Actually I need to replace my knife, the darn thing is close to 20 years old but it still cuts better then the stuff I find in the stores. Anyway this is the one I was looking at, it has very good reviews, especially when used with the extra non serrated blade http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000PRP288/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

I just looked and the cheapest on craigslist is $800. I will be happy if it lasts a year, next year we should be in a better position to afford something better and lasting. Right now were literally counting pennies. I do plan on doing the monthly thing and freezing. That would mean the only thing I would need to buy is ham and I haven't found any thats paleo friendly around here. Need to check the health food store next time I'm in town.

The Dr suggested dd13 and I needed the Paleo diet for valid medical reasons, 9 days in I agree, we cheated yesterday due to lack of ready made food handy and I regret it, we are paying for it today. It is bloody expensive though! An idea hit me this morning, why not season, cook and slice my own lunch meats? I can't hand slice thin meat for roll ups to save my life so I'm thinking meat slicer. Does anyone else do this? It looks like I can get one for around $100 on Amazon. I think it would very quickly pay for itself if it means I'm not shelling out for additive free lunch meats.

dd13 has been struggling with pre-algebra, we ended up skipping 1st semester and going to 2nd which is much much easier for her figuring we would go back to the harder stuff later when we were not in a time crunch for percentages/progress. I ended up asking the charter school if we could just drop it and switch to dual enrollment and I would buy our own program because it was the start of a new semester and she just wasn't getting the math the way it was presented. They offered her Excel math instead. I had her take the placement test and I am banging my head. This child was not able to do any multi-digit multiplication, division or fractions. She got 20/30 for 4th grade (is that even passing?!), 9/27 for 5th grade and on both its the above that killed her score. She KNEW this stuff inside and out and mastered it 100% back in 3rd-4th grade. She didn't even try the 6th grade portion because it was all word problems:( Where do I go from here? I will call out teacher tomorrow but I'm at a loss. She grasps harder stuff easy but this is basic math! So, suggestions? She's an extreme visual learner and was just dx'd with high functioning autism, waiting to get the test results to find out exactly whats going on. We used TT 4-7 when covering this stuff and the charter teacher we had at the time confirmed independently dd knew the material before we moved on.

I'm here, unless you have support or really self motivated kids its nearly impossible to HS as a single working parent. I've basically had to quit my job to HS my oldest. I wish you luck, I know there are parents who do it but I don't have the supports I need to do both.

I filed the 31st, accepted on the 2nd and its still being processed. Its going to pay rent and was supposed to carry us though the year on the little bit were in the red every month with me not working, maybe pay for us to move to better to a better place but with the dx's I got on dd13 yesterday it looks like it might be going on treatment instead.

She was concerned about the level of anxiety and thinks dd might have some really serious mental health issues as well, (we've adapted every aspect of our life around dd so I honestly dont tend to see what she was telling me very often unless dd is under severe stress and being out of her routine and being asked to do these tasks could very well do that) I was starting to feel a bit over whelmed and frustrated. She was kinda adamant that we see a psych and get dd on some meds and counciling. She refused to acknowledge dd13's blood disorder which will cause the anxiety she's seeing when its uncontrolled (we FINALLY found a Dr a few days ago! Waiting for my tax return since its out of pocket), her celiac disease can also cause those types of mental health issues as well if the person is getting gluten. I've been transiting to paleo because my body is mistaking legumes and grains for gluten. I'm wondering if the same is happening to her so today we both go 100% paleo. Thank heavens I have gotten some really good meat deals over the past 3 months and as of yesterday the freezer is packed with meat and veggies and I found a website that has recipes that actually sounds like stuff we would eat and it made me realize we could still eat much of the same stuff we already do, just need to swap out things like romaine lettuce for taco shells:) She said dd couldn't and showed a lot of anxiety , started crying and was very confused about what they wanted if I remember right, it was the only thing dd mentioned from the testing and she just said did didn't want to do it and they finally gave up and moved on. What she failed to mention was there were tears involved in that test and several others. They said she had great difficultly doing unstructured stuff and started doing better once they switched over to structured stuff. That explains a lot about what I see around here, dd is not at all able to see things from another POV, she has the same expectations for everyone, she expects dd7 to be just as smart as her and gets angry when dd7 does not meet what she expects which is pretty much always because she's 7 but dd13 does not accept there is a huge difference in ability and knowledge. If I'm down with the flu she doesn't make allowances and still expects me to get up and do everything including making meals full meals, unfortunately it feels like dd13 has no compassion or understanding for anything outside of herself. It saddens me to think that this is not just selfishness and something she can learn:( oh boy, she just got up and is in a VERY BAD mood:( Geeze, she just tried to lock me in my room because I took away the kindle when she rudely demanded I log it back in to hulu, she has been extremely rude, disrespectful and angry making everyones morning very unpleasant. Good thing I removed the latch from the door after the last time she got PO'd at me and locked me and dd7 in:) The door will hold closed due to pressure but not actually lock us in but she doesn't know that:) We have the counseling/services intake appt on the 11th, I'm told they have a lot of resources in dealing with autism, I hope they actually have help to offer because we went though 5 years of intensive counseling/behavior services and got no where but we didn't know autism was part of the picture and that was a different agency that handled that stuff.

