Nothing because I want everyone to be hungry. We eat at 1:00, and no one is really ravenous at that time. We do our noshing after dinner.

Oh wow! It's Thanksgiving week! **school (done) ** laundry (done) ** roux for gravy (done) ** cut up bread to stale for dressing (done) ** house picked up for cleaners (done) To do yet: ** allergy shots ** library ** bell choir rehearsal

Hello all. (As I sit gracefully down in my "appropriate for tea" attire and set down my plate of cucumber and avocado sandwiches). I happen to adore a avocados. Guacamole is a necessary condiment, IMO, and I would put avocado on any sort of meat sandwich and in any kind of salad. The problem is, they are so darn expensive.

I enjoy Christmas letters. As other people have posted, the best letters are humorous, anecdotal, reflecting of the writer's personality. I don't like ones with just lists: Jonny is in first grade now, we went to the Bahamas, I had surgery. Boring.

we drive a 2004 Toyota Sienna with five kids. And they bicker and fight and all that. They do it less with a Jim Weiss CD in. DH had this wonderful idea of getting a sound-proof piece of Plexiglas to fit between the driver's seat and the rest of the car. Would make things much better. But, he hasn't gotten very far with that idea.

After reading Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers" I realized how much good luck, being in the right place at the right time, happening to know the right person, plays into a person's station in life. Granted, hard work has a huge part, too (you may have been in the right place at the right time to land that plum job, but it was your own hard work that enabled you to keep it and succeed), but not all hardworking people are able to succeed and become materially wealthy. And yes, sometimes we make our own bad luck through foolish choices, but other times we are truly victims of circumstances beyond our control that makes it very difficult to recover from.

We are comfortable (for us). Reasons: Temperment - both DH and I are savers, not spenders, we don't have expensive tastes, we are not impulse buyers Got married later in life: dh had a decent nest egg, neither of us had student loans Luck: dh bought a house in 2000, we sold in 2003 for $75,000 more than he bought it for, we're able to put a good down payment on our now home and just paid it off this summer; we have had no health crises or any other financial crises; dh didn't lose his job in the recession Good habits: we stick to a budget, pay off our CC every month We are by no means rich, but we live within our means, we have absolutely no debt and have a decent amount in investments.

Well, I'm not an expert gravy maker, but I make a roux with flour and butter ahead of time. Then, I get the giblets from the turkey (not the liver, though) and make a broth with those, some celery and carrots and onion and chicken bouillon. Strain that. You can make that ahead of time, too. Then take the broth, add the drippings from the turkey when it's done and bring to a boil, then add enough of the roux to thicken it as you like. I've only been making it like that for a couple of years, but it does make good gravy.

You know it, Sister! :)

Good Morning, Jean! I look forward to your "tackling" posts every day! And good morning everyone else. Here I sit with my coffee and my three-year old shadow. She's up the minute I get up. No sneaking around her. It's a good thing she's so cute. We've got three soccer games today. I gotta get grocery shopping done for the week and for Thanksgiving. DH went to Costco for me after work yesterday and got my turkey and a few other things. Housework Thanksgiving prep - make a roux for the gravy, keep that in the fridge Deal with a bunch of lemons -fil's lemon tree broke, so he had to harvest early. I juice them, put them in ice cube trays and freeze them. Then I have pre-measured lemon juic throughout the year

Yes, I really have a lot of trouble driving at night, so I try not to. I generally find myself driving about 45 mph if I'm driving in the country. Freeway driving is easier, I guess because there's more light.

I am glad it's Friday. And we are all back in the land of the living. We're doing our school stuff now. Ditching co-op today. I am really having issues with our co-op because.... well, some people don't understand the the point. So, we're staying home because I am tired and just don't feel like going and dealing with all that. It is not a drop-off people! It's a co-op. You stay. And help supervise, if nothing else. I'm hoping to get some more baking done this afternoon, and get things prepped for Thanksgiving. We're having 30 people over for Thanksgiving and the more I get done ahead of time the more sane I will be.

I'd love it. Especially if it were truly practical. Not like homemade bath salts or something like that. Even in my "soaking in the bath" days I hated salts. But that's beside the point. The point is, yes, pot holders that are usable, and not just decorative are a wonderful gift.

