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Zinnia

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Everything posted by Zinnia

  1. I've been watching a lot of HGTV lately (we have cable for soccer season), and every time dh walks by the TV, he jokes, "wait....are they painting it....hmm....gray?" LOL Definitely the trendiest neutral right now.
  2. I also am not big on fake meat, but there are these veggie corn dog bites in the freezer section, and well....I make an exception for those! :)
  3. I have always been too scared to try fake cheese. Like I can't imagine what it would taste like. I went dairy free for a breastfeeding baby for 18 months, andid just skipped cheese. We are huge bean eaters, though, so that part is easier.
  4. I would be delighted. None of my pregnancies were unplanned, and I really, really wanted a surprise. Dh has also had a vasectomy, but he didn't go for his followup (at my request) so that I could keep the dream of another pregnancy open as a possibility.
  5. I was a judgy 10/11/12 year old. :D. I remember being in the 4th and 5th grade, thinking, why won't those boys just sit down and do what she says? Their life would be so much better if they just went along with the teacher/leader/coach/parent. Why do they have to question everything and waste everyone's time? And then I had two of *those* kids. Hahaha. Joke was on me. This has been a long learning curve. Turns out, just serving great food every night doesn't make them eat it, modeling kind, sweet behavior doesn't make them so, and having a house full of books and a mom that doesn't stop reading doesn't make them read. Being a good, caring mom doesn't mean they dont buck and question every little thing. Parenting has really made me question my assumptions about how people tick.
  6. Around here, they do family dances. My sons think they sound horrible, so we have not gone.
  7. Bean and rice bowls. I do pintos, rice, then top with cilantro, onions, jalapeno, some sort of salsa, cooked onions and peppers, guacamole if we have it, corn if we have it, whatever sounds good. :) If you have the guacamole or cubed avocado, you miss the cheese and sour cream less. My kids also like sloppy lentils. Make sloppy joes however you do (even a can works for this), and mix in 1 lb of cooked lentils in lieu of the ground meat. The other one my kids like is Thai curry. Super easy. We like tofu, so I'll add it sometimes, but sometimes just veg. Trader Joe's General Tsao's cauliflower over rice. My kids like fried tofu, just cubes, with bbq sauce, like nuggets. Oh, and I make a pasta salad that is pasta, tofu cubes, black olives, artichoke hearts, and a vinaigrette. So good.
  8. I used to volunteer at a place that had English classes for mama's and preschool classes for little ones, serving our large refugee population. I would love to expand that model, paying better wages so they didn't rely as much on inconsistent volunteer staff.
  9. I have this child that is....grumpy. It goes through phases, but right now it's especially bad, to the point of his friends calling him Oscar. Once he experiences the tiniest bit of uncomfortableness, he latches on. So, if he experiences a tiny bit of hunger, he latches.on. If people are not meeting that need Johnny on the spot quick, it devolves into a tantrum. Now, I have no doubt he is hungry, and I feed him quickly usually, but this is a personality/character trait that can be difficult to deal with at best. :)
  10. We are in a big city district. I follow our school board member's Facebook page. He does listen to his constituents that way. He is known for being responsive to the voters, though. He is only one of 9, plus our superintendent, and they are mostly little tyrants who do what they like. One in particular sleeps through meetings. Her district keeps voting her back in. Our county is known for corruption and waste, not clear headed decision making.
  11. From the other side....one of my kids will eat and eat and eat when the opportunity presents. I have a child that leans toward the anxious side of things in social situations. If we take a picnic, he eats his serving, my serving, and his brothers' servings (they are usually too busy being social to bother eating). He will happily accept food from other people. Then, we get in the car, he's full and happy, but my other two are starving, and there is no food left for them. I have stopped at Chick fil A so many times from this scenario. So.many.times. The alternative is to drive with hangry children in traffic. Or these days, I keep boring granola bars as back up food. But it took me YEARS to figure this out. Embarrassingly long time. To other people, it looks like he doesn't eat at home, but it's just his anxiety coming out. My kids are also obsessed with sweets and especially sweet drinks. When they were little, they would drink sweet drinks (juice, lemonade), then not eat food because they were full of drink, then melt down when the sugar high wore off. (This repeats at parties or holidays if we allow sugar drinks.) Because of this and a super high number of cavities, we transitioned to water only many years ago. We have a sugar drink on Friday nights. But my kids are CRAZY obsessed with sugar drinks, and they ask every.single.day, multiple times a day for them (if we pass by a store, they ask to stop and buy, despite this being our family culture for 6+ years.)
  12. In our house, there is often an underlying thing going on. For instance, bedtime battles are often about tEa. Just making sure that there is time for us. (In that vein, it's important to me to enforced bedtime, too). If you can figure out the real issues, it's easier to hit those issues instead of fighting behind bedtime or picky eaters or whatever.
