I don't think you can go wrong with La Pata Pita. It's a classic. Amazon.com: La pata pita (Spanish Edition): 9781941802601: Hilda Perera, Lectorum Piblications, Mana Fraga, Mana Fraga: Books

I felt safe in the French Quarter on a Friday night but I was with dh and both sons. It's jam-packed with people and reasonably well lit. If you follow basic safety precautions, you should be fine (and feel fine, it's really not scary.)

OP, how much do you have to be involved in the relationship between your sons and your dh? Do you have to enforce contact legally? Are they old enough to call him/receive calls on their own and hang up when they want to? I think you should disengage as much as possible. IIRC, they're in high school and really old enough to decide if they want to go to church or not on their own. Trying to force them will absolutely backfire. That's also true of a relationship with their dad. You can't force them to do that. If they want to cuss him out or freeze him out, he'll have to work through that on his end. You can't fix it. All you can do is be a safe harbor from the storm. Hugs.

Wowzers is right! You've had a truly awful time of it. I hope it gets better from now on. You certainly deserve an easy stretch. Sending Geezle to public school was hard and his meltdowns were monumental, but it was the right decision and worked out for the best in the end. Can you sue the electric blanket maker? That's one hell of a defective product. Maybe there's a class action brewing?

I agree with Eos and I have a suggestion about how to approach composition with your 11th grader. I'd have them study for and take the CLEP Composition test. A good place to start is at Modern States: College Composition - Modern States There are also good resources listed at Free Clep Prep: College Composition CLEP Study Guide - Free-Clep-Prep.com For 12th grade or as an alternative to the CLEP if you need one, you can use the Technical Writing DSST. They also offer a Public Speaking test which might be a good choice. Technical Writing DSST Study Guide - Free-Clep-Prep.com Principles of Public Speaking DSST Study Guide - Free-Clep-Prep.com Some universities will give credit for these exams, some won't. My dd got credit for her upper level professional writing required course with the Technical Writing DSST at the University of Florida. Even if your chosen U doesn't accept the credit, it's a flexible way for a homeschooler to demonstrate subject mastery without spending a lot of money. Modern States' courses are free and they offer vouchers to take the CLEP. Once your 11th grader sees a relatively straight forward path to fulfilling this requirement, they may find it easier to buckle down and get it done. In any case, you can step back and point to an objective outside standard that they must meet and not have to be the Mean Mom who's requiring something they hate.

IMHO, no, but I prefer to avoid roads that go through towns with stoplights and changing speed limits. It is more picturesque.

I-10 through Baton Rouge is a traffic nightmare as you approach the Mississippi River bridge. I'd just keep on driving until you get to Lafayette and avoid getting off and on in that mess.

I agree with everyone above. I've discovered jeggings, what a marvel. I buy them a size too big so they're not really leggings but more like super comfortable, stretchy jeans that don't need to be broken in. They look okay to me and that's all that matters! I'm still not through perimenopause, but I can glimpse that golden land of no more pads in the near future. Fingers crossed. The financial security to not give a fig (thanks, @regentrude) about dh's job. If he has a bad year and gets early retired, it's okay. And I'd like to add: Senior Discounts!!! I was actually psyched to turn 55.

A lot of schools ask for a resume. U of Florida asks for a resume for freshman applicants, but not transfers. Go figure!

OP, it may have nothing at all to do with your dh. The company might be in financial difficulty and needs to reduce payroll. They'll use any excuse to not set off alarm bells or mass layoff notification laws.

How many couples getting married today don't have dishes, kitchenware and linens? Plus, these items are just not very expensive unless you're opting for high-end brands. Most young people just starting out are probably fine with Rachel Ray instead of Le Creuset. That's not going to make much of a gift registry list if each guest wants to give $100-200. I bought dd a set of cookware, dishes, kitchen gadgets and tea towels for $300 during Amazon's Black Friday sale since she'll be moving into her first apartment soon. (They all got to her FPO on time too, yea Amazon!) I got good deals, but these items are just not as expensive now as they were 30 years ago relative to other purchases like education, housing and travel.

Lecka brought up a lot of good points. My Navy dd is stationed OCONUS so we've dealt with some of this stuff. The most important thing is that they try to get their paperwork in for colocation before they get their first duty stations assigned, otherwise they might end up on different continents. There's a lot of red tape to get colocated, so be prepared for a lot of running around to get things sorted out. Sending things to an FPO costs the same as the US rate BUT it takes a long time. My dd's Christmas chocolate that I sent before Thanksgiving arrived for Easter last year. I could follow the tracking to see it go to Bahrain, back to Chicago, to Italy, back to Chicago before it finally got to dd in San Francisco. Amazon ships most items to an FPO, so that might be a way to go with their registry. I'd encourage people to give them cash or Amazon gift cards if they really don't want to do cash. Good luck to the newlyweds. Dd has enjoyed her time OCONUS. I hope they do too.

