In 2015 East and West celebrated Pascha together. All Orthodox Churches follow the Julian calendar for Great Lent and Pascha. Some churches changed to a revised Julian calendar that aligns with the Gregorian calendar but many are still on the original Julian calendar which is why some of us celebrate Christmas on January 7th. Pascha is not always the first Sunday after Passover but it's always closely after.

Eastern Orthodox observe Pascha (Passover) after the Jewish Passover. This is why we do not always celebrate Pascha on the same day as Western churches.

I think we all reserve the right to determine the basis by which we define compatibility. We all have a list of priority attributes that we won't negotiate on. I very much respected that he was the kind of person that would stick to his values. Virginity wasn't the main issue but it was a factor among other related issues that when combined did not spell out "marriage match" on his end. I don't blame him. I'm happily married now and my husband and I are both repentant regarding our similar pasts. Things worked out. ;)

I was raised to believe that safer sex was normal. My mother put me on bc when I was 15. It really felt like she was giving me license to have sex even though her words countered her actions with stories about why it's better to wait. I took the license and ran. I was not mature enough or emotionally equipped to do what I was doing and it took decades to recover myself. Years of heartbreak and upset ensued along with deep feelings of being "used goods" because once i was ready for marriage the kind of men I found attractive were exactly the same sort I was told didn't exist anymore, but there they were and they wanted a woman who had waited. I regret sex before marriage. I wasn't the kind of person who could handle it well. Sex has always had meaning to me and i was never any good at pretending otherwise. I hope my children will wait for marriage.

To me a 3 yo is not a toddler but a tot.

We just installed Coretec Plus that looks like Maple in our kitchen, dining, laundry, and half bath. We love it! It's waterproof, easy to clean and very pretty. They have wood and stone patterns. I like the wood patterns best. It is very durable and scratch marks buff out quickly and easily with a light weight scouring pad. It's not cheap but it will hold up to wear and tear better than real hardwood in areas with high water use.

I only have 2 kids, but this thread makes me wonder how on earth my parents could afford dinner for all of us (between 5 and 13 at any given time if all the kids were together) on a cop salary.

I suggest you find a doctor in integrative medicine. They will usually recommend a broader spectrum of treatment options for whatever ails you and I find that they are better at listening. My family can totally relate to your experience. My husband has a lung problem that sounds like asthma but is actually a rare congenital condition and NOT asthma. The doctors are always prescribing asthma meds which make his condition worse. When he reminds them that it isn't asthma they get all uppity.

That's so cool. His grandmother's maiden name is Alden.

Neat thread. My husband is direct descendent of John Alden from the Mayflower and I'm supposedly a descendent of George Washington.

Thank you everyone for your advice. I just wanted to update the thread. We just traded in our odyssey for a Mazda CX-9 Touring. We got $5215 for the Odyssey so we had to roll the remainder of the upside down loan in but we will still have a manageable monthly payment with warranty and gap insurance included! Woo hoo!

You should definitely check out St. John the Baptist Russian Orthodox Cathedral. It was founded by the venerable St. John Maximovitch and the church is breathtakingly beautiful. http://stjohndc.work/Russian/english.htm

Prayers for your family and for the surgeons and medical team and for you. Lord have mercy.

We were pressured into finding a home we could tolerate that was affordable when our lease was ending and the new lease was going to cost us about $600 more per month. We quickly came to realize that the local housing market had sky rocketed and we weren't going to find another affordable rental in our town. We also couldn't afford to buy there so we started looking farther away in the smaller outer rim areas for an affordable house to buy. We found a house that had a 2 car garage on a decent (more than a postage stamp) sized lot about 40 minutes from the city. It's 1344 Sq ft with 3 bedrooms and 1.5 baths. Most of the house has the original hardwood floors from the 60s. We installed new flooring in the rest. It is a good house with good bones. It's a ranch layout. There's definitely nothing fancy about it. It's no where near as nice as our home in California was and is much smaller, but I'm always happy to be here. It feels good and safe in this house. I love the paint colors we chose for the interior and we aren't having any allergies due to the hardwoods and lack of carpets. It's a rather fitting and humble little abode and I'm happy we didn't have to win a bidding war to get it. Ours was the only offer and it's been pretty smooth sailing, thank goodness. I do love my house and I'm happy in it!

My oldest dd is in her second set of braces. Starting at age 7 she had to get hardware to widen her palate and make space for adult teeth to grow in. At age 9 she got her first round of braces for 1 year followed by a year of retainer and now her second set. She will wear these for 3 years and then retainers. All told we will have paid about $9k when this is over. I really hope my second dd won't need orthodontic intervention.

I saw a lady wearing saggy butt pants today and thought of this thread. The pants are similar to leggings until about mid-thigh, at which point they become very loose and baggie with low crotch and high waist. They were not flattering. Also comments on news articles need to go away and news needs to go back to being informative, well written, and without spin.

Yes and we are going to do a fluid change because it is very dirty and hasn't been serviced in ... I don't know how long.

My car stutters when it goes into eco mode and between 2nd and 3rd gear. The mechanic I spoke with yesterday said it can happen as a result of low transmission fluids, so I'm willing to pay for a servicing to see if that addresses the issue. Maybe just wishful thinking but it's cheaper than the alternatives at this point.

Prayers for you and dh! I hope toy find out what is going on with your skin soon and recover quickly!

I just keep wondering how my kids will find like minded peers when they're grown. I guess they will probably gravitate toward other people who *get* having a head full of poetic verse, Plutarch, the Desert Fathers, Greek, Latin, Mandarin, Russian, and sentence diagramming! Lol.

I traded in a Chevy and got the fair trade-in value of $3K at that time and it had more problems than this car and was 20 years old, so I figure I can get the fair trade-in value on this car.

According to KBB in our area, Fair Condition Trade-In Value is $4K.

Thanks everyone. We are coming up with a 2 step plan. Plan A is to have all open recalls addressed on the vehicle and get a transmission service done next week. If the servicing buys us more time, we will take it. If not, plan B is to trade it in.

There are no open recalls for my year Odyssey but apparently Honda Corp will offer some financial assistance on a case-by-case basis for getting a rebuilt transmission at a dealership. The problem with this is that one never knows if Honda will help before going for the repair.

How do I look this up?