We use a free program/app called Good Budget, I tried You Need a Budget but I liked Good Budget more. We log everything we spend, I get notifications so it's super easy.

That would make me mad, I hate feeling like I missed something important. I have several family members that work or worked for CC and they pay was great. Entry level and student workers are probably minimum wage or slightly above, but they have plenty of people who make over $70k.

These are my favorite non-fried fish tacos. Sooooo good. http://www.skinnytaste.com/blackened-fish-tacos-with-cabbage-mango/

I would be hurt. :grouphug:

I have two siblings, a brother and a sister. They live about 600 miles apart and I live on the opposite coast from them. We see each other 1-2 times a year, but when we do, we are very much like Rockwell or Parenthood. They are my best friends, they were my maid and man of honor at my wedding 4 years ago. We don't talk as much as we could, the time difference and general life busyness gets in the way, but yes, we are close and I often miss them terribly, I'm just not the type to stay in one place and live out my days there.

We enjoy camping and usually go once or twice a year. We have a very nice large tent, a good air mattress, a screen tent/canopy thing, and a propane stove. Good equipment makes all the difference. In California and Hawaii when you camp, the campgrounds are all dirt or sand, which I HATE because no matter how much I shower or try to keep it out of the tent, nothing ever feels clean. We recently camped in upstate NY on grass, and it was heaven, there was almost no dirt. Usually by day 3 I am over it, but I made it to day 4 without even getting a little grouchy. I hate being dirty, so I'm pretty sure I'll never camp on dirt/sand again now that I know about grass sites.

Hits: Math Mammoth Pre-A Well trained mind academy Socratic Discussion Hake grammar (no one LOVES it but it gets done with relatively little arguing, we are stretching it over 2 years though) Misses: AOPS Pre-A (stopped this mid year for math mammoth, much better fit for us)

We bought some fun new binders, I'm trying to be more organized this year since we have to do reviews here, it might make it easier. Each kid got to pick out their own writing pens and pencils. I did get a neat wall hanging folder holder thing, we aren't terribly exciting. I think pretty notebooks are my favorite "fun" thing with colored pens.

:grouphug: My condolences, sending thoughts to you and yours.

Oh yeah, if I worked full time I would probably get 4-5 a week. Because dd and the baby don't eat as much we do well with the 4 person plan. I figure we spend $20-30 per dinner on our nicer meals, so $40 isn't that much of a stretch. Plus everything we've had so far tastes like it came straight from a nice restaurant, which we could never go to for $40. :)

You can get nut free. I have found the prep to be easy, they have a key for ease of prep and I think every one we've gotten has been easy, but I've seen some intermediate ones. I think my two olders at 10 & 13 could make them with some help on the chopping.

Exactly, I was doing low-carb for a bit so that's really why I went with Home Chef over Blue Apron, now I'm just back to counting calories and I can do that too, so it works.

I guess I won't bother trying Blue Apron, seems a lot of people are kind of meh about it. Home Chef has veg options, low-carb, low-cal, avoiding certain things like gluten, dairy, and fish. I like that it's customizable. It is much cheaper than going out to eat for us, just Panera, minus one kid the other day cost us $36, it would have been $45 if that kid had been with us. None of the meals have taken longer than 40 minutes for us, with most being about 25-30 minutes. I am finding it to be a nice alternative to eating out, but I am lowering it to every other week because of the cost. I haven't heard anything about Hello Fresh though. We will definitely be recreating many of the meals we've gotten though, even the pickier child has liked all of them.

We don't have that, but we have 34 panels.

Central Maryland $400 electricity and gas (almost half is taxes, but we just turned on our new solar so hoping to see a drop there) $0 garbage $35 water $195 cable/internet $130 phones

We just started doing Home Chef, which I chose because it's a little more customizable than Blue Apron, and I absolutely love it. Five meals in and every single one has been incredible. It's expensive but worth it at the moment. Anyone else do a different one and enjoy it or did one and hated it? I may take a break from Home Chef to try a different one at some point. My favorite thing about it is that I make stuff I never normally would, and I'm a good cook that makes a ton of variety but it's really bringing me out of my box and I'm learning some new techniques as well.

Well we already know you and I are losing!

Everyone has it but only you can see yours. I've never had a warning, but I assume if you break board rules you start to get points toward getting the boot.

Push-ups of all varieties, pull-ups or bent arm hanging, tri-cep dips. Highly recommend fitnessblender.com, you can filter their workouts to what you want, upper body, bodyweight in your case.

I agree with volunteering, I work with a resource center for homeless people and getting to know the women who are overcoming addiction and other major problems and just helping them and working on projects with them just makes me so happy inside. It makes me realize that while it's important to understand the world, the things that are close are mostly good. The people that I know and love are good and we are making differences in our own small ways every single day. Definitely agree with liberally unfriending people. I had an old coworker who would occasionally respond to something I posted on Facebook, not in a friendly debate type of way but in a way that was specifically aimed at goading me. The last straw was a couple days ago and I already feel much better not counting him as a person I know., I have no idea why I didn't do it sooner, but his posts just kept getting nastier and ruder.

Agree with all this. If my dh went there would be some serious discussions, but I don't consider it adultery. I still would not be okay with it. If it was for a bachelor party, I would still be bothered but not require him to leave. I have friends and know people who go to strip clubs, that is their business. If my son went, as an adult we'd have some discussions but I think it's something people will generally check out a time or two in their lives, few people that I know of seem to feel the need to go with any frequency. I've gone to a couple so it would be rather hypocritical to decry it all or claim moral superiority.

I got rid of all negativity from Facebook, everything political and any people who gave me that anxious feeling. I'd like to get rid of Facebook altogether but I use it for homeschool groups. I only read news, never watch it, and try not to read about the same thing more than once. I exercise every day, get outside almost every day, swim with my kids, read books that are happy and light hearted. I still get terrible anxiety though. It really stinks. I have a very happy, nearly stress free though occasionally busy life, but it's still hard to shake the feeling of doom when we are inundated from all sides with awful news and horrible people. :(

Ours are color-coded, but that's more for the kids than for dh. Cream and gray for the kitchen, various blues for bathrooms, and white with blue stripe for half bath. All cleaning rags/clothes are plain white. Minus a couple strays it works pretty well, I started over when we moved in December because it was bothering me so much.

My bestie lives across the country, we chat a lot through Facebook messenger. I went to visit her a couple months ago and she will come here next year. We are also doing a two family cruise/Disney vacation in Decemeber. I think it's just one of those things you have to put a little more effort into. Both of our families are very transient, so we just have to roll with it and hope that one day we will land in the same vicinity again.

We tried AOPS Pre-A after 5B, it was not a good fit for ether of us and caused a lot of frustration. Math Mammoth pre-a has been much better for us.