me! ;) We are going to the movie Friday night and I want it to be all squeaky clean and surprise-y n' stuff, and I've already watched all the trailers and a couple of clips. I. Will. Resist. watching any more. totally backing away from the computer now. :D

A couple of years ago we had a party to celebrate the winter solstice. We sent out invitations to our kids' friends (and their families) and asked them to come help us brighten the longest night of the year. We called it Solstice and S'mores, and hauled our grill out into the driveway, roasted hot dogs and s'mores, had a snowball fight, and then went inside for hot chocolate and bunco. It was a lot of fun! (And not a lot of money...)

Thanks for the clip! The whole family is planning on going to the midnight showing with a group of adult/teen friends, some of whom will probably even be dressed up. Not that we're fanatics, or anything. ;)

This blog post seems to make it sound like there's some compatibility, but not 100%, especially if your Lego-maniacs (like mine) have lots of specialized pieces. But they sure look like cool sets! I've never heard of them before. Thanks for sharing!

Oh, heck yeah. We look at the scouting calendar first and plan the rest of our lives around it, not the other way around. ;) (We wouldn't have it any other way, though. Yay Scouts!)

Ohhhh. This. Thank you so much for putting it into words. My daughter is physically burning a hole in my stomach. IRL I not only feel like the only one, but feel judged by the other parents around me, who all seem to have perfect, mild-mannered, halo-wearing teenagers. They look at me like, "if only you'd made her memorize Bible verses..." :crying::crying::crying:

Heh. I used to think this was patently self-evident about AC/DC (I mean, if *I* figured it out back in 9th grade), but then I met someone who took their lyrics very, very seriously, and was pretty sure they were The Most Evil Band Ever. So then, naturally, I wondered if I was the one who was missing something obvious. But ultimately, I decided that their music was so darned awesome I just didn't care. ;)

Or the passive-aggressive bible verses. We've got some support group issues right now, with families coming down on opposite sides of some pretty emotionally-charged issues, and I am fairly sick of seeing The-Lord-stands-with-the-righteous type posts from some of those members. Ick.

Ah, but don't you think that AC/DC (loved them, still do) was being intentionally cheeky about their "naughtiness"? Even back in the 80's, I always thought that their songs were intended to laugh at people who get so uptight about anything less than choirboy-esque lyrics. And movies - my son was just telling me yesterday that he was in the mood to watch the Back to the Future series again. I confessed that I had loved them growing up, and then when we first showed them to our children, I was appalled at how much swearing there was. I didn't remember any of that! I told him that of course the irony is that had I not said anything to them, as adults they probably wouldn't have remembered the bad language at all, but since I had been shocked and pointed it out, now it will be one of the things that stands out for them. <headsmack>

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

We pronounce it "siv", with the short vowel sound.

That is to get a Level 1 license. After the student has their Level 1, they have to complete 50 hours of driving time with an adult, and then go back to take "Segment 2" driver's training, which is the additional 6 hours of classroom time, and pass a written exam. (Technically they can take Segment 2 any time after they've accrued 30 of the required 50 driving hours, but you get the idea.) They don't get to take their road test until after Segment 2.

My son just took driver's ed last month; it was $350 for 24 hours of class time and 10 hours of driving/observation time.

Somehow I thought we were the only weirdos who watched Holiday Inn every year; we've watched it so many times that we quote it year round, lol. My husband is very fond of saying, "Shortcut... to the shortcut." Cool about the baseball reels, too, although as a Red Sox fan, I am hoping that the Yankees didn't win that series. ;)

This is a handy little book to have; it lists rank requirements as well as the latest merit badge requirements, and I tuck it in my purse on scout nights as a reference for the several badges that I counsel for, as well as any questions that might come up in PLC planning or whatever. I am going to put in a plug for getting your hands on the actual book that goes with each badge, however; they will more or less answer any question that a requirement asks (Name the different categories or musical instruments, or what is the preamble to the Constitution, or what-have-you), and are so helpful for a boy to thoroughly learn and earn a merit badge. And some of 'em are just plain interesting! My son periodically goes back and refers to the Space Exploration book just because it's so chock-full of ever-lovin' NASA goodness. ;) Often times a troop will have a library of MB booklets that a scout can check out; sometimes an ACTUAL library will have a supply of them, although like a pp said, they go out of date pretty quickly, so I wouldn't rely on them for the most current requirements of a badge. Merit badges rock! :thumbup:

Well, almost. ;) We also need to go back to using oriented/disoriented instead of orientated/disorientated. THAT one drives me batty. And yeah, I'm originally from New England, now Upper Midwest, and I have never heard of anyone dropping "to be" from their sentences. Talk about fingernails on a chalkboard.

