Oh the Chinese containers are a cute idea! I've seen them at Michael's, too, in really cute designs. Too bad it's like an hour's drive for me to get to a Michael's, or I'd go get some of those for the cookie exchange my h.s. group is doing on Tuesday! I'll prob end up using ziplock bags instead, as matters stand now :P

Thank you, thank you. I feel like I should be more worldly and mature now that I'm an empress. Like I should be putting on some white gloves and inviting you over for crumpets and tea or something. Actually... I don't even know what the heck a crumpet is, exactly, to tell you the truth. Would you care for wine coolers and pizza instead...? (I'll never be good at this dang empress thing). Although I DO have the wave down pat, if I do say so myself. :seeya: <beams>

LOL. Who do we enlist to get the empress wave added? Because I agree, it should totally be there! P.S. Since reading this thread, I have bypassed coffeefreak, Closeacademy, and Melissa in CA on the post count list. I'm coming for you, katemary63! :glare: (That's my intimidating look, it's meant to keep you cringing instead of posting while I surpass you). bwahahaha!

Now, how many more posts do I need to become an Amateur Bee Keeper?!

:iagree: :lol:

hehe! I did it, I used the empress wave to become an empress bee on page 3 of Laura's post about being invisible :D You should have seen it! It looked like this: :seeya: lol.

See this? :seeya: It's the Empress wave. That's right, with this post, I become an Empress bee. hehe.

I'm so weird. Am I the only one who keeps wanting to pick up a book and then going "Oh, no, I should save that for the 52 weeks thing, it's only a couple of weeks away" ....? ...Yeah? Sigh. I thought so. :lol:

Oh, hush! I'm sick of you posting all the time! :lol:

Oh another idea is a tinkering class...find/gather/recruit a bunch of old or broken electronics and let the kids take them apart, examine the insides, see if they can put them back together and so on. We did an egg science class once which is probably good around or just after easter, I looked up different experiments you can do with eggs and we did those (and also ate egg salad :D) I have a fingerprint class in mind, to do our fingerprints, talk about how they are all different, and then to set up a little mystery/ "crime" story where they have to figure out whose fingerprint it is. I'm in the process of seeing whether anyone is interested in a movie and discussion group based on the info in the book "Talking Pictures, A Parent's Guide To Using Movies to Discuss Ethics, Values, and Every Day Problems With Children." I've done a weekly poetry workshop using the book "Teaching Poetry: Yes You Can" by Jacqueline Sweeney. We also briefly did a short story writing workshop... ...I have a lot of good ideas, and I put a good amount of time into planning and organizing and arranging them for my homeschool group, I just wish I could get people to be better about showing up for them lol.

You don't know how hard it is for me to not lick the bowl these days when we make brownies or whatever the case may be. But I don't. My kids never get to do it. I always have "salmonella" in the back of my head. But it seems like such a intrinsic part of childhood for them to have to miss out on :P Do most of you all do it anyway, or no?

I should talk about something important, though, to get those six posts. Like... I don't know. Cheese. What's your favorite cheese? I love muenster, havarti, cheddar and bonbel (or is it bonbell?) the best. I hate swiss though, blech. Five posts to go!

I'm gonna become an Empress bee at 2500? Wheeee only 6 posts to go!

My bookshelf with all my fiction books on it is in my bedroom. "Junk books" as you call them go in the girl's bedrooms. Some nighttime picture books go in the pockets of the glider in my son's bedroom for goodnight story reading. In the den/computer room, I have two bookcases, one of which has a lot of the kids' series on it (Harry Potter, Little House, Series of Unfortunate Events, American Girl, American Diaries, Encyclopedia Brown Chronicles of Narnia and so on) as well as groups of books by particular authors, like a bunch of Judy Blume books. The other bookcase is loosely categorized by subject, like there's poetry, historical stuff, sciency stuff, plus two of the shelves on it are kids' classics, and one of the shelves is partially my homeschooling "how to/info" type books. Then I have a china cabinet that I converted into a school supply cabinet, and the textbooks and stuff that we use for this year are in there, as well as a dictionary and stuff like that. Oh, and in the living room, there's a small ottoman that has a removable lid with storage inside, and there are a bunch of my 5 y/o son's picture books in that. I wish I had room/space/layout for more bookshelves, even some built in ones! But, alas, I don't.

