Here's what I have on hand most of the time: creme brulee Triple-layer chocolate overload cake bread pudding with creme anglaise and caramel drizzle New York cheesecake strawberries with white and deep chocolate ganache for dipping Okay, I'm really just having fun with 'ya. No, really, I always do have these things on hand.... ....but only because I'm the pastry chef for a local restaurant. :D (We rarely even taste any of it!) Dessert around here is usually a dollop of lowfat vanilla yogurt on top of strawberries or peaches. DH likes ice cream in the evening.

Have you heard the wife's perspective on this? I'd have a heart-to-heart with her to determine whether or not she views her dh as abusive. I'm not saying that her opinion defines whether or not it's abusive, just that if she also has a sinking (probably well-stifled) fear that her dh has gone overboard, that would definitely be a sign to me that I would need to step in and take stronger action. I agree with those who've mentioned that if you can get your dh to stand beside you on this, it will probably be more effective. If your pastor generally has a hands-off approach to issues where personal boundaries are involved, I would make a point of asking for a formal hearing of the elders of your church. If that too was denied, I actually would tell them that you believe it to be so out-of-line and unbibilical that you will do whatever it takes to affect a change (let them read between the lines that you might consider calling outside, secular authorities) if the issue is not addressed properly. Whether or not you actually *would* call CPS is not in question, just that you're considering it. You *are* considering it...(you don't have to tell them that you've already decided not to.) Also, I should say that as a child I was spanked similarly to what you've described, and I don't consider myself at all to have been an abused child. The spankings that I have administered to my own dc have been a bit milder than what you described. I'm not against spanking, just against the other abuses that it sometimes can be a sign of (as in this case, maybe?). You might make it clear that you're not asking for a judgement against this man, just an "exploration" of whether his tactics have indeed gone over the line into abuse.

I'm with you on that! Is there anything more vile than salty raisins?

My dh tells me of many times when he was a kid (he's one of 7 brothers) that they took off their own casts mostly with a hacksaw. I'm not quite sure how many casts that is (I know it's a lot though). They were all ok, though how they managed to do it with a hacksaw and not cut off their own limbs I don't know!

LadyNancy, Good try, but nope. It's a phone answering machine/cordless phone combo, so none of the phones in the house are the same ones we had 5 1/2 years ago, when I had that message. Nice try, though! :-)

Could you find another camp opportunity during a different week this summer? That would be my first choice. If there's absolutely no other camp, and you really do have to make a choice, I'd probably lean towards Weird Al this year (because the opportunity may never come again), and camp next year. I HATE those choices, and I hate it when my kids have to make them too.

I still haven't figured out how this could have happened. It's not part of a voicemail account. We live in a rural area, and many services are unavailable to us. No caller ID, no call waiting, no voicemail, we just live too far from where our phone service originates. It's not a prankster in my own family--we just don't do that kind of thing, and technologicaly we're just not there. So...my update is that I still don't have any idea how this could have happened. What's almost as amazing as the original situation, is that I seem to have boggled the "hive" also! I was positive that you all would come up with the answer--as the folks on this board usually do. I'm still looking for answers & explanations, should anyone hit on one that's plausible. I'd just love to have this not be a big mystery that I'm still wondering about when I'm 99 years old!:D

They can land a man on the moon, but they can't design some less intrusive methods for getting the info they need? Hmph.

I really REALLY can't see one of my kids having the forethought to pull this off! They would have had to save the message from 5 1/2 years ago to some other device (which I don't even think we have!) and then pull off the prank while we were all out? The kids were all with me on the morning this happened. DH was at work. It just boggles my brain. I keep trying to think of a reasonable explanation. There just. aren't. any.

Diana, I've just gotta tell you, I LOVE the picture in your little avatar space thingy! I have pictures just like that of one of my little men (PLEASE don't tell him I called him that!) for every year he played football. They just are so precious to me, seeing him grow up into a man before my very eyes. Blessings to you. Oh, and here's some postive rep for ya!

