I haven't read all the responses but wanted to add mine. I have chickens and they are so therapeutic for me. I never would have believed it if someone told me two years ago the peace and solace I get when I am sitting with them. I take a book and go sit with my chickens. I have hatched most of mine and it's so much fun to watch them grow. Watching their antics adds a little humor to my day. And... the bonus is that they also provide me with eggs.

I have no affiliation with any of the sites linked. I have been on the diet (on round 3 right now) and it works for me. It's a VERY hard diet to do mentally, but if you stick to it, it will work. I've lost 60 lbs on the hCG diet. Make sure you read the original protocol: http://hcgdietinfo.com/Diet-HCG.htm and follow only the original protocol for your food list. There are a lot of BS sites that allow a more variety of foods and most people don't understand why it doesn't work for them. DO NOT buy any hCG that you find in Walmart or GNC. You can get the "Intermountain hCG pellets" from http://www.Netrition.com. Put three pellets under your tongue three times a day. There is a huge support group for hCG at hcgdietinfo.com and lowcarbfriends.com. BEST.DIET.EVER! When I am in between rounds I eat 2200 calories a day and don't gain any weight.

I too have had the same problems. I have lost 60 lbs but still have another 40 to go. Because of my weight loss my legs look absolutely awful. I tried on suits expecting to be happy to be in a smaller size but I sat and cried when I looked at all the flabby skin on my legs. I found a bathing suit here: http://modestlyyoursswimwear.com/swimwearstyles.html Yes, they are expensive but they are custom made to your measurements. I bought the "Tropical Paradise" style, it has a sarong skirt over shorts. I modified mine to drop the neckline an inch and to have the leggings come right above my knee. I have never in my life spent so much money on a bathing suit, but I figure I will get a few years out of it. If I lose the rest of my weight, then I will reward myself with a new one.

I let my dog lick my feet. She hears the recliner go up and she comes running to lick my feet. She gets in between my toes and licks all the way up my legs to my knees. Totally grosses out my DH lol.

Yes, but then you have to actually live in NJ! I lived there for 45 yrs, and escaped to South Carolina two years ago. It costs me $25 a yr to join a homeschool "oversight" association which is very hands off. I fill out one form a year that says I am following the laws of the State. In SC the public schools are awful, but we can join in PS sports, clubs and extra curricular activities as of this coming school year.

I get this a lot too. My two oldest are full siblings from my first marriage and they look nothing alike. One is dark hair/complexion and the other is very light with blonde hair. My girls are adopted and my youngest is Chinese. Our family portraits look like you took six strangers off a street and put them together for a photo lol. Most people can see that my youngest was adopted, and the next question is always "are they all adopted?" or "any of them your REAL children?". My older kids are adults now, and the questions don't bother me like it used to. Now I like to have fun with their questions. My older daughter is Caucasian (adopted from here in the USA), but when people find out she was adopted we now respond with "Yes, from a little country called U-jiji, she is from a small village in the middle of nowhere on the African continent". It takes them a while to come up with another question after that response. I have had someone ask me if my youngest daughter's father is Chinese. I said "I don't remember, it was dark and I didn't get a good look at him".

My friend named her daughter Isabeau, after a character in her favorite movie. She is Italian and when she pronounces it, it sounds nice. But when any American pronounces it, it sounds like "Iz a bow". Her nickname is Bobo. That is what most people, including me, have wound up calling her.

My daughter is Chinese and she had a few at birth. By her third or fourth year they had mostly faded.

I am low carb, not no carb. I eat whole grain bread or brown rice a few times a week. Two slices of Natures Own whole wheat bread is approx 25 carbs. I make french toast with it for breakfast..yummm. There is a recipe for making rolls out of eggs and cream cheese, which I use for hamburger buns when I'm in the mood for a bun. The hardest thing for me to give up was pasta, which I LOVE. After a while though it didn't bother me to serve it for dinner to my kids. I have cut out just about all sugar, although in the past 6 months I have had a candy bar two or three times. Nothing like what I used to eat though. I have found my tastes have changed and things that I used to live on now don't appeal to me.

Christian Light Education is not colorful but that is exactly what my dd needed. It's spiral and she does very well with it. You can also buy one "Light Unit" at a time if cash is tight.