  13. My kids are morning people. I have a 5th grader in b&m school, and he regularly gets up at 5:30 am to do homework. They are all toast in the afternoon, and pushing through isn't fun. I also do carpool for that school kid, so we have a hard end of 2:40 to our day, to include a very necessary 1.5 hour rest time/books on CD time. That means book work is done by 12. I have a short list of necessary subjects, and I reward with a sticker chart when we do that by noon. Very motivating. Very. It is also magic in our house to read aloud. I do science, social studies, history, etc by read alouds because my kids love that so much. They will sit as long as I will read. You will find what your kids like, too. When you do, run with it.
  14. Sounds frustrating! Could you send them out separately? Kid A, you go out for 15 minutes, then you come in, and Kid B goes out. Maybe after a week or two of that, you can work up to both of them being out there together I understand the screaming. Mine do it, too. We have a rule of you scream, everyone comes in, because it's obviously not working. I can't handle the screaming. Once the weather gets nice (not yet here), they like being out there, so that is motivating. But this time of year, they don't care, so they scream. I am ready for summer to be over and my kids to enjoy outside again.
  15. We have county coverage. Three trucks that all run on one day, for garbage, recycling, and yard waste. The city compost the yard waste and anyone can come get it. Most people in the neighborhood pull bins to the street, but there are a few elderly that the trash men will go behind the house for. The trash truck has an arm, but they only use it if the bin is heavy, preferring to reach in and grab bags. Recycling and yard is picked up by hand. About 18 months ago, we went to tgis system to save money. We used to have trash pickup 4 days a week--twice for garbage, once for recycling, and once for yard waste.
  16. Sit at the table and eat one meal, all 3 meals. Its also our *one* table, so it sees a lot of use. Meals, school, art, folding laundry, and more. Sometimes, if dh isn't home, I feed the kids before he gets home. I sit with them while they eat, but I usually wait for him to eat. We eat on our laps in the living room, watching tv, if we eat later like that.
  17. We have started looking long and hard at college costs. My kids are 11, 9, 7, and 5. My oldest is a classic overachiever, good test taking, and I feel like he will be motivated by the race for scholarships. I don't know about the others, and that is where I worry.
  18. We got chicken tender subs for lunch yesterday. They had to fry some tenders for us because it was during the lunch rush. So warm chicken....perfection. Seriously so good.
  19. That's how much ocean front goes for on the Gulf Coast peak season, so it sounds about right to me. We tend to go off peak, and we are willing to stay pretty low, so we don't pay that, but that doesn't seem out of line for going rate.
  20. Publix is a fabulous supermarket. Their subs are very, very good, with Publix brand meat or Boars Head options. My kids consider them a treat. Their rotisserie chicken is good. They sell some sort of organic salad in a box...Salad Girl? Super easy. All the regular refrigerated salad dressings--Tessamae, Naturally Fresh, etc. They also have newish meals in a bag designed to compete with HelloFresh. Just grab and go, ready to cook, sort of stuff. I have not bought those yet. They will steam shrimp for you in the store will you wait, too.
  21. I did a few, usually a year/season here or there. I played softball a few years, one year of Brownies, church choir several years, and always church on Sundays and Wednesdays. I did 4H heavily in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. My mom always felt bad that they couldn't afford piano and dance. I took both of those for a year in 12th grade through school. I volunteered at the hoapital, 8+ hours a week from the time I was 14. When I was 16, I got hired there, and I worked 10-20 hours a week in my last 2 years of high school. I loved the hospital so much (I still miss that first whoosh of AC smell that you get when the doors open...such an awesome smell/feeling). I would have loved more activities, and we were mostly limited by budget, which I understand as an adult. I struggle with the balance for my kids. Part of it is having 4. Just soccer means 7 practices a week, with 4 games on Saturday. One wants to play academy, but the imbalance that would create has stopped us from doing it. But I try to sign my kids up for as much as we can handle. They are always begging for more, though, especially the oldest and youngest.
  22. We are renters. The property taxes went up on our house after the recession, and our landlord raised the rent. Property taxes are publix record here, so I looked, and it went up around the same amount he raised it. It does affect what people pay, in a lot of cases, I think. He's not a corporate landlord, but he was well placed with the recession and mortgaged our (paid for) house, which enabled him to buy a good number of properties. We have rented here 7 years. He has gone from 2 properties to about 25.
  23. I am surprised that this is not the case in some places. We pay water and sewer separately than property taxes. They do bill trash collection along with property taxes, but it is not part of the taxes. It is a separate, mandatory fee (which some would argue is a tax, and I would not disagree), but it is considered separate.
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