Wow. You have way more self control than I! I would have been asking her WTH she thought she was doing? ETA: I wouldn't have thought twice about sharing those things with her, if she'd asked, but to rifle through my personal things would have sent me through the roof.

:grouphug: Prayers for you and your little guy!

Tamales and mixed appetizers for Christmas Eve. Steak and potatoes on Christmas Day. We do both over at my in-laws with family.

Oldest dd got all As and one C in her classes, with the C being in German, which is her major :glare: But next semester is her last, and this semester was pretty stressful for her. I'm good with that. Her GPA is 3.5, so it's fine. My DE student got an A in her Biology class, and has a 4.0 overall for all the classes she's taken at CC. And, since I'm a college student too...I got all As and one B+. The B was in an online class in which something went horribly wrong with my Final and my essay didn't get submitted. At first she had me down for a ZERO on my final, but then had mercy on me.

It seems like the older generation just doesn't get it. I don't eat wheat. It kills my stomach. MIL knows this. At Thanksgiving I made gravy that was wheat-free. My MIL walked by and dipped her cracker in it. I looked at her and said "You just contaminated my gravy!" She laughed, picked up another cracker and STIRRED the gravy with it. She thought I was joking. I informed her that I had made that gravy so I could eat it, and now I couldn't. She got huffy with me over it. Or the time that she made these cookie bars for my peanut allergic dd and said she made sure to not put peanut butter chips in them (which they normally have). DD took a bite of one and immediately tasted PB, and spit it out. Turns out that MIL had made one pan of the bars, but put the chips in half the pan. Clueless. Anyway, you can approach it a million different ways, and she may still not get it.

He is adorable!

I have a Braun that I've had for several years. I love it. Not only does it work well, it is MUCH quieter than most and is reasonably priced.

I've never used a sprayer, but painted our entire house when we built. It isn't that bad. Just do it a room at a time. Get good paint, a good roller, and a good brush for cutting in, and it will go pretty smoothly.

Sugar cookies and tamales. I'm making pecan pies tomorrow. Yum!

Usually, I put candy in my own stocking. This year, today in fact, dh gave the girls some money to "Go get mom something for her stocking." Huh.

My kid that has rarely played video games is the one that complains of being bored the most. She is also the one that craves being with friends and being out and about. My gamer has hardly ever said she was bored in her 20 years of life. It is a personality thing, I think.

I'm usually over winter about 10 minutes into the first cold snap. I'm a miserable grouch from about November until April, and I spend about 99% of that time under a blanket! (The sad thing is, I live in the south)

I think figuring out the mindset behind the questions is the biggest hurdle to a good score. Congrats to your dd!

Well, IMO the tests don't really test that well on certain subjects. The science section? bah. Not much actual science knowledge required, more like figuring out how they want a question answered. We just got dd's back. It was a last ditch effort to bring her score up a point, and she was NOT feeling it when she took the test, so we weren't surprised to see that she did NOT bring her score up..lol.

I've told mine something similar. Cremate me, throw me out in a field somewhere, then if and when you feel like it, throw a party and talk about all the stupid things I've done in my life. I don't want them to go through the torture I did.

I've had to do it for two parents. It is awful. I don't react outwardly very much to death, and so it fell on my shoulders to hold everyone together AND get all the stuff done. I was young too, and didn't know what the heck I was doing. I hated all of it. Anyway, thankfully for the food stuff it seemed to take care of itself. I think funerals are the worst thing ever (especially southern funerals), and if it were up to me, they wouldn't be a thing.

To me that aspect seems more surreal than wrong. But I think it is what keeps people going. Personally, I deal with grief by doing things and the mundane helped me through.

My oldest uses a refurbished Dell Latitude that is a professional grade laptop. It has been super sturdy, and worked well. Our only issue is having to replace the charger, but that is because she keeps dropping the laptop and hitting where it plugs in :glare: She spent under $200 on it, and it was a good decision. My other two have had Toshibas and they are kind of horrible. In fact, I'm looking at replacing the last one this week because the wifi decided to stop working altogether.

We haven't seen dd's yet.

As an artist and former blogger, just ask permission to use pictures of artwork, with proper link backs and credit. I never minded people posting my art, but it did irritate me when I ran across my images with no link back to my website or credit for my work.

I want pretty much everything they sell at BoxLunch..lol. But dh doesn't get it at all, so I didn't tell him that. I asked for a new office chair. :lol:

:grouphug: :grouphug: I'm sorry you are going through this. It is frustrating and scary. My dh has something neurological going on, and the docs can't figure it out either. We are waiting on an appointment in February while symptoms build. Praying you get some answers soon, and some peace about whatever those answers are. :grouphug:

The packaging makes a huge difference too. Hermetically sealed packaging can be about as good as canning. Canned meat can last for ages. I wouldn't open it, THEN wait until March to eat it, but as long as it was sealed and properly stored, that date actually makes sense.

We used to do Monkey bread until i got a waffle maker one year. Then I started doing waffles. Now it is GF waffles :D

We looked at OOS schools, but none offered anything that would draw us there. The girls qualify for several in state scholarships, our state schools have decent tuition costs anyway, and one dd's program of choice is really only offered at an in state school. The other dd wants to be a teacher, so cost is the #1 factor. If her scholarships don't pan out, she'll start off at CC anyway. When we began looking we started with the major they were interested in. Then we ruled out areas that we did not want to look at. Then we looked at scholarship opportunities vs the estimated cost. (while factoring in things like plane tickets/travel for far away schools) Our nets got smaller and smaller until we ended up back at our home state.