I share your discomfort (I'm sure most of us do). What I have found comforting is the "I can do 15 minutes of anything" outlook. Try to ignore what's coming, and then think of something else while it's going on. Ridiculous as it sounds, it helps me to read a really good book, and leave myself at a cliffhanger point in the book, and then think about that during the worst part. (Do I sound like a nutcase?) It doesn't last very long. By the time your clothes are back on, convince yourself it never really even happened. :D Also, it might help to be very clear before the exam, with both the nurse and the doc, about how you're feeling. If they're good, they'll go out of their way to make you as comfortable as possible. Just do it, girl! You know you can...

Cathy, I don't think you need to defend yourself at all! I hope you didn't get the impression that we think you did the wrong thing! It sure is nice to have a church with such a plan for support--much better than having the church not caring for you at all. I'm sure this will all work out, if you can find the right ear to listen to the problem. Perhaps if you put this to the church leadership as a situation where you need some counsel, and then they'd listen to your concerns in a different light? Just tell them that you have a situation that is making you feel stressed, and ask for a counseling session with whoever does such counseling within your church. When you get there, then you tell them what is stressing you out (including this situation). When put in terms of something that's making you feel stressed, maybe they'll do something about it. Also, you should tell them that you need your outside counseling to be very private. Absolutely. Surely they are just being a little overzealous in their efforts in order to assure themselves that they're doing everything possible (?). Blessings to you!

My 3 boys are all very close in age too. When they were young they all shared a room, and now I have two in one room and the oldest has his own. If I still had all 3 sharing a room, I would want it to be at least about 12 x 14. As for the closet situation, my boys used captain's beds with drawers underneath for most of their clothes, and shelves higher up on the walls for their "stuff" like Lego creations, etc. The closet itself was very small in our situation, but it was ok. One 4' closet had more than enough room to hold their Sunday clothes, and they had hooks on the wall by their door to hang their jackets during cold season. It really worked fine for us. As far as personal space, that really hasn't been an issue here. Since we had 5 kids pretty much on top of each other, nobody even thinks about the personal space thing but me. My kids tend to go outside if they really need some time alone, or they just ask the other kids if they could go somewhere else for a while. p.s. I really think that having all of the boys in the same room was wonderful, and if I had it to do over again, I'd still have them sharing. I can go on and on about why I think sharing a room is a good thing... Hope this helps!

Hey Diana, Thanks for the advice. I saw the game that came with a remote thingy, and wondered if that was the right thing to do. And... Thanks for the justification. That treadmill/gym membership thing is exactly how I justified this in my own mind! Actually, I bought it for my daughter's birthday (wink, wink!). We have a Playstation 2 that I'll be taking on down to GameStop and getting rid of. Hopefully I can get a little bit for that, to offset the $$ of the Wii. Can't this be considered part of my p.e. curriculum, and then it would just roll into my homeschool budget for the fall?

Okay, I totally succumbed to Wii lust. What cinched it for me is that even though the "big town" near us didn't have Wii's in stock anywhere, and I couldn't find them online, our little bitty small-town Walmart had Wii's in stock when I checked. Get this... I even got the WiiFit! :thumbup: When I called Walmart about the Wii, she said that they were getting 2 Wiifit's in during the night, and that if I came in this morning I *might* be able to get one. Since I had to take a kid in to town early this morning, I was at WM when the doors opened. They got two in, the guy ahead of me bought one, and I bought the other. Everybody's happy! Well...not Dave Ramsey probably, but "wii" won't tell him, ok? :D

If you've already tried to address the situation with the wife and the church leadership, and they don't take steps to put someone else in that role, I think you need to just not have any jobs you need help with. Find other avenues to get things done, be it family, or a neighbor's help, or asking someone else from the church to help you privately. When this man asks you if you need anything done, the answer is "no, I can't think of anything right now, but thanks for asking." If the church leadership won't change the situation, and you can see that it is damaging relationships, I think you have a responsibility to take care of it yourself. Yeah, it's not as easy as having this guy (who's really supposed to be helping) do the job, but in the long run you can feel good about doing those things yourself, or finding other resources for getting the help you need.