We finally got the testing today for high functioning autism for dd13 today, it was a long day and I find myself physically and emotionally drained. The therapist came out to talk to me a couple of different times to update me and discuss some concerns she had (someone else was doing the testing). She seemed to think a couple things were significant but I don't quite understand. Please enlighten me:) dd refused to play with the dolls and act out a scene of some sort and she needed to make up a story to go with a picture book. She refused and I guess there were some tears and a lot of anxiety involved. It sounds like they wanted her to display imaginative play if I'm understanding this right. Thats not something she has ever really done, in fact I remember announcing at the monthly meeting at work how proud I was that at 4 she played tea party with me, it was the first time (and probably the last) she ever used her imagination for that type of play. (I worked at a special needs family resource center so they understood why I was so excited) outside of playsilk fashion design she doesn't do imaginative play, never has. They could tell within 5 minutes of talking to dd she was at least an aspie:( By the end of the day they were able to tell me even without tallying up everything yet were dealing with autism. Said we will get the report in about 2 weeks. Its going to be a long 2 weeks.

I can't even get to the pipes and we have a raccoon family living under the house so I'm not about to go down there to see if I can even access the pipes, supposedly they are all inside the house except the mainline. The landlord refuses to do anything to this house, including getting rid of the raccoons. Were moving as soon as I get my tax return, this place is costing me a fortune in utilities and needs a lot of repairs which he refuses to do. Tonight I'm thinking of just shutting off the water and draining the system, were leaving for the day pretty early tomorrow so I won't even be home to babysit the pipes and I discovered the kitchen sink is leaking again so I can't leave it running. ugh, its -15F with the wind chill and may go down to -25F tonight. Were moving out of the area and never again will I rent a house thats not newer and well insulated! Old house charm is not worth the expense, $1,100 in utilities since Oct and thats not keeping us toasty warm either!

Its 9F outside, -8F with the wind chill right now. This is an old house with no insulation on the first floor except the kitchen which was gutted and redone. I was told all the pipes are PEX and inside the house which I know it not true because I can see PVC pipe in the laundry room which shares a wall with the bathroom which I know was not insulated when they supposedly redid it. We've had issues with the pipes trying to freeze up before so I leave the water dripping. They said it may get down to -28F last night with the wind chill so I left the bathtub and sink at a fast drip and left the kitchen sink at a slow run since it won't drip without shutting itself off. All was fine when I got up. I was working in the kitchen until around 10:30am running water and stuff. I may or may not have left the kitchen sink dripping when I left the room, however the bathroom stuff was not touched so we still had dripping water. At 1pm dd7 comes running and yelling we have no water. Yep, pipes froze up! Opened up everything I could all the way and 10-15 min later we started getting water flowing. What the heck do I do? Do I need to leave it actually flowing instead of a really fast drip/thin stream?

I will never, ever buy a fridge/freezer combo again. I have a 16 cu ft freezer-less refrigerator and same size upright freezer. I LOVE my fridge! Its 11 years old right now and something went out so its unplugged (keeps freezing everything on the bottom 2 shelves) and it will cost $200-300 to fix and you bet your behind I am paying to fix it with my tax return. I love having tons of space for all the fresh fruit and veggies and room to stock up on eggs and almond milk. Anyway, were stuck using the combo fridge that came with this place right now and its driving me crazy!

The doors on this old house (108 years old) are a mess and impossible to install weather stripping. I may have 1/8 opening at one end of the door and 3/4 at the top and even trying different sizes of foam along the door didn't work. The doors need to be redone period and replaced since the door frame larger then the door. I have a heavy quilt over the door but we still get a lot of drafts. It finally occurred to me, what about a vertical draft dodger? Something like this though to help prevent the draft from both sides and put it all the way around the door. Temps go sub zero again tomorrow and I want to plug this thing up! Quick google search didn't reveal much. If the roads out near my parents are cleared enough I can get out to the store to pick up a couple things. The door is metal so I can't just tack something to it.

