The turkey is cooking and the vegetables are roasting. Our house smells so amazing right now.

Pie day here too! My son will make two pecan pies - one for tomorrow and one for the freezer (for a meal next week). My children are also making a Mississippi Mud dessert. YUM!!

Link to Alton Brown's video that explains what brining does to a turkey. This is the link to our version of Alton Brown's brine method. We adapted his recipe a few years ago, but basically in the past 7 years, we have never NOT had an amazing turkey after brining it.

We were at a big swim meet last weekend and my children were sitting in a different location. If I needed the children, I would just send them a text or they would text me. At some point I sent my son a sweet encouraging note but instead of the "kissy" smilie after I wrote, "I love you", I added this one ... :cursing: I happened to look across the pool deck and see him read his text. His face was like :confused1: :confused1: :confused1: :sad: ... so I looked at my phone to see what I had written. :ohmy: :ohmy: Ooops! I quickly sent a correction and he laughed and laughed.

I bought a turkey on Saturday night just hoping that it will defrost by Wednesday so I can brine it. I won't be able to get to the Commissary to shop for the rest until Tuesday around lunch. I made a detailed shopping list and I am going to put a book on my phone to read since the lines will be awful.

I have a copy/scanner/printer and I love it. It is an HP, but I mostly love the 3-in-One features.

I would divide the money into 3: 1) college fund divided for all of your children (since you mentioned "oldest", I thought there would be others) 2) housing fund 3) savings ***4) if you belong to a Church, I would divide the money into 4 sections and give one to the Church since the money was an unexpected blessing

Why did the doctor send you to OT instead of PT? (just curious) My daughter had bicep tendonitis that took 4 months of 2-3 times a week visits for an hour at a time just to get 80% of the inflammation gone. At the end of October, the PT visits dropped to once every other week while she continued to do exercises at home - trying to get the last bit of inflammation gone. For the first 6 weeks, I think the PT did deep tissue massages for 90% of the session. DD was there for 3.5 months before she was doing more strengthening exercises than she was getting deep tissue massages (plus heat and then ice cold therapy). Since my limited knowledge of tendonitis is based on my daughter's recovery, I can't help but wonder if the OT had you working through the issue too fast instead of working on the inflammation.

It has been years, but we really enjoyed listening to the books on tape while we drove to various activities.

Both of our children have a Genesis Pro bow, plus some added bells and whistles. I have photos on my blog - look under archery.

Both of my brothers use the reply all feature when they share "witty comments", but then my older relatives use the reply all feature to comment ... well, you know how that ends up.

John Grisham's "The Last Juror" This is an older book, but I read it last week and I am still thinking about the story line.

I know they had to condense the story lines, but I feel that by ignoring the torture from his older brother was a mistake. Every thing Ender wanted to avoid in life was because of the torture he faced with his brother. I also think the passive/aggressive nature of Graff was missing, plus Ender was so emotionally/physically fragile at the end of the book and the movie couldn't capture that without the references to his brother and the constant, endless "training exercises". All four of us finished the book just before we saw the movie, so the book was fresh in our minds. We forgave most of the condensed story lines because we liked the visual results, but we only rated the move 2.0/5 stars.

USA Swimming 2013-16 Motivational Times USA Swimming is the governing body for club swimming across the country. Every swimmer is judged at a swim meet by officials that all follow the same rules. Once a time is determined to be official, that time can be compared to swimmers across the country with the same age group, gender, event, and race length. In the USA, most club teams have two seasons: fall to spring is usually short course yards SCY and summer is usually long course meters LCM (but there are a few areas that swim short course meters in the fall) On the above link, there is a form with motivational times that is used across the country. Your child is probably swimming SCY right now, so you would scroll to the second page. Find your child's age group and gender, then use their current times to determine where they currently fit. My son looks at the motivational times before every meet. If he has an A time in say the 100 free, he uses the AA time as a motivation to set a goal. Another thing about the motivational times is that swimmers tend to understand the language of trying to achieve a new time like, "I'm going for an AA". They tend to cheer harder for their friends who are trying to achieve something difficult and/or if a parent says, "That was an AAA time - WOW!", the swimmer understands and appreciates their achievement and so do their friends. I hope that helps! :)

Yes! My son loves to watch youtube videos. For the most part, the language has been tame.

I used to enjoy watching my son play with his Legos when he was young. He would use his imagination and build a world of fun. I think the Minecraft game is the same sort of experience for him. My son built his own server and often plays Minecraft on his computer. DS also has xbox gold, so he plays Minecraft on the xbox with his friends. They build things together. They go mining together. They laugh. They offer "food", etc. when someone needs it.

Yes, music, documents, photos, movies, etc. can be added to the Kindle Fire HD via the USB to KF cable. Why doesn't your husband want to use the cloud? We have hundreds of songs on our cloud that the 4 of us share. We each decide what to put on our device and the rest stays in the cloud.

I have a friend who was also successful doing this method. Their daughter is now a lovely teenager with great coping skills because with her mother's help, she learned how to deal/solve her own problems, etc.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005DQG0BO/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 My son loves these headphones.

Thanks! USAFA lost in the football game tonight, but we had a large AF group cheering for them and my family had a great time.

My daughter will apply for the USAFA SS as soon as her PSAT and SAT scores arrive in December. She is a junior and in our area, the congressional "meet and greet" happens in the Spring time. I will definitely look into if they only accept known test scores since dd wants to retake the ACT. GO Air Force!!!!!!!!!! LOL We are actually leaving in minutes to go watch USAFA football play our local university.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2011/09/2008_the_year_of_the_pot_roast/ Do NOT open the oven door while this is cooking and do not do this in a crock pot. Other than those rules, this has been a no-fail, close to perfection pot roast method.

My daughter just suggested that you go up a size.

My daughter is going into her 3rd winter with her Bearpaws that I bought at Amazon.com. Every year, we start the season with a boot spray and the boots are still in great shape.

I have ordered them online from SwimOutlet (and other places). They will accept returns if the tags are still on, but do charge for shipping. We only buy tech suits from our local swim store. The owner told me that he has his staff write the date on the boxes when they arrive because the material breaks down over time - even in a little box. He said that online stores can and do sell older suits, usually at a marked down price. I bought my son his last tech suit 12 months ago and we were told he would probably only get 5-6 meets out of the suit (grandma paid the $$$). My son has been extra careful to never pull the suit to pop the elastic and he has never used the suit for warm-ups but he keeps it on until he is done instead of taking it on and off after each event. He wore the suit this past weekend (12 months and 15 meets later) and it still looks like new.