Oh, and since AZ is more of a influx area for Californians, retirees, or just people looking for warmer weather, you'll find a lot of the people older than 35-40 are not native. This affects driving -- California drivers mixing the AZ drivers is difficult -- and you can feel areas that have grown recently, there's a lot of new areas that are growing. A lot of planned communities, which feel more insular but are definitely beautiful to live in and have a lot of amenities. And we don't know how to drive in the rain. And in Tucson the roads are made of sugar and seem to melt with any rain, lol.

AZ born and raised. Love the weather, love the desert. There are a lot of different places in the state you can go to if you like more greenery and cold, either to live or just a weekend away. It's true about the humidity. the first summer I was in California (and this wasn't close to the ocean or anything, it was in a mountainous area) I just about died for 4 days before I got used to the humidity. Called in to work sick and everything, it was a shock. You may have a similar shock, but most people find it easier to get rid of the humidity than not. Tucson is obviously better than Phoenix 😉 But seriously, it depends on what you like. I'd recommend Oro Valley just north of Tucson for beautiful views and good weather, slightly cooler than valley areas. You may consider Phoenix areas instead if you like more events and stuff like that to attend. Phoenix is spread pretty big so there are a lot of different areas that will be different even though they are close. But, it's generally hotter and (to my Tucson native eyes) not as pretty. *prepares for flaming* I think a lot of people picture the Tucson area when they think about AZ though, just because this is where the saguaros are. Phoenix may be an easier transition if you are used to bigger cities. Cost of living is fairly low compared to other areas. Again, depends on the side of town or area. Oro Valley is more expensive but since it's still growing and not fully mature, it's probably less expensive than the Foothills area of Tucson, with the east side being nice but less expensive, and the south side both less expensive but also a different culture from the rest of the city. Politically you'll find a pretty fair mix in the cities, with areas around the universities being more liberal. The farther out you go the more conservative. I think we are fair mix. Same with cultures: we have a lot of immigration both from Mexico and other areas (I live right next to a refugee community), so there is the diversity if you are willing to travel across towns and look for it. There are places out east that are beautiful and more temperate, and better chance of snow if that's something you're looking for. Less mainstream culture and events, though.

Morning Scrap! December is definitely going too fast already! I know what I want to buy everyone for Christmas but still haven't gotten it all done yet. I want to get it all done by the 10th so shipping and wrapping and set up isn't an issue. Which has never happened before lol. Part of it is that it seems the kids activities are ramping up for all of the holiday concerts, so my regular "free" time is being spent at extra rehearsals or driving to pick up this-that-other-thing. I like the holidays but am too much of a hermit I think 😉 What a wonderful thought on Thanksgiving. Today I'm thankful for clients and returning customers, they make everything possible for us. I'm thankful for my health which is frankly a miracle right now considering how I've been treating myself. And I'm thankful for rain and overcast skies, really gives the feeling of winter and holidays and being cozy inside. All of our weekends this month through the 22nd are taken up by rehearsals on Saturday and concerts on Sundays. Then we have a birthday party for our son to squeeze in there. I had thought about going to the Presidio for their Luminaria nights because it looks like a fun activity, and fairly inexpensive, but at the end of the day idk if I'll have the energy to do it. We also have a neighborhood in the city that really goes all out for Christmas decorations and lights -- its a requirement of the HOA, lol -- that's a big draw and I'd like to take the kids there, we missed it last year. But again, that pesky energy! We'll see what happens. Right now they are happy to have about an hour a day coloring Christmas decorations to put up round the house, so maybe I shouldn't raise expectations too much 😉

I've noticed more and more people saying Press-cott recently instead of the PRES-kt you mentioned. It's gotten to the point I was beginning to believe I was wrong, lol, so thanks for bringing this one up. My home town name is going through it's own battle. Sahuarita, pronounced as you would in Spanish (Sa-hua-rita). As more people move to the town it's becoming Saw-rita. I had someone correct me when I pronounced it as it should be. Similar things are happening with the street names: La Cañada is being pronounced like Canada the country, with no attempt at the ñ. I understand not being able to pull off an accent, but it got my goat when I was corrected.

