We scaled back from Thanksgiving through last week. This past week we did our regular amount of work, and I hope to do the same next week. We'll take 2 weeks off for Christmas.

We watched some of it on the news today. DD was scared and upset. DS did okay with it. They listened to DH and I talk about it during dinner tonight. I'm pretty open with my kids. I don't shield them from very much. It's going to be all over the media and everyone is going to be talking about, so better they hear it from me.

I found it behind the couch about the third time I looked there.

I "cleaned" Wednesday in preparation for my MIL watching the kids last night. "Cleaning" was essentially dealing with the piles of chaotic clutter that are here all year, but especially during the holiday madness when I have even less time to clean and stay organized. I recycled a bunch of stuff and threw away a bunch of stuff. It's not in recycling. It's not where I normally put any of our school books. We're already a lesson behind and will be two lessons behind today if we don't find it. We already wasted over an hour looking everywhere for it. We moved couches, looked under cushions, looking inside other books -- literally everywhere I could think of. Where are you, Sequential Spelling? I don't want to wait weeks to get another copy of you. Shipping took long enough the first time around.

We had the meal plan when we were there, but we ate breakfast in most days (we bought some bagels and muffins) and we did bring snacks in our backpacks, like fruit, goldfish crackers, etc. I don't see why bringing lunch in a backpack wouldn't work. I'd definitely do at least one meal/day out. My view is it's not a vacation if I have to cook all the time. If it makes you feel better, my MIL is like this too. She has a timeshare and doesn't understand why anyone would go out to eat during vacation when they can make their own food there. I hate doing that! As I said -- if I'm cooking and doing dishes, how is that a vacation for me? I'm doing the same crap I always do in a different location after running around all day. I also don't like cooking in a kitchen that isn't mine. That might sound silly, but it's just how I feel. I don't mind breakfast or packing a lunch, but I refuse to cook dinner while I'm on vacation.

More Legos? There are so many cool sets available.

I agree with the article. DH and my mom get along really well. I don't get along with his parents. We have one of the strongest marriages of anyone we know. My mom got along well with her MIL, my dad didn't get along well with his MIL. They divorced. I'm sure there's anecdotal evidence for both sides of the argument. The article does state people with these relationships are MORE likely to divorce -- not that they will for certain -- so I think it's important to keep that in mind as well.

Any possible way they have been corresponding with you, but the e-mails were sent to your spam folder? I've only ordered from them 3 time and I've never had an issue, but I have heard of other people having issues with them. In fact, I've heard of them being very rude when you call. My only contact with them ever has been through e-mail.

Since I'm in the process of doing this right now...... I guess it depends how you see the value and worth of something. Is the activity meant to be social? Academic? Physical? A combination? What kind of a toll is the activity taking on your family? I try to put my kids first, but ultimately if I'm stressed out, snapping at everyone, unorganized, and miserable, is sticking to the crazy activity schedule REALLY benefiting my kids?

I usually avoid Paula Dean recipes, but she does have a delicious one for pumpkin-cheesecake.

Well, where McKenna is GOTY and won't be available after New Years, you can hold onto her, sell her in a few months when people might be willing to pay a bit more, and hold onto to the money to buy her whichever doll she wants next year. That Marie-Grace was really far too good of a deal to pass up!

I make my kids try a little bit of everything. With DS I DO make him have a few pieces of his vegetables -- usually 3 small pieces. If I didn't, he would hardly get any veggies in him. We do get some things in our farmshare I don't like, but I want to. Butternut squash is something I never liked, but I kept trying it different ways until I found a recipe (for soup) that made it not only edible, but good. Sometimes it's a matter of finding the right way to cook a food. Then there are other foods like lamb that I've tried a couple ways and it's disgusting to me no matter what.

and you're using the Simplicity pattern that contains Tinkerbell, Belle, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, and Ariel, the underwear pattern for Tinkerbell is faulty. I thought I must have screwed them up, so I made a second pair and they just don't fit -- the leg holes are far too narrow for the legs. You can't even get them on. Save yourself some misery and use a different pattern for the panties. I looked at the pattern pieces for another pattern I have (Simplicity #5276) and the underwear pieces in there are larger and the leg holes seem to be wider and have higher arches. I think they'll work much better. That is all. :)

Mine also eats poop -- his own or my other dog's.

I agree that it largely depends on their motivation, but even if there is no ill-intentions behind them inviting you, you have valid reasons for keeping things the way they are. If they have something the weekend after Christmas and absolutely can't do it, then I might consider it, but if they just want to do it because it's closer to Christmas or whatever, I'd say no. You have your own family traditions and this would mess them up.

It seems like most of the people who share your opinion, Elise, that being out of the house pays off more in the long run, have older kids. I can see the benefit to outside classes when they're older, but right now most of the outside classes we take haven't been worth it compared to what we could be doing at home during those hours. Spending half a day including traveling to a science class that is awful (my 9 year-old seriously knew more about nocturnal animals than the teacher did -- most of the kids in his group did) isn't worth the effort. We wasted half a day when we could have been doing school or watching a documentary about animals.

A lot of our time is spent driving too. If an activity is 30-60 minutes, double the time to account for driving there and back.