Basically, my kids are slobs. They have to clean their room once a week. Sometimes I go in and pick up trash. Once I even went in after they were supposed to clean it and hauled out a garbage bag full of stuff, put it in the garage and they never asked for it back. Any of it. They have too much stuff. Anyhow, if they want to be pigs, that's their business. They just have to clean it up once a week.

Dressing. ( I make it in a pan), bread, sautéed celery and onions and mushrooms, sage and thyme, chicken broth. I'm toying with the idea of sausage.

Just try not to picture Bugs Bunny dancing around the barber chair when you're there. Lol! Sorry. That's all I know about The Barber of Seville. My early exposure to classical music was courtesy of Warner Brothers.

My daughter is only 7 but she's not dry ever. And I agree with Ellen! My daughter is incredibly ashamed and embarrassed. So, we just don't talk about it. She wears Good-nights each night. We have found that to be the simplest and cleanest ways of dealing with the problem. And that is the end of the story. I hope she grows out of it. I have a friend who's kids were all past 10 before they were dry at night. Since dd is adopted, I don't know if it's a genetic thing with her. Very well could be. I just figure we'll wait a few more years and then maybe do some investigating if she still doesn't grow out of it

I will definitely keep that in mind as an option for next year. I can barely keep up with First Form, although I do enjoy it and I wish I had more time to study it. It's like a puzzle.

This is true. I seem to have a harder time than he is. We do recitations every day, we cover everything every day, but I was sitting there yesterday, helping him diagram a sentence in Latin and I'm thinking, "ok, my 5th grader is diagramming a sentence in Latin" and I just felt like I had no idea what I was doing. I'm glad I'm not the only one. He has gone through both Prima Latina and LC1, so he does pretty well with the vocabulary, it's just all those darn verb tenses.

Just gave the orders for the day from bed. Dh is here,too. He threw up all night. You know, this is getting ludicrous. The kids are going to do school in their own today. We'll see how that works.

Have a wonderful birthday, Jean!

I do. My mom and I have a great time together!

So, my fifth grader and I are doing FFLatin and we are enjoying it. It's an excellent curriculum, but it is hard (pluperfect, anyone? I'd never heard the word before doing this program, much less knew what tense it was) and I'm just wondering if anyone truly gets it done in a year and is able, then, to do Second Form Latin the next year? My DS is reasonably bright and he doesn't balk at doing Latin, in fact, he does like it, but he tends to need a lot of review and so do I. I'm a little worried. Are we going to finish this in a year? In the great scheme of things, it doesn't really matter, I'm more concerned with mastery, so we'll take our time, but I'm just wondering if anyone is able to complete it in a year. Or should I just content myself with him making his way through Third Form by 8th grade and then....who knows. The penciled in plan is for him to go to Christian High School, so that will be the end of Latin for him.

So, my fifth grader and I are doing FFLatin and we are enjoying it. It's an excellent curriculum, but it is hard (pluperfect, anyone? I'd never heard the word before doing this program, much less knew what tense it was) and I'm just wondering if anyone truly gets it done in a year and is able, then, to do Second Form Latin the next year? My DS is reasonably bright and he doesn't balk at doing Latin, in fact, he does like it, but he tends to need a lot of review and so do I. I'm a little worried. Are we going to finish this in a year? In the great scheme of things, it doesn't really matter, I'm more concerned with mastery, so we'll take our time, but I'm just wondering if anyone is able to complete it in a year. Or should I just content myself with him making his way through Third Form by 8th grade and then....who knows. The penciled in plan is for him to go to Christian High School, so that will be the end of Latin for him.

Well, got spelling done, Bible done, recitation done, LA stuff with DS1 and now it's break time. Also got dinner in the crock pot and it's smelling good (put in a pork butt, added lots of garlic, chipotle sauce and diced green chilis, gonna eat it in tortillas with cheese and salsa). No kids have thrown up or have anything coming out the other end, so it's just me not feeling great. I guess we're doing all right today. And the talk about green smoothis sounds good. Do you all just make them in a blender, or do you have a special l machine? My blender broke and now all I use is my hand immersion blender for smoothies.