Sounds like my house! :) I taught my girls to crochet several years ago. Now it's pretty much all they do in their spare time. My 10 yo designs her own patterns even!!

http://www.diaperswappers.com - the Marketplace :thumbup1: There are quite a few new products since I cd'd my babies. My favorite was the prefold + cover and FuzziBunz. The prefolds worked great until they were mobile. lol Then as baby pulled up, crawled, etc. they would come a bit loose. The FuzziBunz were nice b/c they snap and stay in place! FuzziBunz also fit for quite a while!! I think one of mine was in mediums for about eight months! You don't have to buy special inserts for them. Those microfiber kitchen towels make great inserts and they are inexpensive!! Have fun shopping! I'm jealous! lol

This thread made me chuckle. And be grateful that my children aren't the only ones who do this. When we first looked at this house there was a dead bird in the back patio garden area. When we moved it, all that was left was the skeleton. My kids studied that thing like crazy!! Then a dead rat-looking thing (it might have been a small mole) appeared on our porch. They took it over to the dirt and let it decompose. Then dug out the skeleton. LOL I think they checked that thing almost every day to see if it was ready. Now we have a dead bird on the back patio that they are waiting on. :lol: It's actually been a neat experiment because now it is colder and not decomposing as fast. ;)

Very high ratings! My beefs: - They took the sequence of events out of order. I know for the sake of time and the story but my type A personality didn't like it. :lol: - Prince Caspian seems to have lost his (quite thick) accent between the PC movie and this movie. Obvious congruity errors like that annoy me.

:grouphug:

This is all that matters. The opinions that will be shared in this thread do not matter. Those who are against your decision really don't matter. It's really none of their business about where you give birth. This is YOUR birth. This is YOUR choice to live with. This is YOUR story. YOU are the only one who needs to be comfortable with your informed decision.

Ok..so do you have a set "wage" for those extra jobs? I can see myself saying, "Sure, E. go sweep the garage and you can earn $1." Then two weeks later A. comes and wants to do the same thing and I say, "....and you can earn $2." Then E., who only earned $1 says, "But I didn't get $2 for sweeping the garage. I only got $1!!" Maybe start a list with extra jobs and what can be earned. Then as they think of additional jobs we can just add to it. ??

I read that The Silver Chair is next.

We are still trying to gather ideas from the kids. This year is really hard because our oldest ones have hardly any ideas! Dh and I agreed not to buy for each other. We will do shopping as a family this week and if the kids want to pick something out for dh or me, we will let them. Dd1 - A clock/radio/cd player/iPod player (we have an iPod but she will be getting one of her own for her 13th birthday) - Puzzle - fancy pens and stationary (she has a pen collection) Dd2 - a smaller clock radio/cd player - jewelry box (maybe) - ?? Dd3 - Barbie of some kind - Webkinz (maybe) - nightstand (again, maybe...if we can find a reasonably priced one at an antique store) - Books Ds - Lego set - Remote control monster truck - ?? Family gifts - 3 Wii games - Blokus

:lurk5: If you pay for extra jobs done, do you have a list of those jobs and what they are worth? How do you keep track of the extra jobs they have done? I want to institute this system like this with our kids. I've been procrastinating because I'm not sure how organize it and keep track of what everyone has done and how much they earned.

This year we are doing Ancients. BTDT with TruthQuest. My kids got dreadfully bored with it. I have a couple volumes if anyone wants to buy them. lol My friend lent me MOH Vol 1 to look over. I just haven't had time to sit down and go through it.

We do activities all month long. I blogged about it: littlemamamidwife.blogspot.com

:iagree: I have a small social circle. And even then, it's not really social, just a small group of friends. I would call two or three of them close friends that I have known for 5+ years each. "Girl's Night Out", playgroups, women's Bible studies, etc. do not appeal to me in any way.

Our last day was Thursday. We will start up again on 1/10. :) We spend the week before Christmas making candy and gifts. Then the week after Christmas out of state. And then some time for me to recover after the craziness of it all. lol

This was swirling around FB the other day.... http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=5A4B5D4B84344D5D9CBD262A53D8B071

I. Am. Appalled. Mine as well.

I could sit at WalMart all day and be on the phone nonstop reporting suspicious behavior. Apparently no one at Homeland Security shops at WalMart. :tongue_smilie:

My kids and I have a tradition of making candy. They each pick a few things to help me make, which gives them some one-on-one time with me. :) Here is our list for this year: Fudge Rocky Road Fudge Peanut Butter Fudge Peanut Butter Balls Pretzel Candies Oreo Cookie Balls Cookie Dough Balls Chocolate Covered Cherries Turtles Peppermint Patties Peppermint Merinque Bites Scotch Kisses English Toffee Peanut Brittle Peppermint Bark Sugar Cookies (these we are doing with our HS group at the kid's Christmas party)

We loved it!! However, it was like they took the book and shook it up. Wherever the storyline landed after they were done shaking it, that's the storyline they used for the movie. :tongue_smilie: The movie does not AT ALL follow the storyline of the book. Yes. But it is NOT at all how it is described in the book. And it does not appear in the movie in the place that it does in the book. But it was still fantastic. Something about seeing Aslan on film, coming to life, is so very sweet.

Some of that weight gain was her blood volume doubling. Not all of it...but some. There is a normal and necessary jump in weight around 25wks. Yes, protein! :) It sounds like she is doing fabulous!! An ideal client. :) Sometimes things come up that we don't have an explanation for and it sucks. But you just roll with it and do what you can. She'll be in my prayers! For the remainder of her pregnancy and for a wonderful birth!!

I wish I had learned to knit first.

:grouphug: Tell her it will be ok!!! And tell her to NOT blame herself! She hasn't done anything wrong. Pricking the finger isn't as bad as it sounds. It's very quick and feels somewhat like a pinch. She should be seeing a nutritionalist who will help her with the diet part of it all. Many, many times this can be controlled with diet and exercise. If it helps encourage her....we had a client a couple of years ago whose diabetes would flare up during her pregnancies. So bad that she was taking several insulin shots a day to keep it under control. She was never offered nutritional counseling. My midwifery partner worked with her during the pregnancy she saw us. She counseled her on the nutrition and got her walking each day. She was able to come down to one insulin shot a day!! When exactly in her pregnancy was the big weight gain?

You don't have to spend a fortune to eat healthy foods.

No, you are not the only one. I just think it's sad that people don't stop and think about what they are putting into their own bodies and their children's bodies. And I used to be like that. We used to eat quite a bit of processed foods. So I'm not at all coming from a "most holier than thou" view. Part of my change comes from seeing the effects of nutrition on a placenta. It's VERY obvious when a woman eats a diet of processed foods, doesn't get enough water, etc. VERY obvious. The placenta will tell on you. ;) The other part of my change came when we were dealing with some mild hyperactivity in a couple of our kids. I did some research and learned that food colorings and/or preservatives can trigger behaviors in kids. The very first day they were off food coloring it was like I had different children!!! So when I see people putting processed, dye-full, non-living foods into their carts that will eventually be in their bodies it makes me sad. And it's a bit maddening to have many of those people wonder why on earth we have SO many kids on Rx for ADD/ADHD.

I wasn't able to do it when I was in high school. *shiver* The teacher offered an alternate assignment for those who chose not to dissect. In the years since, I've never needed to know what the inside of a frog looks like.