Yes. My children get them done.

This is how I read them and I don't regret doing so, however I can see how the magician's nephew might be less engaging.

I disagree. You just have to have a system that makes cleaning easy enough that it doesn't take away from the things you want to do. I see stuff like this repeated over and over on fb, but usually it is along the lines of "Good mothers have sticky floors, a messy house, a pile of laundry, and HAPPY KIDS!". The implication being that those of us who manage to keep a clean house are doing it at the expense of leisure time or family time. Like another poster, I spend probably 3-4 hours spread over a week cleaning my home, and it is usually guest ready. I've got 4 cats, 2 kids, and a DH whose idea of helping to tidy is tossing his socks in the general direction of the laundry hamper. :/ To the OP... if you are wanting to have your house tidy for walk throughs looking to purchase, maybe consider starting to pack some items away now? Clear off all tabletops, counter tops, and sideboards of knickknacks. Clear out the corners of rooms of stored items, box up anything cluttering up the tops of kitchen cabinets. Take toys/projects and box them up. Maybe store them in a garage or storage unit. The more empty surfaces people see the bigger your house will seem and it will cut down on your cleaning time as well, making short notice walk ins easier to manage.

Haha, that looks awesome. I wanna be a house sitter but then I'd have to find my own house sitter!

I have 4 cats, three are permanent and one is a foster. We have two lidded litter boxes. I buy crystal cat litter by the 15kg bag. I do not like scooping litter, so basically every 2.5 days I dump both boxes out completely, wash them with dish soap and refill with more crystals. It takes literally 5 minutes to dump and wash. I love crystal cat litter as it absorbs the odours. It costs me 40-50 USD per month. When I lived in Canada I had a room under the stairs that I installed a cat door into. I used 4 litter boxes: 2 extra large, 1 normal, and one giant under the bed storage box. I would fill them all up using approximately 25kgs of clumping clay. They would be scooped 1x a week and changed completely every month. I found it was harder to clean, smellier, and way more time consuming than crystals. It only cost about 15$ a month because clumping clay was cheap at costco.

This is pretty much me. I have a junk drawer though. ;) I have loads of books and my kids have toys, but the books are where they belong (on a book case) and the toys are behind closed closet doors when not in use. My kids are not natural minimalists, so their rooms are usually messy, take forever to clean, and even when clean don't look... calming. But that is their space and they can manage it how they like, so I just close the doors. If you don't need it, donate it. Toss it out if it is broken and you realistically aren't going to fix it in the next few weeks. "I might need that one day" is usually an excuse. Also... motivation! I have a piano teacher over once a week and an arabic teacher over twice. So I clean in the mornings before they come over. I can be lazy the other two days of the week and just do regular dinner/dishes tidying. I also stay on top of things... so instead of taking hours to clean the house, I can wipe down the counters, dust, vacuum the floors, and run a rag over any spots on the floor in about 45 minutes. Once I do that and my house is clean, I reward myself with coffee. In the evening I clean up dinner as I'm making it. Dishes are put away right after dinner and cooking stuff either soaked or washed right away. Garbage goes out at night as well. Back in Canada I had a bigger house filled wall to wall with tons of furniture, oodles of projects and supplies for a dozen hobbies, lots more toys and books and junk, and useless knickknacks. Big surprise - I could clean my house for days and it always looked messy and cluttered and there was always something else that needed tidying.

I dont' think they come to another country to eat foods from back home! Make what YOU normally eat, and ask her if maybe she wants to show you a meal or two as part of the cultural exchange. Maybe take her grocery shopping one day.

I live in Dubai, where the malls have ski hills and dinosaur fossils and things in general are done OTT. So while I am looking forward to seeing the hotels and the decor, I don't know that it would take up more than a couple hours. Window shopping is out - I can window shop where I live currently and I find intentionally going out to see things I want but can't have is depressing lol. I'm pretty easily entertained, so I think I'll probably enjoy seeing the themed places, I don't know that this would take up a whole day. However, it just occurred to me that I could walk around from place to place drinking coffee WITHOUT KIDS so maybe that simple pleasure will make it all seem more idyllic than it otherwise would. Desert Rat: Can you elaborate on where you go shopping, even if it is 20 minutes away? My DH may be able to cart my behind a half hour away. That doesn't seem that far. One of the reasons I'm so enthusiastic about shopping isn't because I have a passion for it, but because Canadian prices tend to be cheaper than Dubai prices, and american prices are even lower. Canadians like to cross border shop for a reason, right? :D So I keep all my shopping energy stored up for my trips to north america. So far on my agenda thanks to this thread: - Staying at a super swanky hotel with a really nice pool/spa and relaxing. - Looking into seeing a show - possibly cirque - Buying clothes that are cheaper in the USA than in Canada/Dubai (maybe, if it exists) - Ferris wheel - Wandering around looking at the gaudy places. - Eating at upscale restaurants. - Possibly visit Red Rock Canyon, if I can find a mostly driving tour that doesn't involve a lot of being away from the AC. Otherwise more pool time. Also I just found out I'm gonna miss the star trek convention by 4 days. :crying: Thanks all for your help. Since it is only two days I'm not too worried. :D

I've had a keurig, and my french press makes better coffee. I mean, some of their coffees are great, but more often than not they are awful. So I vote for a french press as well. Get some flavour shots or different liquid coffee mate creamers to add flavour if you don't want plain. I add cocoa to my coffee sometimes.

