Ideas: Breakfast: usually steel cut oats with milk and some kind of fruit, craisins, bananas, apples and a hard boiled egg or toast with jam and glass of milk (not the best, but it's quick. Someday I can get back to making my own jam w/o sugar) or whole wheat pancakes with fruit topping Lunch: sandwich or wrap. I crockpot chicken once a week and that is used here instead of deli meat. I also buy big bags of spinach from Costco and use that instead of iceburg lettuce. I buy logs of cheddar and slice it myself and put that on the sandwich. I will grate carrots if it's in a wrap or put them on the side if it's a sandwich. I buy bags of broccoli florets, baby carrots, and sugar snap peas from Costco and those goes on the plates (not necessarily all at once, usually one or two) or some cucumber sticks with some salad dressing to dip in. Even my extremely picky eater Digby will eat veggies if he can dip them. Some times I mix fruit with yogurt. For breakfast and lunch I use these trays. If they don't finish all of their meal, the tray gets brought back out when they say they're hungry. Snacks: Occasionally I'll do hummus. Like once a month or so. Usually I'll just do a green smoothie: milk and kefir with spinach plus frozen mango, papaya, strawberry and pineapple (comes in a bag at Costco). They get the smoothie if they've eaten all their breakfast and lunch, I try to make them eat all of that first. Dinner: I've taken to buying ground turkey at Costco. It's 93% lean and only $2.29/lb. It comes in four packages, about 6.5 pounds total. I'll chop four onions and cook each pack with one onion and garlic (also bought in bulk at Costco). Then I'll split all that between 6 quart sized freezer bags and freeze them. I use them for spaghetti sauce (meat, tomatoes, 51% whole grain pasta, and spinach salad), nachos (Food Should Taste Good multigrain chips, meat, pinto beans, sour cream, cheese, tomatoes, guacamole, salsa), Asian Turkey Broccoli Slaw stuff (meat, broccoli slaw, water chestnuts, bamboo, teriyaki sauce served over brown rice or spinach). I'll also slice chicken and cook it with season salt, sliced onions and red peppers and use that for chicken fajitas (chicken, onion, peppers, tortilla, sour cream, cheese, guacamole, salsa, tomatoes). Or I'll do coconut curry (chicken, coconut milk, brown rice, peas, carrots, red peppers). The best way I've found incorporating all these is to just use recipes and add as many veggies as I possibly can. I'll even wilt spinach and add that to scrambled eggs when I make them (which is not too often). Vegetables can go in anywhere. And even recipes that already have some, like chicken noodle soup, I'll add WAAAY more vegetables than the recipe calls for. It usually turns out more like a vegetable stew.

Also, refined oil doesn't have a smell. Extra virgin has a stronger smell (and taste when you use it for cooking. Just make sure not to mix your TeA oil and your cooking oil.:lol:) We use the coconut oil and it works well. We can't use KY or similar products, since they....burn me. Also, I'm nursing and have a Mirena so I need something to keep it from being uncomfortable.

For our two, it was a looooong and tiring process. My oldest is about 3.5 years older than my younger son. We put them in the same room when my younger son was about 6 months old and my oldest was 4. The baby would see his older brother and be distracted and not be able to sleep, so he'd cry. My oldest would come running out at the first sign of a whimper, making the baby cry even more. It took a lot of training, like almost 6 months before they'd go to bed together at the same time. It was also difficult when the baby would go to sleep first and I let my oldest stay up later. The baby would usually wake up when the oldest came to bed, starting the whole cycle over again. Now they go to bed fine. There is often a lot of playing that goes on (younger son throwing his blanket and pillows out at the older son, older son throwing them back, giggling and squealing at each other) but if I get them to bed at about 8, they usually just fall asleep quickly. And my younger son has always had more problems falling asleep, staying asleep, and putting himself back to sleep. But now my oldest son is so used to it that he just sleeps through any crying in the middle of the night. When I go in to comfort my younger son, my oldest is still conked out on his bed.

Yes he has, but we'd need a camera. I have an aunt in the advertising industry in D.C. and she strongly recommended against getting into advertising as it's such a cutthroat industry with people taking unpaid internships just to get in the door. It's still something we're considering, but thinking we need to do more research on. We've also considered doing wedding videos on the side (we're in Utah, tons of weddings here). We've considered getting a super small business loan (we're Dave Ramsey listeners, we don't like debt) to get some equipment.

