We have 5 expedits (4x2). Love them but our movers hated them, calling them 'space hogs' on the truck when we moved this summer. I got rid of the kids' dressers and just used their closet for hanging items and the expedit for folded items. The storage system that target (itso?? Something like that) sells fit in the cubes too in case you need a drawer of sorts.

Thank you for posting this, I really needed to see it. Today was one of those days...I introduced cursive to my son (just big & little loops today) and it brought him to quiet tears. It took him about 7 or 8 minutes to collect himself. He eventually made his loops and hopefully Monday will be better :001_smile:

I just placed my big Christmas Amazon order and the Creator 1 set from Zometool for my 7 year old has now been ordered. He's been doing some interesting things with the family Tinkertoys lately so I hope he's ready to move up!:tongue_smilie: I thought the 'bubble' kit from Zometool was cool too, but maybe for my son's summer birthday instead. Good luck, I know I'm fed up with all my son's Lego sets. Some of them are real space hogs. Dust collectors too :glare:

I have the Haan multi (model SI-70), it's a floor unit that comes apart into a hand held steamer (DustBuster size) and attachments so you can do shower stalls, sink drains, counter tops, and under the rim of the toilet...or other gross, disgusting places that you wish you didn't have to clean.:glare: Keep in mind that this is my first steamer purchase, but I think it heats up really quickly, and on one tank of water I can do my tile entry, kitchen/nook and all the fixtures/floor in my bathroom. It came with 2 pads that are rather thick, so I do wonder just how hot the water really is by the time it hits the cleaning surface. I used the handheld and took it to the counters in our rental house and it loosened a lot of gunk, especially around the cooktop. Yuck. You can also use the carpet glide attachment to supposedly kill any smells that may be in your carpeting. The master bedroom closet of this house had a cat-pee smell to it when we moved in, and after running the steamer through there, the smell is gone. (I don't know if other steamers can go on carpeting? That may not be specific to the Haan.) I went with the Haan after I read all the reviews for the Shark on Amazon. The Haan was more expensive but all the accessories and being able to use a hand-held option was worth it for me.

Good luck finding jeans for your daughter. I know I won't miss Circo jeans from Target. We have had so many ripped-out knees on those jeans over the years. I don't know why I kept buying them, must be those $7.99 sale signs.:tongue_smilie:

I love my scuffs from LLBean, I'm wearing then right now! They are the only thing that keeps my feet warm, socks alone just won't do anymore. They are pricey but the hard soles are worth it. My mom has the Lands End's scuffs (a fleece style) and they are not as durable IMO, but this was from a few years ago.

:iagree: I did this too, except I used grade appropriate workbooks from Walmart (like the $7.99 ones) and 3-hole-punched them to fit into a binder. We had several sitting around the house and it was easier to do this than to pack them, some pages had been used but many hadn't. The whole 5 days we drove here, I kept urging the kids to take a look but they didn't open them until we arrived at the hotel last week. They loved them, especially my K'er. I bought pencil pockets/bags to put in front of each binder to keep pencils & markers contained.

We are in similar moving limbo RIGHT NOW, from NoVA to west WA state. It has been a month since this move actually started and we won't have a signed lease on a house until Monday (please Lord, let it be Monday!). Add in a week-10 days until we get our household goods delivered from storage and who knows when I'll be organized enough to start school. :glare: I feel horrible about how long this is dragging out but once we get our year started we won't have a lot of interruptions (no holiday traveling planned), so we might just drag it out til June...hopefully not July as well. How far is your move? Since we moved cross-country and I knew I'd be doing all the driving and probably exhausted at the end of the day, I didn't bring any school work. We didn't have a lot of extra room in the van anyway. I think packing counts as a school activity: space management, laws of inertia (on a moving truck:D), cooperative working, and PE (weight lifting!). These might be more reflective of our move than yours but how about some life skills: help you consider the budget when looking for a new house, planning a layout of their new room (maybe on graph paper/to scale?), map reading in a new town...it barely counts as "school" but my kids have learned about ferries, oysters, seagull observation, spider hunts (our new house has been vacant for a few months!!)... I wonder if you could scan a whole bunch of your materials into a laptop and then bring along a small printer...that would have been an EXCELLENT idea for us, too bad I didn't think of it a month ago. But with an internet connection and a printer you could find more information about topics that come up. My kids asked some really good travel questions that I had no answers for! Good luck on your move :grouphug:

