:iagree::iagree::iagree: Do you have much experience with abusive/manipulative people? They consider themselves allowed to lash out at you and then take it back with a piss poor apology. "Sorry, I shouldn't have said that." :glare: If she really thought that, she wouldn't have done it in the first place. If she were truly sorry, she would have CALLED you or SEEN you in person, sobbing that she had done something so cruel. She would have owned it 100%. She would have been begging you to forgive her. You can be polite when you see her, "Hello, nice weather we're having." But forgiveness doesn't mean you let someone make you their doormat again.

Well, I haven't written it out. Not much point in me doing that because I would quickly lose that sheet of paper :tongue_smilie:. So it's all mental. And right now, it's just a "Stay the course!" type of plan for the grammar stage. We'll keep using MUS, FLL, WWE, SOTW, Elemental Science, and BFSU. If we reach a point where something doesn't work, I'll re-evaluate. I have a long term goal of educating them all the way through high school. In order to do that, I need to bring my own stuff up to speed, so I'm working on self-education while they're still young. Oh and I'm trying to figure out HST+ so I can do weekly lesson plans. I would love to schedule out the whole year, but missing one day would just throw me completely for a loop. It would also overwhelm me and I would rebel by sticking my head in the sand and not doing anything. I know I can manage a one week schedule. Right now it's not so hard, I just do the next thing. But I want to get in a habit of scheduling the week.

:iagree: Mine is worse too. I don't think you have much to worry about. If mine looked that good, DH would be so happy.

Don't procrastinate. Do something when you remember it and don't tell yourself, "I'll do that later." Do things early. So that way, when it's the 25th of the month and you think, "Oh yeah, I need to remember to send the rent check in," then stop right there, write the check and get it in the mail. I've never heard of a landlord complain about getting the rent early :001_smile: If I absolutely cannot do it then, I'll send a text to my husband. It will help him remember, or it will help me remember later when I'm texting him again and see the message again. I've also emailed myself and set alarms on my phone. Checking the calendar is a habit you must create. A calendar will be useless if you never check it.

Pigby tried pulling a similar stunt yesterday. Two nights ago he refused to eat until I gave him his math blocks. :glare: (those things are seriously his addiction) I repeated the rule of what it would take to get them back; he chose not to comply and chose to go hungry. The next day, he had a good breakfast but for lunch I brought out his leftovers. More whining, more threatening, more anger. But I calmly told him what it would take to get the math blocks and the new food he was wanting. Just a calm, "here's your food, you can eat when you're hungry." Eventually he caved. He didn't starve, I didn't yell or give in. He was free to eat whenever he wanted. And boy, when he chose to eat, he ate it all!

great ideas, thank you!

Yes, come to my house and I will teach you. Though if you want to learn to knit, you'll have to talk to Little Izumi. OOOooo, or we could have a knitting/crocheting party. (Was it me you were hinting at? Silly girl, I told you I would teach you! Just come back to Utah first! :tongue_smilie:) PS and if you want to watch Youtube in the meantime to get an idea, watch the videos I linked in the thread that Ibbygirl linked.

I would love to help you if you would come and help me too :D. Take heart. Just remember the baby steps if you need to. Rome was not built in a day and even Pretty in Pink didn't get that way overnight. Lots of the organized people have probably been working on their habits for years and years. I promise that maintaining a clean house always seems easy, but unless you have those habits, it's not really (ask me how many times my house has finally been completely cleaned and how quickly it all fell apart again). Just try something simple and start with that. Flylady's recommendation of a clean sink is a good one. If you can manage to stay on track with dishes, laundry, and the trash, that's a pretty good head start as those areas just never stop. Maybe watch some Hoarders to motivate your purging. Nothing puts me in a mood to purge like Hoarders.

As with any habit/addiction, I've found that I needed to replace it with something else. I used to get on while the kids were eating breakfast....and then just stay on for way too long. In order to break that habit, I had to start doing something else. Now I get school ready and as soon as they're done eating, they go sit at the school table. Then I'll only get on once it's movie time for them. They'll watch a movie, I'll use the computer, then we go do something else. I hate to admit how much time I've wasted on the d@mn thing, but apparently I have no shame. For me it's been crucial that I do it in baby steps. I've tried limiting myself to only after they're asleep, but I always end up failing. I would like to get there someday, but it's not happening yet. One thing that does help is if you keep a list of things you need to do/check on the internet. During the day, just write down what websites you need to visit, then when you get on, you can quickly check those.

