A girl should always keep options available. I'll be sniffing around some of my side forums. I know you'll be here when I get back ;)

I grew up in a large family and always shared a room (bed, too). I didn't mind it :) I think that's a personality thing, though because my friend's daughter is very introverted and has a hard time not having a personal retreat (she uses the bathroom, which can sometimes be a problem LOL). I think your kids' personalities matter in this decision - not that it should be the deciding factor, but it should be a consideration. I like the suggestion of using the basement as a school storage area and doing school around the home. Maybe another option is to make the fifth bedroom a study/bedroom -- it could be the school storage area as well as your eldest's bedroom. We had a similar arrangment at my parent's home once some of us had moved out; my younger sister slept in the office/den. She preferred to share the space with family during the day over sharing a room 24/7 with our youngest sister.

Oooh, there's a website??! Sweet! We love that show! You have amazing willpower - and you'll do great maintaining at your goal weight. The calories at my house go on vacation every weekend :D perhaps the same is true at your home? If not, your girl will make lots of friends sharing with the neighbors!

Can you use restaurants to supplement your entrees? Maybe order a side of rice from Chinese, or an order of noodles from an Italian place to bolster whatever you make on the grill ... I'm growing tired of salads this time of year, so this is what I do on nights I don't feel like making everything LOL. Since it's a side, you can keep it cheap by ordering one serving to share. Fajitas on the grills, with chips and salsa on the side?

Maybe you're in denial about the impending doom :tongue_smilie: You polish that parrot, Girlfriend - can't think of any better way to face a boardalypse!

I voted for utility room. Cats in the mudroom, dogs in the laundry room. Cat food stinks more, so it goes closer to the outside and trash cans. Dogs are messier, so their bowls go nearer the utility sink and linen hamper (washed daily).

What a wonderful thing you are doing! You'll play fabulously, and look lovely doing so :) Good luck finding your perfect outfit, and have fun!

One tree. Real. We inherited a lot of my husband's childhood ornaments, so we do those (no theme). White lights. No icicles, no garland. My kids each have a tree at my MIL's house. One kid has snowmen, one has angels; my two nephews' trees are trains and gingerbread-people. Every year MIL adds to their trees a new ornament in the theme. My kids ask if they can have their own trees at my house, but I'm a grinch so I said no. They'd pick the themes: penguins and snowflakes.

I like Design Seeds, too :D You can also try the Yolo website for good ideas and pictures. I get tons of color ideas by going through gardening books/blogs (nature makes the best palattes!) and also from fabric stores. When my sister was looking to paint her home, she used the Sherwin William app (there are others, that's just who her painters used) to take pictures of things she thought were beautiful, so SW could color match it. We made a day of it, going through the arboreteum; was fun! Good luck!

I'm very weird, too, with the exception that I don't try to tamp it down at all :D. My home is very eclectic, and drives most people crazy LOL. But I like it! I have a white sofa and grey carpet. My walls are Sherwin Williams Smoky Blue on three walls and Collonade Gray on the fourth wall (it's a brick wall/fireplace). I like it. The blue is bold but not overly bright; the vibe is cool, relaxing, and it sets off the views of the property beautifully because the gardens pop against the darker "frame" around the windows. (I painted the sills the same color as the walls, and not the standard white.) My office is (Sherwin Williams) Peppercorn and Wool Skein; bold and dark, a bit boring on their own but really a good neutral base for more fun accessories. I'm re-doing this room right now, as a matter of fact. Right now I have a 70s-ish poppy orange, avocado green, sunshine yellow thing going on. I'm going to keep those colors but update the feel a bit, so I'm swapping out mod flowers for orange houndstooth valances. I'm re-painting my chandelier in yellow, and going to re-paint my desk in a parakeet green. I think you can go so many neat directions with your basic beige/brown base! Blues would be especially nice, and so would deep grays (maybe a purple-ish gray like SW Dovetail?)

I married into a Catholic family, so we've adopted their habit of not decorating until Christmas Eve. Some years we have cheated a bit and started the week of Christmas because that's when he had leave or when I was in town (I travel for work and am never off on Christmas) but never before that. Christmas wasn't a holiday I grew up really celebrating; it was more of a lesser holiday, and definitely a consumer-driven thing as opposed to a faith-based event.