We got one in May, my husband had back surgery in May 2010 and I'm not sure his back ever will be back to normal, but that was why we looked Tempurpedic. So far I really like it. I can sleep on my tummy and not have back pain in the morning. The best part is that I was having hip & knee pain (and needed to sleep with a pillow btwn my knees for comfort). On the Tempurpedic, I can sleep with no pillows below my waist and my hips and knees feel great. My husband is still not sold on the mattress. His back pain comes and goes and so the bed hasn't solved that. I wouldn't be surprised if he needs another surgery on his back in the future, nothing seems to help his back. Although I'll remember about the heating pads while using the bed, thank you!! The weird part is that since we got the Tempurpedic, I dream A LOT more than I did with our spring mattress :confused: Does this mean I'm sleeping deeper? I don't know, but sometimes I do feel more tired because of the dreams I'm having. Not sure that's really the bed's fault though. :tongue_smilie:

Thank you, btdt travelers! You answered all my (unstated) concerns about the weather. I will probably be the coldest one of the family, we have our a/c at 81 here, so maybe I should just pack all the extra clothes for ME lol!

One 11 year old male (neutered) cat, one big litter box. We dump the whole thing out and put in fresh about every 6 days. We use the pressed sawdust litter and I think the urine smell isn't as bad...for human noses anyway ;) That being said, we did go through a spell where he was peeing on the carpet, first time ever. We don't know why but he hasn't done it for 3 ish months, I hope that is now over!

And for us 70s is long pants weather. I guess even if we don't pack enough, there's plenty of Wal-Marts on the way there. :lol:

No, our stuff will be put in storage b/c we won't be there to meet the truck. (Don't have a house to put it in anyway.)

I'm thinking as I'm typing, we're coming down to the last week before the movers come! Panic!! We are moving from hot & sticky noVA to WA state (east of Seattle). I'm organizing our clothing into hot weather and cold weather piles...I have no clue what the weather will be as we cross the US :confused: We're stopping in Iowa after 3 days of travel (and staying for a week), so I can do laundry there. But we do not have housing yet in WA, and we're leaving our washer & dryer here so we'll be using a laundromat until a lease is signed, we're moved in and new ones are delivered (maybe mid-Sept?). The minivan will be very full, it's 2 animal crates, 3 kids & 2 adults, and travel gear. We're heading straight through, not doing a lot of sight seeing unless temperatures are cool and we can leave the pets in the car. We're estimating a week on the road. I always pack too many clothes, but I have a feeling we're going to be so cold in WA after the heat here. So what would you pack? A week of hot weather clothes, a week of cold, per person? 4 days of each per person? The kids are fine with wearing pants/shorts again. Maybe count on that and then sweatshirts and yoga pants that seem to pack tightly? My kids are ticked that they're going to have to wear SHOES and SOCKS again...that their everyday crocs might not be sufficient for the weather out there.:lol: Thanks for reading this long drawn-out ramble, but I know there's so many cross-country travelers on this board :D

ditto!! :lol:

Ours aren't so tiny, but I've spent the last week staring at our granite counters, waiting to see if any of the dots starts moving. :blink: It's been hot & dry here too. Usually the ant traps work within a few days but this time we still have stragglers here & there. I can't even see where they're coming from. A friend told me to sprinkle baby powder around where they seem to be clustering and so I tried it. It worked (obviously not as fast as Terro though), the ants freak out when they're covered in powder. I kind of enjoyed watching it, really. I've also been frequently wiping the counters down with bleach and not leaving dirty dishes in the sink. :blush: If I was an ant I probably would have come in my house too, we're horrible about leaving the dishes til late at night.

We are visiting my mom in central Iowa and she has some anti-deer tricks. The one that has scared the deer away from her pole beans is video tape. Break open the cassette and string the tape btwn 2 posts above your plants and the wind will make it hum and the sun glints off of it nicely! You will have to replace it bc it doesn't weather well, but we have seen no evidence of deer since my mom put it up!! Some things will just have to be fenced off from those evil bunnies. Maybe craigslist to see if any gardeners have already given up and have fencing?? Good luck on the worms. Those are just creepy!

