Thanks!

We are a family of 4. I do the bulk/all of the cooking. I used to not mind it, but I'm in a funk recently. I want to try to limit how much cooking I have to do, so I was thinking of doing a couple BIG meals a couple times a week and then doing a lot of "leftovers". Ya know, like a big pot of chili big enough to make meals for 3 nights or so. Caveats: DH is dairy-free, I try to eat mostly gluten-free and low-carb/low-grain, and I've got 2 semi-picky eaters. Oh, and I get a lot of seasonal produce from our weekly CSA that I need to use up [and I don't know what I'll be getting ahead of time]. We do eat meat. This is what I've come up with so far: chili veggie soup with or without meat beef roast beans w/ or w/o ham/sausage . . . Ugh. curries? taco-seasoned beans I'm just not thinking of this very well. Any tips/suggestions?

Ugh. Are they breaking the laws of your/their state? Document everything; maybe it can be used to fight the overnights? I'm clueless about the legal end, but poor carseat use is a pet peeve of mine. :(

Until this week, it was just once a week, but today I figured out how to squeeze in another. On Mondays, my boys have basketball skills classes back to back for their age groups. While the elder is in his class, the younger goes to the child watch and I exercise. Then the elder and I hang out in the gym while the younger has his class. DStE also has a homeschool PE class on Thursdays, but it's during the time when the child watch is closed. The first week I tried walking around one of the gyms but DStY got bored quickly, so the last few weeks we've been hanging out in the family lounge and he watches a movie or plays on the iPad while I read. BUT last Monday I got to the gym and realized I didn't have my gym shoes. So I realized the yoga room wasn't being used, so I went in there and did some yoga. It occurred to me that this might be the solution for Thursdays as well. Today I tried it, and it worked! I didn't get a great yoga workout, but I did about 30 mins solid of good strong poses. So yay me!

He toyed with Pokemon earlier in the year, then he wanted to be Trigger Happy from Skylanders, but he finally settled on an Army Commando. $15 at Target, I think it was.

Florida can't afford to provide a real science curriculum in its elementary schools, but they can put cameras on their trash cans? :001_huh:

For who? I have different tones for my hubby and some of my family/friends. Not only that, but I have a different tone for texts and calls. :lol: Various songs: Naked as we Came by Iron & Wine Red Tide by Neko Case [my son's fave] The Banana Boat song Love Shack by the B-52s [though I don't think that is assigned to anyone yet] Protege Moi by Placebo Faster Harder Scooter by Scooter [that's Hubby's] Jezebel by Iron & Wine I like the idea of Downton Abbey!

Yes, it's normal. Sometimes they come back. They took down Groundhog Day around the time of the year of Groundhog Day. But it was back a few months later. Other shows my DS used to watch are just gone. :/

Awesome, these are great ideas! I did some google searches similar to his last night, and saw some cool ideas, but need to find something, as someone else said, that is not copyrighted. :) :) Or use it as inspiration and find someone who can draw! Thanks!

Do you have one? My SIL/BIL have a panda for theirs, and my elder DS wants us to come up with one. Our school is called "Hearth Stone" so I'm thinking of something with a rock or stones, or maybe a circle of stones. Oooh, maybe Stone Henge!? Too presumptuous? What about you?

Mine is about 5-6 feet wide [sorry, I'm on the couch for the eve watching "Enterprise"] and about a foot deep. The actual food area starts about waist-high and is 3 shelves maybe 18 inches apart. There is empty space underneath where I keep cleaning stuff. The tip-top shelf which is really too high for me has vases, napkins, stuff like that. It's got 2 bifold doors on it, but still there is some tucked away space on either end. Honestly? I hate it. Well, hate is strong, it has some good points [better than the linen closet I had upstairs until we remodeled!] but I'd rather have a walk-in and a proper broom closet.

I don't know, but I've noticed in the last few days that our Netflix on our Roku doesn't have the "Recently Watched" or "Top Picks for Mama_Rana" lists. :/ It's still taking me to the next episode when I watch Enterprise though, so I dunno. :(

I guess I'm not clear why you need a definitive diagnosis? You think it's chickenpox, which is a virus, so you just have to treat the symptoms, keep him isolated, etc. If it's NOT the pox, he's on an antibiotic, and you'd still keep him isolated until he's not contagious. Why does the county need to be notified? And if it does, that's on him, not you, right?

