Ortho Home Defense - you can buy it at home depot or walmart or a local hardware store. It comes in a big gallon jug and has a spray wand. Spray it all around the outside perimeter of your house and around windows and doors. You can also spray it inside. I do the door thresholds, under my baseboards (we have tile and hardwood floor) and under the stove and fridge. It works really well. I think the wolf spider family lives in back of our house and they love to come in. I do not love 3-4 inch creepy wolf spiders in my house.

exactly! DH and I tried South Beach and we both gained weight. Shortly afterwards, he had crippling pain in his foot and was diagnosed with gout. Low fat and vegetarian has led to great cholesterol levels (sub 150), blood pressure (104/70) and blood sugars. It's also the only thing that's helped DH's gout and made the scale move downwards for me. :-) We have friends who can drop weight quickly and easily on low carb though. Everyone's different!

I'm not a huge fan of disposable dishes, but in this case, I'd get a package of sturdy paper bowls for the toppings.

I'd do a taco bar or a baked potato bar. Last time I served a bunch of people (only 10), a taco bar was perfect. I had soft corn, hard and flour tortillas, refried beans and I cooked up some black beans as well, ground hamburger meat (and I did veggie crumbles as well), then bowls of shredded lettuce, guacamole, salsa, hot sauce, etc. You could even grill up some fish and make a quick slaw for fish tacos which are always a hit! For a potato bar, bake up lots of potatoes and have lots of toppings! I think tacos might be a bit easier though and easier to avoid dairy with them.

I am not an early morning person, but I do have to get an hour or so of work done most mornings before 9 (I work from home). So, by 9, I'm up, still in my pj's, have had a couple of cups of coffee and done an hour of work. On Wednesday and Thursday mornings, I've also done a 30 min rush to help my DH get out the door for his first therapy client. He usually has a 9am client and needs to leave the house by 8:30. And he's less of a morning person than I am. I make him breakfast and lunch and a to go coffee to take with him. DS isn't much of a morning person either. He doesn't sleep late - is up at 7 most mornings, but he likes to play quietly or read for an hour or so first thing.

Where do you live to make this work? Somewhere where the sunrise/sunsets are at fairly stable times throughout the year? If we tried that, we'd sleep a LOT in the winter when it's dark by 4:30 pm and it doesn't get light until 7am. :-) And right now, it's not completely dark until almost 10pm and it starts getting light around 4:30 am, I'd be exhausted all the time.

We made this very decision almost 2 years ago. We had committed to not having a car payment and drove older cars that we maintained. Then we started having problems with the older cars and were putting a fair amount of money into them over the course of the year. We weren't able to drive the 5 hrs to visit family (pretty much all of our family is in the same place) because of the cars. When my aunt died, we had to rent a car because our cars were unsafe for a drive like that. That was the catalyst for us to get a new car with a payment. It's been well worth it because we've been able to see friends and family every 6 weeks and DS has gotten closer to the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins that live down there. But we did have to weigh out our options and decided that adding some debt was worth it to see family more.

Thanks Ellie! I had been quite stressed about it so I feel like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. And I learned that I need to start a portfolio folder on my computer as soon as we start school back up in a couple of weeks. That way, I can scan work and upload pictures as the year progresses and can avoid scrolling back through 10 months of pictures on my camera! :-)

Have an amazing time! I have a friend leaving for Iceland in a little over a week. I keep threatening to pack myself in her carry on! :-)

I agree with Rosie. The recovery wasn't much fun (lots of cream of wheat and mashed potatoes) but I went from having regular bouts of tonsillitis and ear infections (fun as a young adult) to nothing worse than a once a year cold. So worth it!

This is exactly how I say these numbers. I was born and raised in RI - maybe the north east keeps the 'and'? I went to a quite rigorous private school growing up and was not taught to leave out the and.

I finished my first end of year portfolio for DS! :-) In VT, we have 3 end of year options, portfolio, teacher assessment or standardized testing. I had to show progress in each subject area with a number of work samples or pictures. 30 pages later, I am done! I am so excited and relieved that I had to share on here. :-) Now on to the course of study and other assorted paperwork I need to submit for the upcoming school year!

