Consider living out in Enumclaw, Black Diamond, or Maple Valley. Unless you want to live in a busy city/suburb area, these are smaller, somewhat rural communities and you can get to Kent the "back way" without getting on the freeways. Not to say it'll be an easy commute, but you won't be on the freeway. I grew up near Enumclaw and it's a really nice area. Kent is the scariest place I ever lived. I'm sure there are nicer parts, but as Jean said, there are sketchy parts, too.

This is actually the "straw that broke the camel's back," as it were, as I/our family converted to the Eastern Orthodox church after 20+ years in the evangelical protestant world. Prior to becoming interested in Orthodoxy, I studied this topic up and down, left and right. I did a word study looking up each and every word in the Corinthians section and looked at all the direct and implied meanings. I came to the conclusion that women should cover in church especially and maybe all the time (didn't quite finish that study). I started wearing a headcovering to church even though no one else in the congregation (except 1-2 other ladies who did sometimes). Then I got exhausted from all the work in evangelicalism that being guided by "personal conviction" entails. (This is my story, btw, not putting it on anyone else.) After that time, I came to the point of feeling like "Really?! It's been 2000 years. Hasn't any of this been figured out by now? Why are we still trying to decide things like headcovering after 2000 years?" and as I read about the EO Church, I started realizing, yes, this has been figured out long before now. Now, that's not to say there's unity TODAY in the EO church on this -- some ladies cover, some don't -- but back at the beginning, women covered and the historical, traditional practice is to cover. You see it in the icons -- the Theotokos always has a headcovering on, as do all the female saints except St Mary of Egypt (that I know of). In the parish through which we came to the EO, most of the women cover. So instead of me deciding that my personal conviction was to cover, I just covered because that's what was done. It was the culture I was choosing to be a part of. So I cover for all church services/liturgical practices. Again, my story and there will be some variation and differences with other Orthodox Christian women, but the question was why do I cover so I answered. And I'm painting a house we're closing on tomorrow, so I'm going away again now and heading back to that. Buenos dias!

So the question isn't about whether or not I should paint the house black (I'm pretty sold on doing so having seen some great examples of small houses painted black with a lot of white trim, and sunny, colorful flowers in front and real wood accents like front door and window shutters; you'll have to trust me that the house itself can carry this off) -- the question is, will it reaaallly make it a LOT hotter inside on a warm summer's day? How much hotter? Like 20 degrees hotter or like 3-5 degrees hotter? It's a smallish one-story house with no air conditioning (well, there's a small window a/c that does help a bit) but a decent amount of shade trees. It DOES get late afternoon/early evening sun through the windows on the west side. Who lives in a really dark house in a hot-summer climate? What's your experience been? Are you snarling and gnashing your teeth every summer wanting to repaint if you could? Or is it kind of, yeah, whatever? If it does make a noticeable difference in the summer, does it help with warmth though in the winter? Inquiring minds want to know.

Since we (Eastern Orthodox) eat vegan at least half the year, any Orthodox fasting cookbooks or blogs would work. For example, there's a cookbook called When You Fast by Catherine Mandell. Often parishes have self-produced cookbooks, too. The only caveat with Orthodox cookbooks is that we do have shrimp and similar seafood (not fish) on fasting days, so you might see some of that in an otherwise vegan recipe. We use the term "Lenten" instead of vegan so you could Goodsearch "Lenten Orthodox recipes."

UPDATE: No extra babies in there. What she felt moving was probably the omasun ("water stomach" according to Dr. Dan) and what I saw bulging out was probably a hernia. So there we go! Thank goodness. I'm not up to another baby right now, as I'm sure is the case for mama goat, too. (Can you imagine giving birth twice in a month?!)

His last paragraph describes what I remember of VBS when I was a child 40 plus years ago. It was a week where I'm sure the ladies came up with the materials themselves because they knew us and loved us and wanted to teach us the faith our little church followed. I've thought about doing something similar in our church, although it would be Vacation Church School not Vacation Bible School. Not something splashy, or wide spread, but something for just our little parish.

