I live in South Louisiana. We get hurricanes and in 2016, had a 1000 year flood. It was caused by massive amounts of rainfall being dumped in a 24 hour period, after weeks of solid rain, so the ground was saturated and rivers were already high. The community directly north of me (by about 10 mins) had over 30 inches of rain in 24 hours. Not many places could handle that. Over 90% of my parish flooded. We were displaced for months. We actually just had 2 schools get back into permanent campuses, 6 YEARS after the flood. We are still being affected here. My current home is a mobile home that is raised ~5 feet. I had to go up 3.5 feet because of the base flood elevation. I didn’t move out of the area because my ex is here still and I could only move 75 miles away without permission from the court. We were still married during the flood. I went so high when I moved after the divorce because I don’t want to go through that again. My neighbors here only got 18 inches of water. My grandma’s house had it in the attic and my mom got 5ft. We got 28 inches. If I flood again, I’m leaving the area. My youngest is almost 16, so I just have 2 more years of court deciding where I live. My ex and I didn’t leave at the time because his job was here and our family is here. I’m extra glad we didn’t since we divorced. I’m now on family land. It’s how I can afford to still homeschool as a single mom. My family goes back generations here. It’s home.

Not to my knowledge. I have been sick 3x and tested negative 4x. My illnesses have followed my usual pattern ~ seasonal allergies, sinus infection, bronchitis, which happens about 3x a year, every year. Each of the times I’ve been sick, I’ve had no known exposure to Covid (although with Omicron it doesn’t take much.) I am double vaccinated, but not yet boostered due to scheduling issues. I’m planning on getting my booster shot next week. My middle and youngest son both had it the summer of 2020. They were at their dad’s that week and got it from him. He got them for the week, knowing he was sick, AND had friends of my kids over to his house. Knowing he was sick. He didn’t test until right before I was due to get them back and two of them had gotten sick as well. I still took them back and they isolated and wore masks to go to the bathroom, etc. My mom, my sister, my oldest, and myself all avoided getting it from them. We were living with my mom then.

Just seeing this. Praying your niece is safe and y’all get answers soon.

Never leave a room without looking to see if there is something you can bring with you to put up/away on your way to where ever you’re going. I’ve trained my kids to do this as well. They’re slacking right now though, so I’ll be doing a refresher course.

19, not counting the dorm in college I lived in 11 houses before I was 9 I’ve only lived in 3 different cities though: my current one ~ 39 of my 41 years 2 others ~ one year each

Yes, it’s happened to me and it was in an abusive relationship. I wish I had seen that then. It could’ve saved me years of heartache.

Our state’s official guidelines follow the CDC. At least 10 days after onset of symptoms and at least 24 hours fever free, with no meds, and other symptoms improving. Taste and smell are exceptions to that because they can take longer. ETA: That’s with a positive personal test. It’s 14 days without one. But every employer has their own rules, as far as I know.

Golden Girls

We currently have 2 in braces. Each of the was $6500. Our insurance paid $1500 each. The worst part was that we had orthodontists on our insurance who if we had used would have cost us $6000 *total*, but I wasn't comfortable with them. My middle one had trigonocephaly though and it affected his growth of his skull and face. Of the 3 that we had consults with, she was the only one to catch the condition on her own. The other 2 blew it off after I told them. He and his older brother had the same issue visually, but not skeletally. The three quotes were $6100. $6300, and $6500. Both of them had severe overbites though.

My 2 oldest had the entire series (3 shots), with no issues. My youngest will start his at his well-visit. His birthday is in January, but because of the number of flu cases, we put it off. I'll schedule it soon. I have all boys.

Cried. J/K Kinda I did all of my normal life stuff ~ school, church, soccer, house stuff, but I also read several books.

mom23boys

I can't get it to work for me either. Maybe I messed up by signing in with this email address? I don't know if I used another one when I first signed up.

Thank you!

I am so very sorry for your loss.

That's interesting to me because our basically brand new Kohls closed. It was in a development that is doing extremely well. It did flood in August, but the whole development did. Kohls is the only one that didn't come back. They gave the reason as being the chain itself is having trouble. (I live in South LA and we had a *major* flood in August.) Kohls had terrible customer service, was overpriced for what it was, and quite unpleasant to shop at though. Even though the development is booming, with even more currently building, they weren't. It's an outside type development, so not in a mall.

My oldest 2 are in braces right now. We got 3 consults. The prices were: 6100, 6300, and 6500. Per child. The first 2 were on our insurance and we could've gotten them for ~6500 for both together. The problem is - my middle child has a fairly rare skeletal issue and neither one of the first 2 noticed it and when I asked about it, they blew it off. The 3rd one caught it and showed me on X-rays and explained it all, even though I already knew. She didn't know that though, because I wanted to know if she caught it. We went with the 3rd and are paying 2x as much. I didn't trust the others. My oldest was a "may need an appliance, may not" case and my middle one was a "definitely needs an appliance" case. He gets his appliance at the end of May. My oldest is doing well enough he will most likely avoid an appliance. We were told 24-36 months, partly depending on compliance with rubber bands. It covers the everything to do with the braces, the retainer and a year (or 2, I can't remember) follow-ups.

