We have business internet and it is billed at 100Mbps. It is 88.1 this morning. I don't think it ever really pegs out at 100 though. It is still much better than the non-business service we get out here, which is a crawl.

I have sat here and realized that our house and the people in it would drive most of you mad in about 2.5 hours..lol!

I didn't measure it, but I think it was around 1 to 3? It was pretty strong even at that.

When my husband leaves his #$%@!!! towel full of trimmed beard hair in the bathroom. He uses a towel to catch the hair when he trims his beard, but doesn't take care of it later. Inevitably, I pick it up, just thinking it is dirty/wet, and whiskers fly everywhere. :cursing: :cursing: :cursing: Or when people leave the empty milk jug or cereal box BESIDE the trash can, instead of crumpling it up and throwing it in the trash.

I am NOT an essential oil kind of person. However, a friend of mine, who is a doctor, recommended that we try oregano oil on my dd's warts. The soles of her feet were covered in them (It had gotten bad, and they'd been there for over a year). Anyway, we mixed oregano oil with coconut oil (as a carrier) and slathered it on her feet each night before bed and she slept in socks. Within two weeks they were completely gone. It is worth a shot. (I was pretty skeptical!!)

I even absentmindedly flip it on while going around curves sometimes :lol: :lol: :lol: I'll confess though, I don't always use them when turning on these winding little back roads I live on. They usually dump out onto another little winding back road, and you are usually the only person within sight. My teen daughters DO yell at me every single time I neglect to signal. :driving:

As a person starting over in her 40s, I hope all my interesting windows aren't closed! I think you'll be surprised at what you can do past the age of 40. It isn't as "old" as it used to be...

No party here for my oldest. Just a nice dinner out. She didn't want to do anything at all. My younger two may have some sort of friends gathering at some point. They have a tight knit group of friends, and most of them are also graduating...so if it isn't at my house, I'm sure there will be one somewhere. Their birthday is also around the same time, as is my oldest's (and mine!) graduation from CC. We may just have a bonfire and celebrate it all at once.

My dd (German major) says she thinks a hochgeschwindifkeits Fluchtweg is 'a high speed escape'. A notausgang is a 'fire exit'. They're probably very similar, and notausgang may be a more modern simplified idea.

I used to not wear any makeup at all. But then age has begun to catch up with me, while I'm perpetually tired from attending school full time and raising teens. I rarely go out of the house without it now. In fact, while Christmas shopping, I went out without one day and caught a glimpse of some haggard old lady in the mirror at Claire's. I looked SOOOO grumpy and tired, when in fact I was having a really good day. I decided that a little makeup was probably needed now..lol. I wish I could just look older instead of exhausted, but it is what it is. :glare:

There isn't anything at all wrong with his plan. My oldest never even applied to any colleges other than the CC that she was already attending for DE. She could have gotten into other schools, no problem, but she had no desire to do so. She graduates this semester from the CC, and we don't regret her decision one bit. She has zero college debt, and has been content to live at home. In fact, she plans on continuing to live at home for the foreseeable future while she works and saves up a down payment for a house. She has no current plants to go on to a 4-year, as she already has her dream job (librarian), and just needs a 2nd job doing whatever to make a decent income. (The library is small and has no funding for full-timers). This is what makes her happy. Anyway, if a kid isn't interested in going away to school, there is no reason to push them towards it. I wouldn't waste the time, money, or stress on college tours if that isn't what he's interested in. If he changes his mind later, you aren't going to be any worse off for not touring schools he's probably not going to be interested in anyway. With my younger two, we did some tours, and I found that really all it did for us was rule some schools out that they were only kind of interested in, and confirmed the ones that they were really interested in. It didn't make them want to go to a school that they weren't previously interested in going to.

No judgement here. There are 5 of us, we are all pretty much adults, and I still run the top rack FULL of cups/mugs every day.

Several, actually. When I was a teen I wanted to live in a big city and be an architect. I gave that up to marry dh. We talked for years about having a farm, but when we finally got the property to do so, dh's health went in the toilet. I wanted to get an art degree when I went back to school last year, but financially it made a lot more sense for me to get an accounting degree...so I can support us if dh can no longer work in a few years. I really, really wanted to stay in TX, but again, dh's health made living near family more of a priority. I can't say I'm happy about giving any of it up, but life could be a lot worse.

