I just did a big batch freeze last night. I made 4 baggies of prepared noodles, and 4 baggies of prepared rice. Those freeze flat in ziplocks and reheat easily in the microwave. I bought a 5lb chub of ground beef and browned it with some onion (minced very small so it "disappears"). I used some of this for a macaroni and beef recipe. I guess I used 1.25lbs of meat and it made 2 foil cake pans worth. One of these is plenty for my family of 4. I typically split 9x13 casseroles in to two pans like this. The rest of the meat I mixed with tomato sauce and some sauteed (pureed) veggies (to hide them). So I have 5 pkgs of prepared spaghetti with meat sauce ready to go (and see above the prepared noodles). My 12 yr old can easily heat these things up. I freeze this in ziplocks and lay them flat. I also made a chicken pot pie and a chicken cordon bleu recipe. Those each made two pans. I bought one bag of frozen chicken breasts and boiled them in chicken broth (more flavor - if I had time I would have bought a cheaper whole chicken). Both recipes can be found here: http://sixsistersstuff.com/ One WalMart bag of frozen chicken breasts made all 4 pans of casserole. Quite meaty too. I already had ham on hand for the cordon bleu recipe. I bought a bag of frozen meatballs and divided it into two baggies, then added 1/2 a large jar of grape jelly to each, and 1/2 a bottle of BBQ sauce to each. This will dump in the crock pot to make Sweet and Spicy Meatballs. I serve this over rice and with a salad. Rice is already prepared, see above. I also made 2 freezer bags of stew. I just divide up all the normally raw ingredients that I use in my stew: meat, carrots, potatoes, green beans, corn, Lipton Onion Soup mix, beef broth, cream of mushroom soup (no boos please). Dump all that in to your ziplock baggies and freeze. Easy to throw into the crock pot. DD could throw it in for me, and also can serve it if I needed her to. Look at that Six Sisters website. Lots of great family approved recipes there and certainly not complicated. Those are my criteria - kid approved (no weird flavors or too many veggies), man approved (meat!), easy to assemble and cook. I still haven't had time to fix another batch of pasta to freeze, and make freezer calzones with sausage and pepperoni. That's 17 dinners, ready to go. It's a lot of work, I was super tired last night, but SO worth it as I now have a few weeks of dinner that I don't have to worry about when I am exhausted in the evenings (we're remodeling and I have way too much going on right now).

:bigear:

In "Protecting the Gift" DeBecker talks about telling your kids about someone wanting to touch them, wanting the child to touch the adult, wanting to see their body, showing them the adults body, showing them pictures, and even just trying to get the child alone with them. He does talk a lot about the instinct that something isn't right here, and that even children have this instinct and should trust it. I had this talk with my kids even before having the s3x talk. I want both of them to trust their "creep-out meter".

:grouphug:

Thank you. :grouphug: Some days are harder than others. You had good timing tonight.

My dh lost his job last December and has not replaced it. He's been freelancing some, but it's not enough. Our unemployment runs out next month. We are moving in with my mother in law. Retirement? Ha! We have no health insurance. No college fund. Yes, I'd say things are bad. Very, very bad.

Low carb, high fat. I've lost 35 so far and am still losing.

The difficulty with getting her in some place is figuring out how to pay for it. Assisted living places are extremely expensive. A nursing home is too. My father in law was placed in one after a hospital stay and while he awaited approval for Medicaid (medicare? I always get those confused). He didn't already have it because they were retired from the state. He didn't get approved despite the nursing home guaranteeing he would. His medical insurance paid for most of his stay because they classified it as "rehab", and then the nursing home wrote off the rest somehow. Either that or the insurance covered the balance, I am unsure of the details. How will she pay for it? If you place her there involuntarily, she will be hostile. What happens to her house? You can't sell it while she is still alive and refuses to allow you to do it. It sounds really messy to me. :grouphug: You may have no choice but to wait for something really, really bad to happen where she is forced to move.

I LOVE this show! Not only do you see their impact on the neighborhood, but you see how it changes the midwife Jenny too. Last night was just especially touching. They show such respect and love for the women no matter their circumstances. Anyone watching Bomb Girls?

I always sign up. It's such a huge blessing and so easy for me. I usually just double whatever I am making for my own family. Swedish Meatballs: Make a pkg of butter noodles. Make brown gravy (I make my own from beef stock), stir in a pint of sour cream. Heat with store bought turkey meatballs. I generally add a bag of salad and some cookies to this. Chicken Salad: In summer I either make a big batch of chicken salad (one chicken will make plenty for both families) and send it with croissants, or I stir in pasta as a one dish meal. This one is always appreciated and easy for mom to snack on in the middle of the night. Taco soup: the old stand-by recipe with the can of black beans, can of pinto beans, can of corn, can of diced tomatoes, ground turkey and one pkt of taco seasoning and one of ranch dressing mix. I don't remember how much water, I just add enough to make it "soupy". I always send this with a bag of tortilla chips. Chicken, broccoli, rice casserole. Lots of cheese please! People do get tired of chicken, so I have done pulled pork in a mild BBQ sauce too. With buns and salad. One time a friend brought my family sandwich fixings to stock the fridge. Lunch meat, cheeses, bread, tomatoes, lettuce, even the par-cooked bacon. It was AWESOME! Mac-n-cheese made with smoked sausage is really good. Very kid friendly but good for the grown-ups too. I like this one with a side of green beans.