It's an up-front cost, but I recently bought one of those food saver things (that vacuum-seal food) and I'm sure I've been saving money in groceries in a couple of ways. I use a lot of chicken broth in my cooking so I've been making my own in huge batches, portioning it out according to the recipes I typically make, and freezing it. It really doesn't take much time. I'll get it going one night after dinner, let it simmer unti I go to bed, pop it in the fridge, and deal with portioning it and freezing it over the next couple of days. I've also been doubling-up my crockpot recipes or soups and freezing half. We're very busy, so it's not unusual for us to get home from an activity at 7:00 or 8:00 and either be too tired to make dinner dinner or realize cooking whatever we planned for that night will take too long. A frozen soup or chili thaws out very quickly. If we didn't have something quick and easy, we'd be more likely to go out to eat and spend a lot more money. Also, I try to limit the trips I make outside the house. If I can hit the pet store on my way home from an activity, I do that. I don't know how much it saves in gas, but it save something!

Stay home. You'll tick people off, I'm sure. I did the first year I stayed home, but man, is it worth it!!!!! Christmas is now my favorite day of the year because we don't have to run around like crazy, no one bothers us, we stay in our jammies all day and enjoy our family time together. I don't blame your DD for not wanting to travel with her little one. It's too much, and not enjoyable. The extended family is all like, "Oh, little baby! We want to oohhhh and ahhhhh over the little baby! You shouldn't deprive us of that!" but they don't stop to realize how miserable it is to pack up all that baby stuff and end up with a cranky, over-stimulated baby who is off-schedule. Stay home. If you're super-nice, you can invite all your extended family over for Christmas. They can do the traveling.

I'm sure this isn't helpful, but since plenty of people have already explained what Skylanders are, I'd like to add that your nephew sounds like a little puke with a super-huge entitlement mentality. Screw the gift cards! I'd get him the ugliest Christmas sweater I could find and call it good. Don't bother making a bag for his Skylander figures. They sell carrying cases so I doubt this little snot would appreciate the time and effort you put into making a bag. I'd buy the smaller kids books. No way you should be buying for extended family if you can't even get presents for your own kids. I'm angry for you.

I think you made a key point. I'm trying to evaluate which out-of-the-house time is truly benefiting my kids and us as a family. There are some things that are, like FLL (even though the commitment is heavy from September-December). They're learning about team work, engineering, programming, problem-solving, and we lucked out with a really nice group of kids who mesh well. Their book club (run by the same mom who does Lego) is also beneficial. They can't have the type of literary discussion with me that they have with a group of peers. That's also only once/month, so it's not awful squeezing it in. When DH and I discussed what needs to give, I was firm on those two activities because the benefits outweigh the time commitment. Dance and karate are both fairly big commitments, but the kids benefit physically and socially. We can consider it PE. Cutting dance back a bit might be a possibility next year, but it largely depends on the schedule. Karate is 3 days/week -- it is what it is. If dance overlaps with karate, DD might as well take the dance classes. Both activities are in the same building. We are taking a monthly science class that is NOT benefiting my kids. They over-booked the classes so instead of the people who run the center teaching the classes, they've had really clueless college kids who didn't know the material 2 out of 3 times. It's also a 90-minute round-trip for us so the travel time plus the class eats up all but a couple hours of our school day. I'm dropping that, even if they won't refund the money.

I've experience that as well from people who want me to baby-sit on occasion because I'm "home." I might be home, but since we currently only do school 4 days/week because of co-op, there really is no extra wiggle-room in my schedule for the distractions that another child would bring. It's not like it's as simple as having the child do school with us. I also have 2 friends who call constantly during the day because I'm home. Yup, I'm home -- trying to cram 4 days of school into 5 days. I really don't have time to talk to you. Most of the time I don't even answer the phone anymore. I've also felt some pressure from my book club (not the one the kids are in) when they were looking for someone to take over. I held firm on that one. Our book club uses these book kits from the library and there are usually one or two stragglers when it comes to returning them to the head of the club. I don't have the time or desire to track down people. It would stress me out!

When I figured out our time away, the low number included one one-hour weekend dance rehearsal + round-trip travel time for that. It also included all regular dance & karate classes (I only take DS to karate when it overlaps w/DD's dance and DH takes him the rest of the time -- I only accounted for my own time, not DH's) gymnastics, and co-op. A bad week included all of the following plus FLL on Wednesdays (it's done on Wednesdays now until the fall), two two-hour dance rehearsals, and an outside monthly class (either our book club or a science class). I didn't bother to add Scouts which is every-other week, or the Saturday FLL session DH takes them to. We had 4 or 5 weeks this year that were the bad, 24-hours-away activity weeks. Reading the responses, it's sort of nice to know I'm in the same boat as many of you, but it's also sad how much time we're away from home. 14-24 hours is like a part-time job. Something seriously needs to give in my schedule. I'll have to see what corners I can cut this year and reevaluate next year. Due to our schedule, we're still not able to take time for spontaneous opportunities, and that was one of my goals for the year.

It sounds like many of us are stressed out by our outside commitments, and that seems to be greatly affecting our happiness and the amount of time we are able to put towards educating our children. I sat down today and figured out how many hours/week we're attending outside activities + driving time to see how much we're not at home. On a good week? 14 hours, which I feel is excessive. On a bad week? 24 hours -- an entire day. 1/7 of my week. No wonder why my house is a complete mess most of the time, I'm stressed out, and don't have time to do anything fun. I'm either doing school with them or sitting with them at an activity. Something has to give. Sit down and figure it out. It can be scary when you look at it in terms of hours physically away from home.

Grandma would be taking him. I would have said when he received the gift, "How generous! I'll make sure he's fed and ready for you at 4:30 AM sharp, unless you'd like to pick him up earlier."