My oldest is extremely resistant to showing his work. It eventually became a battle of wills, but one I was willing to stick out and win. As math gets harder, with more steps, it's harder to do in your head without messing up numbers. This was a hill I was willing to die on. So I sat him down and calmly explained why he needed to show his work, including things like the joys of partial credit. Mostly though, I stressed that if he didn't get a problem right, and he didn't show his work, I had no idea where the issue was. Did he understand the process and just switch 2 numbers? Did he know how to do the 1st two steps, but not the 3rd? Was he lost on the first step, which made the rest of the problem wrong, even if calculations were correct? Etc. After that, for his daily work, if he did not show his work, he had to go back and redo the problem, even if he got it right. He basically had to do his math 2 times each day for maybe a week. After that, he was consistently showing his work. He was slacking before Christmas break, so I'm going to crack down Monday when we start back. (Our first semester was terrible. We live in Louisiana and our house flooded 8/13 in the major flood in the Baton Rouge area. We live in the hardest hit area. We lived with my BIL and his family for ~12 weeks, all in one room. Public schools have been terribly screwed up too, so there wasn't a good option for this semester. I relaxed a lot bc everyone has been dealing with trauma and loss.) Also, I started giving partial credit on tests. That also motivated him.

For a well-check, within a week. I'm picky about time, so I'll usually go an extra day or two longer than I have to. I like around 1:00, which is right after their lunch and a good time traffic wise for me. We'd probably have to wait a little longer if we wanted after school. For sick visits, same day. Usually with our Doctor, but occasionally with another doctor in the group. This is with one of the most popular pediatricians in our area. I think the group he is with allows them to put reasonable restrictions on the number of new patients they take. I got lucky when my oldest was born and he was accepting new patients.

Both times we have bought houses while owning another one, we have put our house on the market, and then looked at houses. We waited until we had a contract to make an offer on what we wanted to buy. Before we put our house one the market, we spent some time looking to see what was available in the market. We lived in the house while showing it. The first time with both a 2 and 3 year old. The second time with a 3 yo, 6 yo, and 7 yo. We were able to both buy and sell at the same time both times. The first time, we closed on selling our house in the morning and buying in the afternoon. The people buying our house closed on the sale of their house the day before. We had 2/3 days to be out of the house. Our buyers had the same with their house. The last day, we were crossing paths going and coming. It worked out fine. The second time, the house we were buying had been empty for close to a year. We knew the owners, so we were able to start moving stuff in before we closed. Worst case scenario, we would have to move back into our house. Being able to start moving in early ended up being a blessing to us, because our then 3 year old ended up inpatient at the hospital with a broken femur exactly one week before we closed on the selling of our house. He went in one Friday and we closed the next Friday. To say that was stressful is an understatement. He came home from the hospital in a spica cast. Thankfully, we were moving next door to my IL's. so we only had to move him once. We closed on our house Friday afternoon and needed to be out by Sunday. We didn't close on buying until Monday. We were able to move into the house we were buying before closing. We only did that though because the people we were buying from were long-term family friends. Otherwise, we would have had to push for a different closing date. It was difficult because our buyers were from out of state. It's really stressful, but both realtors and lenders are used to working out closing dates that work for everyone. That's usually part of the negotiations of contracts. Things can push closing dates back though, but again, realtors are used to that situation. It is possible for that to cause a sale to be lost though.

This is where I live. Everyone is on edge. I, like many others, have loved ones in law enforcement and as other first responders. I know one is working the scene and a few others are off right now, but will be going in for their shifts soon. It's terrifying. Where it happened is right by a popular shopping area. My MIL goes there pretty often on Sunday afternoons. It happened before stores were open, so that's a small comfort.

400k+ The more land, the higher you go. When you're around 5 acres, it's 800k+ The farther out you go, the cheaper it is, but they are more likely to need updating, instead of move-in ready.

Our mortgage, including escrow. Escrow includes homeowner's insurance, flood insurance, and property taxes. Food is next.

I can't see myself keeping my grandchildren for free FT. I worked at a MDO program and saw lots of grandparents who were FT caregivers, except for the few hours of MDO. Several of them paid for the program, but didn't get paid for keeping their grandchildren. Almost everyone ended up feeling taken advantage of. The dynamic was different bt them and their children. IME, some people tend to place more value on things they pay for, even if it's a token amount. That being said, I also can't see myself charging market rates, unless I was in a situation where I really needed the money. In that case, it could be mutually beneficial, even if money wasn't much different. I've seen that happen too. The child was being cared for by a loving grandparent and the grandparent had an income. I would never charge for normal babysitting - things like going to the doctor, date nights, and other random things, even like going away for the weekend now and then. I also doubt I would charge for keeping my grand child(ren) 1 or 2 days a week on a regular basis.

It probably depends on your area too. For just DH and I, with clean driving records, we pay just over $200. Both of our cars have liens on them, but even when we owed nothing on our cars, we paid $175 a month. I don't even want to think about adding our sons. ðŸ˜