I agree. I'd also like to point out that the military rates or MOSes that lead to high-paying contractor gigs afterwards also require long schools with fairly high failure rates. If you fail out, you are sent needs of the ______ to a job without good career prospects post-military. If you hate school, you may not enjoy learning to be an IT or an electronics tech or a mechanic in the armed forces either.

OP, if your young adult is considering the military, they should look at mass communications fields. All of the services have people who take pictures, write up articles about people winning awards or doing community service, handling social media, etc. Another possibility is the chaplain's aides who help organize religious observances, provide community support, handle admin/decoration/set-up/take-down for events, etc.

Not if you use the brighter or darker colors.

At my nephew's school they require parents to SIGN the weekly homework. They lose points if it's not signed. Even if you want to try to encourage independence, it's impossible. Since we're afterschooling, I'm the one who checks the homework and signs. The instructions are written to the parents, not the kids. This would be okay if it were K, but it's third grade. DN can read the instructions on his own, but he realizes they're not written for him. I do try to assign him chunks and then correct them with him if he makes any mistake or doesn't follow the Circle/Underline/Box key words stuff This is a whole other issue, they spend more time marking up a problem than they do solving it. The actual arithmetic involved is ridiculously easy because they place so much emphasis on the analysis of the question. It's math taught as a reading exercise.

Check out Lands End's Winter sale. I got myself a ladies XL puffer jacket for $40 and one for Geezle (a boy's Husky XXL that will fit him at 5'11, 150 lbs) for $23. They have parkas and colder weather gear too at clearance prices. On a different note, I used to use Waldorfy playsilks to wrap presents. I'd use a hair tie to gather the edges and then put a ribbon around it. This works particularly well for plush toys, dolls, clothes or other non-boxed items.

Same. I have had to tell mine at least a couple of hundred times to check the mugs on the top. If their bottoms are wet, the washer has run. We're rinsers, so it's not immediately apparent from appearance if things have been fully washed, but the water collected on top of the inverted mugs never lies. And he can't seem to determine when HE put an item in the fridge. DH: Is this okay to eat? Me: When did you open it and use half? DH: I don't remember. Will you smell it? Me: UGGGGHHHHHH (I HATE THIS. I don't want to smell rotten food any more than he does and, yes, he can smell.)

There's a lot of Nightmare Before Christmas themed stuff this year. Maybe it's a festive Jack Skeleton?

I'd definitely make the effort to either order the items from Amazon (watch with shipping delays though, everything I've ordered has taken longer than normal) or hit the Walmart/Target/grocery store/Aldi and get the stuff. My 3rd grade nephew has had a couple of these spirit day things that's left me scrambling to find appropriate stuff. He needed a t-shirt with our local high school's colors. Navy and white shouldn't be hard but he literally didn't have anything in those colors. I was lucky to find an old rugby t-shirt of Trinqueta's. He was not psyched to wear a t-shirt from a girls team with all their names on the back but I warned him that he really needed to conform or it would be uncomfortable. He came home and thanked me for insisting that he wear the shirt. Apparently, rugby is cool, even girl's rugby and a "Going to State" t-shirt is golden. The peer pressure to fit in can be miserable and I wish schools didn't do this. But the consequences of not going along with the herd, especially if you're already an outlier for whatever reason, are severe enough that I would do my best to make sure he goes along with the spirit theme.

to foovle: to mess around and not get ready in a timely manner Most common usage: Stop foovling and get ready or we're going to be late!

done

Dd is gearing up for starting classes in January. She met with her General Ed advisor (who is distinct from her CS advisor) to see what would transfer and how to meet the distributional requirements. The guy doesn't seem to have read the UF catalog. It very clearly states which CLEPs/DSSTs fulfill which requirements. There is a chart. There are footnotes. It shouldn't be this hard. What worries me most is that there are a few areas that are not explicitly spelled out in the UF catalog about out of state AA holders and he is just not a reliable source of information. If you can't count on your academic advisor, who can you count on to make sure you're squared away? The only bright spot is that dd's first semester classes are obvious and pre-requisites to the whole chain of CS classes so she doesn't have to stress about what to take right now. I knew this was likely, that's why we went over the catalog carefully. But it's still disappointing.

I want to get tickets to Zoo Lights for all 7 of us and do it right with smores and cocoa. I'm actually going to get this because I'm the event planner of the household. This will be our big holiday shindig. Now I just have to pick a date. We don't do gifts for adults and we're all adults now except for Astroboy. It's so much less stress when you can just concentrate on activities instead of finding the right gift.

I buy a precooked small turkey and a ham every year. So far, they don't have them out. I checked on Friday to see the pricing and flavors (Cajun, deep fried, or plain, usually). I expect them to be out next week.