Maybe you're just not drinking enough of it?:tongue_smilie:

It's alive and well. RWK's has been keeping us on track. I posted pictures of my hotspots on my blog this morning and started opening up FlyLady emails soon after. I've already seen the benefits - my sink has been shiny for a couple of days - that's something, right?

And I kept procrastinating about joining until today when I decided that sometimes confession is the best motivation. I posted pictures of why I need FlyLady on my blog. Then I went to sign up. Apparently I was already signed up so I went to change my mail status and found that the emails are actually going to my inbox. So, over at my inbox I discovered that "someone" had made a rule about FlyLady emails and they were actually going into a separate FlyLady folder that I have been studiously ignorning for who knows how long. Anyway...now that I know they're there I can spend my 2 minutes reading them.

Thanks, everyone. We had a lot of tears this afternoon. Ds 2 does not understand and I'm rather relieved about that. Ds (8) is sad, but not at all mad at his younger brother. I worried that he would really be upset with himself for leaving his ladder next to the hamster cage (cage is up high and normally littlest one wouldn't be able to get to it) but after mentioning it once he didn't bring it up again.

Drives me crazy, too. I'm not the only female, there's dd as well but then we have three boys and dh. I remember (not *that* long ago!) ds seeing me in the washroom and being absolutely shocked and confused, "Mom, where's your penis!!?", as he craned his neck to look for it.

I think I would have to move if our local homeschool store shut down. I'm usually in there once or twice a week. I spend a *lot* of money in there - not just for my own kids but I also do thousands of dollars of library purchasing through them for our homeschool library. I will do a couple of Amazon shops during the year, but the bulk of my stuff is bought locally.

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Bully Boys by Eric Walters and Jeremy's War.

He'd thank you both if he could. Poor guy. I told him he could get down and that he didn't have to eat any more cereal. He got down from his chair, said, "thanks", and came over to give me a hug. We deal with the more issue often and I always talk to him about it but let him go. This time I thought I'd try and get him to follow through with what more means. I don't pour much when he asks for more (especially by the third bowl!) but I want him to start thinking that when he asks for more he actually has to eat some of it.

He had two bowls of cereal this morning and then he asked me to pour him some more. He even brought the box over. I poured him a little more, added milk, and put his bowl down. He hasn't eaten any of it and is trying to get down from his chair. I told him that he had just asked for more and that it would be a waste to throw it away so he had to eat it. He is chanting: "I don't wike the cereal mom. Mommy! I don't wike the cereal!" I said, "Eat two bites and you can go." He just keeps chanting. Is there a way to extract us from this situation gracefully? We're at a stalemate.

Brown ground beef in a skillet. Add a clove or two of chopped garlic and one medium chopped onion. Throw in some sliced mushrooms and chopped green peppers. Sprinkle in some oregano and basil. Then add a can of tomatoes (chopped or whole), a small can of tomato paste, and a plain can of tomato sauce. Stick a bay leaf in there and a teaspoon of sugar. Simmer for as long as you'd like (I like to have it simmer for 45 minutes).

I think your demeanor will have a much bigger impact than your outfit. Dh's bosses wife dresses casually but is always well put together. For BBQ's and such she'll wear jeans and a shirt, sometimes a casual skirt. But, it's her personality that really goes far. I tend to be more comfortable wearing a skirt and sandals to work related social events.

We live on a busy street but the yards are big (over an acre) and we're on a lake. In the winter there are people ice fishing all the time and families clear off patches to skate on and people skate and play hockey. You can go for a walk on the lake and talk to all of the neighbours. All of our neighbours are very friendly and one family has kids that are close to my little ones in age. We talk over the fences in the back yard. Our next door neighbour has had dd helping with her horses and keeps lending her horse magazines and books. Our other neighbour brought over big pieces of a cake that she made after dd opened a jar for her. This is the first time we've lived somewhere like this. Our last house was on a quiet street where the kids could bike around, but everyone kept to themselves. My friend bought the house next door and will be moving in sometime during the school year - I'm so excited! She has a dd who she homeschools so we plan on doing some things together.

My parents divorced when I was 7 and my sister was 5. It was a very amicable divorce, my sister and I didn't feel we were responsible, there was no fighting between our parents, dad helped out considerably after moving out and always kept in close contact. He never married again. Everything is so "healthy" that my parents are both coming to stay at my house for a week this summer - together (but not "together"). We've been doing this for the last few summers. Anyhow, all this to say that we had about as good a divorce as possible but it had huge ramifications on my sister and I and my sister is still very wounded. She is 28 and is convinced that it is impossible to find someone to love and then actually get to the point where she could get married. She wrote an essay about it called "The Ladder" about how impossible it is to go through all of the steps one would need to take to get to a healthy marriage. I would really like her to read a book on the effects of divorce on children and how to try and heal those wounds. I think that once she recognizes that her insecurity stems from not having Dad in the home that she may be able to begin taking steps to move past this. Any book or website recommendations would be appreciated.

Me, too! I was just downstairs cleaning out the school room and then I realized I hadn't booked summer music lessons yet so I went upstairs to do that and of course the phone was next to the computer so I ended up here on the boards. I'd better get back downstairs!

That's awesome!

Thanks, everyone. I ended up wearing the shorter dress with a black wrap and I put my hair up. Final picture is here if it doesn't show up below. And thank goodness I didn't wear the long one - people ranged from very casual to formal with most people in the smart-casual range. I was one of the more dressed up people. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Here's my other option. I guess that's going to have to be it, isn't it? Does it look too wintery? Any idea on how to make it look more summer-ish?

I'm in Canada and I *never* go to fancy-anything in the summer. I wore the dress in the picture to a dressy but not formal dinner a couple of months ago. I could lose the jacket and maybe even pick up a black shawl or something on my way there (did I mention it's 4pm tonight?!). Because these kinds of events have always happened in the winter all I have are very wintery wraps. I just perused my closet and my only other choice for tonight would be a long black crepe dress that has kind of a swirly part on the bottom (below the knees). It's long and black and I'm shaped rather like a rectangle now so it enhances the lack of waist I'm currently experiencing. It also feels rather formal. I've worn it to semi-formal dinners at Christmas as well as a black tie ball in London. But, maybe if I wore my hair down and wore simple jewelry it wouldn't look formal. Knowing the crowd I'm not sure that I'd be terribly out of place in something less formal. And I apologize for taking up board space with my silly dilemma. But, dh is out of town, my mom lives far away and is working right now so can't even take a phone call, and I can't reach my sister. You're all I've got right now ;)

I guess I'm technologically challenged. Please click here for the picture. Please ignore the dumb look on my face. Would you wear this dress, but maybe with dressy sandals instead, to a semi-formal renewing of vows and dinner starting at 4pm tonight? It's an ourdoor event. It's not really a semi-formal outfit though, is it? My other choices are very black and I'd hate to wear all black to a renewing of vows. Would you wear it?

I tend to make the mistake of doing read-alouds in the afternoon and then I ask dd to take over and I fall asleep :)

Peanut butter and crackers are good, too :)

BTW you're breaking a board rule. You may not post about yummy food without sharing the recipe. French Onion soup is one of dh's favourites. I think he'd fall over in shock if I made it a home. Recipe, please!

:lol: