We were there in July as part of a larger trip. I wished I had researched more before we got there (we spent a day in Arches) because there is so much to do in the area. We took a short trip to checkout some dinosaur footprints but there were other locations where you could see fossils that we didn't have time for. I was able to put my hand into the footprint and take a pic which was amazing! And you are allowed to but it is against the law to take plaster casts because those destroy the stone. Wind and flooding are very common and sandstorms will require pools to close to prevent damage from dirt in the pool systems. Arches was still partly closed due to some flooding. Fall and spring are "the" peak times for this area because the weather is more mild but it will be very crowded. We rented a home in a small community just south of the KOA from Airbnb and were very happy.

Ugh that sucks. About 10 years ago my doctor really went missing. He showed up for work in the morning and left the newspaper on his desk and then vanished. His car was found but his body wasn't discovered (with a self inflicted gunshot wound) for several months. I don't remember how long it took to be transferred to a new doctor but I don't remember is being terribly long. Can you not just ask to be assigned to a new doctor? That might be easier than waiting.

Our experience in court was that it was/is a corrupt system. Retired police officer sued us after we had sold our house and moved away (he was upset that we sold he had tried many times to sell and never could) for parking a trailer on our own property, adjacent to an easement. Which, because he used a tape measure he had decided (after the fact we moved) was his property. He also didn't live in the home, it sat vacant 10 of the 12 years we lived there, only first occupied by renters. We ended up paying him a lot of money in "damages" for longer than we owned our trailer for even. Without any proof whatsoever that the property was his. He never had a survey done, nothing. But we no longer lived there and the trailer was no longer parked there to prove it. Although we knew we were correct once we "lost" the case we just let our insurance handle it. It still kills me today and you know that whole truth is stranger than fiction?

I don't know about it being less per say than an Eagle. The gold award is a huge undertaking and the project must continue on in perpetuity without the girl there to keep running it. For boy scouts it is a one time service project which comes at the end of earning a large number of badges. The gold award doesn't have the same name recognition that the Eagle does though. eta...although I have heard of several alternative scouting organizations I'm not aware what their awards are. I will say that the skills gained in doing whatever project are very valuable and that in itself may be worth it even if there isn't the name recognition for it. Plus there would be opportunity to explain this on say an application. I'm not sure if I would do any activity for this sole purpose and there is no guarantee that your child would actually follow through all the way and actually complete it.

Being from San Diego we are pretty big fans of in n out. What I like is that it's relatively inexpensive compared to other burger places. Their fries are definitely different so I get why people have mixed opinions about them. We get a few meals, plus some extra burgers for the girls and walk out spending less than say McDonalds and the quality is much better. Plus I like how competent they are with the protein style lettuce burgers. Lots of other leave plenty to be desired. I've been to 5 guys once. It was good for sure but cost me about double. We just went to the Habit last week as they are new to our area. It was a nice compromise between the 2 places. My girls liked that the lady gave them huge ice cream cones and they are the only place I've seen here that still sells them for $1, Everywhere else it is way more money for a soft serve cone.

Many years ago we had a 2am phone call because the car we had sold to someone had been used in a high speed police chase. When they ran the plates it came back as still registered to us so they wanted to know if it had been stolen or we had any info about the driver.

We have a garbage disposal made for septic. It has enzymes that are added to it when you use it and you buy the enzymes in cartridges.

Disney runs 3 day, at sea cruises here in CA. There are options for food you can eat anytime you want vs doing the sit-down meals. They have Halloween parties and even the adults dress up. Since it doesn't port anywhere there is no getting left behind.

No, I mean I could guess at several reasons though. I do know that girl scouts is meant to be girl led so the girls should be designing their own fundraisers. Our troop has done a few in the past. Several years ago they made crafts and sold them at a farmers market and used the proceeds to donate to leopard conservation.

In our council, that isn't allowed. We have rules to follow for additional fundraisers outside of cookies and nuts. And to even be eligible for those you have to participate in those first. We aren't allowed to use businesses that offer % back to fundraise, nor are we allowed to sell products from other fundraising companies.

I am not a big fan of leftovers. My stomach is a bit sensitive and I am always nervous that leftovers will make me sick. There are a few things I will eat leftover, but only the very next day. Thankfully DH is a big fan of leftovers for his lunches to take to work so I usually try to cook enough that there is one serving left over.

