In that case, I say go for the national park "grand tour!" Rent an RV and go! I cannot think of a better vacation within the continental U.S. My family would jump at the opportunity.

I vote for getting a port-a-potty or two. You can set up a hose and some soap next to it for a hand washing station or get the hand washing stations offered by the port-o-potty folks. I personally prefer the hose method because the stations can be hard for little kids. Of course my first thought was to just have the able-bodied folks use the woods. Until I read the posts above I had no idea this was considered a big deal. I cannot tell you how many parties we have attended where the one bathroom had a line and we just headed for the woods. Obviously, this is not in cities or subdivisions, but rural locations. It is sort of an unspoken rule that the real bathroom is for the elderly, small children, people with limited mobility, and number 2. Everyone else generally uses the woods. We live in an area where any road trip often requires this same method. We can go over an hour by car without a place with a real bathroom. We also go to a lot of festivals and such whee port-o-potties are the only option. They have come a long way in the last few decades. As long as they are cleaned regularly, it really is no big deal. I cannot fathom people here saying they would never ever use one. What do you do when that is your only option!?!?

I also agree about that a national park tour would be a lot of fun. Keep in mind that Disney would be worse than prison for my family so that is where we are coming from. Do you only have one week? If so, the RV plan means you will be driving more than vacationing if you want to go all the way out west. Could you do the RV thing but stick closer to the east coast and still feel like you are "vacationing?" In spring you could go south and hit parks that way.

You have gotten lots of great advice so far. REI makes great stuff. We have two old Kelty tents and those have served us very well although I have heard their quality has gone down more recently. We also have an REI that has been great. One thing I say in every tent thread and will say again here is that a quality tent should NOT need to be seam sealed (or waterproofed) when new or after just a few uses. We camp a lot. We have many friends who camp a lot. Regular seam sealing is not normal. Our 20+ yo Kelty has been sealed once....around year 10 after what I would guess was 150+ nights of HARD use. This was after it leaked a few drops during a major storm. It has logged around another 50-100 nights since then and still does not need sealing. Our others have never been sealed. If people are happy to do it and think they are getting a good deal, that is 100% cool with me. But don't think this is just part of owning/using a tent. The whole point of the tent is to keep you dry. If I bought one that didn't, I would want my money back.

Yes, this is typical nowadays. You might find a company that doesn't but we were not able to. We got hit with a higher rate because we are "underweight" according to them. Seriously.

I can tons of broth too. I also used to freeze, but find canning so much better. Do you use canning-specific recipes for soups or do you just use any recipe? I would love to do this! To the OP - I have an old old OLD Mirro that I found in my mom's basement (so FREE). I would not have bought one otherwise because while I do can broth with the pressure canner, that is about it. I water-can everything else. But now that I have it and have used it for a few years, I would like to expand so in retrospect I should have just bought one years ago. Firing up that ancient canner the first time was about the most terrifying experience I ever had. Nothing happened but I was so sure it was going to blow up or something, I used a garbage can lid as a shield.....much to the amusement of my family.

I menu plan and spend a stupid amount of time cooking most days. But there are two days a week that I "wing it" due to my work schedule and I do the same all summer when I cannot predict what produce I might get out of my garden or CSA on a given day. Whether because of work or because it is summer and I don't want to spend a lot of time in a hot kitchen, I typically try to spend less than 30 minutes on meal prep for the "winging it" days. One thing I started doing a few years ago that has cut way down on prep time is to keep certain "building blocks" available in the freezer. When I make a pot of rice/millet/quinoa/barley or any grain, I make 4 times the amount I need. I put the extras in single-meal portions in the freezer. For my family of three, a "single meal portion" is the amount I would use to make a dinner and leftovers for one lunch, so 6 servings. That is usually a quart of grain. I use quart-sized deli containers but ziplock bags or mason jars would work just as well. I do the same thing for beans, including homemade refried and baked beans. On any given morning, I evaluate what produce I have on hand and start building the meal in my mind. Then I grab whatever building blocks I need from the freezer to thaw. I can have stir-fry, rice-and-beans, burritos, soups, casserole, etc... by adding whatever produce and other perishable ingredients to the building blocks in as little as 20 minutes whereas if I had made all of it from scratch it would have taken two hours. I tend to pick one grain and one bean that I make in large quantity on a weekend day when I have unlimited time to restock the freezer. I also make all soups in huge quantities and freeze 2/3 of it in individual serving size mason jars. I always have 4-6 different kinds on hand in the freezer. Dh grabs one to take to work on days I didn't have time to make a lunch for him. He likes just browsing and picking whatever appeals to him that day. I can also grab three of them on any night I am too busy/sick/tired/etc to even "wing it." I do home-can enough broth to last the whole year in one huge all-weekend, wine-inspired canning session. I do the same with tomatoes and applesauce. I quick-blanch and freeze any produce we cannot use up in the summer (which is a lot in our case). So those are all also at my disposal.

