That is just a high back booster seat, the one I used for DS until he was 9. And no, you can't convert one type of carseat to another unless that is already an option. Some seats out there CAN go from booster to harness (like this one), and vice versa, but this one cannot.

My son was not extended rear faced, mainly b/c I had no idea what that was when he was a baby. I think I kept him rear facing until he was 16 months old, or so, though. I then became a CPST when he was 6yrs old, so he remained in a high back booster seat until he was 9. At the time the only carseat that would harness a 9 year old was the Britax Regent, which was GIGANTIC, not to mention expensive. I still think we did great keeping him in a booster that long. I kept him in it until the seat belt fit him properly and he was mature enough to stay put in his seat during the whole ride. If we ever have another baby he/she will definitely be extended rear faced to the limits of the seat and harness longer than recommended.

Do you crate train it? Crating is NOT cruel, it is a necessary tool in training a dog. The dog should never be allowed out of your sight, for ANY reason whatsoever, if it is still having accidents in the house. It should never be allowed privacy to go into the bedrooms. Our dog is only allowed in the bedrooms if we are with him, otherwise we have a baby gate up so he cannot access the bedrooms. If you can't watch it for whatever reason...doing dishes, taking a shower, ANYTHING where you need to turn your back or are not able to give 100% attention to the dog...it goes in the crate. The dog is NEVER given free access to the house if it is alone. If you catch it have an accident, take it over to the spot and say "NO!" then immediately take it outside and tell it "Potty HERE" and stay there until it pees, then TONS of praise. Then you must take the dog outside regularly, at least every hour or so, but your dog may need more often. If it pees, then TONS of praise. Part of it is also restricting water after a certain hour, or for a certain period of time before you have to go somewhere and leave it for an extended period of time (shopping, etc). Also, the crate has to be just big enough for the dog to lay down, so that it can't pee in one corner and go lay in the other one. Generally, a dog will not want to lay in its own filth, and at 8.5 months your dog should be able to hold it. I have a teeny tiny dog (4.5lbs at 7 months) with a teeny tiny bladder, and he is able to hold it overnight or for a few hours while we are gone. He has been fully potty trained 24/7 for almost 2 months, and we crate trained him.

Definitely not mine either! Well, maybe a BAD dream!

We love to have audio books for road trips! We prefer Dean Koontz, if we can find one that we haven't heard before. The Odd Thomas series is WONDERFUL!! DS has been listening to them along with us from the time he was very young, and I never had a problem with him hearing them.

My husband owned his own company, and I guess technically still does. He had it for 4 years, and last year he gave up and went back to working outside of the home for someone else. I know that isn't helpful to you, though. I really hope you have better luck than we did. I totally understand, 100%, what you are going through at the moment, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. :(

Oops. I read the title and that's it! haha I'm not sure how to help you, sorry!

I haven't noticed that. I have had mine for quite a few years and they have held up wonderfully other than a small bit of pilling, which is normal for a thin jersey knit like that. :)

That's exactly it. We HATE driving that much. We grew up and lived in a big city up until 18 months ago, so this is new to us. We are planning a move out of state in the next year or so, and as much a we love our property, we plan to move into a populated area. My favorite thing to do when I'm stressed or to unwind is to go to a store (Target, Walmart, etc) and wander around for hours. I don't buy anything, I just look at EVERYTHING. I gets my mind off of other things. I can't do that where we live now.

That's where we live, near Branson. We bought 5 acres with a really nice 8 year old home, with a GORGEOUS view, for only $125k. The downside is that we live so far away from everything. Well, not far as in distance, but b/c of the hills around us there are no straight roads, you have to wind in and out of the hills to get anywhere. Branson is only about 20 miles from here as the crow flies, but it takes 45 min to drive there. Our view: http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a353/ShyGecko/1886d68d.jpg http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a353/ShyGecko/127d76f4.jpg

Yep, buy a new rice cooker. ;) They are pretty inexpensive.

I'm kind of a weird duck in this regard. In a work environment I am organized to the point of being massively OCD about it. Everything has a place, and everything must be perfect at all times. I get REALLY stressed out if someone messes things up. In a home environment, though, I'm a complete mess. No matter what I have tried, or how much of my work mindset I try to implement at home, nothing ever works. I wish I could make my home environment as organized as my work one, b/c it stresses me out, but I just can't seem to do it. I've tried for 35 years to do it, but so far no luck. :001_unsure:

Good finds!! In our hometown there is a Goodwill in a really rich part of town, so they always have really nice clothes in practically new condition. They wear it once or twice, then it sits in their closet until they give it away. When we still lived there, the majority of our clothing was bought there. Now that we are in a different state, we make plans to go back there twice a year to buy new clothes there. We get all the nicer brands, like Old Navy, Gap, LOFT, etc, but we pay ridiculously low prices on all of it!

We feel the same way most of the time. We live in the middle of nowhere, so even to go to a grocery store it is a 45-60 minute drive. That makes it difficult and not very cost effective for us to do a lot of field trips, if we can do any at all. We love living here, it is so pretty and private, but we really want to move back to a populated area so it is more feasible to do stuff like that.