If the outlets suck, is there any other affordable shopping? The only other time I went to an outlet place was in Orlando, and I bought tons of stuff that seemed really affordable to me. I was hoping for a similar experience.

What? Why would anyone walk around without shoes to begin with? That is very weird. Thanks for the advice anyway. :lol: Care to elaborate on what I can do in almost any other US city (including vegas?) I haven't been to any major US cities. I'm secretly planning on going to an american grocery store. I love grocery shopping in foreign countries. This looks great, fantastic even. Horseback riding looks fun! I wonder if it would be too hot for the horses? I love off-roading and dune bashing.

I don't drive either. :/ I'm usually a bucket of fun, I swear ... I'm used to the heat so I'm not worried about that aspect too much.

Our pool is 95f. :/ Can't even cool off that way.

Yeah, Vegas wouldn't be my top pick either if I had a choice. But its *almost* free and we'd actually be alone with each other at night for the first time in aaaaages so I'm hesitant to pass up the opportunity. Day tripping might be nice - is August too hot for Death Valley or Red Rock Canyon?

I've only been to the US twice, not including getting stuff from a PO box in Port Huron. But this summer the husband will be interrupting our vacation to Canada by going to a conference in Las Vegas. I've been invited to come along. We will only be there 2.5 days, and I'll be alone all day long. The kids will be staying at their grandmother's house in Canada. This will be our first kid free time away in years. I don't drink. I don't gamble. I don't dance. I don't really care for Elvis. I see that there is an outlet mall - does that actually have decent discounts/selection? Shopping in the US sounds exciting, but maybe not all day for 2.5 days exciting. What else is there to do?

Call me skeptical but I'm not sure I believe this. I wonder how it is possible that the natural alignment of the teeth and jaws of everyone on earth could have changed in as few as 250 years. If this were true, we should be able to see differences in the natural jaw/teeth positions in people from places that don't use forks. Unless she means that forks cause muscular changes that effect our jaw development? If that's what she means, we should still be able to see variations between populations that eat with their fingers and those that eat with forks. Does chopstick use require the same muscle/jaw movements as fork usage? How does eating with fingers compare? I dunno, sounds off to me. But I rarely know what I'm talking about so... feel free to ignore.

I hate MLM and won't buy anything from a company that uses that marketing strategy. People on my fb sell scentsy. I like burning oils rather than waxes so no temptation there.

The average life span of a rabbit is 9-12 years. They need a lot more room and require more care than a hamster or a guinea pig. If you aren't even sure what type of pet to get, I'd go with the shorter lived hamster (3ish years) or guinea pig (4-5 years). And of the two, I'd probably still choose a hamster because it requires less commitment and at 7 years, you might end up doing a lot of the work for the pet.

I'm Canadian and I kinda mumble the "and". It comes out like hundred'n one. I was never taught that "and" meant decimal point.

So, because of this thread I decided to let mine try coffee. The 11 year old gagged and the 7 year old enjoyed a sachet of nescafe instant with a spoon. :/

http://www.spoonfulofflavor.com/2014/01/27/key-lime-coconut-energy-bites/ I recently made these and they are delicious. I used fresh grated coconut instead of desiccated stuff though.

I like Clinique's High Impact Extreme Volume mascara. Other mascaras I have used in the past have made my eyes water and turn red, but this one doesn't. It is easy to remove. The Diorshow Iconic sounds interesting though. ETA: Why not pop down with the daughter to a store and ask if they have any samples?

We are a 4 person home and have... 16ish towels. I would say at this point NONE of them are guest worthy lol. 7 are bright beach towels, 3 are raggedy things that were shipped with the cats, and the rest are off white and showing their age. I'm not going to get new towels though until these are completely unusable.

I second (third? fourth?) getting an apartment instead of a hotel if you are going to be there for more than a few nights. Airbnb is one we've used. Usually it is more spacious and cheaper than a hotel.

I had one litter box and three cats but got a second box when I got my foster cat as she was confined to the bathroom. After the meet and greet period was done and the cats all became friends, I attempted to migrate the new box out of the bathroom, but the foster cat started peeing in the bathtub. :/ Now, all the cats prefer using the new litter box. I thought perhaps it was because the old litter box was 2.5 years old and maybe the smells weren't getting washed out... so I went out and replaced the old box. They still prefer to pee/poop in the box in the bathroom. I believe it is a dominance thing, as both boxes are in rooms roughly the same size and equally accessible.