Yes

Oh my heck. I want to be like you too. I am feeling a serious need to go and purge everything in my house. And clean everything I see. I might just look at pictures of your house every day for some motivation. (Oh, also another tip for those with littles: don't get distracted when they are out and about. Don't be on the internet, don't read a book, don't talk on the phone. If you want to train them to clean after themselves you need to follow them around and teach them right away. I've noticed there's less fighting between siblings this way too. I also second the getting rid of clothes. They only had like 4 pairs of pants and 8 shirts plus socks and underwear. And even then there's a few shirts that hardly ever get worn)

I second the Desk Apprentice recommendation. I wrote a post about mine here. Also, do you just have the one child? If you have any younger children, I would recommend a locking cabinet or file cabinet for all the craft supplies, manipulatives, small pieces that you don't want littles getting in to. It's hard to keep them away from such things and it doesn't take long for them to make a HUGE mess when your back is turned. I also recommend laser printers over inkjet. I love being able to print a ton of stuff without having to buy such a dang expensive cartridge. Just my helpful hint to anyone who will listen. :D

Good morning everyone! How is your Monday going so far? Pretty well. We did some school already. I've rearranged our school schedule to include Digby. He mostly just colors or practices on some handwriting sheets I printed out for him so he could do "school" too. But it's going well so far. He's not too distracting and he's free to sit or get up and walk around. It was necessary because he's starting to cut out his afternoon nap, so that time was no longer available for us to do school. How was your weekend? Pretty good. Didn't get as much done as we needed to, but DH made a plan for some bunk beds. We need to get those built so we can move baby girl into the crib in the boys' room, then DH and I can go back to sleeping in our bed (we're in the LR now). What's on the menu today? Breakfast? We had breakfast burritos. Lunch? The boys will be eating their leftovers from dinner last night. I'm not sure about myself yet. Dinner? Lasagna. Do you have anything other than schoolwork planned today? Catching up on OUAT and Worst Cooks in America after the kids are asleep. I'll also be trying out the HST+ trial program. It's a bit different than the free version I had been using.

I am not super organized, I'm a recovering slob. Some things I've found (and these are my experiences and may or may not be applicable to anyone else): ~Habit. This is probably the biggest. It's not that I have ADD or Mommy-brain or am lazy or stupid; it's that I haven't formed all the habits that organized people have. (If I do have ADD, it's only mild. I do understand that more severe cases would make it harder.) There are so many good habits that organized people have spent time forming, it seems completely overwhelming to me as an unorganized person to try and get to that level. Sooooo..... ~Baby steps. Going along with the habits, I realized I could only handle one habit at a time. For now it's keeping the kitchen table cleared. DH (an organized person) would always wonder why I could never keep the kitchen table clear. To him it was obvious-Eat a meal, clean the table afterward. But that wasn't my habit. My mind would wander, the kids wouldn't finish there food, but ask for it 30 min. later, I'd have to go take care of a baby, etc. I promised him I'd try to keep the table clean for one week. It's been two and I'm doing pretty well. It's not perfect, but it's so much better than it was before. I'm still not in a habit of cleaning the table after a meal, but I do clear it about three times a day whenever I notice it. ~Bribery. I hate dishes above all else. I'm bribing myself with a nail polish when I 1) Get completely caught up on them and 2) keep them that way for a week. The thought of two nail polishes makes me excited :D ~Make it fun. I listen to audio books on my mp3 player while I wash dishes. I listen to Dave Ramsey while I clean my room. If I had a good stereo system, I would put music on while we clean the living room. Those are things I enjoy, that I never seem to have time for, but I can use as mini-rewards to motivate me. Dishes are more appealing when I know Jim Dale will be reading Harry Potter to me. :tongue_smilie: ~Focus on the reward, not the work. I also hate laundry, but I love having all the clothes clean and folded and put away. So I focus on the rewards instead of how much I hate folding and putting away. Same goes with the dishes; I hate washing them, but I love having them all clean when I need them. This post gave me an epiphany when I read it. (feel free to skip the scriptures if that's not your taste, the rest of the post still has lots of good info). Since then, I've identified so many of my bad habits. Just doing that has given me the ability to start replacing them with better habits.