Nope. I've never been to one either. We did not for my oldest, per her request. She didn't do a ceremony, nothing. We took her out to dinner at a nice restaurant and that was it. My younger two want to walk in a ceremony, so we'll be doing that with a larger homeschool group. They may want a small party with their friends, but I'm not even sure about that. Their birthday is the same week, so we may just have a little bonfire or something and do it all at once.

To clarify my answer for you: I had no limitations growing up. Not really. The requirements were to keep operating room level clean in the house at all times, and don't piss momma off (which what that could be shifted more than wind direction). I was dating dh at 15, and had no curfew. I was at his apartment all hours of the day and night, and went where ever I pleased. I had access to alcohol my entire childhood, and was even occasionally encouraged to drink. I never did any drugs because I was pretty observant as a kid and saw what they did to people. I had dreams of getting the heck out of dodge as early as 7 or 8 years old. Now, my girls have a lot of freedom, but nothing like what I did. They've never been exposed to the things that I was, and they've had rules. They have seen the mess I came from as they have gotten older (although they never met my mother as she died before they were born), and have thanked me repeatedly for protecting them from that life. On the flip side, we are probably very similar in limitations/rules to what my dh had growing up. He and his brother turned out fairly well, so it wasn't a bad choice to kind of role model our family after his. In fact, for the first couple of years, I was in complete awe over how incredibly NORMAL his family was...lol. Now, after 20+ years, I know the warts and skeletons in that family too, and they aren't perfect...but they are still oh so sane and normal compared to what I came from. I believe that people can and do rise above their upbringing. It is hard, and the scars are with you forever. But it can be done. Step #1, in my opinion, is to refuse to blame your own choices on your family past. The ones that stay in the mire seem to blame every bad thing in their life on other people rather than owning their choices.

Heh. Well, here's your exception. ETA: Drug abuse is rampant in my family. My mother was mentally ill and abusive. I was around drug use, criminals, and exposed to sexual activity at a young age, simply from the people that were around me. My parents divorced when I was very young, and my dad had a whole different set of yahoos that I was around when I visited him. My step-dad and his family was probably the only glimpse of normalcy that I ever saw growing up, and even through his family I went through abuse of a different sort. They were also pretty much responsible for driving me away from the church for a very long time. My own brother is an addict and is currently homeless. We are out there. But we've worked hard to right the ship, so to speak, and to people that don't know our past we look like we came from entirely different background than we did. In fact, after my small group at church really got to know me, they were shocked to find out the things I've been through. This mostly came through my correction of their wrong assumptions about troubled people in general.

Yeah, I'd say I'm more conservative. My family of origin is a train wreck on both sides. My parents were pretty the typical "wild child" type from the late 60s/70s. I was allowed to do things my kids were never allowed to do. I married a young man from a pretty tame, Christian family, moved over 4 hours away, and never lived any closer than that again. Now, I'm probably the most liberal (politically) member of HIS family, but still far different from my own family.

We had a similar issue with our "dumb" phones. I think it has something to do with data.

My brother had a black bedroom for a while. It was very dark in there, but I don't remember there being any trouble when it got painted over.

My biggest sympathies. All our apps are in, but what I thought was a sure thing (one dd's top choice school/major, that she's been super sure about for the past four years) is suddenly not. She may have decided not to go to that school at all, and it is where we put about 90% of our effort into. Sigh. So now we are in limbo waiting on scholarship offers, combined with re-evaluating schools for a different major. But if she gets a good scholarship there, it will be back on the table. I'll be so glad when this is all settled and decided. Even when you think you are done, apparently you aren't. :glare:

When my dd was 13, she fell head over heels for a boy. We loved their entire family, actually. They moved all the way across the country. She was heartbroken, and it was hard on her. BUT, they kept in touch. Now they are 20 and 23 and are still friends. I don't think she would trade the heartbreak for the time we spent with them the few months before the move.

I've made this without the onions and it tasted just as good. Even the people that don't really care for broccoli like this one: http://www.food.com/recipe/broccoli-cheese-soup-atk-487132

I use them to ship my sold art pieces. I make art dolls and the smaller Amazon boxes are the perfect size.

Our 20 year old dd has a "curfew" of 11 or 12PM. It is impossible for anyone to pull in our driveway or come in the door without our dog waking EVERYONE up. Her dad is usually in bed by 10 or 11, and doesn't want to be jolted awake at 1AM by the dog, so we ask that she come home at a decent hour, or find a friend's couch to sleep on for the night. (And to let us know if that is what she is doing) For us, it is just a curtesy extended to people you share a house with.

Usually Pre-Algebra, Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, then Pre-Cal (I think?)