I wasn't really sure how to answer the poll, so I will just post my reply instead. DH has always worked long hours, even before kids and we never really had the traditional family dinner time. I hated being home so long in the evenings by myself so I had the kids in activities so we had things to do. 2 years ago we moved really rural and we are often away from home most of the day until late at night so we can't always pack all of the meals to take with us. We started just eating dinner at 9pm after everyone was home. Getting an instant pot this past winter was a life changer lol.

I know I replied to this quote already but inside of Paradise Hotel there is a set of payphones you can use. I know they are going to start remodeling there so I don't know how that would affect the payphones but at least you could call out at some point if you didn't get signal anywhere else. We have Tmobile and the only other place we had a signal was at Crystal Mountain but that would be quite a drive if you didn't plan to go there.

Altitude may be an issue depending on what you body is used to. I had a lot of trouble hiking Sunrise to Frozen Lake which started at 6400'. I started getting a migraine maybe not even 2/10 a mile into the trip but it was too pretty to turn around so I suffered through it. Paradise area starts at 5420' and goes to 6336' at Glacier Vista and 6800' at Panorama Pt. I'm not sure what would make that not steep lol you are walking constantly uphill for several miles. Although our most difficult hike in terms of going uphill was Snow Lake (eaten alive by mosquitoes). It was hiking up stairs carved into the hills over and over and over. Just when you think you must finally be at the top, yet another set of stairs. Do you know what type of foot you have? Under, over, or neutral pronation? If you look it up on Asics website they have a chart which shows which type of shoe works for what foot. Other than that I think any trail runner will give you the tread you are looking for with the versatility of a tennis shoe. They are a bit heavier with the treads but I wear mine regularly to Disneyland and I find them comfortable and supportive for my foot. I was there July 16-18, a week ago. We stayed the 16th at Crystal Mountain resorts and the 17th at Paradise Hotel. Kind of a big pain because they were paving the whole Paradise parking lot and we had to move our cars by 7am. That whole area was a mess. I would expect Panorama Vista to be mostly clear by Aug but I think they are expecting beyond that to still be covered in snow.

I forgot to put the specific shoe I have is the Asics Gel-Kahana if you want to look it up. It is a trail runner shoe so the comfort of a running shoe with the tread of a hiking shoe. I don't like boots they irritate my ankle. I actually had to buy another pair about a week before we left on our trip (we spent 10 days road tripping and hiking OR and WA 1500 miles and hiking 75) and I had no break in period, no blisters from my shoes. I did have trouble with one toe where is folds under my other toes but this is an ongoing thing and even happens when I wear hiking sandals.

When I was there you hit solid snow at Glacier Vista and were not permitted past Panarama Point, same with going up from Myrtle Falls via Golden Gate about 1/2 mile up you would hit snow. Normally that is one entire loop. We had planned to hike all 6 miles of it but scrapped it and did Myrtle Falls, Narada Falls and then drove to Olympic to hike Staircase. I think knowing what I did if you are comfortable in tennis shoes then I wouldn't worry about getting new shoes just for the trip if they have a decent tread on them. Narada Falls is super easy. 2/10 straight down steps and 2/10 straigh back up.

DH and I were just there a week ago for 3 days and hiked one snow covered trail out of Paradise, the Frozen Lake trail cutting back onto the Wonderland trail. There was quite a few sketchy spots on the Wonderland section but I'd imagine most would already have melted there. We just have tennis shoes and were fine, wish we have had trekking poles though to help on the slipping snow. We just took it slow and steady. Honestly the issues I had with lack of ankle support was when we "hiked" the Ape Cave upper trail the last day of our trip but that is in Mt St Helens area.