You can buy regular bags of frozen veggies and poke holes in the bag and microwave it like that for the same effect. The only "special" thing about those bags are the holes. Also, make sure he knows to wipe the inside out periodically, even if it doesn't look messy. Otherwise the build up of grease could cause more sparks and burn a hole in side. You don't want to know how I know that. :tongue_smilie:

Oh man, I feel your pain. Sometimes the writing on FB is enough to make me twitch. :blink: My biggest problem is remembering to capitalize. In high school, I got so used to letting Word capitalize the first letter of each sentence for me, it took awhile to break that habit.

I'm not exactly sure if this is the kind of thing you're talking about. If it's not, I apologize. :001_smile: Digby goes to a charter school one day a week. In doing so, I was aware of what it meant: ~He'd have to do standardized testing when he was old enough (they don't do it in Kindergarten. I'm not exactly sure when they do it) ~We'd have to keep track of our hours (again, not so big a deal in kindergarten as kindergarten isn't mandatory here) ~We can't buy any religious curricula with the money we get from them. If I wanted any (I don't) I would have to pay for it out of my own pocket. All that stuff is not really anything I care about, as I was going to do the first two anyway and we already use secular materials. The reasons I signed him up: ~To get the "school" experience. He has a cubby and a coat hook. They do circle time and teach fun songs (I'm so not very fun). He gets to take a lunch and have recess and take a snack. ~Mostly so he could make some friends. Poor kid is a shy extrovert. He loves being around other people, but is scared to ask them to play. I tried various groups where he could socialize, but they weren't working very well with my two littles' schedules. But at school, he's branching out and making friends and his teacher is helping him ask to join in. So those are the only reasons I signed him up. I honestly don't care about what math program they're using there. I don't worry about how much he gets it or where he's at on reading. I already know that. I'm just happy he's making friends and having fun.

We started FLL 1. We went according to WTM guidelines to start when he was almost done with OPGTR. It's easy enough. He knows the definition of a noun :D. He does really well with narration questions and learned how to answer in complete sentences. I had started WWE 1, but it was mostly for handwriting practice. Then he wanted to learn cursive, so I'm making my own practice sheets on Start Write. The reason I had started him on WWE was because he was using HWOT for practice, but he was having such a hard time trying to squish his letters in the shaded gray box. He does a lot better when he gets to write on the three lines. I had him do the short sentences, figuring that if he needed more practice, I could always have him go back and do the long sentences on our second go-round. With both programs, he did ok with them. But grammar is probably his least favorite subject. He prefers math and spelling.

Oh man, I wish! The last hair cut I had was about a year ago.....DH did it....:leaving: I just don't have the time to care about it right now. My hair is super curly and needs a lot of product in order to look decent. Not to mention I have all my angel wings from the regrowth after baby girl was born. To say I look hideous is an understatement. :lol: I've been wearing my yoga pants all day (and I don't do yoga ;))

Is this the same sister you had the disagreement with about the floors and counters? ;) BEE

an electri pressure cooker cannot be used for canning. so far as I know, there is no such thing as an electric pressure canner. an electric pressure cooker usually takes less than 20 minutes to cook food, so you might not need to put it in the garage (at least I can't think of a reason when it takes so little time). also pressure canners need to be supervised to make sure they stay up to pressure the whole time. I dont think it would be a good idea to have one in the garage anyway

water bath-strawberry jam

I'm wondering which ones are easiest to use, which ones are well made, which ones won't explode :D Any info is useful. I really want to get one, but I'm not sure where to start my search. Thank you.

I've read many P&P fan fiction books and this series is the only one that I've found to be worth my time. She doesn't use the original story as an excuse to write a trashy romance like so many others, she uses the same style of language, and her interpretation of the characters and their motivations is completely spot on, imo. Although if you like the trashy romance ones, there are lots of those available. The second book is completely her own work and not based on anything from the original P&P story.

I like the priceline negotiator feature. I've gotten 3 star rooms for $50/night. They don't tell you ahead of time which hotel you're going to get, you only get to pick the rating and put in a bid. If they accept the bid they charge your CC immediately. It works if any hotel in the area will do.