We just finished Kindy here with a good reader. We read aloud or we took turns reading a few from your list: Charlotte's Web The Mouse and The Motorcycle (also Runaway Ralph) Mr. Popper's Penguins Stuart Little Cricket in Times Square (twice - it was a favorite this year) Some other favorites: Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner The Boxcar Children (first 2 so far) George and Martha Books - they're a bit easier to read and hilarious Magic School Bus regular and chapter books Pippi Longstocking I've been trying to balance books he "can" read and books that he'd get more out of if we waited. He can read almost anything I put in front of him, but I'm trying to hold off on some of the books I think he'd understand and appreciate more when he's older. Books like Swiss Family Robinson for instance. I remember reading those in 3rd grade or so.

We are similar here. DS goes to bed between 7:30-8 and is asleep by 830 at the latest. He sleeps until 7-7:30 in the mornings. We have some late night's here and there, out late to dinner, we're going to a night time baseball game in a couple of weeks, things like that. But he does best with a pretty regular routine and DH and I like to have a few hours of adult time in the evenings. We can play board games, watch a movie, talk. It's really nice.

Yup, I'd restart with Drums if I were you. Then you can keep reading until you get to the latest book! :-) Drums is one of my favorites too.

Me too! I've been looking for updates on the kcup thieves and the people with the crazy neighbors! :-)

Ooh I love Podcasts and I'm excited for all of the ideas in this thread! What's on my ipod: Ted Radio Hour Alton Browncast Gymcastic (gymnastics news and interviews) Jillian Michaels Show Diana Gabaldon Podcast (old, but new to me) Outlander Podcast Car Talk The Splendid Table The Monday Morning Quarterback with Peter King (football)

We have 8 bath towels, 8 hand towels and 4 beach towels. Lots of washcloths. 3 person family. I wash towels twice a week and we reuse them a few times until I wash them. The towel to people ratio has been working out nicely. We have extras in case 1 gets dirty or we have guests, but not so many that I feel like we're overloaded with towels.

If you're going to be on a boat, I'd recommend having a back up pair for everyone as well and don't bring any really nice sunglasses. When I was in my early 20's, I bought a pair of pricy ray bans as a splurge purchase and accidentally wore them sailing one day. I had brought a cheap pair to wear on the boat but forgot to put them on. At one point in the afternoon, I leaned over the side of the boat to look at something in the water and my sunglasses fell into the ocean. I almost dived in after them! I'm 37 now and have never spent more than $20 on a pair of sunglasses since. :-)

I'd love to join in! I'm down 6 lbs with 25-30 to go. I have had a really hard time figuring out what works for me. What's gotten the scale to move is changing my coffee to black and eliminating most dairy. The dairy thing started out as a grocery bill saving idea when I realized how much of our grocery budget was going to milk, cheese and yogurt, but eliminating it has helped clear my face up, gotten rid of some congestion and helped the scale move down, so it's been good all around. I will still have a bit of cheese on occasion (pizza and spaghetti) but it's a rare occasion now instead of a multi/day occasion.

It could be a female/male thing, or it could be a older child/younger child situation. I find that parents are usually much less strict with their second. But yes, if Uncle Joe were staying with us and went out for the evening, I'd hope he had enough common courtesy to give us an ETA. When DH goes out, he keeps me updated and I do the same for him. I can't imagine not doing so.

My little older fitbit (the one that clips on to a pocket or bra) will count steps walking in place. When I remember to wear it, I'll sometimes jog in place while cooking. I've also found that letting a 6 year old hold it for awhile helps with the step count! :-)

When DH is going to be later than expected from work or band practice or out with friends, he calls or texts. Same for me. We were just at my father's house for the weekend last week and I went out to dinner one night and let everyone know what time I was planning on returning. It's polite, IMO, to do so.

Instructions for working the TV if it's anything less than completely straightforward. To turn our TV on, we have to press the TV button and then the power button. That is confusing to every single person using our remote for the first time. I wrote out a cheat sheet a couple of years ago that I put out for babysitters, though thankfully DS has been able to help them for awhile now. Same for the coffee maker if the house sitter is a coffee person.

This is how I get a lot of my water in. I love seltzer. I usually buy whatever brand is on sale, but Polar seltzer comes out with really yummy summer flavors this time of year. Blueberry lemonade, cucumber melon are my summer treats, there's a sangria one I haven't tried yet and a few other summer ones too that sound tasty. I will buy bottles of lemon juice and add a little bit of that to my water which is delicious too.