Does this opinion change if the child actually did try cutting? OP, do you know for sure that she did not attempt it? If you want to show love for a "consistently private" person, do you just respect their privacy at all times? I know that sounds like a dumb question, but I feel like doing that will only cause the child to withdraw further. Like they are slipping away or something. When does extremely difficult/dramatic/argumentative/shut-you-out behavior truly become a problem?

That was harsh. The OP specifically mentioned that she knew her DH should not have read it. Are you the parent of this kind of child? Do you have this nagging feeling that something is wrong emotionally but said child will not open up to you? It's a very scary place to be as a parent and I don't blame him one bit for reading her diary. That is an act that can be forgiven, especially if it leads to a deeper relationship and communication between them.

Oops, I just checked my pair and they are a 42. :glare: I am a 41 in Birkenstocks so I assumed... Those are cute though!! Any 42s you want to part with? You can PM me. :)

Michelle, I'm a 41. What do you have? Anything brown?

Those are the ones I have. Get lots of compliments on them, they are just so heavy. And I am no light weight. I think I must be "off" anatomically...at least in my feet. :lol: I like those, but want a brown I think. Like these (olive color? might be fun) or these (more red-brown). We don't have very cold winters here, and never snow, so that's not a concern, but I do hate wearing my Birkenstocks in winter. It just feels weird. Need something for church.

My dd was painfully shy, then developed the stutter. I had already had a bad habit of speaking for her. She's now 12 and still won't order her own food in a restaurant. So the advice at home was to stop speaking on her behalf, slllllllllooooooooowwwwwww my rate of speech way down, put pauses in my conversations to give her a chance to answer, have her practice the slowed rate herself, and have her practice "easy onset" where there is a little breath that pushes the word out. They did a lot of forced stuttering too, because supposedly this builds awareness for the child of what triggers their disfluency. She was in 3rd grade when we finally pulled her out to homeschool. I remember about 8 weeks into that school year I asked her teacher about her stutter, thinking she could get an eval with the school. Her teacher had no idea that she stuttered. 8 weeks in to the school year and she had not had a meaningful conversation with my child. It's likely your son doesn't say much in class if he's aware at all of his stutter.

I had trouble with mine. :confused: They felt heavy, clunky, sort of Frankenstein-ish. I can't get used to them at all. I wonder if its just because I wear Birks 24/7? The Danskos just feel so heavy and inflexible.

He's only 5? He should be helped, but don't look for a "cure". Most stutterers either grow out of the problem or they learn coping mechanisms and techniques that help them not to stutter as much so it's less noticeable. My dd did therapy through the local university which was a training facility. They are nationally known for work in stuttering. Keep in mind that many SLPs have a small amount of training in disfluency, but not much. They are much more accustomed to seeing articulation issues. You will need to watch his progress closely and see if you need to get him to a stuttering specialist. He will learn breathing techniques, what's called "easy-onset" where you put a little breath at the beginning of the word, and they work a lot, LOT, on slowing your rate of speech. They want the parents to model slowed-rate too. It was hard for me, so I would practice when I did read alouds. :grouphug: It's a challenging problem. He may very well grow out of it but therapy will help him tremendously. My dd was late onset (after 7yrs) and so it's been harder for her to overcome. I would definitely ask their experience level in working with stutterers. This is through the school right? Maybe you can find out who the most experienced (with stuttering) SLP in the district is and take them to that person. Our folks at the Univ level did not speak too highly of having stuttering treated at the local school level because of the lack of experience of the SLPs. They felt that private was the way to go.

My dd and her friends wouldn't want to color. But I can see them painting nails, or watching a movie together on a portable DVD player, playing a board game, or flipping through a book - dd got a "making of" book about Hunger Games and her friends love it. Even going for a walk around the grounds might be nice if she is up to it. I know the movie idea sounds weird, but just being together in the same space while having something distracting might help talking, or it might not and that might be what the friend needs. :grouphug:

Awesome idea! Now I need to think of something like that for dd12. The Biebs is coming to our area in January but I don't know if I can get tix. For my ds8 birthday we got tix for he and a friend to LegoFest. It was unforgettable. Thanks for all this!! I will check it out. My son would love it. dd12: Maybe a video camera. They are getting in to making movies, especially stop motion movies with Lego. She produces/directs and writes scripts. :D Or a new phone. But a dumb one, not a smart phone. ds8: Lego Lego Lego Minecraft?

Kahn Academy. My dd did not get long division at all until we watched the video and did it his way. It's different but has opened her eyes to the logic of math more. She is so non-math oriented that she often needs a fresh perspective.

I have no insight in to military life, so take this for all that's worth, but I would never live in Shreveport/Bossier (Barksdale) again. I HATED it. But I was a transplanted Californian so that skews my view of it. Houses are cheap though.

I love this show too! I was sooo bummed to sit down and watch the first episode of the season and realize that somehow my DVR didn't record the first episode, what I had was the 2nd. I think I followed pretty well, but was a little lost at first. Need to bump up it's priority in the listings!

My dd is in CC Challenge A and works about 6-7 hours a day. Latin takes her the longest at over one full hour.

Thank you Shellers! The High Noon books just look like regular books that would be engaging, but of course I'd want something that reinforces what we are doing in our reading lesson. Pathway readers look good, but I am not sure where to start. DS does not need Bear Necessities I don't think. His troubles are in reversals, putting the end of the word first, remembering a word he just read the sentence before, and sometimes blending 4-5 letter words. I think he looks ready for book A. Any advice on which pathway readers to get initially?