Thank you! I just got the whole Peter and Starcatchers series for $3.95/book and all the Mary Poppins books for $1.95. My kids will be thrilled!

Called once when a friend showed up at my house late one night and told me she had taken a whole bottle of Amitriptyline in an effort to kill herself. Called once when I encountered an elephant in the middle of a city street. ... That was a fun call. I was also the local crime/court reporter at the time, so the dispatcher knew who I was. He repeated "An elephant? In the middle of Brushy Creek Road?? Is it pink???" I assured him that it was gray and that it appeared to be a large African elephant. He hemmed and hawed a bit more, then asked, "Ms. {Name}, isn't a little early in the day for the press to be inebriated?" I assured him that I was stone sober and that there was indeed an elephant in the middle of the road. Took two police units, a sheriff's deputy, and the fire department to get the beast to move too! Called once when my toddler disappeared. (We found him under a bed trying out Nana's makeup just before the police showed up.) Called last week due to an oven malfunction/small fire.

As the parent of a child with severe pet allergies and allergy-induced asthma, I thank you. Whenever we're traveling, we make sure to reserve rooms at pet-free locations only. Spending the night in a room where someone had previously sneaked in their precious pooches could very well land my daughter in the ER.

The first ones we ordered from Amazon were Chinese knock-offs. We are returning them at Amazon's expense. Amazon covers return shipping costs for any "not as described" products, then recoups the money from the third=party seller.

Korean Cucumber Salad is a favorite here -- https://kimchimari.com/korean-cucumber-salad/ . I love cucumber kimchi also, but it's more labor intensive, and the rest of the family doesn't like it as well.

We have a copy of https://www.amazon.com/Scholastic-Treasury-Quotations-Children-Adrienne/dp/0590271466/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1500159055&sr=1-6&keywords=quotations that I picked up at a library book sale. It's supposedly for grades 4-8, but my 6- and 8-year-old do fine with it.

We own a few sets of Southwestern books and enjoy them, but I refuse to purchase directly from the company due to its exploitative business practices. When their sales people come by here, we offer them a cold drink and a bottle of water for the road, then send them on their way. I think we finally got dropped from their route a couple of summers ago after I brought one of their sale people inside, showed him that we already owned the sets of books he was peddling, and told him that I bought one set in like new condition for $29.95 on eBay and found the other for $0.50/book at Goodwill.

Yep, I woke to find a shipping notification for the LEGO DC Super Hero Girl High School I ordered for $20. :lol: Merry Christmas to DD1 (who has been told repeatedly over the past year that an $80 LEGO set isn't happening).

It was actually a short-lived glitch rather than a deal. ... Amazon was offering 20% off a bunch of stuff, but for whatever reason, their system was taking the discount off multiple times. Amazon caught on quickly, pulled entire inventories on certain products (including the whole of Toys and Games), then put products back online about an hour later with no active discount codes. :-( Now we wait to see whether they honor these unintended "deals" or cancel orders.

The 7-in-1 was Amazon's biggest Prime Day deal last year and was $69.99 then. Some people are expecting a deal on them again this year.

Just as an FYI, I went on Amazon a few days ago, browsed Warehouse Deals, and saved a bunch of items in case they offer 15% off on Warehouse items again this year. As of today, the price of almost every item in my cart has increased at least 20%. I also checked the Prime Pantry deals tonight and saw prices that had been artificially inflated for Prime Day. (Case in point, the 32-pack of Pop-Tarts has been $6.98 for months. As of today, it's a "Prime Day special" for $9.85 - 25%.) I'll still check in on Prime Day, but am watching prices like a hawk and checking price history on camelcamelcamel.com. I'm sure there will be a few loss leaders, but suspect that Prime Day will once again prove to be more hype than substance.

We use the plastic ones. The foam ones always seem to find their way into someone's mouth, plus they cannot be cleaned well.

We have The Real Mother Goose because I found a copy at Goodwill, but the one my kids read until it literally fell apart was the Mary Engelbreit one linked above. The Aesop collection illustrated by Milo Winters is a classic and hard to beat.

Amazon is my go-to if I need a specific title, although I generally buy used from third-party sellers. If I have to buy new, I try to give my business to Rainbow Resource. Most of our books come from library book sales and Goodwill, though. Our local Goodwill prices all kids books at $0.49, and I'm amazed at what they get in. In the past year I've gotten RightStart Math A-E (Lesson Books and Worksheets) for $5, a like-new My Book House set, almost a full set of Value Tales, Usborne and DK books galore, like-new Kumon workbooks, 20+ hardcover Nancy Drew books in mint condition, and more.

Unrelated to the OP, but why on earth don't they take the train from Midway to O'Hare? I used to live by Midway, but routinely took the train to O'Hare to fly the one airline that flew into my parents' hometown. It's not a hard trip by train -- certainly easier than forcing someone to drive across Chicago!