VT Coffee Company - best coffee ever. I have to bring bags of it with me when I visit family to keep them stocked!

I wouldn't do Walmart. I go to one of the drug stores in town. DS did a tree study this year that involved taking pictures of different trees on our property once a week to watch how they changed over the years. Walmart insists on looking at every picture you print out before they let you buy them. I asked them about their policy and apparently is to prevent people from printing out pornographic pictures there (why would anyone print that type of picture at Walmart?) but I felt it to be an invasion of privacy. I'm not the type that usually minds much, but it was so irritating and just felt demeaning that the clerk would flip through my 5 tree pictures each week to make sure they were ok.

I was coming to post Charlotte's Web for the same reason! :crying: I had no problem with Pooh thankfully because it's one of DS's favorites. I don't do different voices though (sssh..don't tell DS that's an option!). And DS likes to read/sing Pooh's made up songs, which makes it a little easier on me!

The Badger sunscreen/anti bug stuff is awesome! I use it especially on the back of DS's neck and behind his ears to deter ticks and it works great.

I was a regular at the local coffee place and then they started changing baristas and not training them as well, so I haven't been as often recently. My favorite "regular customer" experience at the moment is the Thai restaurant we order takeout from regularly. Usually by mid phone order, the owner or his wife will interrupt me and say "for Amanda?" :-) Apparently we're the only family that orders our particular combo of items. DS and I always get the same thing, but DH alternates between a few different entrees. Funny to be recognized over the phone!

Yes - regularly! Glad I'm not the only one that thought that too! :-)

I take mine with me when we go to the park or the bike path. I like to take pictures with it and if we're walking or biking, I like the Mapmyrun app to see how far we go. I don't have FB on my phone. It doesn't bug me when I see parents use their phone for a few minutes, but it does bug me if they're completely ignoring their kids for an extended period (like an hour straight). I admit to being annoyed at the cell phone zombies (thank you for the term Sparkly Unicorn!) in restaurants or movies though. I don't understand taking the time to go to a restaurant with someone just to stare at your phone all night and not speak to your dining companion. I see that more frequently. DH and I like to make bets on how long it'll take people to speak to each other or look up from their phones. I'm not talking about keeping your phone handy in case the babysitter calls or something, the people that bug me are the ones that are glued to the things and don't look up for basically the whole dinner.

I'd come up with some crazy high price and offer to sell it for that price. If it's worth $10,000, I'd ask for $75,000 or some number that you're comfortable with. Then enjoy the extra money and be happy you're well rid of her.

Crime rates have declined fairly dramatically since the mid 90's contrary to what most Americans believe: http://www.gallup.com/poll/150464/americans-believe-crime-worsening.aspx

I got MM during last summer's sale on HSBC. I believe it was in August. I got the ebooks because I don't mind printing chapters and it's been handy when I've needed to reprint something.

I would say B because they're the least spread out? I haven't done any kind of math beyond balancing a checkbook and excel formulas since college though!

I can only speak to VT, but Medicaid covers all medical/psych/dental and depending on the plan, vision with $0 copay and a very low monthly fee that is income dependent. My mom was on the VT health plan for a bit when she had a part time job and her insurance was $30 a month for full coverage. She pays more now out of pocket now with her full time job. We paid a LOT more with BCBS when we had our son - over $2000 out of pocket. And we have good coverage. $250 deductible and 20% copay. My SIL had my nephew at the same hospital and paid $0 because she was on Medicaid. Medicaid isn't a stigma here. Over 50% of the claims I process are Medicaid.

I deal with insurance companies on the billing side. In my state, Medicaid is by far the easiest, most transparent of the companies I work with. VT has a large medicaid population because of Dr. Dynasaur though, which ensures that all children and pregnant women are insured.

Hmm, I don't have a teenage girl, but I remember being one and there's no way I would have taken my poor mom's make up advice at 14. :-) I was a teen in the late 80's, early 90's, so I have lots of horrid pictures of myself from back then! She did used to take me on girls days to the salon and I would have my hair, makeup and nails professionally done. Maybe you and your DD could do that? Does she get fashion magazines? (do kids still read magazines?) If you feel brave, you and she could do each other's makeup. Or, you could invite a few of her friends over for a makeover party? Then, without saying anything and just making it fun, she might pick up some more refined make up tips. Or one of her friends would tell her that her makeup looked not so great. Teenage girls are usually pretty ruthless about that kind of thing.