I usually stay out of these threads. I am 100% for equal rights for all people and do not consider LGBT people to be "abnormal" or "sinners" or anything else but people. I find the biblical arguments to justify legislature against equal rights to be laughable, actually. We will one day shake our heads that we even had these discussions. But. I disagree with the above. At least not the way I understand the statement anyway. I don't really know what it means to "disapprove" of someone. How can one disapprove of a person? I understood it to mean disapproving of someone's actions/feelings/identification. If that is not what this statement means, you can disregard my opinion on it. I am close to, love, accept, advocate for, respect, and ACCEPT many people who have done something (if not many things) I "disapprove" of. I am not a Christian but grew up in a deeply religious family and church community. Growing up, I was taught in church that Jesus calls us to love and accept people. We are to leave the judgment and punishment up to God. This means accepting people even if you disagree with things they do. I cannot quote bible verses to back this up. But it seems like common sense. Be nice. Love people. Help people. Don't be jerks. These are the messages I would take away if I were someone who believed LGBT were sinners. Jenner is not hurting anyone. I would argue that he is helping people by using his status to shed light on an issue many do not understand. Spewing out "disapproval" when not asked for your opinion does hurt people.

We are redecorating 11 yo dd's bedroom and need to purchase some new furniture. The bed is the most crucial. Can anyone suggest sources? The room is very small so IKEA is the obvious first choice. We have looked at what they have and what they will sell online (and deliver) and have not found something we like. We are hours and hours from any real furniture stores and do not own a vehicle large enough to carry large items so it has to be an online source that will ship.

I'm not sure who or what you are referencing with this statement. I have not seen many who think feeding hungry kids (or ANY hungry people for that matter) is a bad idea. I do not think it is a bad idea. I support feeding hungry people. I have a REALLY big problem with the way these programs are run. And not at the local level....the problems usually come from higher up when lobbyists and bureaucrats get involved. When crapola is served for two meals a day for entire school years, it might meet the immediate need of filling some empty bellies. But in the long-term, a daily diet of crap is as bad (nutritionally and emotionally) as food insecurity so we are just trading one problem for another. And paying for it. If schools are now charged with taking over the feeding of children they should do it well. And before the whole "but but BUT kids don't LIKE vegetables....." people start chiming in....so what? Many kids don't like reading or doing math but schools cannot just stop teaching it. Find a way to make it work. Just like we find ways to make teaching math work for kids who struggle. So the OP was about ALL kids in a class being offered free crappy breakfasts. Some parents had a problem with that. I would have a problem with that. Even if you feed your 6 yo a nice balanced breakfast at home, most 6 yos will STILL want the pop tart (or donut or fruit drink or whatever....) and therefore will still eat it. So now we are using tax dollars to feed some truly hungry kids pop tarts (because that is a great way to start the day) AND a bunch of already fed kids whose parents do NOT want them to eat pop tarts. This does not make sense, financially, nutritionally, emotionally, or educationally. Better solutions. This is not rocket science.

Thanks. I was just wondering. There is someone I know who sells it (or whatever you call it) and she is pretty relentless about getting people "under her" so it seemed just like thirty one to me. So relentless that I have distanced myself from her as much as possible. She is a MLM-hopper so maybe she is using the wrong vocabulary?

I'm curious about this. How is Melaleuca not a MLM? Is it not multi-leveled?

I third the therm-a-rest suggestions. We camp very frequently and we have two that have withstood 20 years of very hard use without a single leak. If you have an REI nearby, check out their gear rental program.

I cannot get too worked up about the philosophical aspects of whether schools should or should not be filling this role or the long-term ramifications. But I can get on board with feeding hungry kids (whether because their parents cannot afford the food or simply will not feed their kids for whatever reason) and am 100% fine with my dollars being used in this way. However, if you are going to do something, do it WELL! Our local schools provide breakfast (lunch too) for all kids. It is usually pop tarts, donuts, chocolate milk, go-gurt, and fruit "drinks." That is garbage and I am NOT okay with tax dollars being used in this way. I can't speak for everyone, but I know that I myself would be a much better student with no breakfast than a stomach full of cheap carbs. It is one of many factors that went into our decision to homeschool. I know of plenty of good parents that wage the crappy food battle daily, thanks in part to the schools, but it is not something I want to deal with.

