I'm so very very sorry. I wish there were something, anything, I could do to lessen your hurt a little.

We just did a party with a crock pot of thin-sliced roasted pork tenderloin in gravy (made with a little dijon mustard, apricot jam, and thyme,) baguette, salad and a few cheeses (Camembert, blue and Parmesan.) I put out some pickles, too. Cake for dessert. Pretty easy and everyone enjoyed it!

I've had this chronological WEM list bookmarked for a while now.

If you're a AAA member (or know someone who is) you can usually get maps for free.

a bazillion stomptillion

Aaand it's under contract before our realtor even manages to get an appointment set up. :sad: This house hunting is getting really frustrating. Years.

See, I think of this as a downside--same old stuff in the same old places, even though not spending more on new stuff is good. While I don't *love* my house, it functions well and is spacious enough. I suppose those are the important things. For so long, we've looked at houses and said "well, where would we do *this* or *this*?" We know the house layout works (this other one has an extra room, so it's a bit bigger.) I'm seeing a lot of upside, and the only downside is lack of "different," and that's not enough, is it? We'll be going to see the house this week. Thanks, everyone!

Thanks again. I'm probably working through a change in priorities. When we first started looking, we were more or less looking for the house we'd die in :) Now, the kids are so much more involved in activities, and I see the next 15 years or so being like this and then some. This other neighborhood is close to a community college campus (for the future,) a mall, a grocery store I could walk or bike to, a Target, even Cub Scouts.

Thanks for the opinions. Maybe it just feels weird to move to the same house. I can imagine that looking out the windows would be a shock for the first little while. :lol:

but in a different location? We've been looking at houses for more than two years now, and a place has come on the market in a neighborhood that has a lot of positives. There would be a lot less driving than we do now, and we'd only be a couple of minutes from the best library in the county. But it's the same house, the same *model* that we have now (with some slight differences.) I suppose I've said in the past that "if we could pull this house up and move it..." There's nothing wrong with how the house works for us, but its location isn't ideal anymore, with the kids getting older and more involved in stuff. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Ideally, we wouldn't move to a neighborhood at all, but that requires DH's commuting time to be too high. This seems like a reasonable compromise. Plus, I wouldn't have to count how many steps to the bathroom in the dark--I already know that. But...it's the same house. What do you think?

Thanks for posting. My ferret was awesome, and if I didn't have small kids, I'd think about some again.

Zombie thread! Saw Kalanamak's response up there :(

We just got a box of these recycled paper pencils. We love them. Even when they've been sharpened to a fine point, the tip doesn't break when you start to write. I have yet to have a lead wiggle or fall out or break or do anything unpleasant.

As the mom of an allergy kid, thank you for being so thoughtful. :)

Yay for successful surgery! Sounds like the reading glasses are fun!

Before they get their pajamas on, can you take a peek and say for example, "Darling, the pants should go into the hamper with unders and socks, but the top looks okay for another go." Have a couple of hooks for those "okay" things. They'll start picking up on what's okay to wear again and what's too dirty pretty quickly, I think. As far as choosing their own clothing, I'm all for that. My kids pick all their own clothing. They also know how to adjust when they're too cold or too hot. They look crazy sometimes, but if they're happy, who am I to complain? I only put my foot down when they want to wear dress clothes for outside playing.

The fun part about having the kids sort the clean stuff is that I don't have to wonder whose it is! I set my DS5 to sort mostly because that's his sort of task, but if there are mixups, the kids fix them. Easy (for me!) And my DSjust-barely-4 has been putting away his own laundry for a year or more now. He just needs help folding his socks :)

Well, there's your problem :) I think different people have fundamentally different views of laundry. I don't sort. They're kid clothes, they get torn up, worn out, used up before any potential dinginess is an issue. If the clothes last long enough, I don't care about sorting anyway. Everything except for a very few items gets thrown in the dryer, I put the big basket of clean and dry clothes out, the kids sort into their own baskets and put away. Folded or not, as they choose. I do one load of kid clothes every other night. That's it. All four kids. What do I care about? That they have clean clothes to wear. Are they model perfect? Heck no. Do I care? Heck no. ETA: I will wash new red items alone with a white rag before allowing them to join the rest of the regular laundry, just to make sure they don't bleed. Items that bleed are often relegated to the back of the closet if possible.

Have they experienced what happens when they don't do their laundry and put it away? Frankly, the same sort of dresses or clothes for each kid would be a turn-off for me, because then you have you look at every label to see whose dress/shirt/whatever it is. I know. My mother likes to buy all three of my boys the same shirts, just in three different sizes.

There's also the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Barnes Foundation, and if you like weird stuff, there's the Mutter Museum.

Getting or keeping a good credit rating is more important to us in the long term than the 15% is right now.

There are seats that have, um, strategic cutouts. They are male- or female-specific. They do help. ETA: Terry bicycles women's seats as an example.

Can you put the littler one in a high chair with a tray and let her mess around with things like applesauce or edible play dough while Big Sister gets to do her art?

Could you get a not-purple pair from, for example, Zenni?

Just adding my agreement. DS8 was diagnosed with peanut and walnut allergies when he was 15 months old. He was tested for a whole slew of different nuts, but was only positive for those two. We were told to avoid all nuts due to possible cross-contamination issues.