The ones I have aren't gathered at all, they are just a simple piece of fabric in a tube, and the waist band is really tall so that you just fold it over to get the rise you want. The length of the short ones are adjustable that way. I wear them all the time in the warmer months. They are so comfortable, and can be dressed up or down depending on the shirt you wear with it and the accessories you use. You can be casual with a basic tshirt, or dressier with a nicer shirt and some jewelry. I do a large variety of casual to dressy, and that is what I like about these skirts! This is what I have http://oldnavy.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=79586&vid=1&pid=898555&scid=898555012 I have it in black, grey, and an olive green. I also have a bunch that are made of the same material, length, and style, but they are shorts. They are called "Gaucho" shorts. I wear a lot of those as well b/c they breathe well when it is hot out. http://oldnavy.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=36107&vid=1&pid=898745&scid=898745012

I was going to suggest Old Navy and Target also. I have a bunch of the knee length ones, and I LOVE them. I would love to get a long one, but my legs are short so they are all too long for me.

I have been in that woman's shoes, pretty recently actually. There is a mother of a girl that DS went to school with who I was friends with on Facebook. One time, she commented on a picture of our house, and I made an off hand comment that she was welcome any time. Well, my situation here is a bit different b/c at the time I said that, she lived 7 hours away so the likelihood of her ever being in our area was slim. Well, 6 or so months later, she suddenly sends me a message and says that her DD is coming down to my area to "reconnect" with distant relatives. She mentioned what I said, and asked to set up a date. I kind of panicked, b/c instead of telling her we were busy from the get go, I didn't want to hurt her or insult her by declining so I agreed to a date about a month away. I'm a type of person that likes to please EVERYONE, but at the same time I am completely terrified of social interaction and the rejection that comes with it, even with people I know really well. I hate small talk, I have NO clue how to do it, so unless I know someone REALLY well, we usually just sit there staring at one another. It is no mistake that all of my best friends are some of THE most outgoing people I have ever met. They do all the talking, and I just fill in the gaps. So, the closer that date got, the more I panicked. I didn't really want to get together with her, although I really liked her a lot. I hate rejection and I didn't want to make her upset with me, so rather than outright telling her what was going on, I instead made up an excuse to get out of it, which at the time was an honest excuse. DH had just accepted a job in a different state, and he wouldn't have had to start in 2 weeks, so I thought we would be busy packing and/or moving (depending on how quickly we could list our house and find a rental home). That job ended up not following through, so we didn't move. I'm sure she knows now that I was full of it, but I'm afraid to mention anything b/c I'm sure she is upset with me. I really do like her as a person, but I just didn't REALLY want her to come over. Does that make sense?

I wouldn't give the girl a gift. Have your DD use it instead. I know how you feel, though. My DS went to the same school from the time he was 3 in preschool until 6th grade, with the same kids the entire time. We didn't live in that neighborhood, but it was the school I went to so we optioned DS into that district so he could go there. My DS was only ever invited to ONE birthday party the entire time he went to school there. We don't do parties (only with family), so perhaps they didn't invite him b/c they thought we weren't inviting them. *shrug* I know they were having them b/c they would talk about it in front of DS at school, and his feelings would be hurt b/c he wasn't invited. Plus, you can't tell me that out of 13 boys in that class, not a SINGLE one of them had a birthday party ever in the 9 years DS attended that school. Growing up, I was taught that you invited everyone, or no one at all, particularly at the elementary age. If we did parties, that is definitely how we would do things.

We've always just rented one from someplace like Lowes or Home Depot. We don't do it often enough that warrants owning one.

I wonder if that is the case for me. I have had 8 miscarriages, we've been TTC #2 for 12 years. I wonder if I inherited that lovely trait from my father. In his family there are 5 children, 3 males and two females. The two females both have large families. The males, on the other hand, each only have one child b/c they had fertility and miscarriage problems. Thankfully I was tested and I didn't inherit the breast cancer gene also (my mom has it). Thanks dad!

I wouldn't share it. You didn't know when the other child's birthday was when you decided on a date, and honestly that isn't your problem. It's not like you did it deliberately. She chooses not to do parties, but she can't prevent other people from throwing them. Have fun, and celebrate YOUR dd's birthday! :)

I think your new header picture looks really nice! It complements your scheme really well, and I can easily read the title. :) I think you add enough colorful pictures in the body of your blog, which is what people see the majority of the time. They only see your header when they first start reading and when the page changes. The rest of the time it is colorful.

The only thing I noticed is that it is too wide. Granted, I have a smaller screen, but most blogs adjust to it and I don't have to scroll from one side to the other. The title is also a little hard to read against the wood background b/c it is so dark. Otherwise, I like the colors, the text and your pictures stand out well against it, and it generally reads really easily.

Do you have this woman's name in addition to her address or license plate number? If not, then I don't see what reporting it will do other than waste the time of the people you are reporting it to. Without that information, they can't follow through on it anyway.

www.unitedcountry.com www.landsofamerica.com (they have a different site for each state, so like for us it would be landsofmissouri) We live on 5 acres in a nice 10 year old house, and we found it on the United Country website. Zillow and Trulia are also good sites. We are currently looking to move to a different state, and I have been scouring Zillow. Good luck! Edited to add - We were like you...wanting to move, with no real idea of where, so we just looked everywhere we could think of. We have looked just about everywhere at this point. We started out close to home, and gradually looked further and further away. We grew up in Nebraska, we moved here (near Branson in Missouri) 18 months ago, and now we are looking at moving to Texas but have considered as far as North Carolina or Arizona.