Well, we have checkers, chess, backgammon, reversi, tic tac toe. He loves strategy games and it's easier to play on the phone where it can show him the possible moves. He's so young, he has a hard time with it in real life. Once he's older, I'll take that option away so he'll have to think about it more. We also have one called Let's do Math (I think) where they can do their math tables. Beyond that....not yet.

My not even two year old is like this. Thinks he can do everything we can do. It has gotten him injured more than once. Although it's pretty funny when he puts both legs in one pants hole because he insists on trying to dress himself.

Eep! I missed stuff while posting. My responses in red. And I hope I am not reading tension in this. I hope it's just in my mind :crying: but please no tension on account of me.

ok, very happy that I get to tell him we don't have to get an MBA (thanks everyone for saving us thousands and thousands). But he can't go back to BYU to get a bachelor's in business:glare:. There is a city college here that can do an associate and a university the next town over that can do either an associate or a bachelor's. Not sure how many credits would transfer for that though. Oh well, it gives us plenty to think about.

:grouphug:

If she asked for it, it is perfectly fine. Like eternalknot said, probably doesn't even register for her. Plus, there's no law that says they can't switch down the road. Growing up, it's like we were playing musical bedrooms, there was so much switching going on (kid initiated, not parent initiated). If her needs change, they can switch rooms. A pain, yes. Impossible, no.

Thank you, thank you!!!

Oh right, sorry. Sometimes I talk too much I lose my train of thought. His degree is in film. Absolutely useless. He wants the MBA so he can know more about setting up his own production company and hopefully make it more successful. If needed, we're hoping the MBA would give us a better paying job so we could save enough money to start that company. I'm very good at being frugal.

In light of some of the other threads going on, I feel really bad posting this. If you think I am being too selfish, please say so (though in a nice way:001_smile:). I'll try to keep this short: DH's job pays $12.50 an hour (I say this because by US standards, it's not much. But everytime I look around at our apartment and see what we can afford, I feel so well off compared to those living in third world countries. The fact that we are well blessed is not lost on me). Compared to nothing, it's a lot. He was unemployed for 18 months before he got this job. For the past 6 months we've been feeling rich because we could pay for rent and food and utilities and not have to stress too much. But he keeps getting in trouble at work for doing his job well (customer service/tech support). The company is really stupid. I'll save the hows and whys, but they are really stupid. He's considering going back to school to get an MBA. We'd apply for every scholarship, assistantship, and fellowship we could. I would work overnight at McDonald's or do childcare in my home. Obviously we'll be praying about it. But the hard part is the amount of debt we'll be taking on. There's a program in the next town up that he could do, but there's one two hours north of here (we'd have to move) where the cost of living is so much cheaper, it might help to lessen the load. And it seems like the further away one has more scholarships, assistantships, and fellowship opportunities. The only problem is that it seems to be a smaller town, with less work available in the community for me to find something that would work. *sigh* I'm just so conflicted, I don't know what is best. What would you do?

I do not think it was too harsh. She's old enough where she needs to start thinking through her actions because they do have consequences. Accident or no, they have consequences. Adults have car "accidents" all the time and they have to pay for them. It's the perfect consequence for not thinking about your behavior.

:seeya: Hello and welcome! Don't be shy, just be polite:001_smile: (although I stay out of most of the religion/political threads, too much tension for me). It's a fun bunch here, I love it.

I hope it doesn't count as advertising, those are just beyond awesome. Thank you, I had never seen them before.

well, I did post a bunch of stuff on the other thread (I'm sorry, I can't help it. I talk a lot) But one thing that I have that I didn't post there is my smartphone. We would have never gotten smartphones, but my brother let us join on his family plan and so we pay the exact same money but get unlimited texting and data now too. How this enters into the organizing equation? Well, let me tell you. Pigby is obsessed with Angry Birds. OB. SESSED. :lol:Soooooo....that little white board that I was talking about on the other thread? On it he gets 20 tallies a day. Whenever he whines, back talks, is mean, disobedient, etc, he starts losing tallies. When he does his school work without whining, arguing, you get the idea, he gets four more tallies (he only does four subjects). Each tally is worth one minute of playing on my phone after dinner. It's also useful for making him do his chores. I set the timer for a chore, if it's not done when the timer goes off, he loses more tallies. Since I'm not gonna be cleaning up after him his whole life and I can't keep everything organized without help, I use my phone to motivate him. It works. For now, at least.