My sister is having her home re-painted next month. She used Angie's List to secure two bids, both which were within a few thousand of each other, and got a third bid from a company that came recommended by a friend. The friend's contact cost the most by $5K, but that included one more color choice than the others and also a quicker timeline. Her home is 4400 sq.ft. She wanted upper and lower trimwork painted (including a staircase), two formal rooms with two-story high ceilings, and a total of seven other rooms plus four bathrooms. The bids ranged from $15K to $19K. The lowest bid offered $1K off discount upon completion of the job, for a total of $14K. All three used Sherwin-Williams paint, and offered at least 3 color choices (one offered up to five color choices). Good advice here. I know Sherwin-Williams runs regular sales, occasionally as deep as 40% but often in the 25-35% range. If you could purchase it yourself, that alone would save a significant amount. Otherwise, maybe you could knock out the kids rooms or bathrooms on your own over a weekend, and hire someone to do the main areas? Not easy or ideal with a big, young family but possible.

:D I can see I'm in great company! :lol: I have a sister like you! It kills her to see me throw my book on the table, open, face-down instead of finding a bookmark. Spines are her thing, too LOL.

I'm going to snag some lingonberry jam for those gluten-free biscuits :) Today I am working (outside of the home). Same ol', same ol', nothing new. What is the topic of your paper? For Veteran's Day we always do a parade, and my boys' scout troop puts up flags along our small town's main street. This is the week we typically cut back our roses, and my daughter likes to deliver little bouquets and cookies to the veterans we know around town. How awesome to be in talks about your short story! Even if it ends up not being feasible, how cool that it was even considered - you know? Cool stuff.

I mark up books, yes. I don't know if I've ever taken colors to black and white drawings, but I've doodled in them with blue or red ink - for sure. I do a lot of highlighting (not just words, but the edges of the pages LOL) and line drawing and notetaking in my books. I encourage the kids to do the same. I have a hard time keeping people straight, even in shorter YA books so I always have a family tree-type diagram going on in the back interior cover page. I do not, however, dog-ear pages. To me, that's the true sacrilege! :D

Wonderful news - best to you going forward! Will you sleep soundly tonight, or do you tend towards excited jitters? :)

My university roommate introduced me to Rack-o. I don't know if it is retro, but when I tried to find it a few years back for my own kids I wasn't able to find it anywhere. I didn't think to look on eBay ... great idea! I can't remember how to play it, I just know it was fun LOL. As kids we played a lot of backgammon; we still do. Probably doesn't count as a board game, but my kids love it and it's a great take-anywhere game.

I've done it to pay for a hotel (didn't want a hold on my debit card), and it's worked right away once activated. I bet it works :) I hope it does! Good luck!

We used crayons in the bathtub and made a game of it. Sometimes, after a shower, we'd write them on the mirror before the fog evaporated. Sometimes they'd show up again after the next shower :)

On the one hand, I love the practicality and thriftyness of re-using and re-purposing. On the other hand, where I grew up people are leery of used items because of beliefs about spirits. In the end, I try to avoid used stuff if it comes from an unfamiliar source (thrift store as opposed to friend). My one exception is the bookstore. I buy almost exclusively used because my need for a fix is stronger than my childhood superstitions :D

Yes, I'm fine with a mix of schooling types for our family. But it would matter what was best for me, in addition to the child (not just best for the child).

:grouphug: I lost one earlier this year, too. She had been in our family for more than 20 years. It was different circumstances, but same cause - I didn't realize I had to babysit an adult or do everything myself :glare:. People don't realize what good escape artists turtles are. I'm so sorry you lost your pet!