Thank you for the links, the 2nd link/recipe will be Saturday night's supper! IF I remember to make the dough on Friday night :lol: In the past, I've tried going 1/2 WW and 1/2 all purpose flour in my standard pizza crust recipe and it was a disaster. I had to fight to get my pizzas off the cookie sheet :glare: and that was with generously olive oiled pans. So frustrating (and embarrassing) to have to fight with your pizza in front of your starving family :tongue_smilie:

that's hilarious!! love it!:tongue_smilie:

I'm old-fashioned and a party pooper and all that, but when I see this spelling: Chrysztyna my brain just does NOT see the name Christina. Why do people make their children's names a spelling challenge :confused: Am I really a fuddy duddy?!? Or maybe this is some kind of Eastern European spelling?:confused: This spelling really makes me question the phonics rules I learned as a child. And hopefully no one has a daughter here that they have named Chrysztyna. :blush:

My husband is out of the house about 90 hours a week (I'm counting his work hours and commute hours as well). The yucky part is that his commute is an hour each way, so even if there is an emergency, he would still be delayed. He goes in on Saturdays and Sundays, although tries to go in a little later & come home around 5. It's a little easier for me since he's doing training right now before he goes back to sea duty (Navy), and I know it won't last forever. It is hard however when the kids miss him and I miss him and we end up grating on each other's nerves...it's definitely a learning process as the kids get older and need their daddy time. We used to do the early bedtime as well, but now that DH comes home at 7:30, I do let the kids stay up later so that we can have family time. I keep hoping that they'll sleep in later as a result, but that hasn't started yet.:glare: So HSing is awesome that it's flexible enough to make time when our family needs it. One other thing I do is I really limit extracurriculars. DD8 & DS6 are in scouts, then they're active in Wednesday night church (sometimes Sunday activities there as well) and then random playdates and that is it at this age. It may change a few years down the road, but I'm a homebody and I just cannot handle being a taxi driver!!! :auto: Hate traffic, hate being "scheduled", hate being busy every night. Alright, I got that off my chest! lol I hope someone else has suggestions, I'm certainly listening!:bigear:

I didn't read all response, I'm just jumping in here... We named our youngest Elisha, which is a form of Elizabeth. We say it just like "uh-lee-shuh", although some folks try to pronounce it like Elijah. Not a big deal, they were buddies in the Bible anyway :lol: I have a friend who has an Elizabeth and an Isabella but didn't realize until younger Elizabeth was a few months old that they're basically the same name (in meaning). She's used to it now, and they each have their own personalities (like night & day actually) but I don't think I would have done it in my own family. I tend to go toward names that aren't as common. I still wish we had named our youngest Naomi, as a testament to my grandmother named Ruth but my husband was against that completely. She does look so much like my grandmother though! Good luck, I hope you find the perfect name. I remember with our last pregnancy that it was almost impossible for us to agree on a name. Maybe involve your kids, let them have a vote?

:iagree: It could have turned out so much worse!:grouphug:

I vote for the black dog. I have a soft spot for them, we have one and I've heard of a shelter that offers a cheaper rate for BBDs (big black dogs). :( Poor BBDs :( I'd go with either the black dog or the hound/beagle (middle), simply because of the shed factor. Good luck and will there be a poll on the name after the final decision is made?:lol:

This happened to us a few weeks ago! We tried to go bowling, of all things, and the employee wouldn't let us bowl since they were expecting a group of school kids. There were over 100 kids due in half an hour, but wouldn't let us bowl on ONE lane, even for one game. And yes, 100 kids in one bowling alley is a lot, but allowing us just one game would have been really fun for my kids too. *pout* We've lived here for almost 3 years and this was the first time we'd even been inside this alley. I was so surprised that the whole place was reserved...there certainly were no signs on the front door letting bowlers know that there would be no open bowling. Not only do I not want to go back and try again, but now I've figured it up and with no coupons we could easily spend $50 on 2 games of bowling for the 4 of us. Just for bowling. (That's another thing that blows my mind, when did bowling get so pricey??!?!?!) Regarding the sharing the sidewalk, I find that to be just common RUDENESS, in all ages, these days. I sound like a grouchy old lady but common courtesy seems to have disappeared with the invention of the cell phone. Ok, rant over. For now.