I have a laundry room on the first floor and in the basement. (It's a weird local thing) I had to drag laundry into the basement from the second floor a few times and I hated it. As much as I would love a bigger closet on the first floor, taking laundry up and down two flights of stairs multiple times per week isn't worth it.

Can't they just come with rain gear and a change of clothes just in case? If not then it depends a bit on the personalities. Puzzles Coloring sheets Dress up clothes Legos

Here is what my 9 year old recommends Guardian Herd series The Giants and the Joneses The Royal Diaries series Candy Fairies series Books by Shannon Hale especially Goose Girl The Candymaker Savvy, Switch, and Scumble by Ingrid Law. (Those are e separate books not one long book title) Books by Jessica Day George

I have 35 open on my phone right now. I've had up to 50. I rarely have under 15.

We're not taking any time off next week. I needed another full week before Christmas break. This week wasn't a full week because of the AMC8 and my son's class in DC. The week after Thanksgiving is my son's birthday and we'll spend three Wed - Fri in NYC. They understood.

Audible's Daily Deal today is The Magician's Elephant for 99 cents. My kids liked it. I only half listened so I can't add a review. It's definitely worth $1.

Mine are 3 or 4 days. I'm feeling super lucky right now.

I've been to the Virgin Islands. They are probably smaller than you are looking for. St. Thomas is small and very hilly so there is not a lot of food production. Pretty much everything is shipped in so the grocery stores are very expensive. St Croix is less hilly and does produce dairy. I don't know much else about it. St. John is beautiful and very hilly. http://stthomassource.com/content/news/local-news/2008/11/04/growing-our-own-agriculture-virgin-islands http://www.usvi.net/archives/vi-in-depth-archives/caribcat-how-much-did-you-say/ They have been working on becoming less dependant on imported energy. http://energy.gov/eere/articles/us-virgin-islands-ramping-clean-energy-efforts-eye-toward-sustainable-future Puerto Rico on the other hand, has more farms and ranches. It's not nearly as hilly though.

Being the driver. If I'm not driving I try to sleep.

You can do that. I put our dvds on a hard drive. The hard drive plugs into the dvd player. I downloaded a free DVD to mp4 (?) converter. If you google you can find information. It took me a while to figure it out and unfortunately a lot of that info has already leaked out of my brain.

[quote name="hjffkj" post="7279924" Oh I could get lost in the Great Courses selections! Did you notice that Amazon Prime has a new add on subscription for the Great Courses? It's $8 per month. There are 87 courses to choose from.

Thank you. My son just came in sad from a book he was reading. I showed him the Adele song and then the Hamilton song. He could barely breathe because he was laughing so hard.

After a lot of back and forth with the teacher and pricipal when my son was in second grade, they said he could read A book and write a report if he finished his work early. Otherwise the option was just sitting there. Anything else was a distraction to the other kids. Reading without writing a report was apparently too distracting as well. My kindergarten daughter after lunch lined up in the hall and sat there doing nothing for 15 minutes. The kids sat in a single file line. Any kid who fidgeted too much or touched another kid was pulled out and reprimanded. I never understood the purpose. I should have asked.

I would wait on Singing Down the Moon. That feels like middle school content to me. I might wait on Starry River of the Sky. It's a beautiful book but I think it might be better appreciated by an older child. Some books to consider if you haven't already read them: Anything by Roald Dahl Nanny McPhee 101 Dalmatians Nurse Matilda Anything by Kate DiCamillo Tumtum and Nutmeg Paddington The Freddy books by Walter Brooks Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Can you get the audible version for less?

Bomb by Steve Sheinkin would be the best followup. My son listened to Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman when he was 10 or 11. Feynman was briefly mentioned in The Green Glass Sea.

I knew about it. I've read some British books and casually followed British culture. I asked my husband and he had no clue.

We had a two houses in our neighborhood of new construction homes staged after months on the market. The staging didn't make a difference. The eventual price drop did.

My MIL uses Etsy. Her site is mostly for paintings but she had a few photographs offered. Only the photographs have sold.

She was on the recent Hamilton PBS special. I watched a few of her lectures years ago. Seeing her again reminded me how much I had enjoyed them.

My Kitchenaid mixer broke a few weeks ago. I replaced it with the compact Bosch. I like it pretty well. I've put 6 cups of flour in there but I think that's pretty close to its maximum because of the bowl size. I like that it is smaller but it feels flimsier overall. It does a good job it's just a big adjustment from the heavy, tall Kitchenaid. I do miss the metal bowl a bit even though the plastic bowl is fine. I chose the compact over the bigger Bosch because I read reviews that the bigger Bosch doesn't handle small amounts well. I make smaller batches of dough more often than big batches.

I third this. Check your library.

I received a fishing harness last week from Amazon. They had no record of it so they couldn't make a return label. I would have preferred screwdrivers. At least those are useful.

My 6 year old likes Barbie and has for several years. My nine year old never liked Barbie. She'll play with them sometimes because her sister is playing with them. I played with Barbies until age 11 or so.

Secrets of Droon Warrior Cats Guardians of Ga'hoole ( maybe this doesn't count because there are only 16 in the actual series but there are several related books in the same world that bring the count to 24)