Turkey Mashed Potatoes Candied Sweet Potatoes Green Beans Corn Sausage Stuffing Cranberry Sauce Pumpkin Pie Apple Pie Crescent Rolls Gluten-Free Dinner Rolls

I sent you a PM!

I also agree that George RR Martin is a little too intense for teens! The plot is very nitty gritty...it does contain ince*tuous relationships and the like...and they go into quite a bit of detail about one character being a eunuch. I LOVE Robert Jordan and have read all 12 of the books. They're terrific. I've also enjoyed the Terry Goodkind Sword of Truth series. The first book is "Wizard's First Rule" and I think there are 12 more .. or something like that. Like Jordan, there is romance, but they leave the details to the imagination. There are good wizards and bad wizards and lots of sword fighting and magic in a fantasy sense (as in having magical abilities -- not magic as in the Harry Potter sense with spells and the like). It has dragons, too! Which are always a hit, especially with my boys!

My 7yo is allergic to gluten, soy and dairy. Here are her favorites foods: Breakfasts: Trix - Cocoa Pebbles - Fruity Pebbles with Rice Milk GF pancakes with real maple syrup (Bob's Red Mill has a great bag mix) Bacon - Sausage (make sure they're GF) Fruit (she loves grapes, bananas, apples, strawberries, raisins, and kiwi) GF toast with jam (she loves EnerG White Rice Bread -- comes pre-sliced and able to be stored in a pantry until opened) Scrambled Eggs Lunches (she attends public school, so her lunch is usually): Peanut Butter on toasted EnerG bread Lays Potato Chips Sliced Apples Raisins Gummy Bears 100% Fruit Juice in a box (On the weekends, her lunch is usually the same as Dinners) Dinners: All meat -- she loves hamburger, ham, pork, chicken, and turkey Vegetables -- she prefers raw veggies (broccoli, carrots, celery) Rice or potatoes GF pasta with spaghetti sauce and a little olive oil As for my daughter, she suffered from failure to thrive before we discovered the gluten allergy (she was around a year old). When she has gluten, she breaks out in an excema-like rash all over. Soy makes her shriek hysterically and bite herself (she's autistic). Dairy gives her diarrhea and a rash on her buttocks area.

All four of my kids had it last week. The first thing that came was all over body aches and general blah feeling. They just wanted to lie down and rest. Then they all ran high fevers (102-103 was average). Other than that, the symptoms varied. My 7yo and 18yo had diarrhea; my 15yo and 10yo were throwing up. They all had dry coughs. It really affected my 10yo who has asthma and he needed to use a nebulizer, which he's rarely had to do. My 7yo and 15yo also came down with unexplained hives after the fever broke and they were on the mend. These lasted for a few days and subsided with Benadryl. It's a nasty bug, but, for us, the worst of it only lasted for around 3 days. But the cough and general tired feeling lasted for about a week.

Steel Magnolias Terms of Endearment

Has anyone else experienced hives along with H1N1? Here's a quick synopsis. My 7yo dd started feeling bad on Saturday and ran a fairly high fever (101-102 or so). On Tuesday, my 10yo came down with the same thing and we ended up having to take him in to the urgent care place in town because his asthma really started acting up. They tested him and he did / does have H1N1. They started him on Tamiflu, but because my 7yo had been sick for more than 48 hours, it was too late to start her on it. But by then, she was feeling much better. The fever had broken and she was acting normal...she still had a lingering cough, though, so we kept her home from school. School was also closed yesterday for the holiday, so today was her first day back at school since last Friday. When she came home from school this afternoon, however, she was covered from head to toe in hives!!! I called the school to ask if her teacher had noticed them, but she had already left for the day (I would think that she would've called me, had she noticed them -- my dd has autism and is fairly non-verbal, so she wouldn't have said anything to the teacher about them, but she was scratching up a storm, so maybe it was just missed). So has anyone else experienced hives along with H1N1?? We gave her some Benadryl, but she isn't on any medication, other than that. (And my two oldest also came down with the same illness, but they've also made easy recoveries. My 7yo is the only one with hives).

If it helps any, I've made the drive to Radford from the Fredericksburg area and it's not a bad drive at all! Not too many treacherous mountain passes! (The drive to James Madison in Harrisonburg was another story!! I was literally freaking when I realized how high up in the mountains we were and how sheer of a drop-off there was on several sides of the road!) You can do it!!!

My oldest is at the community college. She took a few dual enrollment classes her junior and senior years of homeschool, but now she's going full-time. She has TONS of friends! She's attending a fairly large cc campus and they have a student lounge in the main building, and she started going in there during her class breaks. The campus is a good 45-60 minutes away from us, each way, so it's easier for her to load 4 or 5 classes into 2 or 3 days per week than to drive there every day. Therefore, she often has over an hour between classes. She hangs out in the student lounge and has met many, many students there and she hangs out with them on the weekends, too. For instance, this semester, she leaves for school on Mondays and Wednesdays at 7:30 in the morning and her last class ends at 4:00. She has a two-hour break between 12 and 2 and she has lunch in the lounge. So don't assume that she won't make friends at the community college! :) My dd is 3 semesters away from her AA degree and, with her 3.0 gpa, she has guaranteed admission into the state college of her choice, where she'll be granted Junior status. We're paying around $5000 per year for the community college (and that includes books). The state college she plans to transfer to would / will run us $15,000 a year (tuition, room, board, and books). So we'll save $20,000 doing it this way, at least.