You got me curious, so I just double checked. Ours went up $2 from last year. We were with a different insurance provider before then and they charged a lot more.

If you're eating well - a variety of fruits and veggies, whole grains, beans, etc, you would only need a b-12 supplement. If you want to see how you're doing with nutrients, this site is awesome: www.cronometer.com I haven't eaten much today (going to remedy that soon) but I just put in what I've eaten. Smoothie, made with soy milk, banana and strawberries and 6 pieces of vegetarian sushi and it popped up all of the nutrients I've eaten so far and considering that I'm only at 526 calories for the day, I'm making a good dent with all the various goals. Protein, calcium, fiber, etc.

I don't think mine has gone up at all, maybe $5?

I'd love to see the lightning bug app! Our favorites - visiting the rivers and lakes and spending the day playing, swimming and relaxing, bike rides on the local bike path, getting ice cream at the local ice cream stand (yum!), grilling out, making s'mores, going to the beach when we visit our home state, gardening, eating tomato sandwiches (yum!), so much.....

Flow! It starts off simple and then gets progressively more challenging. I also like word searches.

Check out www.happyherbivore.com. She's got tons of great info on a plant based diet. Her book Everyday Happy Herbivore was on sale at Amazon for kindle this month for $2.99. Not sure if it still is, but it has lots of recipes. I don't consider myself vegan, but we eat mostly plant based for health reasons. Here are some things we like: Breakfast: oatmeal, cereal w/ almond or soy milk, smoothies, breakfast tacos, hashbrowns and veggie scrambles, pb&j, bagel with hummus and sliced tomato Lunch: wraps with hummus and lots of veggies, mock tuna salad (recipe on hh.com), brown rice pasta w/ chopped up veggies and asian sesame dressing, various quesadillas or burritos, salads Dinner: most asian or mexican foods are easily veganized. spaghetti, chili, stir fry, salads, bean burgers, mushroom barley "risotto", potatoes with toppings, there are lots of good fake "meat" products out there too if you want to try those.

Hmmm. I love that since we redid everything when we moved in, we know that it's insulated properly, has new windows and is well built. I love our location. We're on a rural road, but are only 5 min either direction to the 2 nearest towns. I love that we're on a dirt road with very little traffic. I love our stream that runs along the edge of our property and I love that even when we had an epic flood that washed our road out in 2011 (Irene), that the water didn't come anywhere near our house. I like our neighbors. We have 2 that are close and they're both great. The type that looks after our house when we're gone and plow us out in the winter. I like that since we redid everything, all of our appliances are newer.

VT has a weird naked law. It's illegal to get naked in public, but you can be naked in public all you want. So no stripping. I don't see nudies too often here (thankfully) but we do have an annual naked bike ride, which is fairly horrifying. Bits on bikes.....shudder. And the people who do decide to bare all are never the ones you would actually want to see in their birthday suits. Editing because I forgot to answer the original question! We don't really make a big deal about nakedness here. It's just a body. So if I encountered said bike ride with DS, I'd probably just say something like "that doesn't look too comfy to me! I would rather a layer or two of clothing between myself and the pavement" or "yes, they have on no clothes. In our family, we always dress appropriately for the occasion"

You can check out my hometown of Newport RI on your way down! Beautiful beach town. I visited Charleston a few years ago and really enjoyed our dinner at Magnolias: http://www.magnolias-blossom-cypress.com/magnolias.asp?id=118000&action=detail&catID=20428&parentID=20426 We stayed at the Meeting Street Inn, which is a great little hotel right downtown. http://www.meetingstreetinn.com/ And we enjoyed the famous coconut cake at the Peninsula Grill. http://www.plantersinn.com/cake.htm Baltimore is also a fun city to hit up - they have a great aquarium! Oh and Gettysburg PA is really fun too. I went to school there for a year and the history there is great. Visiting battlefields, feeling transported back to the civil war. :-)

I thought concussion too and please don't wait. His insurance company will pay for everything medical. We were rear ended a few years ago and ended up in the ER. Didn't have to pay anything. Hope you feel better!

Yup, this is me too. I never encounter the term outside of this board.