Yellow belt with us are encouraged to have sparring gear, and they do no touch sparring with it on. Green belt they begin real sparring with gear. I think the yellow belt sparring is to get them used to the feel and make sure they have everything ready for green sparring. We are required to have head, mouth, hands, and foot. I think the cost is around $75-90 new? Our school offers buying the gear for us as a convenience, we could go to Amazon. We end up usually buying from other families in the school whose kids just had a growth spurt (and in turn, selling to the younger kids). I think my daughter is on her 2nd set, so is my son. Maybe there's a family that needs to upgrade and would be willing to make a deal with you?

Our mantle was never cleared of Christmas stuff. All year the Magi and shepherds and farm animals have been looking at us. It's been a little awkward sometimes, but hey! One less thing to do this week, so I officially give this idea my seal of approval 😛

Today was a weird half day of school, we did all of the less-done subjects instead of the regular math-writing-reading. It was good though and the kids are happy. No real holiday party planned or planning to attend, but DS7 will be having his first birthday party on Dec 15th, he is so excited. Going to do it at a pizza/arcade place and he wanted the theme of science, lol. So that will be fun, I'm getting the invitations out tomorrow. We'll probably school through until Dec 24th, since we've been missing odd days here and there. But, more Christmas activities will be folded in so they won't feel like it's all school and no holidays. Glad to hear you got to get out for your errands, hope the rest of the day went well!

Just as a PSA. you can dry out an oven bag turkey. But it really takes a lot of effort, so you're right that it is forgiving for a lot of food. But yeah, some things are sad to learn the hard way. 😞 lol We treat Thanksgiving more as the day that everyone gets at least one thing they really like, and a lot of it. Enough for leftovers. We do the traditional sides because I love stuffing and it's the one day of the day I get to have it. And cranberry sauce. DD likes mashed potatoes, and in our family we don't make it any other time. Boys like rolls and pie. DH likes salad, so we get butterleaf and all of his favorite side veggies for it. And so on for the extended family. And really, not having to cook for the rest of the weekend is my favorite part of the whole thing.

I know I have a relationship with food. We even have a Facebook status, "It's complicated."

If it's been a constant never goes away thing, with no regular heart beat, then I'd go to ER. If the arrhythmia is happening regularly but not constant for at least 5 hours in a row, I'd probably be ok waiting for the appointment. Our ER experience for arrhythmia has been that, unless it was something they could see both immediately AND constantly on their tests, they won't do anything except say to get a cardiologist. The one time it was both immediate and constant DH was admitted. They always say "get some rest and it should go away by itself. Relaxation is the best medicine for this". Which isn't helpful when you're panicking about heart issues, lol. Agree that if you can skip the GP and go straight to a cardiologist it can save you time and streamline the process. and is obvious from my post, I'm not licensed to give medical advice and am only speaking from our experience 😉

❤️ Beautiful. My grandmother had a dog that looked exactly like that, minus the light brown spots. Same everything else. We never knew what she was, she just appeared and stuck around. I played with Molly for 14 years, she was a wonderful dog, I'm sure your pup will be wonderful. Congratulations! And my grandmother's name was Jesse. Ha. (Jessie, I guess)

My comment isn't really advice, more of a general "first thought review" on a pilot program I've run here for 3 months now: I make a kid responsible for the budget. Now, each kid has a "job". One is the sous chef (helps with dinners), one is maintenance department (cleaning, helps put things together, etc), one is the accountant. I set the numbers at the beginning of the month. (eg $500 for groceries, $100 for household, $75 for entertainment, $100 for misc). I print out a sheet with the starting balance and lines for expenses for each category. The Accountant is responsible for helping me track how much we're spending in the store as we go and then adding the receipt to the tally. They let me know how much we have left in a category before going shopping. They help me plan my dinners with estimated costs (still developing this part) and are allowed to "weigh in" on purchases for the household; This doesn't help with paying utilities or those unexpected medical bills, but does really keep the daily spending under control -- or at least at a known quantity. They are very serious about staying on budget. I still use a credit card for all purchases. eta: I used to use budgeting apps religiously, both excel sheets and then the app HomeBudget. Love them both, but I just don't have the bandwidth to do that right now. This gives the kids practice with budgeting, math, and generally involved in the family, and takes a big chunk off my plate and I'm no longer losing receipts everywhere 🙂

