:hurray: Fabulous idea!

:hurray: Thanks for sharing! What a great nephew for a great aunt!

:drool5: And I just happen to have all the ingredients to make these right. now. Oh my, I should never have opened this thread. Baby #4 wants cookies (that's my story and I'm sticking to it.) oh dear.

We have the Gilbert, which probably won't help you since it's a different style, but my 2 year old tornado can't destroy it. It makes a great jumping-off-and-over-to-the-couch-launching point. He also tries daily to destroy the Ektorp sofa and hasn't succeeded. We're slowly switching over to an all-Ikea house until the children are grown. Then we're moving into an Airstream and hitting the road. (I should probably warn my husband about our-ok-my post-children plans).

Do you still need GA? I have some great picture postcards of the GA coast I can send. PM with your address and I'll stick it in the mail tomorrow.

I do but I put it on the stove top in case it leaks over.

YAHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!! Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Target/Circo brand train set is a hit at my MIL's house. It also matches the TRU house brand set she got at a yard sale. Between the 2 sets, my boys can build a wooden, non-motorized, non-Thomas train track around an entire 10x10 room. We have a few hand-me-down Thomas' that fit the tracks as well but when they are playing with "nana's tracks", they never miss the Thomas stuff.

I know that feeling. I had this dip at a Christmas party and I swear I ate the entire small crock pot-full of it. It was freakishly addicting! The lady who brought it had to repeat the recipe to me 3x before I believed her that it was just that easy. Now I've got the hankering and grocery day is tomorrow. May just have to make a batch for once the kids take their naps.

I have one that is similar. Combine 16 oz of cream cheese, 1lb of breakfast sausage, and 1 can of Rotel in a crock pot. Cook on low until melted then switch to "keep warm" if you have that setting. You can adjust the cream cheese amount lower or higher, depending on your taste for cream cheese. This is my "go to" recipe for "mommy movie night". It goes great with corn chips.

I ordered MM Light Blue 1 last night for my kindergartner. We start it today! I am so excited. I hope ds is as excited about it once he sits down to do it. All during supper he talked non-stop about how excited he was to start math.

We love our Billy's! We've moved them 4 times in 8 years and not had a problem. We've lost 4 other Target/Wal-Mart/Storehouse bookcases to our humidity here on the GA coast (we lived in an old Victorian for 3 years without HVAC). The Billy's have not succumbed to the humidity at all. The shelves are still level despite hundreds of pounds of books over the years. Once we can afford it, we're buying a couple more to use in our dining room in place of a china hutch/buffet. They also go on sale fairly regularly (annually?), if I remember correctly.

You might be a homeschooler if you create a geography unit study on the coast of the UK just so you can watch Neil whats-his-name on the BBC series "Coast" with your children. I never knew the coasts of the UK were so interesting. :tongue_smilie:

I have a plastic cancelled check expanding file for storing my coupons. This fits into my purse or the diaper bag as needed. I clip the ones I want to keep weekly and stick them in their designated sections. I can't make the no-clip or the binder work for me so this does fine. As I file new ones, I take out the expired ones to send monthly to a military base overseas since their PX's will accept expired coupons up to 6 months past the expiration date. I don't clip every coupon, just the ones for stuff I know we'll eat/use/might be willing to try if it's cheap enough.

We don't do much, mostly because my kids are so young. I also am a hermit so getting out to the grocery store weekly is huge for me. If we have more than 2 things outside of the grocery store and church during the week, I feel stressed and busy. Thankfully, we have a couple of other homeschool families that we are friends with who are the same way so we get together bi-weekly. We'll occasionally do field trips with our homeschool group but I'm curtailing that this year since my kids are too young to pay attention to what's happening on the trip.

Yay!!!! We ditched our cable 2 years ago and it's been fabulous (except for the repeated account notices from Comcast that they owe us 93 cents). I only miss it during hurricane season (we're on the GA coast), when Jim Cantore and his gang are at their craziest.

:smilielol5::smilielol5::smilielol5::lol::lol::lol:

WOW! I would have have several panic attacks by now. I can only handle about 3 days worth of company and then I start freaking out. As my dad says, "Fish and family are only good for 3 days in close quarters". Kudos to you for making it through!!! Now go put up your feet and chill!

My homeschool group meets monthly. We have one of our group teenagers watch the other kids in a room and all the parents chip in what they can to pay her. We have a topic each month and sometimes a speaker. The early part of our meeting is more structured with a simple agenda. The last part of the meeting is support, sharing, venting, laughing, celebrating, etc. For me, it's great, cheap therapy. We try to have a family get together once a year so everyone's other half can get involved and meet everyone as well. Sometimes we have an adults only meeting without actually planning it that way so we decamp to the nearest coffee shop for a more relaxed setting.

We have an upright freezer that I can't live without. I store anything that won't be eaten within a week in it. Combine that with coupon and BOGO deals and my regular freezer just didn't stand a chance. My freezer is only 5 feet, a couple of inches tall but it holds so very much. If my garden had actually grown anything this year instead of providing food for the neighborhood squirrels, it would be more full. But I did get a great sale on frozen veggies and Blue Bell ice cream so they are helping fill the void.

I have a blank calendar with the month and year at the top from Microsoft Publisher. On Sunday nights, I pull out the books from the milk crates and right out the lessons I want us to do each day in pencil. At the end of the day, I add or scratch out what we did/didn't do. I know we have certain books we have to go through for the year and this helps me stay sorta organized for now. I currently only have 1 in K so I am sure this might change as we add more children in hs in the next few years.

Do it! I think it's a great idea!

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol: YES!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nope. Each child has their very own milk crate (legally acquired) under the study table with their school books and accessories in them. I have a weekly sheet with lesson plans for each child. I check off the list as we do the lessons. At the end of every lesson, we move a sticky note to the start of the next lesson so they can know exactly where to find it in their books. Each child has a different color of sticky note. Like a pp mentioned, I only have enough energy to homeschool. This is as organized as I can get at the moment.

Every day and I thrive on it. It means I'm surviving and not dead yet. I grew up thinking it was a bad thing but now, I realize so much more.