I struggle with this as well, but I voted after because I think some things just are more meaningful if you know what you're looking at. The liberty bell is a good example. It's just a broken bell if you don't know the story. If you KNOW you're going to take those travels, during the studying, make a huge deal about "In the spring we're going to get to SEEEE the ACTUAL Liberty Bell! How COOL is that?" or something.

:bigear: I want to replace all our CFLs with LEDs, but haven't yet so I can't help. I'm curious about the replies you get though. Where have you bought your LED bulbs?

Thanks! I do plan to make an appt. with the ped. As I said, my elder son has had some sort of blood test for food allergies, but it showed nothing. I don't know exactly what it was though. Wonder if I can get my hands on it in my mess of a house. *sigh*

Thanks everyone! I will try to food diary, but I struggle to see patterns in that type of data [or to note reactions in a timely manner :( ] But maybe my doc could make some sense of it. I also need to make ped. appts. for well checks, so I'll talk to her more about it then. Thank goo no severe reactions, and hopefully it'll stay that way.

The thread about adults not believing in allergies got me thinking about my sons' reactions to .... something. Both of them have had redness around their mouths or anu5e5. I know the younger has reacted to apples and possibly carrots, but not always. Recently the younger ate some chocolate ice cream at a party and his mouth was red for a week! Last night both of them got red mouths after dinner [chicken sausages, cabbage, & ratatouille]. The elder has had blood testing for food allergies [we were drawing blood for something else and I had her take extra] but reacted to nothing. I don't think the younger has had that done yet... What would you suggest? Getting them both scratch tested? Taking better notes about what they eat and what happens [i suck at that, even when it's for myself]? Letting sleeping dogs lie? TIA

Wow! That's interesting [though I'm sorry for you]. I think I'm going to start a new thread though cuz I don't want to hijack any further.

That's interesting about the raisins. My elder son says that raisins make his mouth "feel weird". He still eats them, but he self-limits. I guess I should look into it more. Both of my boys occasionally have redness around their mouths but I haven't been able to narrow it down. I've been lucky they haven't had more serious reactions.

Yeah, I think it's weird that my sis can have wine but not lemon juice, but it is what it is, and I'm not going to intentionally try to test it. Luckily, she hasn't had a severe [needed to go to the ER] reaction in a while and she works in a hospital so if she DOES... *sigh* Anyway, I'd never heard of a sulfite allergy until my sister developed it, but now she knows several people and now I know of your dh. Makes me wonder if it's becoming more common or if I'm just becoming more aware.

But not boxed mashed taters, right? My sis is allergic to sulfites, and I seem to recall that is one of the things she can't have, but I could be forgetting. I'm surprised at the dressing thing every time she and I talk about it. There are some that don't bother her, but others that do. Balsalmic is a no-no, but white is ok. She drinks wine without a problem, but can't do bottled lemon juice. I'm one of those annoying people who /tries/ to eat gluten-free not because of a diagnosed problem but in an attempt to determine whether it plays a role in some nebulous health issues I have [attention, allergies, lethargy]. My dh has been avoiding dairy due to increasingly worsening allergies; he's shocked every time he finds something with milk that he's not expecting, like those almond crackers we had the other day. Ooops, sorry, honey, I bought those a while ago cuz they're gluten-free; wasn't looking for dairy then. :( I try to be respectful of my friends' allergies. I have a couple friends who have to be gluten-free. I'd rather buy them fresh new food that I know hasn't been contaminated in my house than risk it. OTOH, I was stressed and pressed for time the other day, and packed the mother-load of a gluten-y lunch for my boys and I [pizza for the boys and salad with chicken tenders for me; leftovers] when me met at the farm for apple-picking. It wasn't even a sharing issue, I just hate having food around them that I know could make them sick. :(

My guess would be an appraiser getting pics of similar houses for "like value" homes, but don't they usually pick houses that have sold within the last 12 months? I have been known to take pics of houses where I like the landscaping to keep for my ideas file. And I did take a pic of the home I grew up in when I drove through that town a few years ago. But when the owners came out, I did explain to them why I was doing it.

Yes, I want sentences entirely comprised of words we've studied in spelling. I have a free account [i keep forgetting I have]. Maybe I'm just missing it, but I just can't find a way to make sentences that are ONLY comprised of spelling words. When I first entered my words, there were sample sentences to give context, but they were made of lots of different words not just my 30 spelling words.

Hmmm, I don't see an option to make sentences using JUST the spelling words. Am I missing something? My son is easily frustrated and I don't want to have any words that I don't expect him to be able to spell, iykwim.