Re jeans: Actually found some at Forever 21 that fit pretty well (and not rips, etc), but not many F21's have their plus section in the store, or a good selection. It's been a couple years. Old Navy was another place that worked well for me, but same problem again re in store selection. I call ahead now to ask if they carry certain sizes after being disappointed a couple times. I went last night to the mall -- not to shop but to use the 24hour Starbucks to get work done. Got there at 9pm, and it was PACKED. Had to go down 2 or 3 rows and passed up a few whole sections in parking before I lucked into someone pulling out. Luckily the Starbucks was packed but with standers and I was able to snag a table. I had the window spot and watched countless people go by with shopping bags. Left at 2am, there were 4 open spaces in my parking row but it was still substantially crowded. All of these people were SO HAPPY to be shopping and getting deals. I got tired of shopping just watching them, lol. Good luck!

Mucinex DM with the 600mg guaifenesin and 30mg dextromethophan Hbr has worked well for me. I never had luck in the past with cough syrups really helping much, doctor recommended this the last time I got a bad cough. Then honey lemon tea (1 tbl honey, juice of half a lemon, hot water) as well.

Considering how it was "my husband's" air compressor that "we hardly ever used", I am shocked at how much I miss that thing, lol. He really made life so much easier with bikes and car tires.

We downsized from a 3 bedroom house with garage and office to basically a bedroom with some boxes on an outdoor patio. We got rid of 95% of our stuff and really we need to get rid of at least 50% of what I have now. The hardest things for me to get rid of were the things that were given as wedding presents but we didn't have room for or never used, or used rarely enough to justify a lot of space (alcohol glasses, my used up wedding china, etc) and baby things that we just aren't in the current stage of needing (a lot of things we bought for baby #1 and used for everyone else, like bassinet, swing, etc). The biggest regret is listening to others about what I should and shouldn't keep. I don't know why I let others (that aren't part of the household) chime in at all. At the point I was moving it was very fast, I was sick, I had a lot going on besides just the move, and went in with the idea of "less is better." Still, there were things that would be immensely useful in my current situation that I no longer have. Also, others didn't understand either how much these things cost or how long it takes to accumulate the good type of things, since they never used them (art supplies, kitchen stuff mostly). And also things that I ended up donating due to others' impatience that I could have sold for nice pocket change. So I guess my advice would be: -only ask people directly involved with the things if you should keep/lose the things -sell what you can so that way if you have to replace it later, it doesn't feel like a total loss -as you're going through things: if you have a storage box and "yay you just emptied it!", keep the box and don't give away the boxes with the sale/donation. Put the stuff in bags to go out the door. Not necessarily cardboard boxes, but nice plastic ones. Just keep piling them up, even if it seems like you'd never need these again because you've gotten rid of so much stuff. I was shocked at how, after the dust settled, I only have maybe 3 empty plastic boxes that didn't get used by something else. So, I'd say boxes are the absolute last thing to go.

Thank you everyone! Lots of great ideas 🙂

Also, I think the Terrier series was mostly sex-free with some innuendo? I'm one of those that wouldn't let an 11yo read most of Tamora Pierce, but from what I remember I'd be ok with these ones. https://www.amazon.com/Terrier-Legend-Beka-Cooper-1-ebook/dp/B000W917PQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1542643299&sr=1-1&keywords=terrier+pierce My favorite epic fantasy with a female lead is Paksenarrion, but would generally suggest for maybe 16 and up. It's generally clean but much more about good vs evil, and has 2 scenes that aren't really explicit but I just don't like for younger kids. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00APA1E96/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Does anyone do certain lessons around Thanksgiving? My plans for this week are in the air and I will be too distracted to do my regular lesson schedule. So, I'm going to move over to Thanksgiving lessons and general activities. I have a lot of coloring pages and we'll make name cards for the Thanksgiving table. Does anyone have movies or documentaries or an actual lesson that they usually do for this week? And resources would be helpful. TIA!