My husband and I went to Maui last May and had an amazing time. We got up early and saw the sunrise at Haleakala, then drove one way around the island and saw Iao Needle and did a bunch of hikes. The next day we drove the other way around the island and did the road to hana- and kept going. That day we did a hike, well bouldering really, to a private waterfall where were the only ones for the several hours we were there. Amazing bucket list type thing. We stopped at several other falls and swam. One of the falls my husband did some cliff jumping. Another set of falls was in the national park. We took private golf lessons at the beautiful Wailea Golf Club. We did the full day early morning Trilogy sailing cruise to Lanai for snorkeling and we saw several pods of dolphins, one of which had several hundred! It's common to see them that time of the day but not usually so many. The food was fantastic and they actually raise the sails which was my first time on a sailboat. We also went ziplining in Lahaina but actually not my favorite part of the trip, it wasn't as thrilling as we were expecting. Lastly, we had a luau booked for Old Lahaina Luau but shortly after we arrived it started pouring and they had to make use leave :( We ended up having a great dinner nearby but I really wanted to see a Luau lol. For keeping expenses down we stopped at the Costco after we got our rental and stocked up on snacks, water, and breakfast and dinner foods (we had a studio style condo) and only ate lunch out. We just winged lunch and ended up at Leoda's Pie Shop, Coconut's (fish taco shop), Da Kitchen, and Hula Grill. Full disclosure though, my husband won the trip at a golf tournament which was a set $ amount to put toward the trip but we had to book through a travel agency. We used that money to pay for airfare, hotel, and car rental and we paid for everything else ourselves.

Mine is about 15 years old, maybe more. I only know I had it for a few years before ODD was born. About 2 years ago we started to loose the light strands on it. We decided to buy a new house over that holiday break and DH and I came across LED strands for $1 on clearance and bought easily 20 of them. So, before we packed away that tree before we moved I cut all of the old light strands off. Last year in our new house I rewrapped the tree with the new LED strands. It looses needles and some of the branches are starting to get close to breaking but each year we pull it out and decorate it and it looks fine. Mine was originally from Costco and it is def a nice quality. This year I bought a bunch of holly berry sprigs (those fake ones you get from craft stores) and stuck it throughout the tree and that helped to make it look fuller. My plan is to just keep making it work until something really breaks on it.

Both of my girls started fun ballet/tap classes at 2. They learned some basic ballet concepts and balanced but it was definitely fun. When my oldest was 7 we switched to a traditional ballet school. They start beginning ballet at 6. This year we switched again to a new school and while they offer lots of fun classes the traditional classes start at age 6. Both of these schools really don't let anyone new to ballet skip levels regardless of what level they come in at they still have to go through all of the levels. Also where we are a lot of these schools are very full and the only way to take classes is to progress up. Starting at 6 gives them plenty of years of training and sets them up to go on pointe just after puberty (better for the development of the foot).

I used to shop regularly at one before we moved. I liked the savings catcher and I liked that the prices were pretty consistent week to week. I get annoyed trying to play the "sales" game. Produce selection was always great and they had a lot of local produce and nicely priced large organic selection. I remember going to Whole Foods and there being a sign about some special for the week on local grapes and it was the exact same ones that were at Walmart only they were $2 a lb more!

We moved to a rural part of the county in San Diego and I drive 65min (one way) one day a week for skating practice. We have activites every day of the week that require about 30 min driving, and between them some days I drive 3 hours per day. Plus add in the times there are traffic :( I do find that you get used to the driving very quickly and learn to make the most of it. My girls keep only books in the car and it has been a great way for them to build their reading skills.

My Dad did this...plus a few more. Basically every language he could say it in, he did. I had not thought about it in a very long time until this thread. He would also do it for washing hands, and when he answered the phone. There is another one, but I don't remember what it was. I say vamanos a lot with my girls lol

I got engaged to my boyfriend of 4 months when I was 16 and in HS. My family was moving away and he didn't want to break up. My parents were as supportive as they could be, helping me plan my wedding during the fall semester of my Sr year. I was able to graduate early from HS, moved back and started college full time at 17, in Jan of would have been my Sr year. At that time I had a job and lived with a family friend for a few months then my mom got me an apartment and I lived there until I turned 18. My parents told me they wouldn't let me marry before 18, so I picked the Sat after my birthday! DH grew up LDS and us living together was not an option. Neither could either of us afford to live separately. I know you said it wasn't about sex, but I'm sure that plays a part too. I know it did for us because of the guilt. I busted my butt in college and DH not so much and he ended up dropping out (intending to go back after I got my degree) but he ended up in a really good company working IT where he has now been for 15 years. We bought a condo at 20 and I was graduated with a BS and went back and earned a teaching credential and teaching by 21. At 25 we decided to sell our condo and purchase a home and our oldest arrived. My youngest came a few years later at 28 when I stopped teaching to SAH full time. This summer we celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. It has been so tough being married, but I think any marriage is a lot of work no matter the age.

I agree. Pants she will need something like 0, 00, 000 sizes which they carry at Aeropostal!