Gold for Latin 1. Dd is geeked!

I told dd 12 but am now regretting that as she is approaching that age. I would prefer 13 or even 14. We have older cars with older airbags. Dh and I both have engineering backgrounds and know way too much about car crash physics. That said, ALL of dd's friends are allowed to sit in front. Some as early as 4-5 years old. Dd feels like a dork. Oh well.

I grew up in a tornado-prone area so spend my fair share of time in the basement waiting out warnings. We had an actual basement. It was not comfy but a few steps above what you are talking about. We had a few card-based games that we only played during warnings. It took our minds off of the scariness and was a novelty as we did not play those games any other time. I still think "tornado" every time dd suggests a game of Crazy 8s. Stash a few in the bucket for lantern-light fun. If you have littles that are too young for games, my mom had something for littles too. She would either wrap a long piece of scotch tape around our fingers for us to pick off or Elmer's glue. Sounds weird but again was calming and kept us occupied.

Winter storm warning here. 10 inches of wet snow by morning is predicted. That is not a huge amount of snow for our area, even in April, but the weight of the wet snow makes things more difficult. And. I took the snow tires off. Doh.

I'd pick the vegetarian option. The word "may" is what would decide it for me. Perhaps the surf will be excluded whenever the "may" turns into "will." Also, I am a vegetarian and have attended hundreds of these types of functions over my lifetime. 90% of the time the veggie option looks far more appealing and half of the table will be asking how I got the "better" meal. For some reason, the veggie option is usually hotter and fresher too.

Is your AYSO on the small side? This is probably just a numbers issue. My dd is involved with a sport that also uses the U12, U14, etc.... designation and the rules allow coaches to "age up" kids if there are not enough kids to go around. They can never "age down," so a 13 yo would not be allowed to participate as a U12 but can as a U14 or up. Dd's sport is not a contact sport (or at least is not supposed to be...) and so this is not usually a big deal. She is 11 and recently had to compete in a U19 event due to a number of factors. Obviously, she was at a huge disadvantage but there was no real physical danger. I would be much more concerned in a sport like soccer. I would probably chat with he coaches and see what they think about your concerns.

I also noticed this when we first got our new dishwasher. I discovered after reading the instruction book carefully that there is an adjustment for the amount for rinse aid dispensed. The amount needed varies depending on the hardness of your water. We can get away with the lowest setting. Once I adjusted this, the bottle lasted as long as it said it would. I have a very very long discussion with the repair guy at our local independent appliance store. He has been fixing dishwashers for 40 years. I was replacing a dishwasher that stopped working well at about two years. We had been hobbling it along until it was simply not cleaning anything at age 7. I was disappointed that it was such a dud and was talking to this guy to find out how to not let that happen again. He said that the number one issue he sees with newer dishwashers in from gunked up sensors from not using rinse aid. The old dishwashers did not have sensors, they just had a determined cycle and did that every time so rinse aid only helped with spots on dishes. I never cared about spots so I never bought rinse aid. He did not get to look at my old dishwasher so could not say for sure that is what happened but the symptoms sounded right. I'd rather buy a few bottles of rinse aid a year rather than a new dishwasher every 5.

Yes! The rinse aid also rinses off the sensors. If the sensors get spotty or filmy, our dishwasher will not work properly.

The 3m board was in the dive tank! Not the regular pool. Sorry to be confusing. The dive tank is 15 feet deep so I am really not sure why the 3m board was removed. The 1m boards are still there and so is the 10m platform. The lesson went very well. Dd enjoyed it and the instructor thinks she will easily be able to get up to speed. We have daily lessons scheduled this week then will talk about a plan at the end based on her progress. She is a stronger swimmer than I realized. I'll have to do some asking about the blocks and what happens at the various pools where they compete. I'm not sure how any kid would be able to do it at one location if they never have a chance to practice with them. The meets are all 2+ hours away so I have never been to any of the other pools.

Kale (or other shopped greens) is nice. Especially with garlic, onion, and sesame oil.

Do you (or others) happen to know if pools will still use blocks if both ends of the pool are shallow? I can ask the team organizer next time we speak but I did not think to ask last time. Our pool is shallow (4 ft) on both ends. It used to have starting platforms that were not removable. They took these out as well as the 3 meter diving board 15+ years ago. I have seen no evidence that there are any sort of moveable blocks. But I have never been to a meet so cannot say for sure. Dd can dive off of a diving board, boats, docks, and rafts but she will have to learn about shallow water diving if they do indeed use blocks. But first things first..... Thus the lessons. The first one is tomorrow and she is very excited!