The pacifier seems like a good choice because you can always take it away. Which I did with Digby a month or so ago, when I caught him sticking the ENTIRE thing in his mouth :thumbdown: I had considered taking it away a few weeks before that cuz he just didn't seem attached, it was more of a habit. But heck no, I wasn't going to give it to him again and risk him choking on it while I thought he was napping. I threw it in the trash, never had a problem with it again. HOWEVER! This is the kid who was waking up 5-7 times a night his first 8 months because the (*$ thing fell out. I would get up and stick it back in. 1 hour later, more crying. At those moments, I would have given anything for him to be a thumb sucker. Now baby Chuck is going to be a thumb sucker. That started about two months ago, she started sucking on her wrist/fingers to soothe herself to sleep. It is amazing!!! Now I just have to worry about not letting it go on so long that it ruins her teeth :glare:

It is very possible sister N might not want that responsibility. Which is why the OP should discuss the situation with her and see what she would want and if she'd be able to make it work. But everyone is saying sister N because sister N already has a relationship with them. Sister F doesn't seem to from what the OP has said.

ever since I got my laser printer, I haven't cared about how many pages I print. Now, I will always buy the pdf version and print it all out! It's fun. It's easy. It's immediate, no waiting for packages to come.

I would have this discussion with sister N, because only she knows the answers about what she would be willing to do. Are you able to get life insurance on yourself that would help out? If so, they could use some of the insurance money to upgrade to a bigger house. She might be willing to get rid of the animals (in my opinion no animal should come before a person). I would make any kind of adjustment necessary to be able to take care of my nephews or DH's younger siblings if I had to. I would never let them be split up. I would sacrifice and make it work. If she loves the kids, she would probably be wiling to do the same.

Because we don't have a dishwasher and I didn't want to hand wash a billion and twelve Bento box things, I got these. I like them a lot, I even use them regularly for breakfast and lunch at home. We do broccoli florets (I buy a bag of prechopped stuff from Costco), pretzel sticks, couscous, wraps, carrots, strawberries and yogurt, grapes, oranges. More ideas here.

1) I use plantoeat.com to organize my recipes and menu planning stuffs. (I am in no way affiliated with them, I just love their service). 2)Keep things in baskets. I have baskets in the linen closet for washclothes, pillow cases and hand towels. I have baskets above the kitchen sink (absolutely no way one of my kids could reach it) for vitamins and medicines and matches and extracts, etc. 3)Chore checklist lite on my android. It tells me what I need to do everyday, every week, twice a month, and every month. Everyday I write my chores on a $3 white board and cross off as I go. 4) (more than 3, sorry) I have four of those $3 whiteboards hung on my wall, one has my to do list, my son's to do list, my husband's to do list and a shopping list. It's in the main living area of my house, so it gets seen frequently and easy for every to use. 5) "A place for everything and everything in its place." You really won't be organized if you don't have a place for everything to go. "Don't put it down, put it away." Try to only deal with things once. 6) Stacks of papers that you have no idea what to do with? File them. Better to have them in a file box than scattered all over the house making a mess (and making an even bigger mess when you try to find one particular piece). 7) Desk Apprentice for my desk, not for kid's school supplies. All office supplies go in there, file folders "Things to be filed" "Things to shred" "Things to be typed up onto the computer. 8) Throw stuff away, throw more stuff away, throw even more stuff away. If you can't tell, I'm a recovering slob. I'm not perfect at all of these yet, but these things have REALLY helped me out the past few weeks.

:seeya: hello!

We got the Radian for our oldest when my daughter was born, since the five point harness seems to keep them safer than a regular booster. If you google "Radian Car Seat coupon" you can find sites that have 20-25% off. We only paid $200 for ours. We like it, but we rarely ever take it out of the car.