:grouphug: Are you having a rough day/week/month/semester/year ... or would you genuinely consider putting him in school? I homeschool for (my) convenience. I have nephews and nieces in local schools, both public and private, and I know my child would do just fine in either. He would prefer the private, but we've discussed how it's not a good investment on my part based on his behavior at home school. He knows he'd be going to the local public school. It's an excellent one, top in the state. I sent him to shadow for a day there, and he's seen the work his peers and cousins are doing. He sees the number of hours each day they dedicate to school (inside and out) and how it affects extracurriculars and free time. It has done wonders to motivate him to work better at home. In part, because he believes that I won't hesitate to send him there if I feel it's better for him, for me, or for both of us. I've always billed homeschool to be a privilege that has to work for all of us. Even still, he can get complacent and take homeschool for granted. I think we all fall into that trap in one sense or another, at various times in our lives and points in our relationships. My son has been working independently since 2nd grade. He's always just been really good about it, able to do it, and fine to do it. When he hit 5th grade, something snapped and suddenly he needed me by his side to do everything with him. It annoyed me. I had other things to be doing, too. But I humored him, and discovered that he truly did work better with me by his side. I don't know if it was a hormonal/maturity leap type thing, or just the transition from easier elementary level work to logic stage stuff ... but for most of that year and into 6th grade we did school together, for the most part. Sometimes it was latin conjugations and declensions at the kitchen counters while I did dishes. Sometimes it was using wet-erase markers on the sliding glass doors in the laundry room while I tended to laundry. Initially I think he sensed that I felt anxious and annoyed, and his attitude reflected mine. I hate that LOL. So we agreed to something - I'd put some of the chores on hold to work with him but he had to help me with those (above and beyond his usual contributions) in return once schoolwork was done. He wasn't thrilled, but knew no better offer was coming ;) so he accepted. When his attitude would occasionally sour, I'd tell him that he was free to go back to the desk and work alone. A few times he did, but mostly he shaped up. For my part, I had to watch my attitude also. I did feel some resentment and annoyance that he required such one-on-one time; then I came to actually enjoy it and realize it wasn't just about me. Hate that, too LOL. So in your case, had he done the belligerent thing over Latin words, I'd have quietly packed up his work to relocate him to his personal space and shrugged. Kind of the way you treat a toddler tantrum, you know? I have to fight my urge to scream, "OMG WTH!!! HELP ME TO HELP YOU!!!" and I'm convinced one day I'll earn an Emmy for such fabulous acting skills (playing cool when I want to throttle him). I'd invite him to finish the work himself, and offer to help finding an outlet for his frustration. But I'm not going to let it be me. I have big issues with people wasting my time, my kids included. They hear me say that a lot. Too much, probably. It's become less of an issue now that I set aside time to work one-on-one for those who need/want it. I do work outside of the home and they can't afford my hourly wage ;) but even if I didn't, my time is valuable. If they refuse to value it, I refuse to offer it. Have a fit doing your work on your own, my expectations of your output won't have changed. It's a hard thing to teach them, ... to respect not just you, but your time and energy also. FWIW, I wouldn't send my son to school. He believes I would, and I'd be really tempted to, but I know he'd resist me the same at home with homework. If I'm going to be fighting this fight, I'd rather it be on my terms and turf. That makes me a tad irritated (at him) but I know then that at least it's not just me - it's him. It makes me more able to help him develop this because I see it as a yet-learned skill moreso than I do a personal slight.

My daughter has always been extremely receptive to my sister, who has lived overseas since before my daughter was born. Whenever my sister is in town, and ever since my daughter was weeks old, she's shown a definite preference for this sister - even over another sister of mine that my daughter sees on a daily basis LOL. All three of us look pretty much the same - skin, face, hair - so it's not necessarily appearance; I've always wondered if it wasn't pheremones or something, instead. Maybe my Overseas Sister and I share a familiar scent, whether biological or external (like the same undernotes in lotion or shampoo or something), that registers as familiar to my daughter. I'm not a kid person, and yet children flock to me. Kids that know me, kids that don't; kids I'm related to, kids I'm not. Kids love me. I don't get it either. I wish they wouldn't sometimes LOL, as it makes me the de facto kidsitter at family and friendly gatherings!

:lol: at the time it drove me to the madhouse but looking back, it reminisces like a bad sitcom episode. Looks like you guys are back in the saddle, with a new one on the way? Congratulations! :lol::lol: that pretty much sums it up. That's funny!