Tetanus and whooping cough. I don't do flu shot.

The hard thing with explaining it to kids is its not a real situation. As a general rule any genuine emergency is going to be covered by parents. What may work better is setting a goal to save towards a specific holiday or event that they will need money for. So much of this is personality I think. I have one who saved for a year for a holiday then forgot to take his money! I have one who spends everything but also earns quite a bit because she's very energetic. To be honest I can't say for sure one way is better. My saver has been able to make some big purchases but I don't know if he really has any more pleasure in them than my dd does on her many small ones.

We renovated and got 70k more for our house than some agents valued it at before renovation. It's worth the effort and expense.

I do two house blessing when we're running the way it works best - one for tiled and one for carpet. I don't do all the tasks (no magazines to toss etc and I change sheets when I make the bed) so my house blessing is more like 10 mins to dust 10 to today 30 to vacuum and 10 to mop. It's not meant to be thorough just a freshen up. For zones I have one (entrance and Lounge) two (kitchen and dining) three (bathroom ensuite, toilets and laundry) four (bedrooms and study). I don't do a zone five as we too often don't get five weeks. The thing with the house blessing is it only works if you do the swish and swipe and zones. If you don't do the through zone cleaning as well things get out of hand really quick. And I definitely struggle to get to the zones when we're in school term.

I also am a shoe rebel. I wear ugboots. No shoes should be worn both in an outside on our muddy farm anyway. And I never want to kick my ugboots off! I haven't done that well today - the sink is a disaster zone but the day has been incredibly busy and tomorrow isn't looking better...

I find this. I am a far better teacher on the stuff that is new and therefore interesting to me than the stuff I know well. I suspect I'm not really a natural teacher though so most of our homechool looks more like "assisted learning"

Good idea... Will do this from now on.

I would ask directly why. It could be that it's hard to patch because of the age of the existing roof. We are having insurance work on our roof and they are replacing a whole side because it they replace the damaged panels it will look mismatched because the older panels have faded (tin roof). If they say it can't be patched effectively you know getting a handyman won't give a good result but if it's about the job being too small for them they you can probably use one.

I voted yes but only to nz so culturally fairly similar. The other places that are affordable from here my DH isn't keen to go (Bali for example) and places we'd both like to go are unaffordable for now. These are our local travel see Australia and camp years with kids but hopefully we might do some travel when it's just us.

There is actually a service over here that is all female trades so that women who don't want a man in their house don't have to. It's kind of weird to me but I guess everyone has different life experiences.

My oldest ds will probably go into a trade. He's talented at making and fixing things. His academic skills are a little less. Most of the men in our extended family are either in a trade or started out that way. They all either run their own business or have been promoted to some level of management. The income is good. The only downside is that the physically heavy work gets harder with age.

Just had some car panels repainted and it came back with exposed metal on some of the repainted panels and damage to the panels that weren't being repainted. The worst is this guy was highly recommended by so many people and we had a lot of confidence so I don't know if the apprentice did it or what. One issue I think is that the best tradespeople tend to end up in commercial because the pay and conditions are better. A lot of the residential tradespeople aren't as thorough. I say this as someone married to a tradesperson who is often frustrated by poor workmanship on our house. Gutters that don't drain properly etc. best way to get a job done well is do it yourself if you have a bit of know how. I do think increasing pay levels and respect for highly capable craftsmen would help heaps.

I think some of the things may have other causes than just smartphones. Like driving. It's become much harder to get a license. Maybe it's too daunting to start for some kids. And studies of other cultures show that our idea of a teenage rebellion isn't actually a necessary stage of human development. I do think they have an impact. Some of the impact is probably from parents who are interest and iPhone obsessed. It's too soon to know for sure what the impact will be though I think. Mind Change is an interesting read for those interested in reading deeper although inconclusive.

Yeah this is what is frustrating with trying bush foods. Mostly it's just a twist or something not an actual completely indigenous food.

Sewing machine goes in the den or the master. Den remains as a computer room not bedroom to avoid blue light and sleep issues. You keep the master. Then you have 3 rooms fitting 4,3,2 You could either do 1 room for all girls, one for boys under 9 and one for older boys or all under 10s together, 1 for older boys and 1 for older girls. Only hesitation with that is the large gap between 12 and 19 but it sounds like it's very temporary so should be ok. If oldest boy doesn't like sharing with the pcs he needs to share with his brothers.

Interesting Qs. We've been on a road trip. It's going to be a really tough year for a lot of rural Aus towns due to pretty bad drought. Some of the stuff that some of the successful towns seem to do is stuff like run a community dining out night once a week/month, regular events like golf days etc. however this seems to work best in the better cropping areas where there's a bit more wealth. I guess it's hard to get much find when you are struggling. Definitely stuff that builds community is pretty critical for mental health. Another issue is schooling. A lot of ag towns, the kids go away to boarding school for high school and too often they don't come back. The destination town idea is good but requires someone with ongoing motivation/ expertise. Makes me think of the novel "readers of broken wheel recommend". Then there's the road side stop towns which are just a good service station and a set of public toilets on a freight or tourist route. I guess another thing is being an event town - whether it's an awesome country music festival or rodeo or tractor pull or something. There's a lot of nostalgia for country with wealthy city people so some kind of event could be successful. The trouble with mining or industry towns is economic downturn can leave some awful black holes behind. I almost think there should be some kind of legal prerequisite like there is for environmental clean up for psychological clean up when the FIFO work stops. I doubt it will happen though. I'd love to see Australia learn to cultivate and market more native foods as well, but I don't know how realistic that is.

Mine do. I don't encourage it because I'm scared about tooth damage but they sneak it...

I did do it one year... Here it is expensive to get the workbooks due to shipping and $ conversion. On the one hand it did basically work but I feel that we lost ground that year so I probably won't do it again. I do skip problems because otherwise we would take two hours a day in many lessons. Maybe we are slow. We do use standards and it has more practice than the us edition which we used one year.

:grouphug:

I would say they sound like cultural differences.

Rotate right or rotate left? Would that work? Visualising the clock is so much easier... People here also describe something as being at 2 o'clock or 5 o'clock to give its direction as well.

These are three of mine also...

I think the first one is logical. If you are driving in a car and hear sirens you start looking for emergency services. It's not great to have siren sounds commonly used outside of their intended purpose.

My hubby teases me about this now. I think it also needs a name.

I wouldn't report it but it would bug me that they were there.