I definitely did not buy the same machine again, since I had changed out that message years previously, and threw the old answering machine away. The answering machines have been digital, so it can't be swapping out the tapes. It is absolutely my voice--nobody could come that close--and it's definitely the message from 5 1/2 years ago, and not a re-do. This is just really freakin' me OUT! It's nothing sinister, but still...too weird.

First, some background. We moved into our new home about 5 1/2 years ago. We built the house on our own land with a contractor (none of this makes any difference, but still--bear with me...). When we moved into the house, I put a cutesy outgoing message on my machine. It was pretty short, but still, clearly me speaking. We probably had that message for 3 months, 5 1/2 years ago. Fast forward to now. I got a new answering machine about a month ago, because the one we had died. There might have even been another answering machine in between, because we seem to be hard on electronics at our house. I decided to leave Mr. Robato as the outgoing message, because 1.)I don't really know how to change it and I refuse to read the manual, and 2.)I just don't really care. Yesterday, I'd been out for a few hours, came home, and checked my message machine. Here's where it get's freaky, I promise.... My outgoing message is now that goofy little rhyme I had 5 1/2 years ago, on a completely different machine. !!!! :blink::huh::scared: It's definitely my voice. My family thinks I might be trying to pull off some kind of gag, but I'm not really that kind of gal. How? What the... How could that happen?! Color me...speechless, Julie

Each week, my dc have a personal "conference" with me. I do this anytime between Friday afternoon and Monday mid-day. Each kid takes me about 15 minutes. During this time, they "present" the work they completed in the last week, and we talk about how they've done. As we're doing that, I give them an overview of where I'd like them to go with each subject for the next week. The older kids take their stuff after our little conference, and they write up their lesson plan for the week. For the younger kids, I write the lesson plan or have them write it with me watching. I think the presentation time has been very useful in terms of helping the kids take responsibility for doing good work that they're proud to show off to me during their meeting time, and it affords me a little bit of accountability in getting back to them with input and things like editing of writing assignments and then assigning re-writes.

I have Payless and Crocs, and prefer my Payless Airwalks. The Airwalks have absolutely been every bit as tough and long-wearing as the Crocs, and I like the feel of the Payless Airwalks better in terms of how they fit my foot (I have a lot of trouble with painful heels, etc.) If you're not squeamish about it, you can run your Crocs or Payless Airwalks through the dishwasher on the top rack to get them looking really nice again.

...and decided against it. For me, I realized that I take my cell phone with me when I go out, and I wanted my sitter or older kids to have access to a phone while I was gone. I also didn't want to have to contend with the possibility of having the cell phone be low on battery in an emergency.

My dd told me that for her birthday she wants "one of those butterfly houses with a pop-up cardboard tree inside, where you can watch caterpillars turn into butterflies." Ummm...anyone know what she means about a pop-up tree? Is there a particular brand that has that? Her birthday is coming soon. Thanks!

Garlic Press publishes some, I think.

Oh my Gosh, Katia! You got TWO of my 3. I guess I liked older guys, or somethin'. Tom Selleck Pierce Brosnan Harrison Ford

I LOVE being clean and sliding into clean, cool sheets! Besides loving that feeling, I also like it that my sheets stay clean and nice for a very long time(umm, I still try to wash 1x per week tho!). I can't imagine (as a farm family) what the sheets would be like if everyone in my family didn't take a shower before bed. ETA: Since Joanne brought up the dreaded "bed head", lol, I thought I'd mention that I avoid that by using a spray bottle in the morning to make the curls behave. That can definitely be a problem with evening bathing unless you have a routine to take care of it.