Yep, I've got TWO 29x32'ers over here (though ds 14, the one who blows holes in his pants knees every 4 months or so :mad:, is probably going to need a 29x34 this next round), and mostly I find Levi's, though once in desperation I got some clearance-priced 30x32's at Kohl's (which are easier to find), and made him wear a belt. :tongue_smilie:Hey, don't judge me; jeans are practically a disposable item for this boy. I take what I can find on sale. And for those of you with tall, leggy boys, have you found any cargo or other trendy shorts that are long enough to at least reach their knees? Somehow, though my boys wear the same size pants, the older one has a much different inseam and his shorts look fine - they reach at or below his knees. The younger one has longer legs and is not as well-proportioned, and shorts/bathing trunks just fit him funny, and make him look (and feel) a little dorky. I know it's too late for this season, but I'd dearly love to find a shorts solution for next summer.

Thank you, Chris. This was very convicting for me this morning.

Woohoo!! It's such a great feeling of accomplishment, isn't it?? Good for you for making it a family affair! I usually get my crew to pitch in with cleanup - it helps me eke out a little more motivation toward the end of a long day if I know that I can put my feet up while the menfolk do the dishes. ;) It must smell awesome in your kitchen this afternoon, with chickens cooking in the oven, btw. Bagging and freezing plain (cooked) ground hamburger has saved my bacon more times than I can count. It can be put in spaghetti, chili, tacos, hamburger soup, shepherd's pie, and on and on. Even if you can't do a whole round of freezer cooking, it's easy enough to buy 10lb or more of hamburger when it's on sale, cook it up, drain it, cool it and bag it in individual packages (1 lb. cooked = about 2 1/2 cups). For thawing, I peel the frozen hunk out of it's plastic bag (I don't heat in plastic), dump it in a glass bowl in the microwave and in 3 minutes it's thawed and ready to mix with whatever. Easy peasy. Enjoy your freezer full of food!

I try (don't always succeed) to make Tomorrow's Dinner part of my daily dinner prep - while I'm putting something in the oven, making a salad, etc, I look in the freezer for tomorrow night's dinnner, pull it out and put it in the fridge overnight. I might check on it at noon on the day I want to serve it; if it's not sufficiently thawed I'll pull it out to sit on the counter for a couple of hours. If I forget, well, it's probably going to be scrambled eggs for dinner. ;) The pasta/sauce dish (assuming pasta and sauce have been frozen together), I would thaw, put in a casserole dish and bake. If sauce has been frozen separately, I would cook the pasta and reheat the sauce on the stovetop or in the microwave. In the summer, if I've done any freezer cooking it's more likely to be meat frozen in marinade so that I'm not heating up the house. I haven't put a month's worth of meals up for quite some time; with the school year almost on us, it is definitely time!

What about dinner kit or "dump" recipes, where you put the ingredients in a ziploc bag, but don't do the actual cooking until dinnertime? That way a lot of your prep is done, but the food is still fresh. Marinades work really well for this - put meat in bag, put marinade in bag, seal tightly, freeze. Then pull out the morning you want to serve it, the meat thaws and marinates simultaneously, grill at dinnertime. You can do this with baked meat, as well - chicken breasts/salsa for instance; freeze them in the bag, thaw them in the morning, put in a baking dish and top with cheese, bake. I also make up a huge batch of pizza crust dough, divide it up and freeze it in rounds (well - flattened discs for stacking). Pull it out in the morning and let it thaw, roll it out sometime in the afternoon and let it rise, top it and bake it at dinner time. That way our pizza is really fresh, and it takes up less space in my freezer. You could have pasta sauces (meat sauce, alfredo sauce) frozen ahead of time as well, and just thaw it and cook dinner up fresh; this gives you the ability to include fresh vegetables in your pasta dish, as well. Do you think he'd be okay with that?