Has anyone received calls from a "Me Research Ins"? (That's what it shows on my caller ID). They called us this evening, and my husband picked up. They said they were calling with a survey about health care. They asked if we had children between the ages of 10 and 17. We answered, "Yes.." And then....they asked to speak to them!! To the children!! Ummm...heck no?? :mad: I can't believe they're calling, asking to speak to minor children! Sheesh! What could they contribute in regards to a survey about health care? I'm not sure I want to know.... :glare:

My 18yo is still at home (while taking classes at the community college). She is responsible for feeding and caring for the cat and her litter box, keeping her bedroom clean, doing her own laundry, fixing her lunches to take to school, and helping with babysitting (our youngest has autism and she's very good about taking care of her when we have errands to run or just need a night out). She also gives piano lessons to her 10yo brother every week, cleans all 4 bathrooms every week, and mows the lawn during the spring & summer. My 15yo loads and unloads the dishwasher, picks up the playroom, does his own laundry, takes out the trash, makes lunches during the school week, and keeps his own room clean. He's also responsible for keeping the yard free of toys and sticks, etc,. when it's time for mowing the lawn. My 10yo sweeps the floors, feeds the dogs, makes breakfasts in the morning during the school week, and keeps his own room clean. My 7yo loves to dust. That's what she likes to do! She also likes to take clothes and towels out of the dryer and fold them.

Around $15 to $20 is average for us.

I love my teens!!!! My oldest is 18 and the teenage years have really been a joy...which is funny, because she used to drive me up a proverbial wall when she was little! She was a chatterbox who talked my ear off from the time she could walk. But all of that conversation really helped us to get to know each other and it's paid off in the long run. She can talk to me about anything. When she and her boyfriend were ready to "move to the next level of their relationship", some 6 months ago, she came to me and we made the trip to the OB/GYN together. We've been able to give her a great deal of independence and she has a good head on her shoulders. My 15 year old is a bit more of a challenge...he's an introvert and very sensitive, so we sometimes rub each other the wrong way, but he's working very hard on expressing his feelings, rather than waiting until they boil over. The challenge with him is that he has high-functioning autism and puberty is really throwing him for a loop. But we're working on it!

16 hours of video games a day? Wow! I do have a funny comment along those lines though! Some old homeschooling friends of ours that we knew years ago in Maryland were always walking that line of "do we do video games or not?". Their oldest son became involved in Civil Air Patrol and expressed a desire to become a pilot. He went to some...summer camp thing for aspiring pilots when he was a teen and he called his parents, just ecstatic..."Hey Mom & Dad! Guess what we're doing all day? ... Playing video games!" :lol: So I do see the good side of video games...but anything in moderation, you know? 16 hours of any one thing all day is just too much.

I'm rooting for the Yankees for basically one reason...... A-Rod :drool5: But they sure got spanked last night!!! Yowza! And they'll have to face Lee again in the series. Should be interesting!

Oh my goodness!!!! :grouphug: I'm so sorry to hear this, but very relieved that you're all safe!!! Things can be replaced...but I'm sure it must be heartbreaking!! (Oh..and keep the photos...I've heard of businesses that are able to restore damaged photos after a fire....perhaps you'll be able to do this, at least with some of the favorites).

Oooh!!! I'll bet they would have it at Wegmans!! (There's one about 40 minutes away from us, but it would be worth the trip!!) Thanks so much!!

This is exactly the case with my youngest!!! She has autism and she's terribly allergic to wheat and soy. When she has wheat, she will have definite digestive reactions, as well as break out in an excema-like rash. With soy, her reaction is purely behavioral. She will literally screech at the top of her lungs and she'll bite her hands until they bleed. She's fine with dairy in very small doses, but when she has a lot of it, we see the same reactions that we do with the soy. So dairy is limited. (She might have some real butter on the weekends with her gluten-free pancakes, for example, because she reacts terribly to margarine, which almost always contains soy)....the same can be said for cheese substitutes.

When we lived in Maryland, there was a registered child sex offender in our neighborhood. He lived directly across from the neighborhood park, which also doubled as the neighborhood school bus stop. One day, I just happened to check the registry or I'd never have known.

It makes terrific fudge! And the holidays are coming.... :D

I got ... 120 – 140 Super Nutty, Ultra-Crunchy Granola Earth Mama :D Mainly for not circumcising, using cloth diapers, natural family planning, breastfeeding exclusively for 6+ months, co-sleeping, wearing my babies in a sling, child-led weaning, tandem nursing, eating organic foods, using homeopathic remedies, homeschooling, and not vaccinating.

LOL!!!! My 10yr old is also going as Gene Simmons from KISS!!! His big sister's in charge of the makeup department. My 7yr old is going to be Cinderella. My 15yr old (who'll actually take them around the neighborhood) is going to dress up in a doctor's outfit -- aka scrubs. My 18yr old is going to a private Halloween party with friends from the community college, and I think she's going to be a gypsy.

Nope! Not on your life! But then that wouldn't be my kind of movie either. I like action-adventure & sci-fi movies.

I'm getting him the new Star Trek movie on DVD when it comes out next month! We're not buying any large gifts this year, as we're taking a vacation to Disney World in January -- that's our family Christmas present!

:iagree: We're going to Disney World in January and that's our family's Christmas present this year!! We'll get a few little things -- Star Wars Action Figures, little Lego Kits, CDs, DVDs, etc., -- and candy of course! -- to put in their stockings and that's it!