It was only a matter of time before someone did THAT parody! :D

We started a "Community Helper A to Z" type project which we did for a while (we didn't finish). Each month we met someone with a different job, going through the alphabet, and asked them if they would do some sort of presentation for our group. Sometimes it involved a talk, a Q and A, a tour, a hands on interactive activity, a demonstration, etc. Like, we contacted an architect for A and he came and showed the kids his blueprints and computer program, let them play with the computer program, encouraged them to build with blocks and legos, talked about his job. We contacted a bank for B and we went and had a tour and the kids got to try the coin and bill sorting machines and see the vault and the drive thru monitor and so on. We contacted a charity for C and went and helped out and heard about what the charity does and the importance of helping others. We met with a dietician at a local hospital for D and learned about her job and proper nutrition and she passed around fake food and so on. We met an EMT for E and saw a slideshow presentation on first aid, got to go down and climb around in the ambulance, saw the CPR dummy, and so on. F was going to be a firefighter but that one got snowed out. G was a groomer, as in pet groomer, and she was great...we went there and saw her place and her equipment and she'd brought in her dog to demonstrate dog grooming to us. H was a historian at our local historical society, which included a tour and a video. It sort of fizzled out after that (unfortunately)... I thought it was a great program but our group can be kind of unreliable about showing up for everything and after a while it seemed like too many people were canceling last minute, when I had set up these people for free, and I didn't want to feel like I was wasting their time, so I stopped organizing it...maybe I'll pick it up again at some point, in the warmer weather. We still do things that are similar here and there, but not going in alphabetical order, just different things that seem like they'd be fun. Someone from the red cross came and did a disaster and preparedness class, I'm talking to my daughter's judo instructor about a self defense type class, we did a 911 center tour and so on.

I'm sorry. I agree you should just stop all unnecessary things and do something fun with the kids. They'll be happy to have your attention, you won't feel guilty about not providing it, and that should put you all in a better mood instantly. When the kids go to bed, take time for yourself. Read. Forget about trying to have everything done before your husband gets home- let him help you with the wrapping when he gets back, do it together while the kids are in bed and you listen to some music, have some wine if that's your thing. Hang in there! Things will get better! We all have days like this.

This is a nice idea. Or it could be an outing of the month- sometimes a dinner, sometimes a lunch, sometimes some sort of field trip or activity, or some such?

My Y doesn't even have a pool. I wish it did! I can get around okay in the water but like you I never really had swimming lessons and never had the whole rhythm and breathing thing down either- I have spent a lot more time swimming UNDER water than I have doing a regular stroke above the water. I think adult lessons are a great idea! And I'm sure it would help with weight loss!

Oh, cool. I'm on page 6. I need to work on that. :P

I don't even celebrate Christmas/go to church, and I find that kind of odd and not really appropriate lol.

My opinion is that kids should help around the house with typical stuff because they're part of the household and should help out with chores. Kids should also get a small portion of the family income (in the form of allowance) because they're part of the family, and because that's how you teach them about money management. The allowance is not tied into chores. But if they want to earn EXTRA money, they can do extra chores that are above and beyond what you would normally expect from them for helping out around the house anyway.

I hope he recovers quickly!

If you have a cell phone with internet access, you can use this for foods where you want to calculate from a label rather than using the foods already listed in your little booklet: http://www.wijvallenaf.nl/Weight-Watchers/ProPoints-Calculator.html

Cool, glad it was helpful! :) The year's continuing to go well for us insofar as math is concerned. Once we do our standardized testing at the end of the year, I'll update that review again. But I'm really happy with it so far.