How large are the large loaves? I know we get 6 sandwiches from the small ones plus 2 heels. I usually pay $4.97 at Walmart I think. Its almost $6 if I have to pick it up at the store half hour from here, I try stocking up in the city an hour away when its on sale and I have coupons and get it for $2.29:) I picked up 30 loaves last time, my freezer was a bit packed lol

I am looking at other options, I'm just thinking out loud here and want others peoples thoughts. Believe me, I have a lot of different ideas going though my head from moving to various cities to how we could survive here if we stayed. My ex's dd is moving there this summer to attend the Uni in the fall and he's asked me to really consider moving there (I had brought it up first before he told me she got into the Uni there) since he can't move due to his job and he doesn't want her living that far away with no one around if something goes wrong. She's lived a pretty sheltered life so being on her own is going to be a huge shock to her. It could actually work out to the benefit of both of us. So I guess I would know 1 person but I assume she will be busy with school, I haven't thought to hard about that angle TBH. I still think of her as a little kid, its hard to believe she's 17 now. She would be a good influence on my dd13 who looks up to her though. She's one of those dream kids who are easy, rarely get into trouble, are compliant and A+ students. lol, everything my dd is not:)

Do you happen to remember how much the Udi's bread is? Do you remember how much you pay for chicken and lamb?

I went for the first time in about 10 years last week and saw some pretty amazing deals on #10 can sized foods which I would totally use up in 1-2 days when doing OAMC type stuff but is it really worth it? Were GF/paleo, don't do processed foods much which rules out a lot of stuff. I only had about 15 minutes and most of that was spent trying to find the large Udi's bread loaves which they don't carry at that Costco:(

Holy cow you were busy! I wish I had that much energy, I won't even touch the yard for several more weeks, of course I can't even SEE the yard because its covered in a foot of white stuff with more on the way I hear.

yep, did that too. Utilities are actually half what they cost here. The lack of safety net scares the heck out of me. Major introvert here too but it would be nice to have a friend to visit, the kids need a social life, dd7 is a total social butterfly and dd13 needs a friend. I'd personally like to go out on a date lol. There is NOTHING here unless you belong to the church or use the public school. The town only has about 250 people spread out over several miles and I can't afford to drive an hour to stuff plus the cost of the activity itself.

Done all that, my only real concern is the population is 50% LDS and I'm hearing its hard for the non LDS kids to make friends or join activities. I know the LDS folks will deny it but its what I'm hearing from the non LDS folks. Outside of the LDS issue it sounds like a really great place for us, I even found a Dr that has a lot of experience in dealing with a health issue we have and I can afford him! I've been looking for 3 years since we were dx'd and haven't found one local so thats a huge deal to me to be able to see a Dr when we need to.

We have no social life here, not many chances for work either (very rural area, long work commutes with low work hours). If I'm careful with the tax return we can exist here, bills will be paid but we have nothing in common with the locals, the kids have no IRL friends here (me either), other then the fact my parents live here we have nothing holding us here. We've been here 9 months and just are not happy here. I found a city (about 60k people) on the other side of the state that looks great, much lower cost of living, checks off all the boxes for things were looking for but we don't know anyone, and I would be leaving my job here. We have income that would pay the basics but I wouldn't have the safety net of my tax return anymore since it would get used up in the move. There are many, many, many positives to moving there. Trying to figure out how to go check out the place ahead of time too, its 1000miles round trip, driving is cheapest but still it would not be cheap to drive down, get a hotel for several days to explore ect. I am a planner, I don't like surprises so just packing up a uhaul and going and hope we like it and find a rental quick is way outside of my comfort zone. Also worried about being able to find a place without having a job already there.

I really shouldn't be reading this thread, its making me want another baby! lol:)

We watch tv all day on those days

My guess is the family will be getting a visit from CPS. This is a case where reporting is mandated.

Thank you, is the HS actually HS level stuff? From the samples for 9th it doesn't look it.

Lucky you! My LL won't take care of my raccoon problem, little bugger is under the house and in the attic. Guy told me to call animal control and get a trap, I am not dealing with a raccoon! You want me to trap a mouse? fine but not a raccoon! According to dd7 there are 2, she saw them running across the yard and under the deck. I've only seen 1 at a time but it wouldn't surprise me if there are 2 with the amount of noise it makes.