My niece is named Trinity Faith.

Same here. When I cut out the carbs and sugar and went to a meat/veggies/dairy/full fat diet I lost 60 lbs, and I haven't felt this great in 20 yrs. I will never choke down a low-fat anything ever again. Bring on the BIG steak!

I shop once a month. In one day I will get 3 carts at Aldi and another cart at Walmart.

I grew up in Springfield, Union Co.

Formerly from NJ here. When my son was younger his test asked which doesn't rhyme: frog, log, dog and cat. To us, there are two that don't rhyme, dog and cat. We pronounce dog ..dawg.. and dog doesn't rhyme with frog or log!

I have lost an elephants penis too! I have been doing the hCG diet and maintenance is exactly the same foods as what you eat. I'm looking at losing another 40 lbs.

My son has autism and when he was younger he communicated to us with drawings. He is very talented artistically and he would sit and draw for hours, literally. To save on paper waste I bought washable Crayola markers and let him draw directly on my kitchen floor. It was an off white color and gave him room to sprawl out and draw. Never had an issue with getting the marker off the floor. For xmas my MIL gave him Rose-Art washable markers. No matter what I did I could not get the marker to come completely off of the floor. Never again have I used anything but Crayola washable markers.

We have four kids. I wish I could get my DH to realize that five really isn't too many but that hasn't happened..yet. My two boys have the same father and look nothing alike. One is dark haired and the other is blond. My two girls are adopted, our youngest is Asian. Our family portraits look like you took six strangers and threw them all together for a picture. It's very obvious that our youngest (adopted from China) is adopted. When people see all four of my kids they always ask if ALL of them are adopted. I have responded with two of them are adopted, but I don't remember which ones. That usually shuts them up. It still amazes me how some people think they have a right to comment and know every thing about our family.

We will be going on four years of homeschooling. The one thing I learned is not to try to recreate public school at home. Our first year I had a rigid schedule but that went out the window pretty quick. We are very relaxed homeschoolers now. We don't even start our school day until after lunch. We don't work M-F, we do five days but that could include a weekend if we have something planned during the week. We also school year round which allows for more shorter breaks during the year. We live in the south and it gets hot in the summer so we use the sweltering afternoon hours to get our school work done. When it cools off in October-November we take 3-4 weeks off to enjoy being outside in good weather. The best advice I have ever received was to just enjoy my kids. Don't stress if things don't get done on schedule.

Your daughters are beautiful! We adopted our seven yr old from China.

Hands down for my oldest daughter the best thing ever was Teaching Textbooks Algebra. She wasted a full school year trying SOS, Aleks and Lifepacs and even a personal tutor before it clicked with Teaching Textbooks. For my younger daughter the miracle has been CLE math. We tried MUS and it was too distracting for her. She just wanted to play with the manipulatives lol.

I agree. There are people out there that will do anything to feed their starving children. There is a book called "One Second After" by William Forstchen, very good read. It will give you an idea of what can happen to humanity in the event of a major crisis.

We school year round also but I'm always on the look out for new curriculum. We will start 2nd grade in August and as of now we will be using the following: CLE 200 Math, Language Arts, Social Studies & Bible, Horizons Spelling, we just started Explode the Code 4 so we will finish that up, also just started A Reason for Handwriting D a bit early, and I'm looking at Nancy Larson Science but haven't bought it yet.

South Carolina!!

I'd speak to the coach. There is no reason a child should have lice for this long and be allowed near other children. My daughter came home on Friday with lice in her hair. I noticed last Wednesday that she was itching, and figured it was shampoo that she didn't rinse out of her hair. She is 6 and likes to wash her own hair, but doesn't always rinse well. When she came home on Friday, I saw it in her hair and I immediately googled for images of lice. I have four kids, and this was the first time I have had to deal with lice. I got out my little egg shaped microscope and put it on her head. Sure enough, I saw the same thing in the microscope as what was on the page. I went out and bought the lice gel. It took me three hours on Friday pm and another 2 hours on Saturday (after I cut her long hair short). I went through it again with the microscope and every last bug was gone. Today she went to school and the nurse checked her head and confirmed they were gone. She said if there were any nits left in her hair that she would have called me to come pick her up and do another treatment on her head.