Thanks for the interesting stories, Daria (lol!). Not two uteruses, Rose, same uterus for both, from what I understand anyway! Just somehow -- if it is a true superfetation -- she went into heat again even though already pregnant and got pregnant again. It has actually happened in humans, too, but still, very rare. Fairfarmhand, we'll do the ultrasound on Monday. She's all closed up; the birth was three weeks ago. I've put my hand (arm, really) in to help deliver breeches before, but I don't know that I should do it now (?). Besides, after two kids were born two years ago, I reached in to see if there was another and said, "Nope! Nothing here..." and the biggest of the three was born a couple of hours later. Sigh. I'm an accidental goat midwife. And yes, we're aware of a situation such as what you described (where a baby didn't come out and ended up dying and infecting the mama goat), so since we don't want to lose this mama, we'll take her in on Monday. In that situation, the mama went downhill continuously from shortly after the birth until they treated her a couple of weeks later once they realized what was going on; in our situation, the mama goat is doing fabulously and we think we feel the baby moving. I've read now about deliveries about 3 weeks after a first delivery. Anyway, we'll find out on Monday. Thank you so much for your thoughts!

I have a vet. appointment for an ultrasound on Monday but she could deliver before then. I guess we'll see what happens! She's a great mama so I hope everything's fine and if she does deliver another one, that it goes well. One vet that I talked to (not the one I have the appointment with, and who doesn't have the facilities for surgery anyway) said she would do surgery ASAP, but I guess I don't agree. The mama isn't having any negative symptoms whatsoever and if baby is in there and living, which we think it is (IF there's a baby in there still), I don't see why it couldn't deliver naturally. I guess I'm thinking about a situation we're aware of where a mama delivered two kids and then was done -- except there was still a baby in there, which eventually died. The mama went downhill over the course of a couple of weeks and eventually either delivered the dead baby or had surgery to get it out. That didn't turn out well (lost the baby, but not the mama although she took awhile to recover), but our mama isn't going downhill at all. She's happily taking care of the two babies she does have.

Our mama dairy goat just gave birth to two cutie little kids three weeks ago and we now think there's another living one still in there. She's still big and my daughter says she feels something in there (when she turned to move away from us yesterday, the side bulge wasn't just spread out and flabby, but you could see it shape around something inside, so I'm thinking so, too). Our breeder always asks us to leave the mama-to-be at her place for a month to be more sure that the goat was successfully bred, but it seems this time our goat bred near the beginning of her stay and again, different estrus, nearer the end of her stay. Any similar experience out there? Advice? What will we need to know/do? Yes, I'll google this too but it's always nice to hear from people directly,too. My daughter said she thinks that (if the baby[-ies] survive), she'll have to bottle feed because the bigger siblings will just push them away if they try to nurse. I suppose we could take the babies off the mama for a week or something so that the babies can try and nurse? From what I read, we'll have to get a colostrum replacement for the babies. Aye-yi-yi. We are in the middle of a move and will have less than three weeks, once we close next week, to be out of our place. NOT a good time, but apparently the Lord thinks it is. :)

You could check out what's on stage at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre downtown. We saw Les Mis there a few years ago and it was just lovely. Side note: I'm an Airbnb host and I encourage you to check some out! You can tell a lot by the reviews and photos. Use this link if you're not already registered at Airbnb (www.airbnb.com/c/dsautter6) and you'll save something like $40 on a stay. When I'm looking for a place to stay, I check out the photos thoroughly, as well as the recent reviews. I lwant to see a good more-than-a-handful of photos and I look for numerous reviews where the guests gush about their stay and I also look for certain things (parking onsite, private bathroom, two beds, etc.), so use the search tool to limit my search by those things. Vancouver is a great city.

We won an IKEA kitchen about ten years ago and installed it in our hosue; that hosue is now a rental and as far as I can tell, it's still holding up well. We do have the old system, too, which is a bummer because now we can't change anything out, but you'd get the new system so that wouldn't be an issue for you. By the way, they run that sale every year in June (I believe, somewhere around this time of year anyway), so if it doesn't happen this year, you can also get the sale price next year.

Someone else stated it above, but yes, you get in line between the numbered stanchions and the whole group on one side of the stanchions boards at one time while the other side waits their turn (they don't cut off a group between like 30-34 and 35-39,for example). SW doesn't monitor if you're in the right place in line, but the people do! People kind of check with each other, "What number are you? Oh, I'm right here behind (or in front of) you," and then they make room, etc. That's been my experience anyway. I, too, love Southwest and choose it first if it works out. Yes, partly because it's consistently very inexpensive (they have sales all the time; we flew Seattle to Phoenix for $108 RT two months ago), but also because of their awesome customer service policies like changing a flight without a fee, the free baggage and carry-ons, and -- as someone said above -- the often times funny/fun flight attendants.