Heya Scrap. Sorry to hear about all of the health issues. I hope that the heart monitor finds the issue and that it is an "easy" one. Re looking forward: DH's birthday is tomorrow. I'm going to make boston cream donuts tonight/tomorrow, the kids are away until Saturday, so I will get work done have a nice night and eat donuts!

I drape them overnight either on the counter or the windowsill or the sinksill, when dry they go into a plastic bag on the laundry room door. When my stash of clean ones gets low I wash them all at once. If plastic bag is reuseable (usually but sometimes things happen) it gets washed with the rags. Once a week? Every 10 days? I have a lot of rags but sometimes use 2-3 a day.

I found that when I was using it for myself, it wasn't a good indicator of who I was going to get. If there are consistent things that the raters, both good and bad, mention, such as: "Hated him! He was always late!" and "Best teacher EVAR! Sometimes comes in a few minutes late but will talk after class about whatever you need", you know the guy will probably come to a few classes late. But, individual taste it too big to determine if they are actually good. Also, if the student doesn't like the subject, chances are they won't like the teacher no matter how good/bad etc they are. DH taught a little less than 3000 students, he had 12 ratings. On his last semester teaching, he pulled out ALL of the stops. He learned the new tech boards, made handouts, made *individualized* study guides, set up the online class site, made a reward system (finish xzy critera? entered to win gift cards to the campus bookstore or starbucks!) etc, besides the regular office hours and everything he had done in the past. Just, everything he could think of. In the internal reviews that are given anonymously by each student as part of the class (required by this college) he was rated highly by almost everyone. And... at the end of the semester, he received 2 ratings: one person saying DH wasn't invested in the class and the student got a D because it was boring. The other person who rated him said that it was the worst class he's had and mentioned the class by name and by course number -- DH has never taught that course. So, I guess my TLDR opinion is that it can help you see large tendencies of the professor but won't really let you know if they are a good or bad fit for you personally.

I know that my work used to get their boards from ULine. I can't speak to how well they hold up since they were used, yes, but in "slow mode" where you write something up there and it stays for a few months. And office workers aren't quite the same as kids. ? They overall have good standards of products from my experience though, at a good price (for business-level products). If you want to look at them, they do have the sizes you were talking about: https://www.uline.com/Grp_265/Boards-Easels

How big are you imagining? eta: We have an ikea board that is like kid size and a chalkboard on the back. Has held up amazing. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/50021076/

My first two are a girl and a boy. I got so many "Oh! A matching set! You can stop now!" I'm my mom's third girl, I remember 2 or 3 people saying to me when I was younger "Oh, they were trying for a boy?" Didn't understand until I was much older. Now I have 4 and even. People seem so pleased by this. I'll admit I'm pleased too, but mostly because I'm 2/3 of the way to being able to say to any kid "your brothers and sisters" and not getting corrected about my count "you mean my sisTER not sisterSSSS" thing. gah. Totally a legit reason to have 6+ kids, right? I remember this one guy was shocked that I had (then) 3 kids. We were at a Halloween party and he had remarked how many Incredibles costumes there were and I said "Oh they are all mine." I then said, jokingly, that we were planning on 10 total, one birthday per month. I thought he was going to have a stroke, he couldn't say anything. I told him I was joking. He said "Oh good, 10 would be insane, 3 is bad enough." I replied, "Oh, no, I mean about the birthdays, we'll probably have a couple in one month." He stopped talking to me, lol. The next year at the Halloween party (mutual friend's party), I had #4 in arms and just said "Here's February!" And he kind of smiled. I get along with his wife well and always enjoy talking with her at the various parties we see each other. He gets along well with DH but did a double take when he found out we were married, hahaha. TBF, he has one kid he loves very much, just no plans for more ?