I added a little bit more information to the post if you want to reread it. :)

I was thinking the same thing when I read that. I'd ask the flight attendant for help in getting the seats if I was next in line and wanted them. I fly almost exclusively Southwest and I don't mind the way they do seating. You can also pay extra ahead of time to be in the A section. Then you don't have to remember to log on 24 hours out.

We just flew in April/May, same situation as you (even the hypothetical forgetting to get on the app at the 24 hour mark). We were late B's on the first flight. I was traveling with four kids, two older teens and two under 12 and I wanted to make sure that at least the two youngers and I sat together. I let the older teens go wherever they wanted, so no problem there, but we also had zilch problem finding three seats together for me and the youngers. Sure it was a little bit further back, but there were still a LOT of empty rows in the back half when we boarded. I also mentioned it to the flight attendant at the front when we first entered the plane, and while she said it wouldn't be a problem, she also called back to the back to have them check on the situation. They came up and made sure we found what we wanted when we got back there. I wouldn't worry about it. ETA: These were full flights, too.

No, but on a related (maybe?) topic: We're trying to buy a house and the appraisals here are currently six weeks out (we'd wanted to close in four). My loan officer just told me that there used to be 4000 appraisers in our state, but now there are just 1600. So that looks like an in-demand field, at least where we live (WA). He also said they're working 6-7 day weeks.

This. I don't get why people ask or require the invoice thing. It's much easier (IMO) for them to just send the funds with your e-mail address. I use invoicing in PayPal for business, but not for book selling (unless the buyer requires which, as I said, I don't get). To me, it's extra time/effort.

I would think that means the reception, although I wouldn't be 100% certain. I read it as "our marriage has already happened [by that point], and now we want to celebrate with you." Wouldn't matter to me if it was friends or family -- I'd go to whatever it meant.

Tap, message me and I'll get an address to you.

Thanks to everyone for your comments and prayers.

I don't know what his specific job was, but he worked at an winery (the area is famous for its wineries and orchards). The family uploaded a video of Noah telling his story to one of the nurses if anyone would like to watch. The first 8:20 or so is him getting outside for the first time; he starts telling the story at about 8:20.

I know. He doesn't live at home so his family didn't know he was "missing" and he didn't work the next day so work didn't either. It was near freezing to freezing - and it rained like cats and dogs the last morning -- before he was found. He has some frostbite on his chin. They posted a picture of him sitting up and smiling today.

Additional info to add to the original post: He fell 25-30 feet, rolled to about 200 feet, and (because no one saw him or knew he'd fallen), he pulled himself half a mile across rocks -- all with a broken back -- until he found someone, a day and a half later. He sat up today and there's a photo of that on the youcaring page.

UPDATE (5/23): The family uploaded a video of Noah telling his story to one of the nurses if anyone would like to watch. The first 8:20 or so is him getting outside in his chair for the first time; he starts telling the story at about 8:20. ( ) ORIGINAL POST What a strong, determined young kid. Noah fell from a cliff while at work and broke his back. He fell on Monday afternoon and wasn't found until Wednesday. He thought about his grandparents and parents and nine siblings and held on with all he had. He has had two surgeries and will likely not walk again. This family lives about two hours from here and I just sat and chatted with the mom for awhile a couple of weeks ago. There's a group of us that gets together for events with our kids. See story here, and of course any donations would be much appreciated. The family has a long road ahead of them. If you want to give and mention that you came via WTM/Juliana so they know, you can, but not necessary of course. Prayers and good thoughts welcome too! https://www.youcaring.com/noahmessenger-827576

Yes, I have always carried birth certificates and a letter from my husband when I've traveled with our kids, but without him, into/out of Canada. My parents were both born in Canada, so we've gone a lot. Even WITH a letter and birth certificates for all, we were detained coming back into the States once while they contacted my husband by phone. I just like to point out whenever I see it stated that everyone needs a passport for travel to/from Canada that kids 15 and under don't if traveling by land. There were times we wouldn't have been able to go if that were the case because getting passports for seven kids at once was impossible financially.